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selling tickets for boat rides and they were collecting money for this and that. So it's a big deal.

Later on I was always worried about how selling tickets and how you staggered the thing, how to do it, develop mailings, eliminate the pressure off the organizers so much. But we're doing all of these things. We had lectures. I remember we had a lecture schedule. Nikki Giovanni was then very hot, and someone came to me and told me that Yevtushenko was in town, and Yevtushenko would be interested in doing a program with Nikki Giovanni. I say, “Oh, boy, I've got something going here.” An evening of poetry, Nikki Giovanni and Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Hot stuff! Admission is 75 cents. All right. We give the leaflets out. I'm ready, and I get an announcement in one of the Broadway columns. Yevtushenko then books himself into Carnegie Hall that same night. I was so angry, I would have sent a letter to the Soviet Union and tell them to expel him or something, get him out of the country. So we went ahead with the Giovanni thing. The word got out outside the union, and that night, the hall, the auditorium, we had to lock the doors. Young blacks from all over were coming with our members and they were seated on the stage, overflowing. You couldn't breathe in the place. We had to lock the doors and keep people out.

When was that?

That would be about '67, '68, around that period. Then we had one night where we had lectures, and we had Daniel Ellsberg on the Pentagon papers. Remember, by this time we have a Guild, and so people know, so you can count on them. So we are going to have it in the Reuther Room, 75 people. Okay. But I have in my mind, maybe, maybe -- so I check. I say, “Don't rent the auditorium that night.”

We're waiting. Ellsberg is late as heck and the crowd is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and people are saying to me, “Where is he?”

I call and they say, “He's on his way.” The crowd is getting bigger and bigger. Finally I say, “Okay, march them down.” And we go down to the auditorium and we fill up the auditorium. Ellsberg finally comes, and he continues on and on and on and on to answer questions.

But it's like grabbing something and going with it.

But you got away from the idea that you mentioned at first about how the union had to be a living, vital thing?

It is living and vital. The other thing is that members, particularly when members come and they see that they've got Ossie