{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/639k35p049/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Ronda Hauben Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAuthor, journalist, teacher, and public speaker Ronda Hauben reflects on how her experience attending Queens College during the early 1960s influenced her subsequent activism work. Ronda shares her memories of growing up in Oakland Gardens and Little Neck as well as attending Martin Van Buren High School before starting at Queens College in 1960. Ronda, who majored in English and minored in education, discusses her involvement in civil rights initiatives organized by Queens College students. Specifically, Ronda highlights the work of Queens College students and faculty on the Student Help Project in Prince Edward County (Virginia) and the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Ronda speaks about the contributions of Queens College Education Department professor Sidney Simon and students Mark Levy and Mario Savio on these and other initiatives.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAfter graduating from Queens College, Ronda spent time living, studying, and working in Massachusetts, Alabama, Europe, and Michigan. In Michigan, Ronda became interested in labor union history; she met participants of the 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike and wrote about their experiences. Ronda also taught computer classes to auto industry workers and co-authored the book \u003cem\u003eNetizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet\u003c/em\u003e with her son Michael Hauben. Ronda explores how the concept of Netizen, a citizen of the Net actively engaged in and contributing to online communities, expands upon the activism work that was prevalent at Queens College in the early 1960s.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/43498"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2024-06-20 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Tags"]},"value":{"en":["Queens College Alumni"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Ronda Hauben (Interviewee)","Fran Kipnis (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Mid-1940s - 2024 (temporal)","Oakland Gardens, Little Neck, and Queens College, Queens, NY; East New York, Brooklyn, NY; Harrisburg, PA; Prince Edward County, VA; Tuscaloosa, AL; Atlanta, GA; Cambridge, MA; Detroit and Flint, MI (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAuthor, journalist, teacher, and public speaker Ronda Hauben reflects on how her experience attending Queens College during the early 1960s influenced her subsequent activism work. Ronda shares her memories of growing up in Oakland Gardens and Little Neck as well as attending Martin Van Buren High School before starting at Queens College in 1960. Ronda, who majored in English and minored in education, discusses her involvement in civil rights initiatives organized by Queens College students. Specifically, Ronda highlights the work of Queens College students and faculty on the Student Help Project in Prince Edward County (Virginia) and the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Ronda speaks about the contributions of Queens College Education Department professor Sidney Simon and students Mark Levy and Mario Savio on these and other initiatives.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAfter graduating from Queens College, Ronda spent time living, studying, and working in Massachusetts, Alabama, Europe, and Michigan. In Michigan, Ronda became interested in labor union history; she met participants of the 1936-1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike and wrote about their experiences. Ronda also taught computer classes to auto industry workers and co-authored the book \u003cem\u003eNetizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet\u003c/em\u003e\u0026nbsp;with her son Michael Hauben. Ronda explores how the concept of Netizen, a citizen of the Net actively engaged in and contributing to online communities, expands upon the activism work that was prevalent at Queens College in the early 1960s.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/249/782/small/hauben_ronda_20240620_portrait_resized.jpg?1724957699","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - hauben_ronda_20240620_edit.mp4"]},"duration":4456.66133,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/249/782/small/hauben_ronda_20240620_portrait_resized.jpg?1724957699","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/249/782/original/hauben_ronda_20240620_edit.mp4?1724957349","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":4456.66133,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK, so this is Fran Kipnis, and today is June 20th, 2024, and I am interviewing Ronda Hauben for the first time. This interview is taking place via Zoom and is part of the Queens Memory Project focusing on Queens College. And Ronda, I want to begin by thanking you for participating in Queens Memory, and hearing about your experiences as a student at Queens College and your work in the Civil Rights Movement and the virtual world will be a great contribution to the Memory Project archives. And we'll start a little bit by talking about your childhood and teenage years and Queens more generally. And then we'll talk about you attending Queens College as a student, your participation in the civil rights movement, and your experiences in the virtual world and other activities. So let's begin by just talking a little bit about your parents' journey from Brooklyn to Pennsylvania to Brooklyn and back to Queens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=0.0,78.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Right. Yeah, well, I can't say a whole lot about it because I was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, because my father had gone to work in a factory repairing plane engines during World War II. So I don't know about that except what one of his friends told me. He never talked about it. And my parents were in Pennsylvania, I think, a short while, giving birth to me and during the war years, but then they went back to Brooklyn, which is where they were born and grew up. So I really don't know any specifics. I never thought to ask them about that except that years later I went and just looked at the areas in Harrisburg, and actually we lived in Middletown, Pennsylvania. But for all intents and purposes, I grew up in New York.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=78.0,131.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK. So tell me a little bit about living in Brooklyn and then moving to Queens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=131.0,137.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Right. Well, Brooklyn was a little hard because the neighborhood was changing at the time, it was East New York, and my parents wouldn't let me out to play or whatever unless they came out and stayed out also. So it was not the ideal place to be, but it was OK. And I did go to school there. My mother worked also sometimes, and that was a little hard on me, but I don't have a lot of memories of all that. I have a few. But the important thing was by the time I was eight, my parents decided to move to Queens, and I don't know exactly what went into their decision. I thought they felt that they would have to move sooner or later, and so they'd better do so a little sooner so they could figure it out better. And so they moved to Oakland Gardens in Bayside, and it turned out I was delighted with that move because there were many more trees, there was lots of grass. When it rained, there were worms on the sidewalks, which I was impressed by, I was happy about.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=137.0,206.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And in general, it was a nice experience to move to Queens and to be able to be outdoors. Then I could just be outdoors on my own. And it was a garden apartment, it was a rental. So then my mother had a baby, and sadly the baby died at a year and a half. And my mother -- we felt that it would be better to move somewhere else. So Deepdale was opening in Little Neck, which was not far from where we were. You had to put a little down payment down, but I think it was some kind of public-supported co-op [note: Deepdale Gardens opened in 1953 as federally sponsored housing for WWII veterans]. And so we moved to Deepdale and that was even better because it was very easy to ride my bike there. I rode on the Horace Harding Expressway up to Little Neck before it had opened, and it was a very nice place to be. My schools -- did you ask about that? I should go on a little bit?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=206.0,269.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Yeah, tell your school and sort of the library, what it was like.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=269.0,273.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: My school situation, where I went to P.S. 86, which I don't remember much about grade school. Junior high, the thing I remember, it was Junior High School 74. I remember that at one point we learned about the American Revolution and the teacher wouldn't let us have a party, so at the end of the term, and we were upset with her, so we made our own party, but we dressed up in American Revolutionary kinds of ways with our arms wrapped or et cetera. And then the teacher's response was really interesting, because she said that was great, that if there was still a chance, she would give us all extra credit for having done that. So we weren't so happy about that, but we were happy we had the party. But it was indicative, I thought, of the rest of what I was going to see as I grew up.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=273.0,327.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And then I went to Martin Van Buren High School, and I've just recently learned from a neighbor who went the year before me that it was new at that point [note: the school opened in September 1955]. I don't remember that, but it was an OK place. The things that stick out from that were Mario Savio went to that school, and it was really interesting. I think he ran for president, student body president, I'm not sure. But he stuttered, and he would make speeches even though he stuttered, and he would be willing to stand there with his stuttering and make a speech. And I remember finally he gave a speech where he didn't stutter and we all applauded. We were so happy for him. And I thought it's really interesting that he ended up being a key, very important person in the Free Speech Movement [at UC Berkeley].","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=327.0,384.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Also, it was interesting that -- the other thing I remember was somehow on the bus going home from school one day I heard that the new elections were happening, and the secretary position only had one person who was running for it, and she was the incumbent. So I thought, well, why don't I run for it? And I put in an application, and in fact, I campaigned and lo and behold, I won. But it was fairly close, not too close, but fairly close. And so she asked for a recount and I hadn't really heard about recounts at that point. And lo and behold, she won by less than I had originally won by, but there was little I could do about it. And it was sort of my first experience in the electoral system. And it was interesting. I wrote a short story about it, \"Winning by a Loss,\" about how interesting the experience had been running for secretary. And the result of my writing that I might've even entered some contests with it, had gotten a honorable mention or something, I don't really remember. But I did write that story and sadly, we moved around a lot. So the things I would've saved, I don't have, like that, but that was an interesting experience.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=384.0,465.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: I went -- somehow, I was being encouraged by my family, who were essentially, they didn't have any money to send me to college, and I had to work for my spending money and my money for books. So I worked part-time through some of high school and all of college. And Queens College was where I was planning to go, which was fine. I thought, I had some thoughts about if I had money, I might've looked into Cornell, but I didn't really look into it and Queens was my direction. And I also did high school by taking a full program, and I ended up graduating in February. And so I went to Queens College and started in February of 1960. And so what I realized since then, which is a bit fascinating, is that I was at college during the early '60s, because the early '60s is a really interesting time, and I didn't put together the really interesting time I had in college with the fact that that's when it was. Mario Savio also was at Queens College. I probably saw him occasionally, not a lot, but it was just indicative of the people at Queens College.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=465.0,554.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And I did have some good experiences and bad at Queens College, but the good experience was that I majored in English. I wanted to teach, and I wanted to teach secondary school. So I minored in education. And lo and behold, very early on -- well, I don't know, it's not too early, it was probably 1962, I managed to get in the class of Dr. Sidney Simon. And he was somebody very special. And it's sort of sad that I looked him up now and I saw he just recently died at 95 [note: Simon passed away on January 12, 2023]. And had I known that he was still alive, it would've been delightful to have been in touch with him. But I thought he had pioneered, with -- maybe in his Ph.D., I'm not sure -- with Louis Raths and Merrill Harmin, the concept of values and values in education.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=554.0,610.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And I saw also online that the book that they wrote [\"Values and Teaching: Working With Values in the Classroom\"] sold a million copies. So it was promoting that people, teachers, do something about values as part of education. And in his class, what he did is he gave out a questionnaire, and the questionnaire had questions on all different sides of it, so you could turn it around and answer the questions. And I remember getting the question of, what are your values? And then he would encourage people to act on their values. And I happened to get all this during the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was quite a time to get it, because I remember writing that it's great what Kennedy's done, that he stood up to the Russians and that he's done something about all of this. And then afterwards he gave them back, what we had written. And it was a little while later, and this was October 1962.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=610.0,669.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And by the way, some of my dates may be wrong, but I will give them sometimes, just to give some feeling for what's happening. And it was a bit fascinating that when I read what I had written, I was appalled, because what I realized was that it wasn't to encourage what Kennedy had done. He could have gotten us all killed. It turns out it worked out, and they did get a settlement from all of this. But somehow my response to it was what I was questioning, that I hadn't figured out that it was no -- to not necessarily threaten what you're going to do, but to try to figure out to promote negotiations. And so I thought that experience was very important to me. I prior had had some experience with a friend that was at Stuyvesant [High School] and who helped me to see that there was a bigger world than I knew through my own experience. But this was where something really, really helpful, and I thought it helped influence the rest of my life. Because what's interesting is I thought Sidney didn't only suggest you live by your values and you know what your values are, but he also, he acted on his. And so he was a very sweet person and he cared about his students a lot.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=669.0,763.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And all through Sidney, I met several other people at the time, and one of the people was the president of the student body, Mark Levy. And he was president 1962 to '63, and he cared about what was going on in the world and encouraged there to be a support for things that would deal with the problems. And at that time, it was interesting that it was a time that the civil rights movement was going on and people knew about it and had a lot of respect for it, I thought, among a lot of people. One of the things that happened at Queens was there had been schools desegregation in Prince Edward County, Virginia. And people, the people in Prince Edward County, Virginia, wouldn't desegregate their schools. Instead, they closed the public schools. And for the white students, they had access to private schools, but the Black students didn't.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=763.0,841.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So there was a project planned and Queens College was active in working on that project, where people would go down and set up Freedom Schools in the summer of 1963. And I was part of working on that project. I think I was part of a group who monitored the mainstream press at that point. I don't have documents to really review all of that, but at some point I might try to look in newspapers and see what I can find. But I thought we tried to critique some of the mainstream press, and I was surprised by how bad it was in general covering this because this was a valuable thing that the students were planning to do. I would've liked to have gone, but in my family there was opposition, and at that point I wasn't going to fight that opposition. And so just to go forward for a minute, in my family, there was also going to be something at Rutgers University in the summer of '63, which was a course by Sidney Simon and one of his colleagues, Merrill Harmin.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=841.0,913.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So I went to that course and stayed at Rutgers for that period of that course. And it was a very lively summer, because -- lots of folk music -- and it was a real concern about what was going on in the South and how could that be dealt with. And so I ended up graduating. I just want to, just add a few -- I did have some other very good teachers at Queens College at that time. I had a wonderful teacher for 17th century literature and 17th century poetry, and we read John Donne -- \"The new philosophy calls all in doubt/the element of fire is quite put out\" -- about the changes that were happening in the 17th century and the changes were happening in the '60s, so it was very relevant.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=913.0,976.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: What was the name of that teacher, do you remember?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=976.0,979.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: I don't remember, unfortunately. And I tried to figure out how to look it up. I don't have my transcript right now. I tried to get it online and I ran into a problem. I should try to get it and maybe I can do some more research. She was quite special. And I ended up, when I did some graduate work for one year at nights at Queens, I also took her course. And then I also student-taught while I was at Queens. And that was a wonderful experience I had. I remember the name of my participating teacher, not the education person, but the participating teacher at the school. It was at Junior High School 194 that I student-taught. The teacher was somehow having trouble with his class of SP people, which were people who did two years, three years of junior high school in two, they were people who had passed a certain test.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=979.0,1033.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so he turned the class over to me when I was student-teaching. And so I had my own class, and they were a wonderful class and they were very special. And he also encouraged them to write poetry, and some of them wrote wonderful poetry. So I had that experience also in student-teaching. And one of the things that sticks out, though, is that I had thought it would be a good idea to do \"Catcher in the Rye\" with the students. And I had gotten it approved by the assistant principal, and we were reading it, and they loved the book and really found it very interesting and helpful to them, the students. And so what was interesting is suddenly one day Mr. Walinski [the teacher] told me I had to stop teaching that. I couldn't mention it in class ever again. And I asked him why. And he said he had gotten a note from the principal that there was a complaint about my teaching that book.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1033.0,1094.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So I couldn't face the students by never mentioning it again. So I went to class and I said, we have to finish it today. And I just said some things when we wrapped it up. And then sadly, the cooperating teacher got a letter in his file that he hadn't obeyed the order that he had been given the principal. So that was an experience that in fact would be repeated in different ways as I was out in the world. So essentially after I graduated in 1963, the summer of -- I'm sorry, June of '63, which again, I had skipped a term by taking a lot of courses as I was at Queens. But I stayed connected with Queens afterwards because I took this course at night. And it was interesting that Mark Levy at one point told me that his fiancée, Betty Bollinger, who was going to be his wife, was at that point, was doing graduate school at Harvard Education School, I think.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1094.0,1177.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And she had a room there and she was coming to New York for a weekend, I thought it was a weekend, and that I could use the room if I wanted to, and that way get away. I was having some trouble with my family, with my mother particularly. But I was happy to have that alternative. And so I accepted, and a friend and I, in the fall of 1963, went up to Cambridge. And what's interesting is we ended up meeting some graduate students. We went to eat in the student dining hall, and we sat in the seats of a set of graduate students but not knowing. And when they came along, they said, those are their seats. And we ended up meeting them, and it turned out that they knew Betty Bollinger. And so when we went back to the room, they gave us a call and invited us to go to a movie. So that's how I met my husband-to-be [Jay Hauben]. So it was through Mark and through Queens, actually.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1177.0,1243.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And then what was interesting is Jay was coming in for Christmas, and we wrote, we corresponded after I left, and he had invited me to something, and then I got an invitation from Sidney Simon. He was inviting former and [current] students to his house. I thought he lived near a beach, and that there would be a gathering. So I managed to find a way to get in touch with Jay, because by then he was home at his parents' house. And he agreed to come with me and to give the tickets he was going to use to his parents. And so we went to Sid's house and it was a really interesting experience; in the set of people were Rita and Mickey Schwerner. And I knew Rita from my class with Sid, but I had never met Mickey Schwerner. And he talked a lot about civil rights that I remember and was obviously very committed to civil rights.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1243.0,1317.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so I thought after that -- I didn't realize, which I've learned since, that in January -- that [gathering] was probably December as far as I can put together. And in January they went to Mississippi, that Rita and Mickey, and then when we heard about the three civil rights workers, one who was a student at Queens College, Andy Goodman; James Chaney, who was from Mississippi; and Mickey Schwerner were missing in Mississippi, it was very sad to hear that. And then when they were found, it was doubly sad. And so I thought that's a sign of the fact that it was, there was a lot of commitment and a lot of concern of the students. I thought of a number of students at Queens College, and I thought probably Mickey was one of the -- I didn't know him prior to that -- but I just want to point out, I read, was recently reading a book of somebody who grew up in the house I live in now, the apartment house that I live in now, which I'll get to later about. And what's interesting is that in the book, she talked about how she was at a camp and these civil rights workers were found and dead, sadly and tragically. And what she said is that the students at the camp wrote a letter to the President saying that they should be protecting the students who care enough about what's going on, to go to Mississippi, and they shouldn't have been left to the situation they had. And so I thought that was impressive that she had that letter and she included it in a book that's just come out. And I agree, of course, but we were up against a fight.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1317.0,1456.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And I thought that a piece of all of that is that somehow I was recently at an event and somebody was asked about what Queens College was like in the '60s, and he hadn't been there till '64, but what he said is something like, it was quiet. I don't remember his exact words, and it was the opposite in my experience. So I want to put on record that there was Sid Simon and there were other teachers somehow, but there were also the students being very active. There was the project for Prince Edward County, Virginia, and then Mississippi the following summer. So it should be understood that it was a very vibrant environment at Queens College, and it was something important to have as one's college.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1456.0,1510.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So I thought that you want to know a little bit about where I lived. And I thought that essentially I lived in the garden apartment, which was a rental in a co-op at Deepdale. And that was basically as I grew up, once I was in Queens, and that those were both interesting situations. And then what's interesting, I think you asked about where I am now, and right now I'm in Manhattan and I live in what's called a Mitchell-Lama that was built on the Rochdale Principle of co-ops. And it's in the '60s these were created, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but there's a real fight now. There's a real need for affordable housing in New York particularly. And this is a form of affordable housing that's works. It's a very good model. And it was from the 1960s, which is interesting. But meanwhile, there's a pressure for them to be privatized, and there's too many efforts by even some public people to go along with the privatization. And these have to be protected and built on. The model has to be built on. So we are in that fight now, and particularly my husband.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1510.0,1603.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK. Wow.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1603.0,1604.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So I wondered if I covered the first set of things adequately in...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1604.0,1609.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Yeah, I think so. Just the last thing and something that you mentioned, and I'm sure it sort of moves into the next part, but what you learned at Queens College that really shaped your future, like the person you became after college.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1609.0,1625.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Right. Well, yeah, I thought that Sidney was very important and the values lessons. But also that the world was a bigger world than I had access to prior. I thought up through high school, the model of the world was there are wars and there'll always be wars, and that's the world. And I thought at Queens College, there are wars, but there are people fighting them. There's the civil rights problems, but there are people fighting them and who care to fight them, and it's right to fight them. So I thought that that's something important that got established and had people that were good models of that. And so I thought it was interesting that Mark Levy went on, was part of the fights. He went to both Prince Edward -- no, he went to Mississippi, sorry. But at Queens College there was Prince Edward County, Virginia, and Mississippi as projects for people to go to. And then Mario Savio went on to do the free speech movement, and he's somebody that I knew of from both high school and college. And so that was the environment somehow that I was in at Queens College. And I thought that -- I hope I carried on in some ways. What's interesting is I will say a little later that I didn't get to go to either Virginia -- Prince Edward County, Virginia -- or to Mississippi, but subsequently I did go to the South. So...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1625.0,1734.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Let's actually move on to that. So talk a little bit about what you did once you graduated.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1734.0,1739.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Right. So first of all, I got married in August 1964 to Jay, and what's interesting is Jay's grandmother sang, who was elderly, she sang \"Blowing in the Wind\" at our wedding during the ceremony. So I thought all of that did have its impact. And then we lived for two years in Cambridge while Jay continued his graduate work and he had gotten a Woodrow Wilson [Fellowship]. And so he was able to do his master's and be in a Ph.D. program at Harvard. And where we lived, it was interesting, at some point somebody put up a sign, and it was a poet, Kay Boyle, who was a poet, and then she got to know us and came and talked to us and whatever. She lived in that same building at the time. So the activism was around in Cambridge as well. And we ended up -- two years later, Jay got the offer from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, told him there was a project where people who had gotten Woodrow Wilsons were being offered a chance to teach for a year in the South. And we decided to accept that offer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1739.0,1822.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so we went down south and we had two choices from Alabama, in Alabama. We took the one to Stillman College, which was in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And it was a predominantly, historically Black college. And it was -- the students were wonderful. They had been through the civil rights movement growing up, had been firehosed and would tell some of that. Another teacher and I taught English, and we created an honors group of people who were particularly sharp and seemed that they would be interested in. And we created a set of literature for them to read that I thought they appreciated.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1822.0,1875.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And then I think it must have been January of, by then it was 19 -- just a minute, let me just check. It was 1966 to '67 we went to Tuscaloosa, and probably January of '67, we went to Atlanta with several of the students from the honors group. And I thought we didn't quite realize at that point that we were a mixed group of people traveling in the same car with the windows...and we didn't recognize that that might still be dangerous, but we did fine. We didn't have any problem with regard to that. But when we got to Atlanta, one of the things we wanted to do was meet Julian Bond. And Julian Bond had been a SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], had been at SNCC, and had a lot of respect of the Black community and had won as a legislator, one of the earliest or first Black legislators for the Georgia legislature. But they wouldn't seat him because he wouldn't say he was for the Vietnam War.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1875.0,1951.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so that case, I since learned, went to the Supreme Court and they ruled in Julian Bond's favor that it was against his First Amendment rights to deny him a seat because of his views. And so he was being reinstated. He had never been able to take his seat or just had taken a seat, I don't know which, in the Georgia legislature. And Lester Maddox [note: Maddox was in favor of racial segregation] had just won the election for governor of Georgia. And so we went to visit Julian Bond and we expected to be able to talk to him but he told us to go and wait for him in this place where they took photographs. So we dutifully did what he told us, and then we were waiting for him, and Lester Maddox comes in, so we were surprised. And then Julian Bond comes in, and the two of them standing, with us sort of at their feet sitting, and they shake hands.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=1951.0,2015.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so that was very interesting. And then the next day we went to see the Atlanta Constitution, the newspaper of Atlanta. And lo and behold, there's a picture of us all on the front page. So sadly I don't have the scrapbook I had, with that in it, but I thought that was very interesting. Maybe they had shaken hands before that. But this was particularly important because they were both going to be part of the legislature and there they were. Julian Bond was going to be a piece of that, which was another victory I thought, for the civil rights movement. While we lived in Tuscaloosa it was certainly a significant experience. There had been -- desegregation was happening. We were able to stay at the house of one of the Black teachers while we were looking for a house. And he had been very hospitable to us, but when we finally got a house in a white neighborhood, he came to visit us and he ended up getting sugar in his gas tank, which messed up his engine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2015.0,2099.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And I think we didn't quite understand that. He told us he had that, but we didn't quite understand how horrible that was. But it was horrible. And then we went away for a weekend, but we had a practice of the new people who would be teachers coming -- we would let them stay at our house. So we had left the house in hands with the new people who would be teaching. I thought they were all white at that point, but when we came home, we found that a cross had been burned in the grass, a very large cross, at the house while we were away. And you could still see the charred remains of it, but it had gotten put out. And the people who had stayed in the house at that time told us they thought that the police had encouraged some young people to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2099.0,2160.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And I would see places where it said \"colored,\" and occasionally someone would still go to the window where it said that. I thought it was still -- it was definitely that there was. And then we went to the University of Alabama with this professor that had been so kind to us, and we wanted to treat him to a meal. And there were a lot of Black waiters, and they were very excited to have him come because prior he couldn't come, go there, but he was able to go there with us. So they were delighted. So we had all those and some very interesting experiences, very interesting students, and a delight to be there. And then besides, despite these problems, and I thought towards the end of the time we found out that they had hired somebody with a Ph.D. Jay didn't, at that point, hadn't gotten a Ph.D., and they didn't need that at the school, so they would replace him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2160.0,2233.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: He was at the physics department before that, but he wouldn't have a job. And around that time, Stokely [Carmichael] from SNCC came to give a talk. And what was interesting was Stokely's talk was that the Black students shouldn't bother with us, with white people, that they really needed to build a Black movement and make -- have all the decisions made. So it was a good time for us to leave. And so we went to Europe that summer and we went to a program in East Germany that we had learned about from somebody in England, which was a whole other experience. But what was interesting was I then went to the Cité because I wanted to study French in Paris, and I was going to have a test in my, I was at graduate school, so I studied French a little bit. And what was fascinating, there were students from all over the world there, and it was a very vibrant time around the world.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2233.0,2297.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So I got to learn what was going on in Africa and in Vietnam and other places from those students, and it was quite a special experience. And so then I went to Tufts, I went back, we went to Medford [Massachusetts], and Jay got a job because he decided to leave graduate school. And my situation at Tufts is I had a tuition scholarship to do theater at Tufts. And what's interesting is somebody else and I decided we needed a guerilla theater. So it was the height of the Vietnam War, and there was an announcement that anybody who graduated would then be drafted. So one of the things we did is we took over an auditorium, and in the auditorium, a lot of students were seated. We shut the lights, we started playing a march, we had somebody march down the aisle to the front of the auditorium, and we put the lights back on and he got his diploma. And right after that, somebody shot him. And everybody stood up and applauded because this was what was happening. And we were upset, alright.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2297.0,2381.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: But then, so I did also -- the play I did was \"Picnic on the Battlefield.\" That was a play about these, I guess I thought it was probably the Spanish Civil War, but it was about -- it was an anti-war play. And it was wonderful. I thought we did a good job of it. And so I want to then fast-forward to when we decided that -- Jay and I decided -- we would go to the Detroit area. And so on our way to Detroit, this was 1979, we stopped in Flint, Michigan. And during the anti-war movement, I had been part of a lot of activity. But one of the things that stands out is somebody had written an article, actually a little booklet, about the sit-down, the Flint sit-down strike.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2381.0,2446.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And this is a major strike, 1937. And it made it possible to begin then to have the UAW [United Auto Workers] and then to have industrial unions in the large-scale factories. And I didn't know anything about it through my education, even though I did have good education in other ways, but that I had never learned about. So I was a bit fascinated and found some other things about that. And I was interested in labor history. And so we went to Flint and stopped in the public library, in the Flint Public Library. I had been reading Sidney Fine's book, \"Sit-Down,\" and he gave wonderful references somewhat to the Flint Journal. And so I got the videos of the Flint Journal, and I looked up the references and found the name of some of the sit-downers and then was able to find their telephone numbers and call them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2446.0,2508.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Jay actually called them. I was too bashful to do that. But one particular person was a poet who'd written this delightful poetry, and he invited us to come over and said he'd be glad to tell us about the sit-down and anything else we were interested in. So that began a period of time while we lived in Detroit, Dearborn. But we went to Flint very often and learned about the sit-down from the sit-down pioneers while they were still alive. And learned their struggle to build the union into something that would be rank and file controlled and have the rank and file having some say in what was going on and how they did that. And also what was fascinating to me was there was a local union newspaper that they had from their local, and they had done some very impressive things during the sit-down, but it was called, the newspaper was called the Searchlight, which is fascinating because it was shining a light on something.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2508.0,2572.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And it turned out that eventually their newspaper was censored by the International [union], because they would challenge the International, and that was if they didn't feel they were fighting for the things they felt it was important to be fought for. And then in the Searchlight were lots of really interesting things, including poems that one of the sit-downers had written all through his time working and whatever. And I ended up putting together a book, a little book, \"A Laborer Looks at Life,\" which is the title of one of his poems. And there's a cartoon that one of the people who was a cartoonist did, and he was delighted with that. And Jay sewed the book actually, he was able to do that. And then I did a little book of the story of the censorship and then of the people and how they used their local union newspaper as something that would help them when, particularly when the No Strike Pledge came [during World War II]. So it wasn't they gave up, it's that they turned to the local union newspaper and told their stories and the newspaper carried them. And so while we were living in Detroit, Dearborn, that was one of the really interesting things. But by then -- I want to fast-forward then to 1984.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2572.0,2666.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Can I just ask one question, Ronda, why did you decide to go to Detroit?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2666.0,2672.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Well, at that point I thought -- we lived in Cambridge by that point. But things were, it looked like where Jay was working at that time might close. And in general, it wasn't a good environment and what was happening, I think shortly after that, it all perked up shortly after we left. But I thought we looked for where to go, and we considered Chicago. We felt we were very narrow in understanding the country, and I thought I was paying attention to labor history and economics and thought that it might be interesting to have the perspective of something different.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2672.0,2715.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Yeah. So that was part of...and then we actually went to Chicago, and we decided that it wasn't where we wanted to go. But then I thought somehow we went to, I guess we also went to, I don't exactly remember. But I thought the Dearborn Cambridge area -- I'm sorry, the Dearborn Detroit area -- was more something that we found, seemed better for us. And so we ended up going there. And so I thought by '84, which is what I would want to turn to, and that I had the idea of wanting to hear about the auto workers' experiences in their lives and whatever. And as working in the plants, and I thought that I would offer to teach writing, some writing, with regard to telling the story of their life, to retirees. And I went to the Dearborn school system and made that offer, and they said they have no such job, but they told me they did have a job teaching computers.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2715.0,2804.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And that was interesting because my son Michael -- by then, Michael was born and he was 11, I think, by '84. And my husband had worked on little computers and whatever, and I was behind. So I had gone to Henry Ford Community College and take an Assembler and a Basic course and found them fascinating. So I had some background, so I said I'd be willing to do that. So I learned that there was a schoolhouse in a factory, basically at the Dearborn engine plant. There was a learning center, and the computer classes would be part of that learning center. And at that point -- and workers were very worried at that point, there had been a lot of layoffs -- that there were going to be computers introduced and they would lose their jobs. And also that the bargaining unit would be lost, that the union would be lost. So for them, it became priority to learn to deal with computers, and they were very active wanting that. And so it was quite an amazing experience to be there in that situation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2804.0,2879.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so there was a lot of interest in the classes. And I ended up finding a very good book that we used, and essentially people were learning, you had to program in Basic at that time in order to use an Apple computer. And so people were happy to learn some Basic. But as I was there for a period of time, by '87, management had decided that they didn't want workers learning to program. And I thought that was true industrywide, not only at Ford, that there were other places that were similar. And so there began to be opposition to what those classes were. And the way the opposition functioned is it wouldn't announce the classes that were being offered, and then they would say that nobody wants them because nobody's...and I was under a public school, I was teaching where my certificate as a teacher was being used to get funding for the program and whatever.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2879.0,2953.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And it's also that, it was a problem that only the people from Ford could go to these classes. It was at the Ford Rouge Factory, which you need to have a pass to be able to get into the general complex and stuff. So we fought it and the workers and I fought it. And in the process, Michael had gotten really interested in computers, and I ended up winning a computer at a local computer store. And Mike -- we decided to get a modem, and Michael was very interested in the BBS [bulletin board system] situation. And so he got online and was having a very interesting time online. And he was, by the way, I hired him as my consultant. I don't know if I raised his salary, but when he was 11, I offered him $2 a week to be my consultant, which meant that if I had a problem I couldn't solve in my classes, he would help me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=2953.0,3017.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And it functioned because whenever I had a problem, he would solve it. And then I would tell my students that my son had solved it. And so when we met the students out somewhere, saw anybody from the class, they would be very happy to meet Michael. And so Michael by then had found a way to be in touch with people in Ann Arbor that were part of something called M-Net, which was an online UNIX-based system, very interesting online and that activity. And he was talking about what happened in my classes, in terms of them, Ford not wanting workers to learn programming. And the result was that people wanted to speak to me. So Michael took on to get me online, and that was quite wonderful. I was fascinated with what was possible, and people told me about something called Usenet and that it was a wonderful network, and if we could get on it, we would be really appreciated because everything was discussed on it, and it was a very encouraging environment. And so it turned out, I gave a talk at a teachers' conference in Michigan, and I got invited to Ohio to give the talk. And in Ohio, I learned about the Cleveland Freenet, which it was becoming possible -- [person walks by in background] whoops, should I stop for a minute?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3017.0,3120.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: No, it's fine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3120.0,3120.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: OK. It was becoming possible to -- sorry, just give me a moment. OK. They were building the NSF [National Science Foundation Network] in Michigan at that time, and there was a lot of activity, but it also meant it was possible...Michael learned to call Ohio, which was a toll call, and to get on the Cleveland Freenet. And from the Cleveland Freenet, I was able to get Usenet access. So by 1992, I did my first post on Usenet, and I was amazed. There were 10 people who told me I posted in the wrong place. And I tell the story in the book that we ended up writing called \"Netizens\" [holds up book] it's called; it's a bit beaten up, the cover. And so I thought Michael was really interested in what was going on with the Net and wanted to understand what was going to happen with the Net, would it be something good and what would be the social impact of it? And that was his interest, and communication was his other interest.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3120.0,3189.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And for me, as I got on these -- M-Net, and then Usenet -- it was really fascinating. The environment on Usenet reminded me of when I had been at the Cité and the wonderful environment of communication that went on there of people from all over. And here, there were a few people from abroad on Usenet, and more as the time went on, but it was, Usenet was a place where you could have disagreements and you would learn to encourage the discussion over them so that you could solve the disagreement. And so it was something very special. And somebody from Canada and I were talking and we felt that it was not understood how special it was somehow, and that we'd like to know more about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3189.0,3248.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And meanwhile, Michael was writing his, was doing -- sorry, just a minute -- was doing some, was in a computer ethics class, and the teacher told him that he wanted them to do research, but not from books. So of course he put things online, and Usenet was a much bigger world than he had on the BBSs. And then there were mailing lists that he also got access to. So he would send out a series of questions about what would be the social impact of the Net and what were people finding who were online. And he ended up getting this incredible set of emails and comments from people that were amazing, because people were finding it totally fascinating what their experience was online. And they were finding that they could be more active in things. And so they had hopes that it could solve problems, they could act more like citizens. And common at the time was they would have things called net.dot something, so net.winetasters or net.computers. And there was a net.citizens. And so Michael took that and he turned it into \"Netizens,\" and he ended up writing an introduction to a paper about Netizens.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3248.0,3336.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And essentially what we did is -- and then he circulated that very broadly, and there was one of the people that was reading the things that Michael wrote and circulated, and the person was from Canada. And he told Michael that if he could create a collection of articles that this person, total Canadian, called \"Readings on the Emergence of a Better World due to the Participatory Nature of Public Computer Networks,\" that would be something he would want to read. So Michael was being encouraged to work towards a book. I was in the process of learning about Usenet, where it came from, being able to be in touch with the pioneers. Michael was in touch with some of the pioneers about what the Internet was going to be happening with it. And so we put together the work that we had done. And I had gotten to meet, and Michael too, we had gotten to meet several of the pioneers in different ways, either online or in person. We took a trip to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] at some point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3336.0,3405.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so we put together a book -- and in the '90s, we couldn't -- at that time, there were a lot of books of how to make your millions on the Net. And that wasn't the book we were writing. The book we were writing was about how this was a very important new communications medium. And so what we did is we had a book posting party. We put together a book called \"Netizens and the Wonderful World of the Net: An Anthology\"; it was only online. We had a book party where actually one person came from the ad and otherwise just from friends and whatever. And Michael read some of what he wrote. And based on that, we had a manuscript, basically. And I went to work on dealing with that manuscript. And one of the people, this husband of one of my friends at that point, was in a class in Ann Arbor, and the teacher was having people read online books, and he was assigned to read that book.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3405.0,3474.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: So he wasn't very happy to have to read it online. And so we kept up the fight for getting a print edition, and it took us till 1997, May 1st, to get the print edition. But we did manage, we had the help of some of the people whose stories we tell in the book, to get a publisher, and the book is still in print. They make a copy of it. So it's not they print a bunch of new copies, but I think it's more than 25 years since the publication, and it's a bit special that it's still there. But I thought the other important thing about all that is that somehow Netizens, the concept of Netizens -- and I thought this goes back to Dr. Simon, Sidney Simon. And essentially, Netizens are citizens of a new type because they have a new mechanism of spreading the fights they're in and of also contacting and corresponding and talking, being in communication with many more people. And so the point...then looking a little bit at what's happened with the concept of Netizen is a bit fascinating because there's been, it turned out that one of the things I found -- well, first of all, sadly we lost, Michael died. And I don't want to say any more about that at this point, but that was a real tragedy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3474.0,3596.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: But I thought I have a commitment to trying to continue to, like Michael called me, his most important, his best Netizen. And I was online a lot at that point and I appreciated the work he did. And so I've been trying to follow what's happened with Netizens. And one of the things that happened was that I saw the Financial Times talked about how Netizens had helped to elect the president in Seoul, Korea, in Korea. And so I went to learn about that, and I found that there was a very active set of Netizens in Korea and that they've done amazing things and that we ended up going to Korea at one point. And also that China has had a lot of Netizens. And we did also... in 2005, I guess it was, there was something called the World Summit on Information Society. And it took place in two different [phases] -- it was from the UN, and it was about the question of spreading the Net and that people around the world wanted to have access to the Net.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3596.0,3693.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And an aspect of Netizens is wanting everybody to have access to the Net, wanting it to be available to everybody that wants it. And so the World Summit on Information Society was sort of created under the pressure of people around the world, in the developing countries especially, who didn't want to be left out. And so there was an event the UN sponsored, and then there was a side conference, and I proposed a panel for the side conference and it got accepted. And so I was going to be going to -- at that point to Tunis -- and talking about Netizens. And so I thought that we had -- I don't want to spend too much time on this -- but there was a panel and we had learned that somehow the way that the story of the Net coming to China was being told was inaccurate.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3693.0,3772.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And the person who had been involved in that situation was willing to be part of my panel. So I proposed the panel and we were accepted. And so we were giving a talk in Tunis, and one of the people who came to the panel was the president of the Internet Society in China. And this person who was on my panel, he talked about how he, with a Chinese person, had done important work getting the Internet to China, but they weren't mentioned in how the story was being told in China. And so essentially he wanted, that that story needed to be corrected. And in the audience was this person who's the head of the Internet Society. And she raised her hand and said, she knows who the person who's credited, and he was right, but if the speaker was right, she'll get it corrected. And lo and behold, she did get it corrected, and we were invited to China to give some talks.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3772.0,3853.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And there's a wonderful picture of me in front of the CCTV Tower giving a talk about Netizens. And when I looked out at who was listening very carefully to my talk, it was this person who was the head of the Internet Society of China. And so some wonderful things have happened along the way, and it's a joy to see some of the references online of people who recognize what Michael somehow understood from his research -- was that people online felt they could be a citizen in a new way, and they wanted to be that citizen, and they would do what they could. And it's different countries at different times seem to be being more active about that. But recently, Nigeria has taken on Netizens and to describe what Netizens can do and to recognize that having a broader media in a country is something desirable.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3853.0,3926.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And in South Korea, in China, there have been lots of Netizens and Netizen activity. And so I've tried to follow it. And one of the things also that I just want to mention is that I did follow the Korean particularly and did tell the stories in articles that I would write. And that what's interesting to me is that at one point, Ban Ki-moon from Korea was going to become the new Secretary General. And I lived in New York, and I live in New York, so I felt it would be good if I could go to the UN and report about it. And at that point, I was writing for a South Korean online newspaper called OhmyNews, but I needed a letter from them. They did give me the letter, and I was approved to be a journalist, a resident correspondent at the UN, sorry, not a resident. I was approved to be a correspondent at the UN. And early on when just as Ban Ki-moon was being approved as the new Secretary General, lo and behold what should happen, but there was a whole fight going on where the U.S. was not allowing North Korea to have access to banks and was making trouble. And I learned about that, and I wrote an article about that and some articles, and they give an award at the UN.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=3926.0,4029.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And early on there was stuff going on with what was happening with North Korea, and there was a lot of complaints. But I saw the story that ended up being documented, in fact, in the U.S., and I ended up writing some articles about that. And one of the people put those articles in various places. And it turned out that I got a call from Voice of America asking me who my sources were and why I was writing those articles. And essentially, I thought those articles were able, in fact, to have perhaps a bit of an impact because that was telling the real story that otherwise wasn't getting out. And so I ended up being shortlisted for my articles about North Korea in a prize that they give at the UN, and the prize is called the Elizabeth Neuffer Memorial Award for the Best Overall Print Journalism, including Online Media. And I was shortlisted, but I didn't get it. The next year I did get the prize, but it was for an article I felt was not as important as the article that I was writing about North Korea. But I recognized that it was hard to give an award for articles about North Korea.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4029.0,4126.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And so there may have been political reasons that I didn't, but I did get it the next year. So there's been a lot of really interesting things going on. And I guess I wanted to see if there would. Oh, I would also try to write about Palestine. And I basically felt if there was a Netizen journalism where more people could write and have access to making available the stories that they see and understand of what's really going on, that we could solve many of the problems that otherwise seem unsolvable. And so I thought the concept of Netizen, maybe to wrap up, is an important concept because what it does is it sees the citizen as a more important person and a person with more capabilities. And so I thought that if in honor of Sidney and in honor of Michael, that the Netizen is somehow the continuation of what happened at Queens College. Thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4126.0,4203.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: Ronda, that was great. OK, so hold on one minute. I'm going to stop the recording unless there's anything else that you want to say in conclusion. And then we can just talk.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4203.0,4216.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: Just that I thought, I told the story to somebody else and at the end I was welled up with tears and I didn't want to be welled up with tears. So I was fighting it and she asked me why I was welled up with tears. And well, I thought that it was so easy to have a different life, but I thought...Queens College. And then I thought, Mark's help to meet Jay, my husband. And I thought that meeting and knowing the people -- some of whom were the Queens College people and what they've done, and that there's something very special that Queens College represents that gets clear from all this. And I thought what it is is that -- it's on a Zoom that Queens College had. Mark Levy said something and I found in my notes what he said, and he said that for the Mississippi, there were essentially people that, from the more expensive colleges that were there, and it was essentially seemed to be an activity of those people, but it was also the people from Queens College that were there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4216.0,4328.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Ronda Hauben: And that, my experience at Queens, I think was what a college experience should be, which is that you learn to make contributions to some of the difficult fights that are going on. And I feel my dear son learned that. And he tried to make, and he did make his contribution with the concept of Netizen. And I thought that, that it's important that Queens, when it was tuition-free, because then I could go and I thought that that lesson is very important. And while I was doing the work about how -- oh, I guess did I leave out that the book Netizens, we ended up, when we got it published, it has a different title. It's called \"Netizens: On the History and Impact of Usenet and the Internet.\" But what was really interesting talking to some of the Internet pioneers was several of them went to public universities. And that should be understood that we need the public universities and we need the libraries. And too often when they would call me to make a donation from the Alumni Association, they would sort of be interested in the donation, not in the amazing experience that the university represented. And I thought that somehow to gather more of those stories, and I really appreciate that the library is doing this because this is what is needed. Because we have some very serious problems and we need the people who will take them on. And my experience is, those people exist and they need the help and support, and that's hard to get, but you guys are giving it. So thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4328.0,4448.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782/transcript/69954/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Fran Kipnis: OK, thank you, Ronda. Just hold on one minute. I'm going to turn off the recording.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/21/collection_resources/134727/file/249782#t=4448.0,4456.66133"}]}]}]}