Richard C. Wade Oral History Interview -RFK #3, 7/3/1974 Administrative Information

Creator: Richard C. Wade Interviewer: Roberta W. Greene Date of Interview: July 3, 1974 Place of Interview: New York, New York Length: 23 pp.

Biographical Note Wade, Richard; Historian, educator; Campaign worker, John F. Kennedy for President, 1960, Robert F. Kennedy for President, 1968. Wade discusses Robert F. Kennedy’s [RFK] presidential campaign in Indiana (1968), Richard G. Hatcher’s role in the campaign as mayor in Gary, Indiana, and conflicts regarding racism in Indiana, among other issues.

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Transcript of Oral History Interview These electronic documents were created from transcripts available in the research room of the John F. Kennedy Library. The transcripts were scanned using optical character recognition and the resulting text files were proofread against the original transcripts. Some formatting changes were made. Page numbers are noted where they would have occurred at the bottoms of the pages of the original transcripts. If researchers have any concerns about accuracy, they are encouraged to visit the library and consult the transcripts and the interview recordings.

Suggested Citation Richard C. Wade, recorded interview by Roberta W. Greene, July 3, 1974, (page number), Robert F. Kennedy Oral History Program.

NATIONAL AHCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION JOHN F. KENNEDY LIBRARY

Legal Agreement Pertaining to the Oral History Interviews of Richard wade

In accordance with the provisions of Chapter 21 of Title 44, Un ited states Code, and subject to t)1e t erms and conditions hereinafter set forth , I, Richard Wade, do hereby give, donate, and convey to th~ united States of .A1!lerica all my rights, title, and interest in the tape recording and transcript of personal interviews conducte

( 1) The transcript Shall be made available for use by researchers as soon as it has been deposited in the John F . Kennedy Library . ( 2) The tape recording shall be made available to those researchers who have access to the transcript . (3) I hereby assign to the United States Government all copyright I may have in the interview transcript and tape .

(4) Copies of the transcript and the tape recording may be provided by the Library to researchers upon request.

(5) Copies of the transcript and tape recording may be . deposited in or loaned to institutions other than the John F . Kennedy Library.

Donor,

Date r I , ~~~~ Archivist of the United States

Date Richard C. Wade- RFK #3

Table of Contents

Page Topic 56, 61 Robert F. Kennedy’s [RFK] April 15th and May 6th visits to Indiana, 1968 58, 64, 68 Racism and civil rights 59, 72 Indiana campaign, 1968 59, 72, 75 Richard G. Hatcher, mayor of Gary, Indiana 63, 74 Payroll and campaign finances 67 Indiana primary, 1968 71, 76 Discussion about the remainder of the presidential campaign and primaries 74 Clean-up after Indiana campaign 78 Peter Crotty Third Oral History Interview

with

RICHARD WADE

July 3, 1974 New York, New York By Roberta w. Greene

For the Robert F. Kennedy oral History Program of the Kennedy Library

GREENE: The place where we left off last time was his visits to the Gary [Gary, Indiana) area where you were concentrating your efforts. What do you remember about those? Maybe I ought to get the dates out unless you remember them, do you?

WADE: I don't remember the dates. It was a very short campaign. He came in the night before, I think, the election. I think he came in maybe Sunday or Monday.

GREENE: Yes. We ll, the first time he came in was after the Martin Luther King period, which we don't count, but. Was it April 10th? That would be right after the King funeral.

WADE: Not in my area.

GREENE: You weren't there. Okay.

WADE: He came in.

GREENE: .. . April 15th.

WADE: Right.

GREENE: South Bend [South Bend, Indiana], Michigan City [Michigan City, Indiana], and Gar y .

WADE: That was the first time.

GREENE: Right.

WADE: Then he came in the day before the election, I think , or Sunday or Monday.

GREENE: That would be May 6th-, yes. WADE: Is that a Sunday or Monday? 58 GREENE: That was the long, long motorcade.

WADE: Yeah.

GREENE: Right. That was that Sunday, which would be the 5th.

WADE: Yeah. Well, the first time he came in it was the .. Let me look at that. I've forgotten. Let's see, he announced on March 16th, right? I remember now. The idea was that he would give a speech that would not be racially oriented, that would be talking about jobs, and especially old folks, and that was the way it was supposed to be. So there was a speech prepared, and so forth. When he got to Indiana, the crowd in the auditorium was at least 85 percent black. He filled up the auditorium, which almost was unheard of before that time. I would guess it would hold five, six thousand people. But in there what he did was, he went through the speech so fast you could hardly hear a word he was saying. And then he got to the question of race at the end .

GREENE: On his own, or through a question and answer period?

WADE: No, on his own. He was. . . . The speech had been given out, and it was also one that had been prepared for distribution around the state having to do with these other problems. The idea was that you could come to Gary and not talk about race because that would be. Well, I think probably that was the idea when they started out, but by the time they got to the auditorium, the speech was. . . . It was a good speech--I've forgotten now what's in it--but it wasn't relevant to the people there who wanted to hear him on the question of civil rights. That's what they really wanted to hear about. Well, he got through it, and then he went on to that. It was a very receptive audience. At the end you could hardly get him out. He had a very nice motorcade coming in, but it wasn't like it would be the day before the election. But it was a good crowd. But it was at the end when it all warmed up. I do remember the fact that people said, "Well, you shouldn't be talking about race because there is only 6 percent blacks in Indiana. . 11

GREENE: You're talking about people in the campaign?

WADE: Yeah.

GREENE: Yes.

WADE: " . And to talk about problems that blacks and white share when one is older, and jobs, and not to talk about race directly." We ll, he did. He started out that way, and then he came on himself at the end. 59 GREENE: Do you remember who was involved in this discussion?

WADE: No. I've forgotten now. I talked mostly to Joe Dolan (Joseph F. Dolan]; that had to do with scheduling. That was, where he was going to go, and so forth.

GREENE: Did it come up then, too, in terms of areas?

WADE: Yeah. And also when he would get to Gary, because you see, it was in my judgment, you had to get there after five o'clock because they worked. And you wanted to get there in that hour if you could, between five and six--I've forgotten what time--it was around in there that he was supposed to show up.

And also there was a gun scare in that day. Somebody had called up and said that the fellow had gone to the Hotel Gary (Gary Hotel], and he had talked about Kennedy [Robert F. Kennedy] and he had a gun and all this business. And we didn't know, and so we changed the route. Instead of going by the Gary Hotel which he otherwise would have done, going down to City Hall, he went directly to the auditorium. The original plan was to go down to City Hall where Hatcher [ Richard G. Hatcher] would meet him, and then togethe r they would go over to the auditorium. Nobody knew much about it because he was late, as usual, and therefo:reyou could say that he was just .. I talked to Hatcher about it and he said, "Well, let's just go to the auditorium, and we won't have to go by that place at all." And we told the police about it. Nothing e ver came, but it was in the air already. It was right after the . No, I think it was before this.

GREENE: No, after.

WADE: It' was after.

GREENE: King was the fourth.

WADE: Around the fourth. Yes . Well, but at any rate, it was in the air, that's all. So what we simply did was not to go downtown and pick up Hatcher, but it was only a matter of about ten blocks anyway, eight blocks.

GREENE: Do you remember the whole issue of where the emphasis in the Indiana campaign should be, as far as the issues went, being something that excited you and some of, perhaps, the young people you were working with?

WADE: You see, the thing was that he had come on very strong on civil rights, and here you were in Gary [Interruption], in Indiana whe r e --I've forgotten the figures but I think something l i ke 6 percen t are blac k. And 60 our problem was that race had infected the whole area up there in two ways: Hatcher had become mayor and to do so. When I first met him we thought that we won the Democratic primary, that there would be no election in the fall. But what happened was, we won the Democratic primary, and then it was an issue not of Democrats and Republicans, but black and white. And it was a close election, very close election, where white Democrats went over and voted for the Republican. So that hat was in the situation. Then next door you had Whiting [Indiana] and Hammond [Indiana) which were white areas, and East Chicago which was black and a lot of heavily Mexican areas. So you had to figure out. . I always used to look at the area as a single unit which included all of Lake County and the next -- Porter .county, I think it is, or the one next to it . . And then you also had the growth of the suburbs in Gary, all of which were white, and where McCarthy [Eugene S. McCarthy) was strong.

And so the big struggle or big controversy amongst the people in the campaign was that I was always the advocate, always seemed like the advocate, of civil rights and the blacks and the young, and so forth, because we were counting on those people, the young, to come down and do the work for us out of Chicago, and we had to have the b l acks . And in looking at that area, you had to get 90 percent of the black vote in Gary if you wanted to carry the whole area. Now you could say that you could get 75 percent, but if you only got that. . . .

We carried Whiting, which we did not expect to carry, we almost carried Hammond--we came close, and carried East Chicago were heavily and Gary very heavily. We lost all the suburbs around. The only white area i n which we did very, very well was a place called Miller. I ' ve forgotten the name of it--Millerburg or something. It ' s inside the city limi ts, and it's to the east of City Hall; it's a middle-class white area with the highest education in the district. And we carried that. The controversy was that we were always putting pressure to keep that black vote up high, to get the excitement large enough, so that we could get that vote on election day, and the controversy was that people said, "We ll, you know you can't give up the whole of Indiana for Gary." I was as forceful as I could be, but I knew full well you had the rest of the state to be concerned about. So my object in that time was to get the mayors of the cities, who were pro-Kennedy, to come out for him whether they be Hatcher or a fellow named something like Klen [Joseph Klen] or something like this, in Hammond, and the other two fellows--one was a Pole [John Nicosia] from East Chicago--have the m all come out for Kennedy, and that would reduce the race fact or because you'd 61 have three white and one black and they're all for the same candidate. Well, they were all for him privately, and during that period I had Teddy Kennedy [Edward M. Kennedy] call ... Teddy came into town and went to see them, and we still couldn't break them until they saw the big crowds on the night before the election. Then they came over. But they didn't do it before, so we couldn't mute the question the way I wanted to do it, to keep the big black vote and then to have us concentrate on the white areas where we were weaker. And that was always a controversy inside the Indiana campaign, at least as I saw it.

Now, what else was going on in reference to the other areas in the state, I don't know. But we depended upon his being strong on civil rights to keep the flow of volunteers coming down. If he had ever compromised, or had appeared to compromise, on civil rights, it would have cut off the volunteers and that would have been the end. We could count on Hatcher--absolutely count on him. I could, but Al Blumenthal [Albert H. Blumenthal] and Jerry Kretchmer [Jerome Kretchmer] who came in never trusted Hatcher. They thought he was a black politician; they equated him with people they had known in New York City, and I had known him now for a year and had helped him in his campaign, and I knew him to be an honest fellow. And also that he had his own stake in getting a big Kennedy vote out. But that was what the race question was like in our area. It was the toughest thing.

GREENE: Who would make the decision ultimately on a question like that, like what tone and what approach to take on that kind of issue?

WADE: Well, Bobby would, when it comes right down to it. I mean, it was all arranged. I was not h appy about the speech because it never mentioned . . . . I think we ma~ have thrown in some major black figure's name, just to . . . . But it was not what I thought would rouse people in Gary, and we needed that kind of enthusiasm. And we also had a lot of people who were for him, but whether they would come out for him was another question.

GREENE: Did you get a chance to talk to him before you went into the hall? Do you think that was part of the reason that he attached the end of the speech?

WADE: Well, no. He was in McLean [Virginia] somewhere that week, and I talked to him then. GREENE: He was in Atlanta. This is April 10th we're talking about now?

WADE: No, I called him in McLean--I've f orgotten now what day 62

it was--about how to go after those four mayors and for him to make calls to them. Well, then I saw Teddy the day that Johnson [Lyndon B. Johnson] pulled out, and Teddy said he would do the calling. He thought that probably Bobby shouldn't, and then he did make the calls. And he came up-­ I've forgotten the days he came up--but he couldn't break them loose, either.

I don't know who made the decision about emphasizing the economic issues rather than race issues. But I knew that speech would never get anybody off their hands in Gary.

GREENE: Do you think it was that he sensed that, too, in terms of the audience response?

WADE: Sure. He wasn't getting anywhere with that audience. When he walked on the stage, great ovation. Then when he started to speak there was no. . . . First of all, I think he thought it was an inappropriate speech anyway, and so he just started to race through it. [Laughter] And he went so fast, nobody did much. . . . Then when he got through with it, then he started to expand oA the race question.

GREENE: Did you talk to him at all about it afterwards?

WADE: Afterwards, yes. He was worried that the speech didn't go over well. I said, ''No, the speech didn't, but you did." Which was what the object of the campaign was. It was a very good reception. He was absolutely mobbed when leaving. I don't know how long it took us to get out of that auditorium. In fact, we went some funny way , I remember.

GREENE: Was that the only appearance that you were out with him.

WADE: No.

GREENE: . on that visit?

WADE: On that visit that's the only one. I picked him up as he came from wherever he was. I picked him up at the edge of town, and I talked to him then. Then I put Hatcher in the car.

GREENE: How did that go?

WADE: Oh, that was fine. They had a lready talked. My fear was that Hatcher would be mad if we said we told you not to come out for Kennedy ·because we can't ... GREENE: Get the white? 63

WADE: Until we get the. He understood that perfectly well. He said, "I don't want to come out. He shouldn 1 t be my candidate. You've got all these other votes around." No, he was very good. Well, in fact, we ran the campaign out of city Hall. I used his phones all the time.

GREENE: And we talked last time a bit about the whole money angle, because there had been accusations made about that. Did you get much of a chance to talk to Kennedy about other things, things other than the situation right there? Did you get any feel for how he thought the whole thing was going?

WADE: No. You don't want to waste. . . A lot of people, you want to have talk to him, and there is no reason for me. • . And this was true the first time I ever met him. We never talked a lot, philosophized about a campaign. It was always that I wanted somebody to talk to him, and I could always talk to him. This would be a time that they could talk to him. So it never came up much. I talked to Teddy more during that campaign--he was in Indianapolis--and John Douglas (John W. Douglas], who was sort of troubleshooting for the campaign.

GREENE: How effective was he?

WADE: He was very good.

GREENE: Douglas?

WADE: Oh yeah. Because you had to peel through four or five layers to get to Teddy in Indianapolis. It was easier to get close to Bobby than it was Teddy, at the time. Then it had to do with money, which they shouldn't have been involved with anyway. It had to do with who was going to pay the staff that I had promised to give expenses to. That meant they were coming down from Chicago, they were staying at the hotels, no one was paid anything, or at least I don't think they were. They weren't supposed to. All they were supposed to do was to get expenses, but we weren't g e tting expenses , and some people were getting mad. I told them to come down for a couple of days a week, and that didn't work out, so I said, "You're going to have to stay." They were going back to Chicago, and we were saving money. But then I said, "You can't do that, you have to stay." And so that money we had pledged to these people, and we weren't getting them. But John was always able to get money. Well, we'd get it out of the Merchandise Mart, get it out of the central kitty or whatever was going on in Indianapolis·, and if we couldn't get it there we'd go to a fellow named Oldman (Walter Olman) or something like this. 64 GREENE: What was his name?

WADE: Oldman at the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. He was the manager there.

GREENE: Yes. I don't know that operation at all.

WADE: Yeah. But when we needed the money we got it there.

GREENE: What about Jerry Doherty [Ge rard F. Doherty]? You didn't see him at all?

WADE: No, he was in Indianapolis all the time.

GREENE: Yes. And he didn't come around?

WADE: No, to my knowledge, no.

GREENE: It was John Douglas?

WADE: I always talked to John.

GREENE: What about Ted Kennedy when you could reach him? Was he cooperative in doing the kinds of things you thought were necessary?

WADE: Oh yeah. And he understood the situation where you couldn't insult Hatcher by putting him in the back burner and saying "We're rea lly running a white campaign here." He understood that. The irony is , most of the people who were advising him to forget the question of race were the people who were the most radical on race . So you had the situation where people you thought to be to the left of yourself--and here I was put in a position of a fire-eater, sort of. . You can't do tha t . This is what the man's going to have to stand for all around the country. If he runs for the presidency, you know damn well that we're going to need this support. And also he had done more than anybody else since the assassination at that time to have earned that support.

GREENE: Right.

WADE: It seems that he was throwing away what was a unique c ons titue ncy.

GREENE: It was interesting that you said the other suburbs, the white suburbs, which were sort of, you mentioned, collectively for McCarthy.

WADE: They were. 65 GREENE: These aren't the working-class kinds of suburbs there.

WADE: Middle-class suburbs.

GREENE: Yes .

WADE: Some of the people actually worked in Illinois who live in Highland Park [Indiana) and Griffin [Indiana] and places like this, where white middle-class and upper­ middle-class suburbs surround Gary on the Illinois side. Oh yes, we got clobbered out there. I could see it coming, so we put up headquarters in each of them, and it was so bad that we phased them out hoping that no one would notice it. It was terrible. And McCarthy was smart. He never went to Gary, Indiana once. No that's right, he went to the Gary Hotel to the US Steel Club, and talked to. The wife of the editor of the newspaper was on his side. But that's all he did . He kept out; he went to the suburbs.

GREENE: How much of a factor was Branigin [Roger D Branigin] in this general area?

WADE: I've forgotten now, but he got 28 percent, is my recollection.

GREENE: In the state, yes.

WADE: In the state.

GREENE: But what about in the similar area?

WADE: Under the system, you see, there, by law you can assess every state office holder 3 percent of his salary. It's the law. It's a legal. Well, he had all that money. The system in Gary is, you don't have any bosses. The mayor was a boss, but that was because he was black and had that kind of position. What's important there are the district leaders, and they are little barons themselves, and they deal on every office and they deal on all sides, and they deal with money and only money. That's all that counts . We gave money on election day which is down the drain because we felt we had to, because if we didn't, we knew the other sides were going to.

GREENE: All right. What do you mean by that, we gave money on election day?

WADE : I've forgotten now the exact amount of money. It was something like $15 a district.

GREENE: Who does this go to, the district leader? 66

WADE: Yeah, the district leader, yeah. It was even a bit more than that. The idea of it was that they would then use that money to pay their workers on election day. It is supposed to be an election day contribution. What they did, the leaders, was they took money from everybody and sat down with their six packs. . .

GREENE: That's a lot of beer.

WADE: . and rested during the entire day. Yes. Didn't do us one bit of good. The only place where we ever got anything for election day expenditures was in Gary. And these people, actually you were giving them gasoline and lunch and dinner. We gave them half. I should say, Hatcher gave them half of what we were giving the white areas, because he didn't want a situation where next year he had to pay high prices. He said, "You'll corrupt my system. You'll destroy my whole organization if you start paying that kind of money in there." So we gave the money directly to him, and he took care of it, where in the other cases you had to go to a variety of different sorts. And this is all supposed to be legal.

GREENE: And this is all supposed to be legal?

WADE: Oh sure it is. There's nothing illegal. First of all, I don't think there were any kind of spending laws there, and then what you do is you gave the money, and the object was presumably to take care of expenses of people who took a day off from work. Let's say· you're a steel worker, and you'll earn fifty dollars that day. The idea is, you take it off and you pay their expenses, that you have to reimburse them for the time spent. That's the theory. The fact of the matter is, it never goes to the workers.

GREENE: It's apparently no accountability.

WADE: No accountability. It's all done in cask. In fact, the only receipt I ever. . I insisted on one in Gary, that I get the receipt from Hatche r. We both did. We both insisted. We wanted that receipt, we don't care what else is done in any other place. But that was what the system was. I mean it made West Virginia look like a good citizens' committee or something. It's t e rrible.

GREENE: What would Hatcher do with that money?

WADE: He gave it to his people. On election day every one of those districts was manned; the lists of voters were checked off methodically. He spent the whole day going around in his limousine to every one of those polling booths telling them, "You've got to g et faster, you've got to get 67 faster." That was the biggest.

GREENE: That was well spent.

WADE: That money was well spent. When everybody else was going on television that night, you know, he stayed out there until every last one of those were c l osed, and he was convinced he had somebody there and get an honest account. Tough day in the life of a mayor. And the results were 92 or 94 percent; I forget, it was something . . .

GREENE: . fantastic like that.

WADE: Yeah. And since, you know, we didn't win that place as much as the people think--I've forgotten the figures now, but it was much closer than the people thought it was going to be.

GREENE: Do you mean the state as a whole?

WADE: Yeah. GREENE: Gee, I forget what it was. It was not nearly so large a margin as ....

WADE: It was no landslide.

GREENE: It seems to me it was- -I should h ave those figures-­ but it was only about six percentage points, I think.

WADE: Above McCarthy, and then Branigin was only four be hind.

GREENE: Right. It got worse a~ the night went on, as I remember.

WADE: Oh, yes. If the other two of them had ever gotten together we would have been dead ducks.

GREENE: Was that something you were fearing?

WADE: Oh, yeah. I was encouraging Branigin, "Stay in there, boy." [Laughter] Because if he had pulled out then the white vote would not have been divided.

GREENE: Anything special about the primary day organization besides the money aspect? WADE: Well, there was a general feeling. By that time the corruption of Indiana· politics was so well known there was a great feeling that we had to be especially careful they might steal it from us. So we got about fifty-­ maybe even more--lawyers from Chicago to come down and do 68 nothing but circulate, and to appear like they were reporters­ -pad in their hands and so forth-~and just to constantly have some outside force there. This was Hatcher's notion. He said, "If people think the whole country is looking at it, there won't be such shenanigans." But it was characteristic. They almost counted Hatcher out when he ran. And I was there at the time, and it was wholesale fraud all the way through. When a black would come there, they'd be thrown off, and the only way you could get back on is to go to Crown Point [Indiana].

GREENE: What do you mean they would be thrown off?

WADE: You'd come there if you were a black voter and they'd say, "Your name is not on the list. " And the only way you could get that was to go to the county, which was Crown Point, which is about twenty miles from downtown.

GREENE: You would have to be pretty determined.

WADE: Oh yes. We had to have cars during the Hatcher campaign that did nothing but go between Crown Point. There was no way in which a local judge could say, "Yes, let that person vote, and then if you think there is something wrong we'll proescute later."

GREENE: And there was n o

WADE: And that was the fear.

GREENE: . so-called neutral authority there to go over the list?

WADE: There's no neutra l authority. The county was run by the people that Hatcher had beaten. We had enough control inside the city in black areas so that we could take care of that, but outside it was a ll run by the other bunch, and he had beaten them all. You can't imagine. I've never known corruption like it was in that area before Hatcher. In my presence a man asked, virtually said to him, "I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars to get out of this race"--this was when he was a councilman--not to go into the race. And that was ordinary. Everything was up for sale. Gary was wide open. By the time it came to the election he had c losed down the prostitution sections, and the old red light districts, which didn't make him popular with the suburban whites who patronized the area. But before that time it was buying and selling like nothing I've ever known.

GREENE: Well now, on the day ·of the primary in 1 68, what could these lawyers do besides play Jiminy Crickets?

WADE: We put out a statement saying that the Federal Bureau 69 of Investigation [FBI] .... Hatcher asked for the FBI to come in and supervise, because he thought there was going to be a large-scale fraud.

GREENE: Did he really do this?

WADE: Oh, yes. We thought it would be closer in the state than the people in Indianapolis, I think. We thought it was going to be close, because they were giving me figures out of Indianapolis about Hammond and Whiting ...

GREENE: . . . which were unrealistic.

WADE: Were unrealistic. They were coming presumably from our canvassers, but they weren't the way we read things. So we thought it would be much closer than it was, and we were worried we might get stolen. And if you're going to get into a close election, and you hope fifteen thousand votes in that area might have been the difference. So he asked for a federal intervention under the old civil rights act. It was designed for the South. And then we alerted the newspapers. We kept on sending out things. The idea was to get the newspapers to look, and to get a general feeling _that if you were going to do something funny in one of those booths that you might get caught. We had no power. So that's when we had maybe one hundred lawyers--we had them all over the place--half of them in trench coats looking like they ....

GREENE: The FBI never intervened at all? I mean, they never came in?

WADE: No. Somebody probably had to come a nd see Hatcher, but no federal supervision took place.

GREENE: But was that fairly effective?

WADE: Oh, yeah. Hatcher was the best judge of this. Hatcher said this was the biggest election they'd had, and largely because people feared that they might. . . . Another thing we did is we had all the Chicago radio, news, and television people wandering around through these places, because Gary, you see, is in the Chicago media shed ...

GREENE: Yeah, market.

WADE: ... and so we had them down there all day. We just kept this constant business of getting lots of outsiders around our booths. And I think the Hoosiers (residents of Indiana] did. • . . People are going to be involved, decided, well, it wasn't worth it. Besides they had already been paid. 70

GREENE: That's very interesting. (Laughter] ~id you have a big canvassing operation that day as welf?

WADE: Well, two things happened in the campaign. Reese (Matt A. Reese, Jr.] came in with a system that was not connected with Hatcher, and we had trouble. He set up a phone bank downtown . . . .

GREENE: This was earlier in the campaign?

WADE: Yeah, earlier. And a black system whereby you identified a black person. . . . It was very complicated, and I didn't care what they did in the white areas, but they came into the black areas. The first thing that happened is that I got in trouble . with Hatcher. He said, i1what the hell are they doing in my districts?" So finally we had to pull it out. Then they did a lot of calling.

GREENE: Did they stay in the white areas?

WADE: Yes, but they had blacks' voices. I thought the whole thing was crazy, and it was very expensive, but it was scientific. He had done it in Philadelphia for ---...... somebody, for Green [William J. Green). He had done it for Green. But it was just a t odds with the realities of Indiana politics. And we didn't have that fight, and I don't r eally know what they . . Since it was separate f rom us, I would go over there once a day or twice a day, but I never knew what they were doing. GREENE: Did you take your complaint to a nybody like John Douglas?

WADE: No, what I did is, I told Hatcher to call. . . . I've forgotten who it was, somebody whose name escapes me, somebody you would call in Indiana. There was a Reese person in Indianapolis. They were doing it elsewhere. I had him call to tell them to get it out of the black districts. And they stopped that. But you had already hired a ll these people.

GREENE: And spent all that money.

WADE: And it was the wackiest idea I ever heard. You knew you were going to be in trouble in the white areas , so all you did by calling into those places is to remind them of the election . . .

GREENE: And to go out and vote for the other guy.

WADE: Yeah. I 'd just as soon let it go the way it was. If you didn't go in and put our efforts. . . . We had good 71

union support in certain places, let the unions do it. We had some reliable people in Whiting, for example, and Hammond. Let those people do it. But to start calling blank into houses, you didn't know what you were going to get, except I suspected what we were going to get.

GREENE: And they still kept blacks calling the white areas.

WADE: See, once you had a bank of people up there you can't say, "Okay all the blacks go home now." You couldn't do that. [Laughter]

GREENE: That wouldn't work.

WADE: And they're all being paid. I've forgotten, but it stopped about ten days before.

GREENE: Anything special about primary night that you remember? I mean, once the results come in, anything interesting about that?

WADE: No, except that it was closer. I don't know what it seemed like in Indianapolis, but in Gary when the results came in we knew it wa s not going to be as good as we had hoped. So our job, largely, was to convey to our workers that it was a great landslide. In fact, it wasn't, but after a while the beer and wine took care of any sober analysis of the problem. The important thing is, the people who left there who were the volunteers from Chicago, they were ready to go the next day in Chicago. They thought they had won, they knew it was more diffic ult than people expected, but they were all set to go.

GREENE: Did you get anything started at that point in Illinois?

WADE: No, because I was at that time dealing with the mayor, and so was Kennedy. No, what that group was going to go to was upstate New York.

GREENE: Oh, I see.

WADE: See, that same set of people probably. I would guess there were thirty of them. What I had done after that--then, of course, the thing went out to California. Then I was dealing with Jack English [John F. English] that on the seventh of June, whateve r the day after the primary was ....

GREENE: Fourth of June was the primary . .. ~ WADE: Fourth of June. We were supposed to be up there on the seventh, on the Friday, up in Rochest er, and I had 72 already gone there and got a couple storefronts and things like that. And we had a g ood operation going al~egdY in Rochester. But this was to take about eleven countie~~tBere.

GREENE : The basic area you had done in 1 64?

WADE: Yeah, but to use these people outside of . . . . Monroe County was set. We had very good people there--the present city councilman now, the present county chairman--all these people were Kennedy people in '64. But the area around it was weak. He had done well in there in '64, but nothing had been done between 1 64 and '68.

GREENE: Right. What kind of re!ationship d id that area have with · Jerry Bruno [Gerald J. Bruno]? This is jumping away from the subject .

WADE: Jerry was always so abrasive. . I don't care where he went, he did his job and he never had to s tay around and pick up the pieces, and every place you'd go. In '64 it became more difficult than in ' 60 , and '68 , it was going to be impossible.

GREENE: And did you give him a lot of the credit?

WADE: Well, he did his job. You know Jerry's personality. If you know him you like him, but you never get to know him. He comes in, you know, and busts through the place, and then he's gone. And then you're sitting around and trying to replace the divots.

GREENE: For y ears. On that final motorcade who were the major people organizing that? Do you remember?

WADE: I've forgotten.

GREENE: Do you remember?

WADE: No. The only big trouble we had on that was whether Hatcher would ride through the four towns or not, and Hatcher bailed everybody out by saying, "You just come to city hall. I'm not even going to go through that part of Gary anyway, I've got too muc h to do." If he had insisted on staying in, and if he had wanted to stay in, I'm sure there would have been a big fight amongst our people, but I'm sure that Bobby would never have .

GREENE: . . . asked him not to .

WADE: . asked him to get off at the city line or something. You know, you just don't do things like that. 73

GREENE: And he was very sensitive to that.

WADE: And we were close to the breaking point in that motorcade about what to do. See, the other way would have been to start at Hammond, and go through Whiting and East Chicago, and then come to Gary, which was one way of getting around it. At any rate, that was the only thing. And also I felt secure in Gary, and I really wanted. You know, he didn't have to come to Gary, but there was no way to get from wherever he was without looking like he was avoiding Gary, which would have looked bad.

GREENE: Much worse, yes.

WADE: So the motorcade that night was not a big one. I mean, it was basically the three other places, and he went through Gary, but the big part was Hammond.

GREENE: "Hammond, Hammond, Hammond." That's what the cover says. Is there anything that hasn't been written about that that is worth telling? Maybe your own conversations?

WADE: The only time that I've watched politics wh ere I've seen a man change his mind in the middle of an event .. . The mayor--I wish I could remember his name-- of Hammond, I had confessed to having gotten his s on involved in the campaign, assumed that h is father would stay n e utral. But when they finally got to the auditorium for the rally, his father got up and said he was for Kennedy.

GREENE: He was one of those that you h ad been working o n ?

WADE: See, we put the mayors in the motorcade, in part just to . We had the next day coming up, and we didn't want any horsing around, and what we wanted to do was to show the mayors how popular Bobby was so they shouldn't, for their own self-interest, not to horse around the next day. GREENE: He got the message.

WADE: He got the message, and Hammond has never seen crowds like that. And as usual it was an hour and a half late. But he certainly did get the message.

GREENE: Did you ride with him, or not?

WADE: I was the car behind~ · We kept putting in the mayors, shuffling the mayors where we went. [Laughter] I always believed in those things. Our peopl e, you can see them some other time. 74

GREENE: You'd think he would have needed somebody there to coordinate the mayors just to make sure the right one was.

WADE: No. We had a guy in the car with cards. [Laughter)

GREENE: I hope you didn't shuffle them. Well, you said either the last or the previous interview in reference to Jerry Kretchmer and Al Blumenthal that you were kind of left behind to mop up after them. What did you mean by that?

WADE: Well, what happened was that all these people parachuted into Indiana. In a sense I came by car, but on the next morning I went down, I left the celebration early, I was tired, I just went home to Illinois. I came back the next day, and every place was a shambles that we had been. Everybody just took off. All the people from Boston went back, which demonstrated how little actual support we had inside Gary. By this time there was a group that you could call good Kennedy sorts, so what we had to do is to call a meeting the next day and have everybody come on down that weekend and clean up, take down the signs.

GREENE: You r eally mean a physical cleaning up?

WADE: Yeah. And the other things, promises were made, and bills--God, you can't imagine--bills tha t you never heard about. Flowers, this and that. We didn't clean those bills up for three or four years, t ill I came h ere. That' s at least two or three years.

GREENE: Where d id the authorization--or wasn't there a ny for that kind of spending?

WADE: What's his name? I keep on forgetting. The cousin.

GREENE: Joey Gargan [Joseph D. Gargan]? WADE: No.

GREENE: Oh, I think we went through this last time, and I never could figure out who it was.

WADE: You still can't find the name?

GREENE: No.

WADE: We ll, he was the one, and he came down and he did a lot of authorizations that I n ever heard anything about, and h e was always saying he was a cousin o f Bob's. 75

GREENE: Maybe he wasn't. That's why I can't think of his name.

WADE: No, he was. I checked on him. He did, on the whole, pretty good work. He wasn't very smart, but he was a very hard worker. But, you know, he'd promise anything, and, of course, I don't think he should ever have put a foot back in Indiana. Well, I was back there then. And also Hatcher was a friend of mine, and we had to get him re-elected the next year. So it was trouble cleaning up there.

GREENE: Were there a lot of political fences that had to be mended?

WADE: Yeah, people had made promises to people which, as time went on, would have been, of course, be even more damaging.

GREENE: Were Blumenthal and Kretchmer, in particular.

WADE: No. They operated out of the local headquarters. Al was very good because he was assigned to see the assemblymen and the state senators, and so forth. He was excellent on that. Jerry was assigned largely to raise.

GREENE: Hell.

WADE: . hell, and also to raise volunteers from Chicago. The only thing they shared was they distrusted Hatcher, and that was really a New York fear, I think, that they had dealt with black politicians. They both came from the upper West side where politics is difficult, and they never trusted him. He didn't really trust them , Hatcher didn't. In fact, he just didn't trust white politicians. That was part of the problem. And so that's why I h ad to insulate Hatcher from the rest of them.

GREENE: Were there also a lot of hurt feelings that you had to take care of and that kind of thing?

WADE: On the night of the motorcade people were told they'd ride with him, and somebody said, " I 'll get you into the car." Well, they never did. And of course the next day there was one person around to complain to, and that was me. So I found out lots of things I never heard of before. But, Bobby was very good. But we put some calls in after he left, the next few weeks.

GREENE: You did stay on a matter of weeks? WADE : Well, I was in Chicago, you see, but I would come down. 76

GREENE: Yes. But I mean you would come down?

WADE: I would come down. I was coming down for Hatcher once a week anyway, so it was easy for me to handle it. And the mother of a student of mine was his secretary. She was very good. She would get all the flak and organize, make the calls and so forth. Especially we had a big publicity on radio and television, when we came back and started cleaning up the city, took down the signs. You know, people plastered things all over hell. And that was really very good publicity.

GREENE: What do you mean by a big radio?

WADE: well, we told the radio, "We're having %'people, volunteers; w~A~aving a clean-up party ... "

GREENE: Oh, oh, I see.

WADE: ... on the Saturday and Sunday following. And they loved that. BecAg\se we had a very practical consideration. We thought we were going to have to come back and have to run in that state again.

GREENE: Other than yourself, the r e really wasn't any real skeleton organization l eft behind?

WADE: No.

GREENE: Just folded up?

WADE: No, what we were keeping was, when if was left--I was trying to hold together. . . . We had a citizens committee that looked pretty good at the end--a citizens committee for Kennedy, and we were going to keep that together for the fall. We had a campaign in Indiana; there was no chance in the world that Bobby would have carried Indiana against anybody, any time. It was just the wrong state for him. JFK got clobbered in Indiana . It was really Wallace [George C. Wallace) territory. Wallace got 30 percent of the vote there in the previous primary.

GREENE : That's what I was just going to ask you . WADE: He loved those votes.

GREENE: Is there anything e lse on Indiana in ' 68 or on '68 in general?

WADE: Well, no, I think that. . . . Once this happened, my own role was to keep the Illinois thing because the mayor was going to go with whoever won the primaries. 77 So we had a very simple system. If you wanted to get Illinois you win California and New York. I had the horrible feeling: what if we won only one of the two?

GREENE: Did you ever ask that of the mayor?

WADE: No. I went home and woke up at night with a cold sweat. I don't know what would have happened.

GREENE: How much of a personal allegiance do you think he had, or feeling did he have, for Robert Kennedy? How much of a part would that have played?

WADE: He liked JFK. He respected RFK. He disliked Sargent Shriver [R. Sargent Shriver], and that came through in almost every conversation. He wished Bobby weren't running; he was for Johnson at the start, but once Johnson pulled out life became much simpler because it was no longer an option.

GREENE: He didn't have strong feelings about Humphrey [Hubert H. Humphrey]?

WADE: If Johnson would have stayed in, then we would have had a real fight in Illinois. That would have been a real.

GREENE: He didn't transfer his allegiance that thoroughly to Humphrey?

WADE: No. In fact, he thought Humphrey would lose. He always thought he was going to lose.

GREENE: You went to see him after eac h primary, you told me last time.

WADE: Yeah. He would say the same thing. "The primaries count; the primaries count." GREENE: But he wasn't thinking of Indiana, he was thinking of California?

WADE: No, Indiana was the first one. If we had lost anywhere along the line there would have been trouble.

GREENE: Well, you did lose in Oregon.

WADE: Oregon. I told you that story. When I didn't show up the day after.

GREENE: Oh, that's right, I remember that now. 78

WADE: And that's when it was clear that California and New York would be the decisive. . . . That was the reason I said there is no reason for me to stay in Illinois except just to keep harmony there the best I could. But in New York I had a higher regard for the McCarthy operation than the Kennedy people, and that's because I saw it only in the upstate area. I didn't know what was happening down here. But I thought we'd have a fight. I thought we'd win, but it would have been tough. So that's when we decided we'd take the Illinois crew, and take them upstate because they had gone into another state and conducted themselves well. They hadn't gotten the Hoosiers mad at them, or anything. We were selective, and were taking only the people that could do that kind of thing. That was as good a political group of young people~ . [Interruption)

GREENE: If there is nothing else on 1 68, why don't we talk off the record but I'll record it so I'll have it on hand, about the Crotty [Peter Crotty) conversation that you told me about. WADE: Peter was the leader in Buffalo . His connections with the Kennedys went back, I think, to '58 or ·~· And he was, along with Buckley [Willia:Jft F. Bue}tl"ey)~the most important person in New York. He's a very decent, civil ized fellow. Very sharp and also very candid. In other words, they didn't get all roses and wreaths from him. And he did tell me about he was with Joe Kennedy and so forth during the 60's, which isn't a conversation worth from your standpoint for the JFK [Library] and then, of course, he was for RFK. But during '64 I remember Duke Horton went over there just ....

GREENE: Who?

WADE: Horton (Ralph Horton, Jr.].

GREENE: Oh. Duke, did you say?

WADE: Isn't it Duke? I'm sure it is.

GREENE: Rip.

WADE: Rip Horton, that's right. Here I was f lying in and everything, he just sat there and talked to Crotty once a day. That was all h e had to do t o win. To win here all you had to do is make sure you didn't do anything wrong. And his inter-relationships with. . . . In that sense, you see, Peter Crotty really ran the place, of which we just assisted in any way we could; and also valued his advice. But he's worth .... GREENE: Was there any s pec ific thing he mentioned, especially 79

like in. . . .

WADE: I see him all the time now. He comes down here; he's a good friend of mine. I've forgotten now, but it's a constant anecdotal conversation about these days, He's very sharp, he's very good.

GREENE: That's good. I am going to interview him, hopefully, in the next couple of months.

END OF INTERVIEW.