When I got the thing I thought we ought to do, Edler, is at some point now, I guess, put out a statement as they put out a statement. I mean, get them have a statement drawn up that we will send only to those people who have written back and have said that the PR memo of 37 is not a sufficient answer to the charges leveled by by Mathews that we will not distribute this one widely and it will use it only to to answer other letters at this point on. My only fear, of course, of using any of this stuff is that the the the writers pick it up themselves and use it, as MacIntyre did with this PR memo 37 He he reproduced a photograph of being a beacon. So you can't keep it out of the hand of the enemy. And this is, you know, again, a part of the part of the problem of widespread distribution. But I don't think this kind of thing that we need necessarily to, again, send out to synod and presbytery executives. But the one place I am concerned about on this trip you're going to be taking to California, because this, of course, has been the hotbed of this whole thing, I just suspect that every place you go out there, you're going to find, you know, these these things, the preceding you were certainly following you, which means that the pastors, of course, and these are the guys we ought to be concerned about, the pastors are going to have to answer the question. So I guess it's a legitimate thing to do, even though it seems like a shame that we have to take your time and everybody else's time to go over these notes. Yesterday after the guys came back from the meeting or the investigating thing down the American Jewish Committee, we drew up a preliminary kind of draft of a statement. And if I can read this to you and see what you think of it as it says it goes, I mean, these aren't the words necessarily, but they can be the kind of words we might want to use. This is your statement signed by you in this instance? I have examined carefully the accusations that have been made against me by J.B. MATTHEWS, a fellow minister of the gospel and a fellow alumnus of Union Theological Seminary. I do not deny that I was affiliated with or lent my name to many of the organizations listed by Mr. MATTHEWS. However, any affiliation I may have had through the years was the result of a sincere desire on my part to promote equal justice for my own people and a better life for all Americans based on the enduring principles of freedom under God. I want to make it as clear as I possibly can that I am not now, nor have I ever been a communist. I have never been cited by any governmental agency. That point, you have never been cited in anything that we could find do you of your own knowledge.

I wouldn't know that.

That you wouldn't know that you have ever been inside in the House Committee on All American Activities or the Senate, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Nor have these agencies called me to appear before them. This is. Okay. This would not have been the case had I been a suspect of subversion. I mean, these agencies have not done this. They have not cited you. They have not subpoenaed you. And, you know, and these are the big, the big daddies these days. Two of the charges by Mr. MATTHEWS refer to my association with certain groups and individuals seeking to abolish the poll tax and to establish fair employment practices. Need I say that I would have been less than loyal to my fellow Negro Americans had I done otherwise. Now, these two, Edler, you may have remembered, or maybe you don't. That one was the a rally of the Bronx Anti Poll Tax Committee. And this goes back pretty darn far. It was back to 1941. And you were. It says here that you were a speaker at that rally. You were speaker of that rally, I assume. Or is that not a date that you and .

I wouldn't remember this, Frank, but this is very possible.

Now, what has been done here has been you have been identified, of course, as the Pastor St Augustine Presbyterian Church, and then it says other nig other speakers came from the National Negro Congress, American Peace Mobilization, American Youth Congress, International Workers Order, all notorious, notoriously Communist action organizations. And I say, and I think you maybe agree that this is nothing more than and of course, guilt by association if there's something wrong with these other groups. But you would say, would you not Edler because of what I mean, just because you were an American first, but secondly, because you happen to be a Negro American that you couldn't be otherwise, and one who would oppose to oppose the blacks in the Bronx or elsewhere.

That's right. Absolutely right. I think, though, Frank, we've got to realize, basically and I think this is implicit in almost everything we do, that really there's no way in which you can really take care of these kind of charges because this is associating you with people who may very well have been communist or left wing themselves, but merely because you identified with a cause, a movement that the communists have no right to lay claim to as the only ones who are interested in this kind of thing. And and certainly when you think in terms of of our country last 20, 25 years ago and the place where civil rights, the Negro. Right. Started going all the way back to Scottsboro days. When you think in terms of all of the things that needed to be done in order to get any kind of opportunities and rights for Negroes, there was a sense in which you may find yourselves yourself related by virtue of being on the same program. But I've always taken the position that if it was a cause, that was a good cause, that I felt I, as a representative of the church, a churchman, ought to be identified with. I found myself at many of these places and identified with these things. And yet, even in the midst of all this and through these days, I was very clear in my own mind at least, and I thought in the way in which I did it, I was always clear that this was my position as a churchman and this was where I wanted to stand. This was where I wanted to identify myself as a churchman. And I lived I've lived all through my experiences in the in the tough, rough communities of our town, where it was important to identify with people's concerns as tenants, as people who had problems just because they were part of the Negro community. There was nothing else that one could do except to relate in some way, and I related in the whatever ways I could of with and at the same time maintaining that this was an indication of of my own integrity as a churchman to do this kind of thing.

And also also really as a as an American, too. I mean, if.

You.

Were doing this both as a churchman and an American, because these were things that you perhaps were doing because you wanted justice and freedom for all people, really, There's no.

Question about that.

What is it that I see where this Bronx entry poll tax Committee business comes? And I see the same thing when MATTHEWS says that you signed in 1950 a statement against the bill. This was the one on internal security. And also you signed the statement for the power of the PC bill. Well, it seems to me that anybody again, it's their employment practices is the kind of thing that.

You know, I've been identified with. This also is never really a concern me that that others. I think part of the unfortunate thing in this whole situation is that many of our church groups were not identified here and we're not on the firing line in these areas. And so if there were some of us who were there and they just happened that this was these were causes that that left wingers and communists identified with, then you were and were you wouldn't bet associations. But I found no difficulty then, and I still find no difficulty in terms of my being there. Well, regardless who else is there.

It was. Any of these. Were you ever in a position where you yourself didn't know at any point that or let's say that in a particular organization such as, say, the American Labor Party had been taken over pretty much by the Communists, and then you were put yourself in the position of staying in that kind of an organization in order to keep it clean or to to maintain the principles with which it had begun or something. That's what I mean. The American Labor Party, of course, is one that they go into in in great detail, saying that it was in 1942 that you own the American Labor Party, that by 1948 it had been taken over by the communists. But then in 1949, you were still a part of it, but others had left.

What they do not do, though, Frank, is to indicate that my relationship, my real relationship with the American Labor Party came through the period when they had not divided into this left right wing and left wing group. This came in the after the 48 election, and you had from that point on, after the election period, you had this division of at that point, the American Labor Party in New York City was the liberal reform group that all of the candidates wanted if they could get as an additional sponsoring party. So my identification really with the American Labor Party came as part of a reform movement to do something about the political situation, particularly in the Bronx, where the the strong Democratic machine in the Bronx had for many years and up to that time, given very little consideration, if any, to the concerns of the Negro community. This was the the period when there was such absolute control by the Bronx segment of the Democratic Party that there was no possibility of of of breaking through into the area of new opportunities for minority groups. This is the same group that in these latter years, the regular Democratic group under Mayor Wagner has been fighting. But it wasn't until these latter years that the regular Democratic Party has felt the necessity and the urgency to fight the Bronx political machine. But this is the same Bronx political machine that back in 48 I said something needed to be done about and I took a position in opposition to this machine. Well, this is, you know, 12, 14, 15 years later that the the regular Democratic group has come out to fight this machine. But well, the American Labor Party at that point represented pretty much the reform group for the in this area. And I wanted to be identified with it. And I felt that this was a thing that I wanted to do after the party broke into the divided into left and right. I had well, I had really no connection with the group because they were interested in me running. I said, I'm not interested in running again. I, I, I really wasn't interested in political office. I just felt that someone and some groups had to take a position against this machine. I've never been interested in political office of this kind, but when they they were interested in me running again and being part of a group, I indicated to them that I wanted to be left alone. I had no particular desire to be involved further, and they did. They left me alone and it was in, I believe, in the in the early fifties and 52, the period, whatever those dates were. I went to the Liberal Party under Rudolph Lutz. Rudy Rudolph, the Liberal Party man. Rose No.

Leader. They mentioned here I established the Liberal Party. Yeah, united.

And you know, but I'm talking about the man who ran for mayor in the then must win 52 on the Liberal Party ticket He's died since. Rudy hit. Anyway, this candidate running on the Liberal Party ticket. They were interested in me running on the Liberal Party ticket. I said I'm not interested. I really have no desire to do this. This was the place at which they indicated that they wanted to give me the candidacy. If I would take my name. I'd never been to a meeting of the administrative committee. I think they called it the State Committee of the American Labor Party. I'd never been to a meeting of this committee. My name was on the rolls because I was the candidate in 48. They indicated that if I would take my name off the list of the membership of the Administrative State Committee, when these people were interested in my running or remaining part of the group, I said, I'm not interested. Leave me alone. I just don't want to be involved. I don't want to do anything through this period. They left me alone. I felt no. I saw no reason why under the pressure of repudiating this group at that time, for the sake of becoming a candidate in the Liberal Party, that this was the kind of thing that I wanted to do. The people had left me alone. They hadn't bothered me. I had not been identified with them through these years. I had nothing with the group. They just left me alone as I asked them to do because of the confusions that had developed between the so-called right and left wing in the American Labor Party. I said to the group, I've I have technically been on the committee. I have not formally resigned. I said I intend to, but I have no desire to respond to your invitation to run by repudiating this party. They have not done anything to me, so I would not. Well, the next year I resigned, but I didn't feel that full out of conscience. I wanted to have make any public statement of repudiation at that point. This was through this period of excitation about communists and and, you know, leftwing folks. And these were the pressures of this un-American Activities Committee that I had strong feelings and still have strong feelings about. And I'm still at a position to do so. I just this was my position at that time.

Well, was there any difference at all in the Bronx, American Labor Party? Was it different in any respect from, say, Manhattan or any of the other areas of the city? I mean, was it.

Well, I wish I knew this a little more specifically, Frank. I don't think I do know this, whether my my impression is because I didn't follow things, because I was not interested either way in the work of the party group at that point, because I thought they had done a disservice by this kind of division. When I was identified as interested with the party, they represented the liberal reform group for the city. My general impression is this would need to be checked with the records much more accurately. But my general impression was that this division into right and left took place in other areas outside other than the Bronx. Unless I may, this is my general impression.

The impression I get by reading.

I'm almost sure this was so, but I wouldn't want to say this with any degree of.

Aggressiveness was the point that I. Somewhere along the line reading, I picked up what they seem to be talking about like the Manhattan American Labor Party, but the Bronx with it. And it seemed that there was a possibility there was some there was some difference. Well, I think that's sufficient on that point. I don't see what more can be said about the about the American about the American Labor Party. Well, let me just go on for one minute with this statement of I say we go back to this and you get we're not this is not a final one. This is just some suggestions. I want to say I would not accuse Mr. MATTHEWS of being a racist, but I was deeply grieved by his remark in the article entitled The Moderate MODERATOR, that United Presbyterians had agreed to humble themselves beneath a, quote, black leader. This remark is quite different from the expression of pleasure at my election to the moderators given by Pope Paul when I visited him this past summer. I am proud of my heritage and will continue to engage myself with my fellow Presbyterians, both Negro and white, in the struggle for racial justice and equality. Mr. MATTHEWS has listed those groups to which I have lent support and which he claims have somehow aided the cause of communism. He has not recounted any of my efforts to combat communism through participation in such organizations as now. Are there any particular organizations that you know of that? I mean, were. I mean, we could list as being those that have, you know, actively fought communist, although this is not of course, I recognize your your main problem in life or your main battle in life is not the fight against communism in terms of the fight against the injustice. But I thought there might be some. Of course, one could list the Christian church first and then go on from there. But that's, you know, like I said to Paul Carson yesterday, we just had you as a member of the American Legion. We'd be.

Set. Well, I've been connected with the American Legion, the of Active War Brothers. Oh, surely we I've been the original sponsor of the American War Mother Mothers chapter in the Bronx community. They've given me the highest honor of an oak cluster that has identified me with the concerns of people who are concerned about their children, who were involved in World War Two. Or this is after this is Yes, yes. This is following a couple of years ago. And Parish has has been the original sponsor of the the Bronx chapter of the American War Mothers. We have not only sponsored it in the in this original or in its beginnings, but we've been identified with it through the years. They have their annual services always in our parish. And two years ago they gave me this oak leaf cluster, which is the highest honor that their organization can give. I don't think I know your mother's.

This is a national event.

This is a national of this. And they have a Bronx chapter. This is national. And I would imagine this is the only the most outstanding and largest group that brings together the mothers of of youngsters who both fought and who died in World War Two. The American Legion in the Bronx has always been very closely identified with that church. They've always had their there. This is why this is so difficult, because I related to these kind of groups, whatever they were involved in causes quite as much as it related to any of these others, all these left wing groups that may have been along for the ride in the U.S.. So the my position that I feel has been fairly clear in this regard that I have not felt that it was my mission to be in pursuit of communists and communism, because I've never felt that this was our major problem in America. Even in its so-called plush days, Communism has never, I felt, been able I don't think it's had the ideology. I don't think it's had the strategy to take a firm it in the American community. This never disturbed me, maybe others who are much more sensitive to this than I am. But I felt that they did not have the kind of stuff that was sufficiently attractive to the to to Americans to to ever be able to garner many people.

And you really placed all your bets on the on the church, didn't you? I mean, the church.

This has been my sole and complete absorption, really. And every time I went out in terms of a cause, I always took the firm position that I was doing this as a church and out of my Christian conscience, that this was the place which I ought to be in my relationships with individuals with. People. This was always very clear in any preliminary statements I would make or any involvements that I was going to get into, that I was doing this because of the fact that this was what I was led to do out of Christian conscience.

Well, just for now, we got those two now. I mean, and I think we can we can just make mention of them both the American Legion and the American War mothers of American war mothers and treat me. But let's for now, a little bit of mental exercise. We talked about the American Labor Party, so we can ignore that. I'm not worried. And I think you need to be worried either at any point about the fact that you joined in the celebration of Harry Ward's 90th birthday. It seems to me that this was a commendable thing. I mean, the man had reached the ripe old age on the.

Coast and he was one of your profession and he was one of the professors at the union under whom I sat not a great deal because he was coming to the close of his years there. But this man has been a kindly old gent through the years, making his contribution to the cause of social justice through the years, making it from the point of vantage of a union seminary and its its feeling about the necessity of churchmen to be involved in the struggles. This was how he felt. And Harry would has been a kindly old soul in my mind and a person who has when it was difficult some of the years and periods when it was difficult to take positions. When Harry would took positions, it was out of respect for this and for the kind of relations that he has had with the seminary that I identified with his 90th. And I I'm I'm pretty sure that that Union seminary has never felt it necessary to take any strong position, anti position against against a man like ours. As far as I know, they have never.

Okay. Well, now some of these others we can, I think, just dispose of them fairly quickly. But I think we ought to ask the question. And as you indicated to me before we started this kind of conversation, that some of them you probably don't remember because But let me tell you what they are anyway, Citizens Emergency Conference for Interracial Unity. They say that you were a sponsor of a pamphlet in September 23, 1943. Do you remember anything about about the citizens, the Americans, the U.S. Conference for Interracial Unity? How would you.

Say about this and that?

It's an unfair question to go back to 1943 to ask anybody. The Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Ricci. Taylor, you were listed as a sponsor of a booklet in August of 1945. I don't even know who Mrs. Ricci Taylor was.

I don't remember who she was. And I have no recollection of.

This was this committee was listed as an auxiliary of the international labor defense that I belong.

On, the international labor defense. I would recognize that as a name, but I would have no affiliation or real contacts with them.

Now, we talked about the Jefferson School of Social Science.

This I know nothing about that school. I don't know who it was.

Says Treatment Annex Bronx, New York.

Never been there. I would have never been there. I know nothing about its operations. I have no idea as to how my name got identified with the work of the school. I have no knowledge of the school or those who were in charge of it. No. Maybe J.B. Mathews has some way of developing contacts with these groups that I don't know anything about.

Now. The the marriage brief and with the Curiosity were a signer of that. It was a brief submitted to the United States Supreme Court January 11, 1951. I assume that you did sign here on behalf of Regiment.

Regiment and of fighting an important battle that I think legally and morally had a right to be fought and identified with it.

To the best of my knowledge. And here again, even the MATTHEWS document here says that although William Howard never denied being a member of the Communist Party, the Subversive Activity Control Board chose not to believe him. But to the best of my knowledge, I've been able to find no one has proved Mellish to be or not to be a communist. And of course, again, you weren't concerned.

I don't know this. I know Mellish has been again identified with some of these quite unpopular things. He has been, I know, active in the Religious Freedom Committee in which I've been nominally on, but not active here. He's been active in this organization and they've been involved. Chris. They I think they would be in difficulty.

There is a right away.

Religious freedom group because they've always had a very strong position against the American un-American Activities Committee, as they have felt that this was a committee that was not in the best interests of American freedoms and liberties.

While we're on this Religious Freedom Committee and stated that you are now still a member of the executive committee or administrative committee, actually letterhead that we saw, it makes you a member of the Administrative committee.

And this.

Current matter ends and or leave us from its inception and from 1954 to the present. Now what I mean, what did you see in the Religious Liberty Religious Freedom Committee that let me what was our program that just very briefly that the.

Two of them.

Were still attraction?

This is the group that has taken up a number of the individual cases of individuals who have had problems and difficulties with the un-American Activities Committee. And in so far as they have been identified with fundamental freedoms for individuals. In this regard, I feel that this is an important level of the total struggle that somebody needs to work at. And there have been very few that have been willing to work at this little level at which the religious freedom I think it's a group of about really about five or six people. It's not the war itself, it's just Howard Mellish for three or four other names. It's a very small group. It's another past. He's one of the Presbyterian clergyman in the city here, or whose name slips with the moment. It's a group no more, really. And about six. I read the minutes. I've never been to a meeting of the committee. I read the minutes and at no time really do you find present at the meetings any more than about six people. But there's a sense in which these people have been almost single mindedly committed and dedicated to this idea of of of maintaining the right of an individual of for instance, I should have the name of this man up in who went to jail for.

You, Winston.

No, no, no. This is a cleric, a methodist clergyman who went to prison for a year or so, and he stayed there because he would not reveal an individual name. And they would come to me. He would not reveal the names of his guests who were in his home or his place of meeting, and he went to jail. This is in Massachusetts. This is about five, six, eight years ago. His name will come to me. But this was his position against the movement in of I think it was the attorney general's office at that time of Massachusetts and the kind of position that the un-American Activities Committee takes, that that feeling that they are right in insisting in moving into an individual's personal freedom of this kind. And gee, I should know the name of this is a methodist family and you can check this out. I well, this is this is the kind of thing mainly at the level of defending these kind of rights of of individuals and mainly clergymen.

Okay. Now, then the next one is the National Council of the Arts Science and Sciences. I'm professionals, and you were one of several hundred. We discovered sponsors of the Scientific and Cultural Conference for World Peace. This is all this back in 1940. Just something.

You know, this is I recall this. I don't know much about the meeting itself.

But it was something that was called for for world peace, which.

Is something where, you know, the U.S. is.

Understanding of other.

Crises. But these were the days, Frank, in which it was very difficult to discover, I suspect very difficult to discover some of the ultimate purposes of. We're interested in peace and freedom. And it was very possible to be involved by signing a conference call with the people who may have been more left wing or communist inclined. Very possible. Through those those years.

And those words such as peace and freedom are rather precious words that belong to us. They have not been taken over, as far as I know, with the Communists alone. One is another. There's one that you're also them. And I think. National Federation for Constitutional Liberties. Signer of Statement urging Abolition of the House Special Committee on American Activity.

They would do this. I still would sign this. And in 64 and 64.

Wonderful. Okay. Now, there's a real dandy here to show you the kind of minds that we deal with. The magazine Protestant. You remember the magazine? Protestant, now.

Defunct. Yo, yo, yo.

Did you. You wrote a letter to them or something, or you signed a petition during in 1942 to the U.S. and British Commonwealth governments to open a second front during World War Two. And of course, as I recall and I don't know, I don't think you're a military strategist, are you? But there were some military strategists who also recommend that this would have a second front.

I really have no no recollection of them.

That magazine was a Protestant, incidentally, has been defunct since 1951.

And I can hardly imagine myself signing something that had to do with military strategy. I would feel that this was my area, my competency. This sounds so terribly strange for me.

Well, and you were also the signing of a pledge quote to carry out the program of the textbook commission of Protestant, whatever, whatever that would be.

I would love.

This. Or at least talked about religious freedom, police. And we just about down to these. We end your statement against the Mundt bill we talked about earlier in the pilot and for the pilot at the APEC bill, you were a signing of a statement supporting legislation introduced by Adam Clayton Powell. And again, we read here they even dropped the month. The element, Bill, was the internal internal security bill. It was vetoed by Harry Truman and finally passed over his veto. We discovered in that bill that one provision was to ban it getting in front of it or in front of or near a federal courthouse and thought maybe that you might have known that was one of the provisions of the bill and you weren't very happy about that and other things.

I would suspect, as I recall, Senator, that there would be a lot of things in that bill that I would have the ability to then and now.

The final one listed here is the World Congress for Peace, Paris, 1949, you were a member of American Sponsoring Committee for the World Congress of Peace, and all of those was cited by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

So I would I would recall this, really. My own memory is that I was, I think, had some concern for carefulness by this time as in terms of signing these world peace conferences, because I had some real feeling as to the real significance of them as part of a strategy for peace. And I guess I had by that time lost a good bit of faith in this as a realistic approach to the problem of peace.

I don't need to go to detail on this, but you did at one point in your conversation with me, mentioned your concern about Henry Winston, and they also Hubert Green was not mentioned to leaders of the Communist Party. They jumped bail. And you join others in asking that their prison sentences not be lengthened because of their jumping bail, but that they'd be freed by by President Eisenhower. This was in 1959, I think you told me Winston was a sick man.

And all along the way you get instances where even with the possible difficulty of guilt by association involved, it was very difficult out of a person's Christian conscience to escape of being concerned about. And in the. Age was person, an individual person. And they're being helped, particularly when they were in difficulty and when it was a question of the possibility of our courts rendering mercy as well as justice. Now, this is what it was involved, and I remember my willingness to go to Washington for this. Henry Winston, who had served, I believe, at that time, about eight years in prison. This man at that point was judged very sick, almost blind. I think since he has become totally blind. This was the point at which I felt, regardless of his background, which I had nothing to do with and no particular sympathy for, but because of the fact that I felt that here was a place at which it might very really be possibly possible and a good thing for our court. So our pardon of the agencies Board of Pardons to render a simple level of of mercy to this, this, this man. I felt that then and I felt that this was the kind of thing that I wanted to do. And I went to Washington. The fact that that the communists were interested in this, this man who who was blind at that time. And I felt that we was doing nothing for ourselves to keep him in jail still.

Okay. Now, Mathews has a couple of quotes in several of his publications that I just wondered whether he might be.

But I think we up to the you see, you got to add whereas they pull out you see my going to Washington to plead for mercy for this guy and that's going to be pardon me. What they don't realize or what they don't say is the fact that I have to do this. Maybe well, put it like this. I get it. Almost every week of two or three letters from people in prison, some of whom have known. And this is a reason why they write me, because I kids from the community like this, some whom I do not know who they pick up your name, try to do something of a screening job in terms of responding to this. But I have got to try to help by and I've taken this fairly seriously through the years, that when these young young people are up for parole and when parole is not possible until they get a job, can't be paroled until they get a job. I find it very necessary for myself to send out letters to try to get some job opportunities for these kids that if there's the slightest possibility of them making a go of it on the second chance, I have to do this. But so to do this for another guy, just because he came from a communist background does not disturb me. Did not disturb me then and still does not disturb me because I know why I do this. Because.

Well, this is an honor. Listen to listening. Maybe a little more positive vein at this point. MATTHEWS is quoted here as saying that tens of thousands of communists say millions of well-intentioned and idealistic Americans are participating in these united front activities without the slightest knowledge of the character of the United Front and its objectives. I suspect that in some of these some of these areas I mean, you did participate in some things because you didn't know a true character of the objective of the organization, but you were in it for a far different reason from from theirs. I mean.

Of course, I think this would be very true.

And is it also, do you think, true that it is, as he says, I'm quoting here, it should be apparent to all and some of those whose names appear on the letterheads of communist united front organizations are not communist at all, nor even conscious fellow travelers under the guidance of there are. Directly sympathies, and I don't like that. But with the victims of injustice, they have enlisted for the duration of the letter. I'm not sure that your. Yeah, these were misdirected, but you know that these were systems of injustice.

But this you also detect, I think, Frank, in this of a way in which these kind of people who have made it possible for some that they don't they no longer want to bother to escape through the the hatch, whereas they will use the same yardstick to belabor other folk. And I don't want to be too specific in and condemnation, but I have very strong feelings that they groups such as these are very concerned about singling out Negroes as individuals for this kind of thing because of their position in in relation to the Negro community. And by and large, these are the kind of people who have not been identified in any way with the causes that make for freedom of opportunity and liberties of minority group and the Negro community. So pervading, it seems to me, all of this stuff, because they will, you know, list the kind of things that people like President Eisenhower has been identified with, but they will not find it possible to find any reason why They want to belabor President Eisenhower. But in their mind, it becomes important to either discredit or devalue.