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PI: So I, I was both doing that kind of work and working in the union at the same time. And for those three years until the fall of 1965, that's what I did. I worked in Washington, and really was, it was an exciting time. I remember vividly the day that John Kennedy was assassinated. I was working for the union, and I was on Capitol Hill in 1963, in the office of Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, meeting with someone on his staff. And somebody came bursting into the office and said, "Turn on the radio. The president's been shot." And we turned on the radio, and we heard the bulletins, "The president's been shot. We don't know what his condition is." And then suddenly, "The president has died." And Senator Douglas came out of his office -- I remember he was very, very tall, distinguished-looking man, sort of like Abraham Lincoln -- and he said, "I'm going to the Senate floor." And along with two or three other people on his staff, I just tagged along. In fact, we went on the little, the little car, that little railroad car under the Capitol to the Senate floor. And I remember going up to the visitor's gallery while Senator Douglas went on the floor. This was in the late- or mid-afternoon, I think. And senators were beginning to gather. And Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who was a Republican, the only woman in the Senate at that time -- and this is something that became famous, I guess, afterwards. She was known for wearing a red rose every day on her, her jacket. And she had sat next to John Kennedy when he was in the Senate, and they had become close friends. And she took off her red rose and walked over and put it on the desk that Kennedy had sat at as a senator. And I remember that very vividly. And then I decided I've got to get back to my office. The weekly edition of the newsletter was just about to come out, and I wanted to change it. And I remember I took a taxi back, stopped at a bookstore, and got a copy of Famous Speeches and went back to my office and called up the printer and said, "Hold up printing." This was on a Thursday, and we printed it Thursday evening. "Hold up the printing. I'm coming over." So I went over to the printer, and we put a black border around the front page and excerpts of a funeral oration by one of the Greek, I forget which one, about the death of a famous leader.

So that, Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson becoming president, and I became very disillusioned with him very quickly. In 1964, while I was working for the union, the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, which I went to, the union was backing Johnson one hundred percent against Barry Goldwater. At that time and growing out of the Civil Rights movement, the sit-ins in the South, was a grassroots organization in Mississippi called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. And the Freedom Democrats were mostly black, there were some whites in it, who sent a delegation to Atlantic City demanding to be seated in place of the all-white Democrats who were all segregationists. In fact, most of them wound up supporting Goldwater. But there was a bitter fight in the Democratic Party over this. And it was quite clear that the union staff, we had very mixed feelings about this. In our hearts, we supported the Freedom Democrats, but we were afraid that this would break the party apart as it had in 1948, very similar kind of split in the Democratic Party. So the union wound up supporting a compromise that would give three of the Freedom Democrats passes to the convention, but no votes. And they would seat the regular delegation. Well, some of us were so outraged we wanted to protest, but we were convinced that we shouldn't do that. And I remember that was a lesson I learned, that some compromises are not good, very damaging. I felt terrible. There were people I met in that Freedom Party delegation,Fannie Lou Hamer, I remember was one of them, a woman, fairly elderly black woman, who had never gone past the sixth grade. She was from Sunflower County, Mississippi, I think, which is Senator Eastland's home county, a leader of the segregationists in Congress. And that was, and she gave a speech. It was at a, not an official thing, but we had a, we had our meetings. And to me she represented the, the very best of what this country should be. You know, just an average, ordinary person who at tremendous risk to herself took on probably the most powerful, entrenched party in the country. And she didn't win, but she got a moral victory from them. So I remember all those, those episodes.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.