New interview with Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life

“We recently sat down with four of the people involved in the revitalization of the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company to talk about the re-emergence of the company, the new books that have either just been published or will be published in the near future, their plans for the future and the vision they have for the distinctive contribution that Kerr will make…

Could you tell us a little bit about why you want to bring the publisher back to life?…

Paul Garon: And there’s one other thing. Franklin Rosemont died in 2009 and that had an effect on all of us.  At some point, Penny realized she couldn’t really run the current company single- handedly and she started grooming Tammy Smith to take a bigger role.  Penny really said, in essence,”If I die, will you keep running it?” Tammy said, “Oh yes.”  I think that’s where the new group came from. Mia, it must have been five or more years now that a bunch of people in your group came up to see us. We met at the Bakers Square Restaurant.  It was a long time ago, but already you were showing us that you were interested in doing something for Kerr. Now that you’re actually doing it, I’m thrilled. I think everybody else is too.

John Bracey: Yeah, I got included in as new old blood or however you want to call it… Let me go back for a minute.  The importance of Kerr was that it never was the white left. Kerr was always the integrated left. You know they didn’t publish white people; they published radical people. They had a certain kind of uniqueness on the left in that they didn’t have a theory that added on black people at the end, if at all.  The black experience was integral to surrealism and anarchism and not tacked on at the end.  It was Franklin who was trying to do that when I met him back in 1963 and Bob Greene and all the rest of them. They were unique in that throughout its history it has had that collective outlook.