become a sensation in the United States on the radio. "Anti-Semitism is not the problem of the Jewish people alone. It is an American problem, a number one American problem. We all know how Hitler came into power—while he was persecuting one section of the people, other sections of the people were asleep. The merchants of hate picked their spot and picked their cause. We too must pick our cause—freedom of all peoples in a democratic America.” said Quill in relation to Coughlin. From 1956 onwards the TWU had been organising financial and practical support for the movement against segregation. In 1960 the TWU established a fund to pay bail for those arrested for attempting to desegregate restaurants throughout the South. Its members took part in pickets, marches and rallies in support of the southern movement. In 1961 Martin Luther King was the guest speaker at the TWU convention. Quill introduced King as "The man who is entrusted with the banner of American liberty that was taken from Lincoln when he was shot 95 years ago". King's speech, ‘Segregation must die if democracy is to live’, was published in pamphlet form and sent to TWU branches across the United States with instructions from Quill that it be widely distributed and discussed. In July 1963, just prior to the March on Washington, Quill told his union’s membership that the battle for civil rights was the key question facing America. That same year the TWU contributed to a fund to aid King and others imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1965 a large number of TWU members joined with King on the Selma to Montgomery marches in one of the pivotal moments of the civil rights era. Quill was quite the admirer of Martin Luther King, whom he saw as a spiritual successor of Abraham Lincoln. Speaking of King, Quill remarked: Final years The TWU did not have the same good relationship with the administration of John V. Lindsay, a liberal Republican who had rebuked Quill shortly before taking office in 1966, as they had had with Mayor Wagner. When the TWU's contract with the city expired and Lindsay did not immediately accede to the union's specific pay raise demands, Quill called a strike which lasted twelve days. The world's largest subway and bus systems, serving eight million people daily, came to a complete halt. The City obtained an injunction prohibiting the strike