Proclamation 3858—Family Reunion Day

Since the founding of the Republic, the American family has been a source of individual strength and national stability.

These are times, however, that test the unity of family life. Progress—social, economic, and technological—has brought with it new mobility that tends to separate the members of affluent families.

For millions of other Americans, poverty, discrimination and the spiritual deprivation of slum life have strained the cohesion of family units past the breaking point. Many young people are growing up without the shaping example of a firm, responsible, and caring male in the household. There are strengths within almost all families, whether or not headed by a father; but history and instinct tell us that that a society that does not encourage responsible fatherhood will pay for its failure in later generations. For that reason, action: to extend job opportunities, to improve education and housing, and to end discrimination in all its forms is vital to stronger family life—and ultimately to a more just and peaceful nation.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 165, do hereby designate Sunday, August 11, 1968, as Family Reunion Day, and I urge all the people of the United States to support those actions that will strengthen the American family, and to celebrate this day with such ceremonies as will reemphasize our continuing belief that family life is the highest and most enduring product of our civilization.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eighteenth day of July, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-third.,

LYNDON B. JOHNSON