Conversation 529-021

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Come on in, sit down, I'll take care of it.

Sit down.

Roll it in.

How do you take it off?

Well, I take it off, I have two dubs.

How, who's doing it now?

And he is now the acting executive director of the responsibility of trying to speak to the convention.

And then in the morning of July, 24,000 of us will come to Detroit and see, do the business apparently, but also see this as a

who was gonna be with the suspect.

And I'm sure there's some mystery about it.

And I suspect something's centered.

So I had a problem with a lady that gave her, gave her something, something confident.

So I don't understand what you think these guys did.

Did you refer to your mom?

I don't get it, I get it.

the first time we met, you don't remember this, but that's the two of us, plus Eugene Clay, Russell J. Combs.

That was 1956.

Fourteen years ago.

You were a junior.

I went to DePaul and I think that she did work.

All of the boys worked.

The boys at DePaul are very bright.

That's an aspect of the scholarships.

The girls are very rich.

I can't wait.

William made $6 a week, plus his boat.

He never carried a train.

He just opened the door and rang the gate door for people to sit down and have a break.

Plus, he got the keys to the kitchen, which was terrible.

That was, that was, that, of course, was the, was the reward.

But I can't, uh, visit that.

Now, Russell Hunger is dead.

Uh, Eugene Pulliam has since, he's quit the Board of Trustees.

Yeah, and page takers.

That's right, yeah.

But he says, with the DePaul Board of Trustees, because the new president, the guy that you see in Humboldt, took, I guess, $30,000 in federal money.

He saw that as a bargain.

That sounds like he put it down like that.

Well, I'll tell you, I would like you, I'll tell you this one.

.

We're coming at the right time.

It's telling.

It's always tough to follow a man who's become so legendary here.

And that's what he is.

It's been hard.

Why do you take the request of someone in the same situation in a very different way?

Nobody really was able to fill the void in the department who came.

Due to the fact that he came out of his seat, he had a personal stake and also a reputation.

And it may have been a mistake to take her years to get her reputation.

But it may have, of course, affected what we know now as a lot of charm and pride and all the rest of the friends over the country.

And, of course, the man's place is always determined to a certain extent by how he dies in the unfortunate way that it happened.

We have to get escalated as a result of that.

Now, he stepped into that job, I think you are 35 years old, 36.

He was a young man too, probably before that, before the time, unless he kept it, he was talking.

Anyways, he stepped into that job at a time, and as you know, everybody was having pickets at the time.

He came down to Washington, we tried to help him, but he didn't help us on the financial side.

the uh they're going to say well they're going to be carrying the other one but on the other hand that's really what will give you the hardest opportunity there's so much work to be done i think the one thing that's much in your favor i'm glad they picked a younger man

You need to follow what's going on.

It's a drive.

They'll knock you down.

You've got to get up and find your cat.

You mustn't get discouraged.

Sometimes the following is over, but instead of a wash-off, and your teeth have to be washed, that's a problem.

That's what I'm saying.

They're at the gear of circumstances we've been around.

Three years ago, we were in Iowa for a meeting in Kansas.

And he was sitting there protecting me.

He said, Brian, I said to you, I said, come to New York.

And, uh, he says, uh, he says, uh, he says, uh, he says, uh, he says, uh,

Well, what we want to do is this.

First, I want you to know, as you know from talking to George and Bob and to the rest here, that we have a very good relationship with Leone.

We try to cooperate every way that we can, and we can lay it all out.

The fact that he's gone does not in any way

reduce our commitment to have that sort of relationship.

As a matter of fact, it perhaps underlines it to an extent, because we wouldn't want to have his situation.

He was very personal.

You can call these folks here, and they've all been told what to do.

And after he's done, I said, now look here.

And I looked down, and he was standing around and so forth.

I said, I want to be sure that we carry out everything that we've made, work with the new leadership, talk about

You don't expect these people to carry that out.

I've told them that.

And I also want you to know that there will be occasions when you feel that it's necessary to talk to me until this door is open.

And we want to help.

We know that we have to be polite.

We are always very honest with the two, but we don't always agree.

I mean, we wish for one thing, but we can't do this, or we want to do it this way, we want to do it that way, and so forth and so on.

But the main thing is we're all working on the same goal.

I mean, the opportunity goal and all the various other things, of course, we are doing, so you can follow that.

And we'll be looking forward to your best judgment as to how we can help.

If you think we're a problem, all you let us know, and we'll get to work scaling it up.

Yes, sir.

The colonel was asking about that morning about the college, you know, like... Yeah.

Because he's extremely interested in that meeting and that now.

Yeah.

And there were some persons who had indicated that they were studying money.

I think that there may be a couple problems now in getting additional monies, because monies for several states was cut back, including Alabama.

And we've had some feedback from that.

Now, this is not just the black schools.

We're also the all-schools.

I worked at your league, and that's coming along.

We had a meeting with the military department.

Well, I think the largest single contractor was with Labor.

H-E-W-L-E-O, the defense, and they're all around.

We had kind of a coordinated meeting about three or four weeks ago, I think.

with uh mr sims and uh trying to establish a point in the office of management budget where he could come if there were problems i understand well

Uh, that's a good cause, too, if you've got a good man succeeding in there.

That is not yet decided.

Uh, it's been some tough, you know, we're doing our best to help with that field.

We haven't done much, but... We have a very good, good man in somebody else.

Uh, we have a very good, good man.

He's a good man.

Uh, good man.

He's on, he's on your side here.

Oh, yeah, sure.

I've been looking for him.

I, I can talk with him.

Oh, yeah.

And then we, we, uh...

I had the last two Bilderberg meetings.

Oh, yeah, you were at those conferences.

I had six or nine conferences.

I had a seven conference.

Yeah.

The 71 conference was in the States, and that was not the one to go to.

We just ought to go over there.

That's right.

But I did not get to that one, but I was at the one last year.

And it was supposed to be here before we met.

We met at the hospital.

I didn't want to take anything from that.

Both of us.

because at that time he was in the State Department.

Yeah.

But he's been really very helpful to the State Department.

I think of the relationship.

But on the league, in terms of federal progress, it's encouraging to me and to the representative that there is this continuing commitment.

And I would like to.

You just give us some credit when we help out.

Looking forward to it.

It was difficult to leave the college, because I'd just been there for 17 months.

And so I'm kind of checking up on the earth.

The problem is, man, can I really select the circumstances under which he has to act?

You've got to move with the times right now.

You've got to move with it.

And as you, I'd like that there's a very different sense of the world on Paul's side of every other congressman.

the fact he should, the fact he shouldn't, but if he misses it, he will never run.

That's right, he'll never make it.

When I ran for the Senate, I'd been in the Congress for four years, and if I would have stayed in the Congress, I would have gone very high, because I had a very safe district, too, and I kept safe.

That's right.

That's what I loved.

I loved him.

Oh, I missed it all, and that's what you're doing.

You're not a candidate for Congress just because I was off of the United States Council.

I have thought that it may not occur to the rest of you, I don't know if it may be so way off.

I wonder, John, if we could, on a pilot basis, maybe, because I'm thinking of getting the urban leagues to heal for me, they've got to go out and get dope for businessmen and all the rest of it.

How about giving them, providing them a pilot basis of money in the drug information?

You see, we've got this new program on drug treatment.

It's terribly important.

As you well know, the drug problem is not a black problem.

Now, if we, in our education, I think, what I'm thinking of, why don't you see if you could get the check in the office and find something where we could have that set.

I don't know.

I think it's very possible.

98 cents.

Yeah.

And I said, appropriate.

They have an education director that deals with people and kids.

Do you have education directors?

I have education directors in every local state.

As a matter of fact, the regional director that has landed there, I first met as a high school student in Atlanta.

He was a revolutionary in Atlanta in 1952.

He was in a hospital with men and people, probably men.

That was my first, that was my initial contact, Ernie Cash Coleman.

And I worked with him, but he was talking to high school kids.

And the problem then was just getting black and white kids in high school to sit down and talk about racial issues and stuff.

You see, the deal with the drug problem here really headed the job wrong, too, because, you know, a lot of people raised the question of, well,

What do you think of it, Bob?

I think it's an excellent idea.

And also, another thing that I'm thinking of, frankly, is your PR thing.

I really think it allows the Urban League to grab an issue, in addition to your other issues, to grab the issue, which people are enormously concerned.

In other words, we're saying, in fact, by God, we're working on education, we're working on jobs,

opportunity to work it out.

And we've got a problem because, you see, we've got the whole country now.

We've got the head of state, we've got the, we've got the Secretary of Congress working on that, and so forth.

And I, I really, I think it's, it also might be a great help out a little to the education director, John, among the subs.

Well, that's what I was thinking about.

The other advantage of that is that my view of their name,

at this early stage is that it has two missions.

One is a mission of advocacy.

That comes, not easy, but I'll take that one, serving a mission.

But secondly, the basic mission of services is to relate yourself to services, to people.

And to the extent in my view that there's going to be a viable organization within both, you can do the right thing.

You've got to be able to deliver services

I don't have any, I don't have any of the field services.

Why couldn't you have, and have Jeff be checking it out, you've got 92 cities on board, 92, take a couple.

And use the, put in, put in, and see if you couldn't have the Urban League as being one of the offices where people can come, you know what I mean?

This whole thing, many of them, this is a remedial part, you see, they're not talking about the enforcement department, where people can come and go.

where you could put in some people who go out and make the speeches, you know, the education thing.

They got to hear, they got to hear from their own, you know, from people that can relate.

I don't know.

It's a way out idea.

Let them check it out.

We don't want to get into that.

Basically, in our office, it's a program, you know.

And we don't think

useful for you, because I know some men under the Black Caucus that ran over New York and said, the biggest thing, the problem we've got is drugs.

He said, I want to go to church.

I said, all right, fine.

I said, we live in a church.

We're trying to cut off the Turks.

We're trying to cut off the French.

We're trying to cut off the Indians.

uh and also the demand is a question of uh rehabilitation because the drug has to eat each other so so maybe maybe maybe we got something here it would appeal to say it'll appeal to red it'll appeal to black and white and a few of the cities and so forth and i think it uh to many people the uh

So I would add one, and I would say that if I were making your speech, you could say that Irving has the problem, has the mission of advocacy, has the mission of services, and it has the mission of education.

Now, education is advocacy also.

But I mean, here it is.

I mean, there's just a lot of noise in the world.

And because the more you're rotten, you're soaked.

Look, I know the problem.

In fact, Don Kendall, who's one of your great supporters in Pennsylvania, and others, he'll take it and put up his dough.

But everybody's having the money.

The urban leader, the coalition's having the money.

And they're having the money every day.

You're in the business of competing for money.

You might find it.

You never know which one of these strings to impose, whether you want to be the one to set somebody free.

Chet Ryder, the drug didn't like me enough.

Who knows?

Anyway, the drug I get, I take my cues when I get out of the barrel.

The barrel, the character I can use.

That's all I thought about.

She did a paper in the sixth grade.

I don't know.

It was in Atlanta.

It was during vacation.

I was going down to make a pizza.

And she had left her homework.

And I took it back.

I was in the sixth grade.

I didn't know anything about using index cards.

But she had this.

Everything.

Where it's thrown.

The very same score.

All of it.

And she knows as much about drugs as a six-year-old can understand about drugs as a six-year-old.

And I really think that that is really a great hope in this elementary school district.

We've managed to get 72,000 teachers through that program.

And, of course, that, again, would have to be trained.

But the real problem with this, of course, is a lot of teachers are teaching it wrong.

And it's awfully important that they stay current.

You know, how do you keep up?

It's a new thing.

The great old order taught you.

players, associations over here.

We can talk a little about this thing.

Now, he's involved with big, you know, banks.

And I said, look, Paul, he would ask me something then.

And I'd say, you know, stretch me from Boston about a month ago, the same thing.

I said, gee, we'd love to go ahead and talk about this problem.

I'm just thinking of the ways that we've just got to get, we've got to get the people, we've got to educate.

It sounds illusory, but also I know you can, I know you can disagree.

Well, I want to take

What are you going to do about drugs?

What are they actually doing?

They thought I came to the express house for a position.

That's right.

You may be interested in that Clarence Coleman has been in touch with us.

We had Ed Harper go down there and make a

revenue share as a regional urban league.

And it turned out so well, and everybody wanted to know so much.

And the urban league people, including Coleman, wanted to have an intervention program throughout the southeast and southwest.

So now we're getting the money together, $60,000, so they can acquaint urban league people and other people, masses throughout the southwest with revenue sharing as well.

organization, and with basically your own constituency very confused.

Some say we don't like .

Some say they do like .

Or they should have more, or we should .

The main thing that I wish to emphasize here is that we .

And I can tell you, and I'll state my whole life on this statement,

I am convinced that in the field of welfare, in the field of welfare reform, there's nothing that's more revolutionary and will be more helpful than to take this first step.

Now, you can argue about the fact, well, maybe we owe him more than the rest.

I must not say, well, $2,400 is too low.

It ought to be $3,000.

It ought to be $5,000, $6,000, somewhere.

Sure.

But there, you know, there are budget intentions.

But when you think,

Now, what this does, if you think of the fact that you get away completely from the main character of the welfare workers, you know, jabbing around the houses and the apartments and so forth and so on, with regard to the tenants, what you also provide for the workers.

money won't actually matter, it helps to grow.

But more important than that is the change in the approach.

In other words, the change in the approach whereby people who need assistance on an automatic basis, again, without having somebody come in, some welfare worker come in, make a decision about the risk.

You've got kids that, as we say, the families that need assistance, they should get it.

They shouldn't have their lives warped by some well-intentioned, but it might be a very helpful book, but they ill-advised welfare worker who makes that family, particularly those kids, feel that they're sort of

He knows the subject better than anybody else.

The whole thing is to provide a way, and you see, by providing aid to the working poor,

It means that there's no incentive for all of us to stay on welfare.

Because he isn't going to lose money by going from welfare to a quarter-day job or a part-time job.

He's going to continue to get it.

And therefore, he goes, takes the first step, and then he goes on to the other steps.

He does the work training, the work incentive.

The other thing is, if you combine that with manpower revenue sharing, we're also talking about a large amount of money that goes into the two go-together.

You've got a large company that goes into exactly the kind of thing we're doing.

In other words, train people for the job.

You can't tell Paul, look, get off welfare when there's no job for you.

And you can't tell him to get off welfare when he's not qualified and there is a job for him.

So what we have, we have really a double approach here.

Second, for those who can't work

We say, look, we'll train you for a job, and we provide that.

And then if you take a job and it isn't up to what they're getting on welfare, you're not losing anything.

So he makes that first step.

because the welfare goals grow, and the hopelessness grows.

The hopelessness, the degradation of the nothing.

I just think you're just not going to have these servers hanging around anymore.

And so the problem is, too, that a great many, millions of people don't have where they have to go.

It's all right.

The statement that was attached to it when I was the board member, I said, you're not going to take welfare.

that change is necessary so that other citizens would have a different attitude toward that citizen's responsibility toward what's necessary for them.

And that you cannot be insensitive to the needs of your fellow citizens.

But you, I think that's a growing intensity under the federal system.

So there's no question that change is necessary.

I guess, I guess,

But you really need them, and then you really gotta change them.

And it may be that you have to take the old philosophy that a broke state is better than no state at all.

You gotta get started on something, you might as well get the whole state.

But you know, the thing about the urban thing, you know, it's a beauty.

I've been through your offices in New York.

But I would say that I was thinking that you put emphasis on dignity, self-respect, you know, standardizing.

That's a great thing, and that's how money can't die.

And it's so important, and it's something that Indians are acquiring.

And it's in that way, this is just a black problem.

It's a white problem.

And you see, this welfare reform helps.

It helps the Chicanos.

You know, they have a terrible problem with Los Angeles and Texas and other places.

It gets the poor whites, you know, down there who are, who are competing with blacks.

You know, it's a vicious competition, you know.

Not the black, not the boondocks it is.

And so we really feel that we're going to have some of the social problems.

And that's why we're pushing.

I think it's most important to have this task force group going to West Virginia and Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, and elsewhere.

There are people who are living on $800,000, $900,000 a year, not $10,000, $50,000, but a lot of people.

And the point is that

Why should we, here in Washington and elsewhere, who get three good squares a day and everything else, tell the poor across our nation that they have to wait until everybody decides to get $6,500 a year while we're still feeding the fat of the land?

And that's what I've told George Wiley and the others who have been in opposition to the welfare program.

I mean, you may be very direct about it, because I think you belong in it.

The United States Senate will act on this, and will pay it enough, you know, by their October October, November, December of this year.

If any of that is opposed by people, you know, who are like yourself,

who are considered to be advocates and protagonists of people that, you know, are poor and depressed, then the chances of it succeeding will be substantially reduced.

On the other hand, we can have support.

To have support, the chances of it succeeding are greatly increased.

I know this comes.

Nobody has come up in the Congress with a better plan.

Nobody's come up with a thing.

Nobody's, except by the way, what I said.

And you do know, my gosh, New York is in a mess at the present time with their welfare problems.

So we've got a plan.

Same on revenue there.

We've got a different one here.

Nobody's got a plan.

And so the thing is, you've got to go forward with the present system, which I think we all

I don't know, maybe the stuff I would take, I don't know if I'll make it, but that one, I would take this one.

Now, the

And also let me say that I think we, in this field, in the truck field, and in others, I want our staff, well, I think Richardson and the men here, those are the key people to talk to, the developers, Jim Hodgson, the inspector, and I told you, the director, he's another one.

All these fellows have committed very shocking work in the architecture of the Philadelphia plant, and he's working hard, so nevertheless,

What we want you to know is that we'll be glad to submit a relationship that you want.

If you've got a press conference or speech or anything like that, you can accept it or reject it.

We don't ask you to come in and say, take it 100%.

But I know myself, and I compare myself.

I don't want to set up some material because it's hard to figure something out with it.

If you say, for example, this drug thing, you could be talking about that.

It could be something that really is meat and potatoes rather than just saying, well, drugs are bad.

We're going to get in a fight.

They've all heard that.

It could be something quite specific.

They're going to set up this and that and the other.

This would be a great thing.

And then you go out and get that constituency wrapped up.

In other words, as I would say, I think you've got a great opportunity here, too.

Just to take your lead.

To build on what Jan left.

Because basically one man rebuilds an organization.

You will build it now.

The leader, you determine.

Don't question about it.

If it goes down, you're going to get a point.

If it goes up, you get a credit.

Now, the thing is, don't just take that building and you find it.

You have to.

Just like this White House, you know.

The Arizona will dissuade.

wasn't here, he used to have the office over in the old buildings.

Part of the reason was that the car was really drunk, but that's an idea.

But I think you ought to leave your own part.

You ought to make your own initiatives.

And I think people, because you're a young man, and you're sort of the new breed here.

But you are.

You're young, and that's my intention.

And boy, I live right up to it.

And we realize, too, that you've got to keep your constituency.

And you've got to speak to that constituency.

That means that you always are going to agree with us.

But on the other hand, it's just something to go overboard the other way and speak quite candidly and say, well, everything we do is wrong.

That's not true.

We've got a lot of decent people here.

You see some of the truth.

We're interested in these same problems.

We're trying to reform welfare.

We're trying to do something about them.

We're helping to start a big health plan in the cities.

And we're working in the field with the interrogation for schools and so on.

All those fields we're working on.

And we're trying to.

And so if we could just look at each other that way, I think we'd make it all day again.

That's really the basis that we have, the basis that made our relationship with the youngster good.

And we both are basically free agents, independent.

You should be.

Actually, you want you to be.

Otherwise, they'll kill you.

You're not going to be in the room that you're in.

We want to help you.

We will.

At least the paper on Reverend Shepard.

On Reverend Shepard, you know, I have a deal with my high education.

So I have a letter to my son.

But for my own identification, I'm going to get it from Reverend Shepard.

I'm going to get it from him.

You have two minutes.

I'm afraid it already started.

At least you'll know that I got the signature.

Good, I'm sorry.

That's the presidential paperweight.

And I always tell folks that whenever the paper's too much, this little old weight won't hold up.

Secretary.

Oh, you're gonna bring her some?

And one for you, if you'd like.

Thank you very much.

Oh, you're welcome.

Okay.

Well, good luck.

I'll be in the bank.

When we read that a man at 200 is a little man, I read in some of these books, you know, that we, well, you know, the great Southern California star, when they were on the 10th century, gee, you know, gee, what's the way to 12?

.