I was a journalist in Vietnam and I
never developed any of my photographs
when I was there and I never transcribed
any of my tape recordings when I was
there I kept them all until I returned
and when I returned I then put together
a piece called the children of Vietnam
January 1967 and Martin King was on his
way to Jamaica with Bernard Lee his
bodyguard and he was going through his
mail and he was a subscriber to ramparts
and he came on this front cover piece
the children of Vietnam and he started
to look through it and he saw the
photographs and when Bernard brought him
his food he pushed it away is that I can
never enjoy a meal again once this war
goes on and then he has to meet with me
and it was agreed that I would go with
him to Harvard and we would then open
Vietnam summer together and we did that
and I opened more files to him and he
openly in the backseat of that car
Cambridge Massachusetts he openly wept
openly wept and then he asked me and we
didn't know would be the last year of
his life but that's all I only time I
knew about Noah he asked me then to stay
with him and work with him and we
developed what we thought was going to
be a change in American history a third
party ticket of Benjamin Spock and
Martin Luther King Martin Luther King
for president Benjamin Spock the baby
doctor for Vice President
we held a convention worked hard on it
held the convention in Chicago at the
Palmer House in labor day of 67 and
5,000 delegates came from every
progressive organization in America and
they were there what we didn't know how
naive we were was that that was never
going to be allowed to happen because of
disinformation disruption there was
created a black caucus and every black
delegate who came in was pulled into the
black caucus and the black caucus became
a very formidable source of information
and disruption and they were guided by
the Blackstone Rangers who some of you
may know understand we're a gang in
Chicago Mayor Richard Daley of organized
as a force to disrupt the convention
Martin was the keynote speaker I
introduced him he was the keynote
speaker and as he was speaking and note
was passed over my shoulder to me and I
looked at it quickly and then with a bit
of horror studied it and it said get him
out of here after he speaks or we will
take him hostage and embarrass him
for the world so when Martin finished
his keynote address I pulled him and
Andy aside and said this is what has
happened and you're a unifier they don't
want you here at this point so you
better leave before something untoward
happens so he loved the convention lost
its unifier resolutions were introduced
by the Black Caucus that were untenable
to many of the progressive groups
particularly to Northeastern liberal
Jewish money because a number of the
resolutions were clearly anti-semitic
and designed to drive away the funding
and the affection of those groups I
remember Marty Peretz it was one of the
founders of the National Conference for
new politics with whom I worked very
closely and it was a was a instructor at
Harvard was just overwhelmed he couldn't
believe the betrayal that he saw none of
us understood that it was all government
operation how am i evil you are back
you
