[answering on speakerphone] Jim?[note 1] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary.

Hello, Mr. President, how you feel?

I’m doing all right. I hope you are. You got a lot of sunshine down there?

Need some rain—we need rain mighty bad.

Well, we’re so dry in my country that we’re going to have to sell off all of our cattle if we don’t get rain.

Well, I’m in the same shape: got a cotton crop just burning up.

I’ll be darned. I thought you’d be harvesting cotton pretty soon. When is it, July?

Yeah.

I guess they’re harvesting the valley right now.

Uh-huh.

Jim, we got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it?

Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe there’s—I don’t believe there’s three missing.

We got their parents down here.

I believe it’s a publicity stunt.

They say that their parents are here, and they’ve come down to see the Attorney General [Robert F. “Bobby” Kennedy], and they’ve seen Burke Marshall, and they’re going to be interviewed by the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]—the parents. And they’ve got some newspaper people and some photographers with them and couple of congressmen: Congressman [William Fitts] Ryan [D–New York] and this Republican, Congressman Ogden [R.] Reid [R–New York], whose folks used to own the Herald Tribune in New York.[note 2] Lee White recounts that he pointed out the Herald Tribune connection to Johnson while standing in the doorway of Kenny O’Donnell’s office just before noon. Lee White, transcript, Oral History Interview, 18 February 1971, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, pp. 8–9.

Yeah?

They want to come to the White House, see the President, and I told them that I thought that that would be better to let Lee [C.] White—who handles matters like that for me—talk to them, and he’d go up to Ryan’s office and talk to them. I don’t know whether that’s going to be satisfactory or not.[note 3] End of 2021 revisions.

The Attorney General called over while I was out. He thought I ought to make a statement on it. I made one at my press conference this morning. Scotty Reston said, “Mr. President, do you have any information about those three kids that disappeared in Mississippi?” I said [reading]: “The FBI has a number of men who are studying it, and we’ve asked them to spare no efforts to secure information and report to us. I’ve had no reports since breakfast, but at that time I understood that the FBI had forces in that area looking into it. Several weeks ago, I asked them to anticipate the problems that would come from this, and they have sent extra FBI personnel into the area. They have substantially augmented their personnel in the last few hours.” And that’s all I said.

Well, that’s all right.[note 4] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary. Now, I’m going to tell you why I don’t think there’s a damn thing to it. They were put in jail in Philadelphia, in East Mississippi, right next to . . . county right next to John [C.] Stennis’s [D–Mississippi] home county, and they were going to Meridian.[note 5] Democratic Senator John Stennis was from Starkville in Oktibbeha County, home to Mississippi State University. It was approximately 70 miles north of Philadelphia, Mississippi. There’s not a Ku Klux Klan in that area; there’s not a Citizens’ Council in that area; there’s no organized white man in that area. So that’s why I think it’s a publicity stunt.[note 6] Eastland’s plantation was in Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta. The county seat was Indianola, where in 1954 the first Citizen’s Council was formed two months after the Brown v. Board Supreme Court decision. Now, if it had happened in other areas, I would pay more attention to it, but I happen to know that some of these bombings where nobody gets hurt are publicity stunts.

This Nigra woman [Fannie Lou Hamer] in Ruleville [Mississippi] that’s been to Washington and testified that she was shot at 19 times is lying.[note 7] Eastland was referring to Fannie Lou Hamer, the sharecropper who had become one of the most influential civil rights leaders in Mississippi. In late-August 1962, Hamer lost her job as a timekeeper for a plantation and was evicted from her home. On the night of 10 September 1962, 16 shots were fired into the home where she had been staying since her eviction, but apparently unknown to the shooters, she was not in the house. That same night, two women were shot in Ruleville and another home was fired upon. To profound effect two months after this call, Hamer repeated her story to the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention. ’Course, with anybody that gets shot at 19 times [slight chuckle] is going to get hit, and she hasn’t been shot at a time, and nobody’s tried to bother her. They let her sit in on the Democratic . . . in the Democratic county convention this morning.

Uh-huh.

I don’t think there’s anything to it.[note 8] End of 2021 revisions.

Well, now, here’s what I’m calling you about as my friend: Number one, they said I ought to make a statement. I’ve made this statement, and I think I’ll stand on it. Do you see any need of my going any further?

No!

All right, that’s number one. Number two, they’ve suggested I see these parents. I’ve told them I thought that’d be a bad precedent. I’m going to try to get them to see an assistant of mine and get by with that if I can, so I don’t add to the fuel. Uh, do you . . . you . . . you . . . Don’t you think that’s the thing to do?

Sure, and I think it’s going to turn out that there’s nothing to it. Now, I don’t know, but . . .

Now, number three, the Attorney General suggested that I probably ought to call the governor [Paul Johnson]. I found out that Burke Marshall called the attorney general, [Joe] Patterson of Mississippi, this morning. He was quite cooperative, and he said they were going to do everything they could to help. If I call the governor, it might put him on the spot a little bit, particularly if it got public, and he might resent it. Now, what’s your judgment?

Well, my judgment is that he’s going to do everything he can, and is doing everything he can, to enforce the law.

All right, now, should I call him or not?

Well, it’d be all right.

Would you advise it or not advise it?

No, I’m not going to advise you. I don’t think it would mean anything either way. He’s going . . . I can call him, and . . .

You just do that, and I’ll say I’ve communicated with the proper people, and I’m doing everything I can with everybody I know.

All right. I’ll call him and talk to him about it [unclear]—

I’d rather work with you. Now you tell him that I want to see him anytime he wants to now. I told you and John Stennis we want to get this bill out of the way so they couldn’t say I was trading and filling out.[note 9] Presumably, Johnson meant the Civil Rights Act, which he would sign on 2 July. Now, it’s out of the way, and you tell him anytime he wants to meet—

Well . . .

—I’m ready.

This boy in the . . . What’s—[Nicholas] Katzenbach said to arrange it one day next week after the sixth.

All right, that’s good. Well, you just—

And I’m going . . . I was going to talk to him this afternoon.

All right. You just tell him anything—[note 10] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary.

[speaking over President Johnson] Well, let me ask you this question about these three that are missing: Who is there to harm them? There’s no organ—there’s no White organizations in that area of Mississippi. Who would—could possibly harm them?

Well, might have some crank or some nut, like they locked [Eastland attempts to interject] a man up in Minneapolis [Minnesota] today for saying he’s going to kill me Friday when I go out there.[note 11] Johnson had several speaking engagements in Minnesota on 27–28 June.

[Unclear.][note 12] Eastland seemed to say, “Naw, it’ll take a bear.” It’ll take a crowd to handle—make three men disappear.

Well, it depends on the kind of men, Jim.

Huh?

It depends on the kind of men.

Well, there’s nobody in that area to harm them.

They might take a big crowd to take three like you.

[chuckling] Ah, well—

I imagine it wouldn’t take many to capture me.

[continuing to chuckle] Well, I’d run.

All right. Well, now, you get that rain for both of us and send it on east when you get through using it.[note 13] End of 2021 revisions.

I’ll do it.

Now you tell the governor I send my regards. I want to work with him.

Now, we got a party conciliator under this law, Jim. I’ve got to have some southerner that knows something about the South and that the Negroes will have confidence in and won’t say that I’ve fixed them. If you’ve got any ideas or anybody that’s worth a damn, I wished you’d let me know.

I’ll do it.

I tried to get the mayor of Atlanta [Ivan Allen] today, and he wouldn’t take it.

I didn’t know that.

Well, I asked him, and he said he wouldn’t take it. Some of them have suggested that I try to get Dave Lawrence of Pennsylvania, but he’s been governor, and he wouldn’t want to take it. Some of them have suggested that I get a mayor from North Carolina; I don’t know him [Stanley Brookshire]. One of them suggested that I get LeRoy Collins. I don’t know whether he’d get out of the association he works for or not.

Well, he’s a damn cheat, double-crosser, and a liar, and he’s a . . . strictly dishonest. Now, he agreed that the convention . . . before he was to recognize us to vote for you, and he went back on his word, and I called him a goddamn, lying, son of a bitch out there.[note 14] LeRoy Collins was chairman of the 1960 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. During the nomination roll call, the Mississippi delegation proved notable for its early morning submission of arch-segregationist governor Ross Barnett as their candidate, a move met by loud boos from surprised Democrats in the Convention Hall. Washington Post, 14 July 1960.

Well, we don’t want him, then, do we?

Hell, no!

All right, I’ll tell them that. Now, get some—

You couldn’t retain your self-respect and vote a—and support a man that fought you like he did.

All right. OK, much obliged.

Well, I think—

You think of anybody you can and give me a ring.

I’ll do it.