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Yes. Jim Wooten calls me up in the middle of the night. He says, “Moe, we've got to beat these jerks. You've got to help me.” He became so emotionally involved with the thing and he's a very cynical guy. Yet he was very interested in trying to figure out. He began to play stories. He got a lot of stuff.

His editor, who's still on the Times, I used to call his editor all the time and say, “Where's Jim? You've got to bring him in right away. You've got to plan, you've got to set aside time, space for him.”

Let me go to the role of labor in the strike. There were beginning to be attacks on us on the red thing, see.

In the South?

Yes. So we had a meeting with Bill Kircher, was then the director of organization for the AFL-CIO; Don Slaiman, he was the head of the Civil Rights Division of the AFL-CIO; Bob Graham, who was in the state AFL-CIO; plus other people. Slaiman, I remember, was nasty. “Is this a civil rights fight, or is this a union fight? What's going on here?” The AFL-CIO was not too happy with the idea of the civil rights people being involved in the thing.

Why? Was there a stated rationale, or can you deduce one?

I just think that they were not happy with the SCLC.

In the way that they're not happy with anything they don't control.

Yes. They were very angry because of what I had done in New York City at the Randolph dinner. The AFL-CIO had organized a birthday party for Randolph. It must have been his eightieth birthday. It was at the Waldorf Astoria, and George Meany was scheduled to be the main speaker. They had all the wheels. With Meany involved, that means that audience was Who's Who in labor and politics. Everybody was there. It was going to get national coverage. One of the speakers who had been invited was Coretta King. Bayard [Rustin] was also involved in that thing.

About a week or two before the dinner, I spoke to Stanley and I said, “Stanley, this would be a wonderful opportunity if Coretta's speech were to be devoted--if we could work out a speech in which she links the Randolph thing with this thing.”

We talk about it and he checks back and he says, “Good idea. Start working on a speech.”