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David White holds to the view that he wanted to see a black leadership. By the way, he holds also to the view that Doris Turner never should have been the president of 1199, that she was never capable, that she was built up by the whites who glossed over all her inadequacies, and was a product of the whites. Now, there is some justification for that, of the way we built Doris, thinking that the prophecy would come through that way. Didn't work out that way. The inadequacy and the weaknesses and the worst things came to the head rather than the best things.

On the merger, Al Heaps had said, “First let 1199 decide what it's going to do.” So we went to the membership, and there was a referendum on the merger of the entire membership. The membership voted better than seventy-five percent for the merger by a mail ballot supervised by the American Arbitration Association, and a very very big majority in 1199.

You said 1199 twice.

I mean the national union and in 1199 -- and in 1199, that vote the lines were drawn. Doris fought that merger violently, and really campaigned against the merger.

When did the vote take place, do you recall?

Sometime in 1981. Because at the end of 1981 we're still thinking that we could do something on this thing, we're not giving up on the merger, and Al Heaps moves into, before our national union convention, moves in to put our union in trusteeship, in order to control the convention.

Prior to the 1981 convention?

Right in December, in the same month -- two weeks before the convention he moved into trustee. Now the court threw it out. We went to the convention. Heaps was supposed to speak at the convention, for some reason stomped out angrily while he was sitting on the platform. But by that time he was committed against it, and Doris and her people were meeting with him and they were just figuring out all angles together on how to stop the merger. So they stopped the merger.

When did the bombing take place?

The bombing took place in December of 1980.

What are your thoughts about that?