Hello?

Hello?

Roy, how are you?

Mr. President, I’m fine. And I enjoyed your speech last night [at the Kennedy Foundation dinner], very much.

Thank you. Sorry I didn’t see you.

Well, I knew you were seeing plenty of people, and I was glad to be there and to listen to you.

I called you yesterday afternoon but missed you. I guess you were on your way home.

I think I was on my way to the dinner, probably. I got the message afterwards.

Yes.

We left a little early in order to get there in time. We live out in Queens, a little distance away.

I’ve got a real difficult problem I want to talk to you about confidentially, and I don’t want you to ever repeat it to anybody, but I want to get your advice on it, and it’s for the good of the nation. If you’d let me talk to you on that basis.

I’ll be—you want me to come?

No. No, I’ll just talk to you on the phone.

Very good.

This film has gone out to 415 places.

Has it?

The Attorney General and Averell Harriman saw it last week and started a hell of a roar in Washington about it and said it will destroy us, that it had nothing in there about peaceful petition, or Kennedy talking to them about meetings, and nothing about the President. Had a good many places [where] there’s poor production, and it ought to be reworked and reedited.

He [Robert Kennedy] called up one of my assistants and just kind of ordered it done almost. I told him I thought I’d be misunderstood if I did that. And I didn’t agree that the film was good in some respects, and I would have improved it, and I would change it, and I would add to it. And I would put the President and Kennedy in front of it and let him make a statement on constitutional rights, and put myself in the middle of it and so forth because it’s not going to do very good to selected business groups in these various countries if it hasn’t got a little more explanation or sex appeal than it just got.

Yes.

Just people shoving and marching.

Yes.

Even though they’re peacefully marching, it’s not good. He thought there was one bad part where there’s a Negro girl, I guess, with a white boy and had her head on his shoulder, or vice versa. I don’t know.

I don’t recall that, but if so, I think that probably could be eliminated.

And so, the Secretary of State, I told him to keep it away from my label. I didn’t want to be passing on it. The Secretary of State asked the embassy to give him their reaction on how they could use it successfully. The Attorney General called back again yesterday and said he just wanted to emphasize that he thought this would destroy us in this country and hurt us.[note 1] The Daily Diary contains no record of this call with Robert Kennedy.

[with Wilkins acknowledging] Of course, [Clark] Mollenhoff is making a big issue of it. He’s on that advisory board of the USIA.[note 2] Mollenhoff, the DesMoines Registers chief Washington correspondent, was a strong critic of the administration and had been a member of the United States Advisory Commission on Information since 1962. He hates me. He hates everybody nearly. He’s almost a mental problem. And he hates Carl Rowan.[note 3] Rowan, an African American, was a former journalist and ambassador to Finland whom Johnson had named to succeed Edward R. Murrow as head of the U.S. Information Agency. For Mollenhoff’s personal crusade against Rowan, see the Washington Post, 21 February 1964. Carl [has been] traveling around, and he doesn’t know much about it. He’s in Europe now—going to be in Finland.

Now, what’s the wise thing to do about it?

Mr. President, I—

They’re demanding it be shown up in the Senate. The Republicans are all going around telling all the southerners that the first thing Carl Rowan’s done is put out this inflammatory film.

Yes.

Of course Carl’s had nothing to do with it.

That’s right.

Doesn’t know anything about it.

That’s right.

[with Wilkins acknowledging] And it hasn’t been run anyplace. It’s just at the processing stage now, to see if they want to use it and where it can be helpful. It seems that we frequently send films to embassies, and if it’s appropriate in Finland, he’ll call up the head of the American-Finnish Association, invite him into dinner like the ambassadors invite you in and show a little film. If it’s not appropriate, they just file it in the film file.

I understand. Mr.—

Now, I don’t want to get caught in there and have—

I don’t blame you.

—some demagogue or say that—

No.

—Johnson is against, he’s canceling out, he’s suppressing, he’s censoring. At the same time, the Attorney General’s kind of proven himself in this field, and I don’t—

I would use that. I would use that. My reaction is that if the Attorney General felt so strongly about this that he advised you twice on it, and his position vis-à-vis this whole issue is fairly unassailable, that there’s nothing—

Just let [Dean] Rusk withdraw the film and edit it as the Attorney General thinks, and the President [unclear] be in it, and show the right of peaceful petition, and kind of illustrate it.

He said it has no point to it now, that it just shows a mob shoving.

Yes.

Marching back and forth. But if you would have the President giving the Bill of Rights, and a little explanation, and maybe a picture of Lincoln and some of his statements, and maybe Johnson’s Gettysburg, and have a paragraph there.[note 4] On Memorial Day 1963 Vice President Johnson had delivered an address for the centennial commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg (written largely by Horace Busby). In inspiring remarks, he observed, One hundred years ago, the slave was freed. One hundred years later, the Negro remains in bondage. The Negro today asks justice. We do not answer him—we do not answer those who lie beneath this soil—when we reply to the Negro by asking, ‘Patience.’ In a reference to the 1963 events in Birmingham, Alabama, Johnson said: Our nation found its soul in honor on these fields of Gettysburg one hundred years ago. We must not lose that soul in dishonor on the fields of hate. Remarks of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 30 May 1963, press release, Box 80, Statements File, Lyndon B. Johnson Library.

I’m all for that, Mr. President, and I think your safest—not safest, because you’re not hunting for safety—but your strongest position is that your Attorney General has made this recommendation, and nobody can question his credentials in the civil rights field. And nobody can question his interest in this country because of the missions that he has performed, and he’s presumably in a position to know what would be the greatest image for the United States abroad.

I would certainly depend on my Attorney General for that, as full justification for any steps and alterations you might want to make.

And then tell him, when he gets back, for him to just make recommendations to probably this deputy of Carl’s . . .

Yes.

That they’ve got in there.

Exactly. I would . . . I think you have a strong talking point, and . . .

See, I don’t want to get in the position—

I don’t—

—or even get him to get me in a position to where while he would be approving of what I’d say—

Yes.

—the Negro leaders, Martin Luther King, might be denouncing me.

No. No, I don’t think—if they use Johnson at Gettysburg, or any other of your quotations, and a bit of JFK’s, I don’t see that that would incense or arouse any Negro leaders that I know of. And we know—we suggested ourselves that this could stand some reediting.

That’s right.

And some pointing up of the right of petition. I think we used the same phrase. So that our position on that is very clear.

You forget about it and don’t say anything, but I think that’s what I’ll do, and that’s—I just wanted to do a little heavy thinking on it. Just kind of . . .

Very good, sir.

[Unclear.] We’re doing mighty well in the House, I think, don’t you?

Very good. Very good. I was there yesterday for a brief time. I saw Congressman [Carl] Albert, the majority leader, and I saw Mr. [Charles] Halleck, the minority leader, and I took occasion to point out to him that in a speech in Dayton, Ohio, I had praised the Republican leadership—and Mr. [William] McCulloch in particular and Representative Clarence Brown—for their aid in this matter.[note 5] McCulloch, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, was a forceful advocate of the administration’s bill; Brown was the Republican representative from the Dayton, Ohio, district. And he said he hadn’t seen it, and I said I’d send a copy, and I’m getting ready to send him a copy of the Dayton paper right now, with that quotation in it.

And he [Halleck] obviously felt good about it. He said he was going to vote against the Meader amendment—to limit it [the public accommodations provision] to interstate highways.[note 6] Considered the most likely of the amendments to the bill to pass, the amendment, introduced by George Meader (R-Michigan), called for restricting the bill’s ban on discrimination in public accommodations to those accommodations located on interstate highways or other major roads. And he said, using some very colorful language, which I won’t use to the President of the United States, he said, “We’ve got to get out of here by Saturday.”[note 7] Abraham Lincoln’s birthday was the following week, and it was one of the traditional days for Republican leaders to make speeches and attend dinners. And he said, “I’ve just been up there to speak to the Speaker.”

He also, Mr. President, he brought you into it. [Chuckles.] He said, “I went up there to speak to the Speaker and have him get rid of these one-minute talks and get many of these privileged matters.” Then he says, “You know, every day the President of the United States sends a message over here. He wants us to do something. And they have to read it, and that takes up time.” And I said, “Well, you can’t—The President has got to get his work done too.” He says, I know it. He says, “But we’ve got to get out of here by Saturday.” [Chuckles.]

I told him if he didn’t get that bill passed before he appeared at the Lincoln Day meeting that they ought to laugh him off the platform because he and Howard Smith had their foot on Lincoln’s neck.[note 8] Howard “Judge” Smith, Democratic representative from Virginia, chaired the House Rules Committee. [Wilkins laughs.] And I think it made a real impression because he went right back and started doing something.

Yes. . . yes. Well, I talked to our people down there this morning, and they said they hoped to get to section seven by tomorrow afternoon.[note 9] In the final bill, Title VII was the equal employment opportunity section. It prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce the legislation. I’m going down again tomorrow afternoon.

Yeah, we’re really going to have to start working on cloture then.

Yes. Yes, we—

We’ve got to figure out how we can get that bill past the Senate because we’re just halfway through. You spend some nights on it, Roy.

Yes, sir, I’ll do that. And days too.

Good night.

And days.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. Good-bye.