Remarks to Leaders and Members of the United Negro Colleges Development Campaign

Mr. Mortimer, Dr. Patterson, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express a warm welcome to the ladies and gentlemen here who are commonly concerned with this great national effort to raise $50 million for the United Negro College Fund. This is, I think, $3 million more than the United Negro Colleges have raised since 1944. This is a great national effort, and, I hope, will be supported by people all over the country.

These colleges are going to have probably the most pressing and significant educational responsibility of any colleges in the United States over the next 10, 15, or 20 years. It will be their prime responsibility to provide leadership for our country and particularly for the Negro community at a time of change in the country, at a time when the Negro community is looking forward to fuller participation in the life of this country. There isn't any doubt that education is the key, knowledge is power, and these colleges are going to have as undergraduates, and will have a chance to mold as undergraduates, the young men and women who will be the very significant and important leaders of the future.

I want to express my appreciation to all who came here--to Mr. Mortimer, for undertaking the leadership of this drive. As a very busy man, he could very easily have pleaded other obligations, but he was willing to take it on. I think it is a most important responsibility of citizenship.

I want to express our appreciation to the Ford Foundation, which has made a very generous offer which must be matched but which I think gives us a very good start; the Rockefeller Foundation, which has been interested in this matter; and to a number of other foundations which are represented here today, and a number of other individuals.

I have been interested in this fund drive for a number of years and stretching back over almost 10 years, and I think that it has now become not a matter of special concern to a special group in America, as it was in the past, who almost single-handedly took on this burden. It is now a national responsibility. This drive serves a great national purpose, and I think it can result not only m maintaining these colleges and improving the salaries of the faculties and endowing the buildings, but it also can stimulate them to the pursuit of educational excellence.

So, this is worthy of everybody's support. And I am particularly grateful to all of the men and women who came here today to give us a chance to explain what it meant and to give us some help in starting it out.

This drive must be successful, I think, for the good of the country.

Perhaps Mr. Mortimer would say a word.