Interview
The interview was held in Judge Raskin's office at the Waukesha Court House. We [interviewer Barbara Morford and Judge Raskin] began at 10:00 a.m. and were interrupted several times by colleagues with New Year's wishes, and at one point, with an invitation to partake of a New Year's Eve party hosted by the County Board. He was greeted by everyone with clear affection commensurate with his affable, outgoing personality.
The interview was hampered by several things: the interviewer's lack of thorough grounding in Milwaukee history, the strange half-festive, half-fearful (due to blizzard conditions outside) atmosphere, and Raskin's hearing problems. This resulted in my letting Raskin tell his story at his own pace, with his own emphasis. Consequently, the labor issues came late in the day when the attention of both of us was weakened.
Abstract to the Interview
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion, and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher, by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button, may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “ESCAPE TO AMERICA” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 11:15 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “eleven fifteen”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “ESCAPE TO AMERICA” continues until approximately 15:35, at which point discussion of the next topic (“SCHOOL IN NEW YORK”) begins.
Notice that in most cases, sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example, the sentences underneath “ESCAPE TO AMERICA “ give further details on what appears on the tape between 11:15 and 15:35.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the con-tent of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However, the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher to locate easily distinct topics and discussion among the many minutes of commentary.
