DELIGHTED with report United Negro College Fund has raised twenty million dollars and is therefore nearly half way to completion of capital requirements. Hope you and your excellent committee will continue task begun in this Centennial Year of the Emancipation Proclamation at least through first quarter of 1964 in an all-out effort to reach the fifty million dollar goal. Improved facilities for these Negro colleges an imperative need.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
[Mr. Charles G. Mortimer, Chairman, United Negro College Development Campaign, c/o General Foods Corporation, White Plains, New York]
Note: The telegram was made public as part of a White House release which noted that the fund-raising campaign would benefit 32 Negro colleges. The release also stated that the drive was launched at the White House on September 12, 1963, when President Kennedy met with a small group of businessmen, educators, and philanthropists and asked them to assume responsibility for leading a major capital fund-raising program to aid private higher education for Negroes. See "Public Papers of the Presidents, John F. Kennedy 1963," Item 355.
The telegram was released at Austin, Tex.
Lyndon B. Johnson, Telegram to the Chairman, United Negro College Development Campaign. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/241445