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Session:         Page of 592

was in the reception room with me, and Norman Thomas came. He was virtually blind at that time. I think it was his last speech. And also I'd arranged a dramatic thing, to get Warren K. Billings, who was the Mooney-Billings case. He had been freed and he was out on the West Coast. We decided we should bring Billings in, and there were Billings and Norman Thomas meeting there in the lobby for the first time and then they sit around swapping stories. My daughter then said it was like listening to history, and that phrase appears in Jimmy Wechsler's column.

Also on this whole thing, the way to build it was using P.R. Wechsler did a number of columns. Carrie McWilliams led me on to reporters and editorial writers in different cities to get editorials written about it, to make the AFL-CIO sit up and take notice that this was happening. Editorials in Charleston, in West Virginia, all over the place, on this thing, and we would reproduce them. We did two issues of a sixteen- page paper, in two colors, that was very, very attractive. Stanley Glambach designed it and was a very handsome thing.

I remember we got Admiral True, a rear admiral, Navy admiral, to come to the conference to speak. I remember, John Kenneth Galbraith came to speak. King came to speak at the luncheon on Saturday.

Q:

This must have been very early in '68. It must have been days before he was shot, because he was killed in April of '68.

Foner:

It was--it must have been--Gene McCarthy spoke at it.

Q:

Not King?

Foner:

King also did, but McCarthy. Must have been the spring of '68. One of his last speeches was a speech at the Salute to Freedom at Hunter, which we taped and we then put out a record, “King at 1199,” which included all kinds of things that he had done with 1199. Then Irwin Corey performed and did a great takeoff that night, and Senator Vance Hartke, of Indiana, was a guest speaker, and everybody was very, very excited. It was really good. We got very good coverage in the press covering it, and national coverage. And then when Gene McCarthy came on the closing session on Sunday, with everybody following him, you know, at that time, he was beginning to take off, and I remember I arranged his visit with Allard Lowenstein, who was then traveling with him and working with him.

So everything came together, and so it ended on a very, very good note and a very strong note. Those are some of the things that I remember about Vietnam...





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