NO THIS WAS AFTER, THIS WAS THE, LIKE THE, AROUND THE 26th OF MAY, THIS WAS AFTER THE MONTOGMERY AMBUSH.

I remember that, yeah, [overlap] OK, OK. Uh, when the freedom riders reached Montgomery and apparently the arrangement had been made that there would be no police protection for X number of minutes, 5 minutes or whatever-so that a mob was, was set loose to, to uh, do what they will. And John Seigenthaler was there as a personal representative of the President and uh, two young uh, women were trying to get into a cab and uh, were being turned away and were being roughed up and John went over and said-I am a personal representative of the President, and that's the last thing he remembered saying for a long time because someone caught him over the back of the head with a steel pipe and he lay in the sun there for a long time and, and I was not present, I was not there at the time, and I, a, a friend of mine, a young attorney here, George Baird and I, chartered a little plane the next morning, Sunday morning, and John, we thought he was in critical condition, of course they didn't know how seriously he was hurt, but he was in the hospital there, uh, he used to kid me uh, uh, when I was working for the National Council of Churches uh, he'd say-oh, here comes the guy who represents 40 million Protestants and of course we didn't represent anybody, you know. So I walked into the room and I said uh, in his hospital room, and the priest was on his way out, and I thought oh lord, is he gone and they're doing unction on John Seigenthaler, and I said, John, I'm here representing forty million Protestants and he threw me the bottle of holy water and he said-well here, I think one of your forty million damned near killed me yesterday down at that bus station. And I knew uh, John was gonna be OK.