 Putting you on. There you go. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. How do you do, sir? Fine. If I can speak to you in confidence, I don't want to be in the position of trying to influence or pressure anyone, but I'd be glad to thank that we confronted with a realistic problem that we've faced all through the years, a combination of the South and the Republicans. Republicans have got new leadership, they've kicked out Halick, and there's a great challenge to that leadership between choice to be chairman of the platform. Those people have got a substitute, which is a very dangerous one. They tried in the Senate to get a big fight started over which way to repeal a poll tax. There were two ways, and Katzenbach thought one of them would be constitutional because he thought he could get it in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas by challenging them in the courts, and he couldn't get it in Vermont. So if he had a blanket repeal, it would all go out. But if he had an individual thing, he could get rid of it. I told him to get rid of the poll tax anyway in the world. He could, constitutionally, without nullifying the whole law. I didn't want him to say I wrote a bad law. It wouldn't stand up. So they got some of them started over there, and they got a challenge to it. Some of the boys wanted to go a little further and help a little more. Really, it was the best judgment we had. Instead of helping more, it would help less. Anyway, finally we got it solved in the Senate, and it was acceptable, and it worked out. I got over to the house, and they've tried every way in the world they could. The first thing they did is they went to the forces that are on our side and said, well, you've got to repeal the poll tax outright, which means you repeal Vermont. And Vermont is not a discriminatory tax, and that's where the court wouldn't hold it, and you wouldn't do any good. But they got McCormick, and they got the real friends that we have to go all the way hoping that that would get the job done for them later on and would hold up the legislation. I think the civil rights leadership is coming around now to see the problem that we all have, and if they don't have much confidence, they're turning John Oleg on to be in trouble anyway, because he's a man we have to try to rely on to help us. And I picked him for that problem because he and Dora and others had demonstrated that they had confidence in the leadership. But we got back then to the big question, what do, how do we avoid this combination? Judge Smith held it for a while. We had to file a 21-day rule, and there's been nobody really around here shoving it. I've done the best I could, but they're hitting me on different sides, and the press is kind of, the Vietnam or the Dominican Republic are some mistake here, some mistake there, and I'm getting kind of cut up a little bit, and Wilkins is having a national convention, and you're somewhere else. And I called Meany to ask him to help. He's gone to Europe. I called Ruth there. He won't be back till August. I called Joe Rao and said to God, say, you try to get in here before it's too late. We're all celebrating and doing something else, and they're going to put a package together that I can see on it. And I called B-Miller, and I got him to agree to go send some, and a wire sent from Roy to all the Republicans. But the Republicans are going to hold pretty well. They're going to quit the Negroes. They will not let the Negro vote for them. Every time they get a chance to help out a little, they'll blow it. And they could help out here, and they could elect some good man in suburban districts and in cities, but they haven't got that much sense. That's why they're disintegrating as a party, so they're going to wind up being pretty solid. Then they're going to get the Southerners, and they'll put the two together. It'll probably be within 10 votes of a count. Now, when I went up with my message, I could have probably passed it by 75. But it's deteriorating, and the other day, they almost beat my rental at my rent subsidy, which is very important to the working groups and the poor people, because when a man pays 25% of his income for rent, we will say a man makes 200 a month in New York City working in a baker's shop. He pays $50 a month rent, and his rent costs him maybe 67. The government will come in after 25%, which is $50 of his 200. They'll pay the other $17.5 themselves, and it's the most modern idea we've had, and it takes care of lots of families, but they beat me. I'll beat them 208 to 202. But I had to work all night tonight before, and we called 90 people, and it was just a struggle of a lifetime. The labor people who were supposed to be supporting it, they were all... couldn't get them to help. What they've done is just kind of taking the victory, doctor, and not being concerned. Now, Smith comes out and says my bail has had a lot of venom in it. I feel great hatred for the South, and like a rattlesnake, I'm trying to punish him and all that kind of stuff. So he gets the congressman from the 13 old Confederate states, and he puts 100 with 150 Republicans, and that gives him 250. And 250 is a good majority of 435. So we get some of them away from him. We'll get a few from Texas away from him, and we'll get a few from Tennessee away from him, the Confederate states. But he'll still get 70, 80 of them, and unless we can pull some of the Republicans away, we're in trouble and we're in danger. And even if we do, we get a bail in conference. Now, when it gets in conference with this house insisting on repealing blank in the poll deck, repealing it in blank, we think the court will not uphold us in that. We think that's unconstitutional. We've said so. We can't avoid it because our own friends have bought it, and they want to be stronger for the Negro than their cats back. So we've got to pass it that way. Then it goes to conference. When it gets to conference, you can't pass that way in the Senate because the Senate will not take it. They know that it's unconstitutional, and they've got six-year terms, and they're good lawyers, and they're not going to vote for it. So they're getting an argument and that delays it, and maybe nothing comes out. But if something does come out, then you've got to go back to Judge Smith again, and you've got to get a rule from him, and he won't give you a rule. You've got to file a petition and take another 21 days. Now, the smart thing to do if we had people that would all stay with us and follow leadership and get in, and when the ball goes through the center or around the end would follow it, would be to get some language that the leadership conference would agree on, and go in and see McCormick and our friends and say, now, let's take this language that the Senate will accept without it going to conference. So we can go on and get this bill passed and start registering our people and get them ready to vote next year. That's what we need to do. But they're playing us, and we are not parliamentary smart in us. If you want to be honest now, you ask my advice, I'm just telling you, you're either going to have a conference with me and then catch them back, or you ought to pick something later you do have and then follow them. I started out on this voting bill last November, right after the election. I called them down and told them I was going to do it, and I called you down here and told you what I was going to do. And I went before the Congress made the speech and asked them to work every weekend. Then we all went off. They haven't had any heat except for me, and they're getting tired of the heat from me. They don't like for me to be asking for rent one day and poverty the next day and education the next day and voting rights the next day. And they know I can't defeat them out there in their district in Michigan or some other place. So I'm just fighting the battle best I can. I think I'll win it, but it's going to be close and it's going to be dangerous. And I've asked Lee White to talk to you and talk to Roe and talk to any of them that called him. Whitney Young. I talked to a fellow named Proctor of New York in here today with the Council of Churches. I tell them all that this is a very dangerous thing. And I've been at this business 35 years, and I got a wonderful response on my speech at Howard. I've had it printed. I've sent out to all the leaders over the country. I've got them right in their congressmen and their senators. But I cannot influence the Republicans. Now, the people that can influence the Republicans are men like the local chapters of COER or NAACP or your group in New York and in Illinois, downstate Illinois and in Pennsylvania and in Ohio and these states where you've got a good many Negro voters and you've got to say to them, now, we're not Democrats. We're going to vote for the man that give us freedom. We don't give a damn whether it's Abraham Lincoln or Lyndon Johnson. And we're going to know and we're smart enough to know and we'll hear and watch you. And we won't see how you go through that televote and we won't see how you answer on that roll call. Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, California. And do it. Now, that's what we need. It's been a Thursday and a Thursday and a Friday. And maybe even Saturday if they run over. And I told you I'll drive that. And I said now don't come back to me after you've defeated and say, well, the president didn't give us leadership because I'm sound in the warning. And you people have a story of sunday and that story says that there'll be less than a dozen votes in difference. Now, they counted a good many southerners voting with us. We think we'll lose some of those dozen that they give us. But we're going to try to pick up some more Republicans. That's where you got to pick them up. You know you're just trying to pick up fellow Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, those places. We'll pick up one or two in Florida. We'll pick up some from Texas. But the place you got to pick them up is Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New York. Now you get a fellow like Lindsey. He's running for mayor and he's going to be with us. But you won't get a dozen Republicans. And we've got to get 25 of them. Or they ought to be defeated.