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Session:         Page of 592

Foner:

But he's now working for a union in the South. I'm not sure which one. There was a fellow, who's dead now, who was their labor person. He's the guy who started the fight with Andy at a meeting that I'll tell you about later. He was their labor specialist, trade union specialist. Kay Jackson was spending a summer out of college and was working in the SCLC office, very, very efficient person. Kay is now Andy's appointment secretary. Tom Offenburger is Andy's press officer. Stoney Cooks is his chief aide. A lot of the people came along with him.

The strategy, if there was a strategy, was to define certain areas of concentration and responsibility. Obviously, it was our responsibility to mobilize the strikers and to keep the strikers in action, and to see that they were fed, and everything that related to that, the picket lines, etc. Henry Nicholas was in charge of that. Then the SCLC's responsibility was to organize the community and the ministers and the youth, the public aspect of the campaign. There was a ministers' committee. There was some disagreement and problems there. The ministers are rather strong people, and not all of them were enamored with the idea of the SCLC coming in and upstaging them, although some of the very critical, Reverend Grady, I remember, was one of them. They were very, very good people, and set aside all of that stuff.

Meetings would take place every night in a different church. There were prayer meetings, vigils, church meetings, rallies. Ralph would speak. A representative of the strikers, Mary Moultrie, would speak. Rosetta Simmons would speak. Others would speak, Nick would speak. Let me finish off the thing. The SCLC also was responsible for the youth, and this was Reverend Orange's responsibility. He was like the Pied Piper of Hamlet with the young people. It was the summer, they were out of school, and it was question of keeping them busy and keeping them involved in the strike.

David White, who was there through most of the strike, worked with Jim Orange on that. Elliot Godoff and I were there, but since we were white and this was a black issue, our role had to be in the background. It was my responsibility to make it a national issue in terms of media and political contacts, and we would proceed on that basis. We would meet every morning--Nick, Andy, Elliot, myself, sometimes Stoney. We would meet for no more than a few minutes. It would be, “What are you going to do today, and what are you going to do today? Okay, go and do it.” And we would communicate by phone if we had to,





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