On the trip there, you got a picture of the power of the Talmadges in Georgia, where Herman Talmadge’s father, Eugene Talmadge, had three terms as governor (he was elected to a fourth, but died before he was inaugurated). Gene Talmadge was known as “Whipping Gene” (while he hadn’t ever joined the Ku Klux Klan, he said, “I used to do a little whipping myself”). Senator Talmadge said I should fly to Atlanta and he’d someone to the Atlanta airport to pick me up. I thought he’d send some kid to drive me down. Instead he sent a top official of the state Democratic Party. This guy himself gave me a taste of the South on the way down because first of all he didn’t like being sent on that errand; in the second place, my name is Caro, so he thought I was Catholic and that was bad enough, but on the way down I made sure to say I was Jewish. So it was a long drive.
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