Yes, sir.

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 9:00 with the chairman of the Credentials Committee, the governor, [David] Lawrence. We’ve had in the subcommittee chairman, and we’ve had in Walter Mondale and Congressman Al Ullmann, Eddie Weisl. And of course Tom Finney was over here, Walter [Reuther], myself. And now, we’ve been in touch with your assistant, Mr. Jenkins—Walter Jenkins—and we called Clark Clifford, and I also called the Speaker of the House [John McCormack]. And I’m confident that you’ve had this relayed to you, but we thought we at least ought to report directly to you.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Well, the … What … as Walter says—and I’ll turn him loose here in a minute—what we’ve tried to do is to preserve the legal prerogatives of the party by what we agreed on earlier: namely, that the Mississippi regulars are to be seated if they take the … [if] they’re loyal and they meet the requirements and 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, creed, or 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 precincts 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. [Aaron] Henry and for the other man, the national committeeman as they call him, Reverend Edward King—not Martin Luther, but Edward King—one white and one colored.[note 1] For Humphrey’s report on Dave Lawrence’s earlier suggestion for the Democratic National Convention to seat both delegations, see Conversation WH6408-19-4917, 4918. 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, of political participation by all peoples in our country and that we, in this historic period when we passed a 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’re prepared to make official recognition of the all-important right to vote and of active participation in political affairs.

Mr. President?

Yes.

I think that this will go together, and we can avoid a floor 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 obligations. They—None of the southern 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 this fellow Henry. And I think we can put this together so we can leave this city, we can get this 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 and do 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 [ sic ] or anybody else to negotiate. There is no negotiations. We’ve taken a position now—at least we’re recommending—a strong position that we can advocate with honor because we know it’s right. 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 interests of our country to get the President, Lyndon Johnson, reelected as President of the United States so we can move on with our programs.

Have you talked to any of their people about this?

Yes, we have had some, you know—

Yes.

—informal talks, because we couldn’t formalize it because we hadn’t, as 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?

Yes, [unclear].

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.[note 2] 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. 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 sweatshop wages, or whether it was the usurious interest rates, or whether it was a discrimination [against the right] to vote, or Ku Klux Klan whipping somebody. And all of these injustices have wound up, and we’ve symbolized them someway or other in the county or state or national convention for time immemorial. 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.[note 3] End of 2021 revisions. And we’re just saying . . . We passed a law back there in ’57 and said that [for] the first time in 85 years, everybody is going to have a chance to vote. And we said it again in ’60.[note 4] President Johnson was referring to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. And we said it again in ‘64. And then, by God, it still hadn’t been executed. And we’re going to say it again in the convention in ’64. And that’s about all you’re doing, is recognizing a symbol. Well, now, if incidentally by doing that and stopping this damn foolishness you can elect a ticket and pick up four or five seats in the Senate to where we’ve got 70 instead of 67, and where we can get some real unity up there and pick up 20 or 30 [seats] in the House, why, then we can do something about this in the next four years. So—

Exactly.

—if you’ll just go and get ahold of those people and say to them, “For God’s sakes, we know the—we’ve tasted from the cup of injustice ourselves, but you’ve had two days here now, and you’re doing more damn harm than we can undo. And you’re going to have a president, and you’re going to have a vice president, without any question or peradventure of a doubt of any kind, that’s yours, that you believe in, that you trust. You’re going to have a Congress. And if you’ll just get on here and quit letting them say that the extremes have taken over our convention like they took over Goldwater’s and let us all get out there in the precincts and get these folks to voting, why, we’ll start out next January and do something … 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 to make a speech now and then and cry with them a little. And we’ll have it where you’ll be on some delegations, like you’re on [in] Georgia, when you come back here four years from now, but we’ve done enough now.[note 5] Georgia had black delegates representing the state for the first time. See Conversation WH6407-14-4328 and WH6408-02-4617, 4618 with Carl Sanders.

Well, I—

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 before we … so we don’t take all the bloom off of this wonderful platform. Now, I just thought 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 [at the Republican Party Convention]. We went all the way on labor. We went every bit of the way on Medicare and everything. Then the damn New York Times said it’s a “pallid platform” and no good.[note 6] The editorial in that morning’s New York Times called the Democratic platform “pallid” and overly cautious. “Pallid Platform,” New York Times, 25 August 1964.

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, Mr. President, will demonstrate one thing: that we’re just, but we’re not run out of the ballpark.

That’s right.

We’re legal, and we’re fair.

Well, I think it symbolizes that we are … we are in the business of looking after injustice wherever it rears its ugly head and we’re symbolizing it here, and I see nothing wrong with it, except that—

[Unclear] yesterday with it—

One thing you’ve got is a precedent. Now, next year, next time, they may come in from Brooklyn or Michigan and say, “Hell, we got a new Freedom Party here.”

Well, excepting [that] we’re going to say that if we make the Democratic Party an open party in every state—

Won’t need any of this.

[with Johnson acknowledging]—you ought to use the channels of the party, the rules of the party. You won’t need a separate organization.

Well, that’s right. Well, when you two fellows get together, you can do anything. And just go on now and get your crowd to do it. Now, what about Dave Lawrence? What does he …

He’s 100 percent.

He’s enthusiastic about it. We had breakfast this morning where 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.

All right. Now, this [running mate] thing—Hubert, I’m not a sadistic person, as you well know. And I … feel like I understand everything. I … 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’re reaching pretty quickly. And since our conversation on the phone, I don’t think we need to have any more. And back there two or three weeks ago—a month ago, when Jim Rowe was here, you don’t have to spell out everything. So what you ought to do, you ought to talk to Walter Jenkins sometime today.

[to Reuther] Walter, are you going to be down here in the morning?

Yeah. What if I come by at 10:00 in the morning?

That’s all right. That’s all right.

I’ll be there.

And I don’t think … 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 Reuther, 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.

The point is, it’s our idea. We’ll implement it, and we’ll help unite the party behind you. And this is something we worked out at breakfast.

And my name’s Joe Glutz. And you haven’t talked down here, because I don’t want them to think that I’m trying to go into everything. And you just carry it the way you think you ought to, because we understand each other all right.

We understand each other perfectly. [Unclear.]

I’ll be in touch with you.

We’ll go to work, and we’ll put this to bed. And you can relax, and I’ll see you in the morning.

Don’t even tell Walter [Jenkins] you talked to me. Don’t tell anybody. Just don’t—you talked to Joe Glutz; that’s my name.

All right.

Bye-bye.

I’ll see you in the morning.

Bye.

Bye-bye.