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No. A period of growth--growth and consolidation, but it's organizing. The legislation of '63 spurs organization and it is a big push on it. I notice that in the Times story on cultural programming, they talk about a membership of 24,500 in February 1965, which is a big jump in membership. I'd say by 1966-67, it slows. We're in Jersey, we're still picking up all over the city, but it's not the same kind of rapid thing that's in 1963-64. It is consolidation at the same time, in the sense that we're building a structure for a union for all these people who are coming in and training stewards on how to run a union, and that kind of thing.

One of the major events in this period is the March on Washington in August of '63 with Dr. King. What was 1199's involvement in that?

In one sense, obviously we were very closely involved. I think I may have mentioned that the first press release was written at the offices of 65 by me. I was asked to come down there. Cleve Robinson was closely involved in that march and was the key labor person in the march until it got so big, you know, when you were bringing in the Walter Reuthers and all that kind of stuff, but that's at the very end of it.

In 1199, the march was a very, very important thing. I recall that we chartered a train and we sold tickets. As I recall, the tickets sold for $9 roundtrip, and we had between 900 and 1,000 members who went down to Washington. It was obviously a very, very big event. I personally recall that I was at the monument.

No, the other thing is--it all comes back to me now--I was assigned that day in the morning to work with the performances that were taking place at the Washington Monument as the first groups came and they walked from the Washington Monument, they walked down to the Lincoln Memorial. Since groups of people were coming from all over the country, they were arriving early in the morning. So we set up for entertainment outside the Washington Monument to start at 11:00 o'clock in the morning. Ossie was the emcee with Lena Horne. He was putting people on, and I was sending notes up to him all the time, to give figures: “Ossie, announce that as of 11:30, the crowd has now reached a total of 110,000.” Deliberately, because we knew the radios were picking it up by the hour, so they would say, as of this time, there were so many people. So I would have an official announcement to make, so every fifteen minutes, he'd be giving a different figure. I was the person who was responsible for the final figure over at the Lincoln Memorial because I was pushing Bayard. Bayard announced, “Make sure now, quickly, make sure to announce