"Mr. Farmer, I've got to get this civil rights bill through Congress, and I'm going to do it. If I never do anything else in my whole life, I'm going to get this job done. It won't be easy, but I'm going to do it. I have to get some of the Republicans on our side. You civil rights leaders can help me on that. You all should tell the Republicans that if they vote for this bill, you'll tell your people to vote for them. And I think you should, too; if they vote for this bill, you should tell people to vote for them. If I can't get the Republicans, then I'm going to have to get the Dixiecrats. That's the southern Democrats, you know. That's really going to be hard. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but somehow I'm going to have to break down their resistance. Somehow I've got to get my hand under their dress."

We were interrupted by several incoming phone calls—senators returning the president's calls. He twisted arms, threatened and cajoled, and then looked up to make sure I was duly impressed with his efforts on behalf of the bill.

Between the calls, I asked, "Mr. President, how did you get to be this way? You're a southerner, and your congressional record on civil rights was not very good. What changed you?"

"I'll answer that question by quoting a friend of yours," he replied. "'Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I'm free at last.'"

What he meant by that reference to King's march on Washington speech, of course, was that, as president, he was freed from accountability to a southern constituency and could be responsive to the needs of all the people.

"The southerners tell me," he went on, "that they'll buy this bill if I take the public accommodations section out. But I won't do that. The public accommodations part is the heart and the guts of this measure, and I will not remove it."

I asked him how he came to view public accommodations to be so important and he related a story in response.

"One day down in Texas many years ago, my maid was going on vacation with her husband. Lady Bird-that's Mrs. Johnson, you know-told the maid to take our dog with her; we had a little beagle. My maid said, 'Mrs. Johnson, please don't make me take that dog with me. My husband and I will be driving across the South and it's going to be tough enough finding places to stay, just being black, without having a dog with us.'

"Mr. Farmer, that made me cry. Just to think that a wonderful woman like my maid couldn't stay in any hotel she wanted to. It made me mad. I'd lived in Texas all my life and I'd never thought about it before. Right then I swore that if I ever got any power, I would do something about it. Now I have some power and by God I'm going to do something about it."

I looked at him and said nothing. I found myself thinking of that terrible day less than a month earlier when President Kennedy's brains were blown out in Texas, and of the call I received from Johnson three days later.

"Mr. Farmer, this is Lyndon Johnson. I first wanted to call and tell you that I remember when you came to my office when I was vice-president. You made a good suggestion to me that helped me a lot. And I asked you to do something for me, and you followed through on that. I just want you to know that I appreciated that a lot."

"Thank you, Mr. President."

"Now, we're going to have to pick up this ball and run with it. I'm going to need your help in the months and maybe the years that lie ahead, and I hope I'll get it."

"If we're going the same way, Mr. President, we can go together."

"I'm glad to hear you say that. Next time you're in Washington, drop by and see me."

I knew that Johnson had to win the confidence of black leaders, for the absence of their trust had helped deny him the nomination in 1960. Nevertheless, I was flattered by what came to be known as "the Johnson treatment." Never before had I been called by a president.

Now, here I was in the Oval Office, still being buttered up by that flattery. The fact that I knew what was happening did not lessen its effectiveness.

He slapped his knee and drawled, "Well, Jim, I know you're interested in a lot of other things besides this bill. What else can I do to help your cause?"

I leaned back in the big chair and unbuttoned my collar and loosened tie; I had gained weight and the shirt was not comfortable.

"Mr. President, there is one thing that keeps me awake nights. We've battered many doors open, and when the civil rights bill is enacted into law, many walls will come tumbling down. Yet, there are millions of Americans of all races who won't be able to walk through those doors or across those fallen walls. The reason? A lack of basic educational skills; the inability to read, write, and compute."

The president nodded his head vigorously.

"I agree a thousand percent," he said, "but what are we going to do about it?

"We have in the movement thousands of volunteers with intelligence, dedication, and boundless energies, who don't consider sitting-in, freedom riding, and going to jail to be the most meaningful things in the world any longer. They're standing by now, waiting for direction. Reading specialists can instruct them in teaching adults to read, and we can fan them out through the country. There are over twenty million adults who cannot read up to a fourth-grade level. I believe we can wipe out that functional illiteracy in ten to fifteen years."

"I think that's a great idea," said Johnson, "and we can make it work. I'll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to send me a memorandum describing your plan in detail. My staff will go over it carefully and give their reactions. I also want you to send me a two- or three-page summary of your plan, and I'll read that myself.

"Now, the press is outside, and they're going to want to know what we talked about. You can tell them that you suggested a massive drive against illiteracy in this country, to teach people how to read and write and add subtract and multiply. You can tell that as an old schoolteacher and former head of NYA [National Youth Administration. Actually, he headed the Texas state chapter from July 1935 to February 1937.] under Roosevelt, I'm enthusiastic about the idea. tell them that we're going to follow through on it."

I nodded agreement, and at that moment a White House photographer led and the president and I posed shaking hands.

As I headed for the door to take my leave, Johnson slapped me on the back and asked, "By the way, Jim-you don't mind if I call you Jim, do you?"

"Not at all, Mr. President."

"You may call me Lyndon."

"Thank you, Mr. President."

He continued, "What part of Texas do you come from?"

"Marshall," I replied.

"Marshall! Doggone, Jim, do you realize that's Lady Bird's hometown? Her father had a filling station there."

When we parted, we shook hands warmly—two Texans reaching out across the invisible railroad tracks of the Lone Star State.

"Anytime you want to say something to me, Jim, just get on the phone and call. I'll see that your calls are put right through to me," the president said. "I'll see that your letters come to me, too, and don't get bottled up on somebody else's desk."

Johnson was a man of his word with regard to accessibility. Phone calls got through to him and written communications reached him without languishing on the desks of aides.

Gordon Carey, my assistant at CORE, was assigned the task of putting the memorandum on literacy together. After several months of exploring the question, he made contact with Dr. Myron Woolman, president of the Institute of Educational Research and a psychologist who had designed a programmed instructional system of proven effectiveness in teaching adults to read.

I met Dr. Woolman, whom we called Mike, and discussed the question at great length with him and his staff. Mike, a rotund and genial scholar of extraordinary brilliance, prepared the memo for the president. I summarized it in a brief paper for LBJ's personal perusal. The memo stressed the training and use of nonprofessionals in employing the programmed instructional method of teaching adult illiterates to read. It presented a carefully phased plan, starting with ten major cities, and proposed yearly expansion until the whole country was covered. There was evaluation built in each step of the way.

In October 1964, the memorandum and summary went to the White House. Johnson reacted promptly by suggesting that I get other civil rights leaders lined up behind it so CORE wouldn't be the only group pushing the project, and he wouldn't be accused of playing favorites. The president's suggestion was eminently sensible, not only for him politically, but also for the success of the literacy program, and for me. Without their involvement from the beginning I might encounter sabotage along the way.

So a nonprofit corporation, the Center for Community Action Education, was set up. Among the members of its board of directors were civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King; Whitney Young, head of the National Urban League; Dr. John Morsell, associate executive director of the NAACP; Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women; John Lewis, national chairman of SNCC; and such labor leaders as Jerry Wurf, international president of AFSCME; Stanton Wormley, vice-president of Howard University; Mike Woolman; Cordon Carey; and myself.

I touched base with the essential persons—Dr. Howard Howe, U.S. Commissioner of Education; Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., chairman of the House Labor and Education Committee; and VicePresident Hubert Humphrey. All three read the literacy proposal, which had been expertly prepared by Mike Woolman, and all three enthusiastically endorsed it. Humphrey, as was his style, became its ardent advocate.

Johnson was pleased and requested that I submit the proposal to the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). He said that he would tell Sargent Shriver, director of OEO, that the proposal had administration backing and should be given sympathetic consideration.

Humphrey told me that I should keep in close touch with Hyman Bookbinder, assistant director of OEO, who was "his man" at the agency, and Bookbinder would shepherd the program through to fruition. I believed that we were home free and went back to concentrating on CORE activities as we awaited funding.

CORE work went on and the excitement never ceased. Even more exciting in 1965 were certain events—fringe benefits of having been national director of CORE for four years. One of those events, dominating my recollection, was a meeting with a man who was, without a doubt, the most gifted human being ever produced by this nation.

When Lennie Seelig, a member of one of the New York CORE chapters, took me to a small Harlem apartment to meet Paul Robeson, I was awestruck as I faced that aging, huge, gentle man. It is incredible that any one person could have possessed such varied and superlative talents.

Robeson beamed as he looked down upon me and took my hand.

"Come in, Jim. For several years, I've longed to meet you."

He had longed to meet me. I mumbled appropriate words of gratitude as I stared at the seventy-year-old physique, which could still shame most of the athletes of the world.

Words were my trademark, but this time they failed me, and I just stared at Robeson. Here he was in the flesh. Rhodes scholar, smasher of academic precedents at Rutgers; all-American football player, breaker of athletic records; brilliant lawyer; greater singer; superb actor—his eyes smiled at the awkwardness I showed in his presence.

The baritone voice that crumbled spines and shattered crystal glasses in recording studios spoke: "Jim, my wife and I have watched you with admiration on television, on 'Meet the Press,' and 'Face the Nation,' and we have silently applauded.

"Oh, Paul," I interrupted. "All my life I've said if I could sing 'Old Man River' just once the way you sang it, I'd be ready to die."

The ageless giant, whose talents dwarfed his size, beamed and I added, "I can't even carry a tune."

There was no lull in the conversation as it drifted on into the night. In the course of it, I told him that although I disagreed with his politics—I was a Norman Thomas socialist akin to the European Social Democrats—they were his views and he had every tight to them, and I deeply resented the efforts in our country to erase his greatness because he was a communist, and to make him a nonperson, a forgotten man.

Robeson nodded and murmured a resonant thank you.

I expressed the view that it was criminal for our kids to go through high school and college without knowing the name and accomplishments of Paul Robeson. I vowed that we would correct that.

The versatile genius again nodded his great head and his face seemed to leap out from a thousand playbills, concert programs, and record album covers as a big smile brought it to life.

Departing, I invited Paul Robeson to come to some CORE rallies and demonstrations, for we would be pleased and honored to have him. He said that he would.

Months later, when he had not come, I called to find out why.

"Jim," he said, "I felt that you had enough problems without being embarrassed by my presence."

Who among us, in the twilight of his career, would refrain from making a widely publicized appearance simply because he thought it would embarrass someone else whom he respected? Robeson had class.

In the second half of 1964 and through 1965, my relationship with Lyndon Johnson deteriorated and access to the While House became more difficult. The president's political career had led him to equate disagreement with disloyalty. Those who were not for him unconditionally were considered to be against him.

There were areas of major disagreement with Johnson. When he knew that Barry Goldwater would be his opponent in the election of 1964, he sought to still the turbulent waters of civil rights activity, fearing that a white backlash would help Goldwater.

Wilkins called a meeting at NAACP offices. In addition to himself and me, there were six others present: Whitney Young; Martin Luther King; Jack Greenberg of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; A. Philip Randolph; Bayard Rustin; and John Lewis. I did not know why we had been called together; I'd simply been asked by Roy to come to an urgent meeting on strategy. Seated at the far end of the long table in his conference room, Roy chaired the meeting. He was always a masterful chairman, poised and polished. He began by articulating a concern that all of us shared—that Goldwater must not be elected. He ended his remarks by saying that he knew we all agreed that we must not do anything prior to the election that would help elect Goldwater president of the United States. Then he called on Randolph for a comment.

Randolph, then in his mid-seventies, had lost none of his grace and dignity. In stentorian tones and cultured Oxford accent, he described the disaster that lay in store for black Americans in the event of a Goldwater victory and the ascendancy of a right-wing philosophy to the White House. He expressed the belief that continued demonstrations might whip up the waves of a backlash on which Goldwater might ride to victory.

The grand old man then announced that he had asked Bayard Rustin to come along and read a prepared statement, which he hoped all of us would agree upon and adopt. Rustin read a statement calling for a moratorium on civil rights demonstrations in order to avoid helping Barry Goldwater in the November presidential election.

In the silence that followed, I perceived that all eyes were on me. It was only CORE, SNCC, and SCLC that had demonstrations as a major part of their operations. Really only CORE and SNCC, for SCLC demonstrated chiefly when King came to town and led a march. Glancing at the representatives of other organizations around the table, I had the sense that they were there to bring pressure on SNCC and CORE-mostly on me. My nature rebelled. Mentally, I tried to sum up the history and appraise the politics of the moment. This could blow CORE and SNCC out of the water.

I broke the silence and spoke: "I cannot go along with a moratorium." Heads jerked upward and eyes showed shock.

"Announcing a moratorium," I continued, "would not halt demonstrations. My chapters have a great deal of programmatic autonomy. If I ordered a temporary halt to demonstrations, some of my chapters would demonstrate anyway. I could suspend them, of course, but the demonstrations would go on during suspension. There would be due-process hearings and appeals that would carry us far beyond the presidential election. If we said that we were calling off demonstrations and demonstrations went on, we would either expose our weakness or look like doublecrossers. I think Martin is the only one who could call for an end to demonstrations and expect to get it from his organization. I can't speak for SNCC; John Lewis will have to do that. Further, even if I could call off demonstrations by CORE, I would not be inclined to do it."

Heads jerked again.

"Demonstrations are CORE's only weapons. If we talk to wrongdoers and ask them to change their ways, they'll laugh at us if they know we've given up our weapon. If we try to negotiate, we become an amateur Urban League. If we file suit, we become an amateur NAACP or Legal Defense and Education Fund. For CORE to give up demonstrations, even for six months, would be to give up its genius, its raison d'etre. It might sound our death knell."

There was another reason, which I did not state. The Norm Hill caucus was, at that time, peaking within CORE. Had I agreed to a moratorium, I would have been clobbered.

John Lewis agreed with me and said that he and SNCC would not go along with a moratorium.

Randolph asked, "But what about the danger to the movement of a Goldwater victory? Do you want that on your conscience?"

"No, I don't," I replied to a man who was a hero to me. "But CORE people are politically motivated and activated. We're going to be out there getting people registered and turning out the vote for Johnson. Johnson will win the election."

Roy Wilkins cleared his throat and said that if everyone else agreed he would tell the waiting press that the civil rights leadership was calling for a temporary moratorium on demonstrations, and that two persons, James Farmer of CORE and John Lewis of SNCC, had declined to go along with the call.

The others agreed and the announcement was made to the press. Johnson, I was told, was furious that I had dissented.