 We think we've made some progress, which I'm sure you know all about already, in reference to our little problem on credentials. And we've had consultation here this morning since nine o'clock with the chairman of the convention committee, the governor Lawrence, we've had it as subcommittee chairman, we've had it, Walter Mondale and Congressman Lowellman, Eddie Weitzel, and of course, Tom Binney was over here, Walter, myself, and now we've been in touch with your assistant, Mr. Jenkins, Walter Jenkins, and we call Clark Clifford, and I also call the Speaker of the House. And I'm confident that you had this relay to you, but we thought we had these daughter reports directly to you. Yeah, go ahead. Well, what Walter says, I'll turn him loose here in a minute, and what we've tried to do is to preserve the legal prerogatives of the party by what we'd agreed on earlier, namely that the Mississippi regulars are to be seated if they take their loyal, and they meet the requirements for call of the convention. Number two, that henceforth the Democratic Party will make a declaration in terms of an open party that we will establish standards of full participation in the party without regard to race, freedom, color. And since the freedom party itself is not a party, but a protest movement, and surely cannot be considered a legal entity in a political party manner, it obviously cannot be seated as a party, nor should the state of Mississippi be denied any votes because of the freedom party. Therefore, it has been recommended that since this is a protest movement, since it does represent the struggle of the Negro for his right to vote, and since he wants to have a vote not only back home in the precinct, in the general elections, but also a vote here in the convention, that we recommend to the convention as a body that two delegates be seated in the convention, not as Mississippians, not as deductible from the Mississippi vote, but just two extra votes at large for the chairman of that delegation, Mr. Henry, Dr. Henry, and for the other man, the national commitment as they call him, Reverend Edward King, not Martin Luther, but Edward King, one white and one colored. And these men be heralded not as delegates from the state of Mississippi, but as an expression of the conscience of the Democratic Party, as to the importance of the right to vote, a political participation by all peoples in our country, and that we in this historic period when we passed the Great Civil Rights Act, which establishes a whole new pattern of social conduct in our country, that we take the lead here in our Democratic Party of showing that we mean business, and that we are prepared to make official recognition of the all important right to vote, and of active participation in political affairs. Mr. President, I think that this will go together and we can avoid a war fight, we can unify the party behind your leadership, and I think everybody can go home feeling good, because what we will have demonstrated is the capability of harmonizing legal problems with our moral obligation. None of us other people can be in any way opposed to this because it gives them the kind of legal basis which they've been fighting for. On the other hand, we do commit the Democratic Party and give historic recognition to the fact that there are some of our citizens who have been denied to date the right to participate as free American citizens in the political structure of the Democratic Party, and I think we can unify. Now, Hubert and I have got a meeting set up at 3.30 with Dr. King and Ms. Bella Henry, and I think we can put this together so we can leave this city, we can get the credentials committee fight off the television cameras and get the positive image of the Democratic Party on the television cameras, and we can all leave here together united and go back home with the hard work of winning this election behind your leadership. Mr. President, we want to make it clear we're not meeting with Dr. Luther King or anybody else to negotiate. There is no negotiation. We've taken a position now that at least we're recommending a strong position that we can advocate with honor because we know it's right, and we are about all we want to do with the men that we'll see at 3.30 is to tell them of the decision that we've made that we're prepared to move on it, and to ask them to give this serious consideration and to cooperate in the best interest of our country to get the president, Lyndon Johnson, re-elected as president of the United States so we can move on with our programs. If you talk to any of their people about this... We have had some informal talks because we couldn't formalize it because we hadn't yet cleared it, but I am confident that we can reduce the opposition to this to a microscopic faction so that they'll be completely unimportant. Have you talked to anybody that justifies that conclusion? Well, I think... Here's what I think about it. I think it's a good solution. I think that it has one danger in it, which I think we ought to take. Maybe in four years we can do a good enough job where we won't be confronted with it again. Our party's always been a group that you could come to with any bellyache of injustice, whether it was a pecan-shelling plant that paid four cents an hour of sweatshop wages, or whether it was the user's interest rates, or whether it was discrimination to vote, or a Ku Klux Klan whipping somebody, and all of these injustices have wound up, and we've symbolized them some way or other in the county or state or national convention for time and more, and that's what the Democratic Party's for, and that's why it was born, and that's why it survives, and that's why it thrives and exists, and long as the poor and the downtrodden and the bended know that they can come to us and be heard, and that's what we're doing. We're hearing them, and we're just saying that we passed the law back there in 1957 and said that first time in 85 years that everybody's gonna have a chance to vote, and we said it again in 60, and we said it again in 64, and then by God it still hadn't been executed, and we're gonna say it again in the convention in 64, and that's about all you're doing is recognizing a symbol now. If, incidentally, by doing that and stomping this damn foolishness, you can elect a ticket and pick up four or five seats in the Senate where we got 70 instead of 67, where we can get some real unity up there and pick up 20 or 30 in the House, then we can do something about this in the next four years, so if you'll just go and get ahold of those people and say to them, for God's sakes, we know we've pasted from the cup of injustice ourselves, but you've had two days here now and you've done more damn harm than we can undo, you're gonna have a president, you're gonna have a vice president without any question of current venture of a doubt of any kind that's yours, that you believe in, that you trust. You're gonna have Congress, and if you'll just get on here and quit letting them say that the extremes are taking over our convention like they took over Goldwater, and let us all get out there in the precincts and get these folks to voting and we'll start out next January and do enough about these areas where we have interests in the form of economic and social and other interests, and we can go in there and send a fellow like Humphrey down and make speech now and then and cry with them a little and we'll have it where you'll be on some delegations in Georgia when you come back here four years from now, but we've done enough now and you just go and line them up there and let one or two of them bitch a little bit in the committee but bring it on out there and ram that damn thing through so we won't take all the bloom off of this wonderful platform. Now I just thought that we had as tough a platform as a person could have on civil rights, we put in enforcement, they knocked it out in San Francisco. We went all the way on labor, we went every bit of the way on Medicare and everything in that New York Times said it's a pallid platform and no good. Well we're not going to worry about that because we've got a damn good platform and this show that this thing that we're doing now as the president will demonstrate one thing that we're just, but we're not run out of the ballpark. That's right. And we're fair. Well I think it symbolizes that we're in the business of looking after injustice wherever it wears its ugly head and we symbolize it here and I see nothing wrong with it except that it's... One thing you got is a Preston. Now next year, next time and they come in from Brooklyn and Michigan and say hell we got a new freedom party here and accepting we're going to say that if we make the Democratic Party an open party in every state we'll need it. We want to use the channels of the party. Yeah that's right, that's right. That's right, well that's right. Well when you two fellows get together you can do anything and I just go on now and get you crowd to do it. Now what about Dave Lawrence? What does he... He's enthusiastic about it. We had breakfast this morning when we worked out this proposition and he's enthusiastic for it. He would have been here when we made this call but he got called over to his meeting. Now this thing, Hubert, I'm not a sadistic person as you well know and I feel like I understand everything and I'm just not trying to play coy with anything. I'm trying to play for the interests of everybody concerned which I think that we are reaching there pretty quickly and since our conversation on the phone I don't think we need to have anymore and back there two or three weeks ago, a month ago when Jim Rowe was here and he don't have to spell out everything and so what you ought to do you ought to talk to Walter Jenkins sometime today and Walter are you going to be down here in the morning? What if I come by at 10 o'clock in the morning? That's alright, that's alright. And I don't think you ought to have this conversation either one of you ought to let anybody know just go on and act independently. Don't be acting for Johnson or anybody else you just act on Ruther and you act on Humphrey and don't have people saying that I'm making you do this. I never heard of it, it's your proposal. My name's Joe Glutz and you haven't talked down here because I don't want to think that I'm trying to go into everything and you just carried the way you think you ought to because we understand each other alright. I'll be in touch with you. Don't even tell Walter you talk to me. Don't tell anybody, just don't. You talk to Joe Glutz, that's my name. Bye bye.