"One Nation/Indivisible?" 17th Anniversary of Brown Event at LDF Institute

    efense 

May 117-2971 
For Immediate Release 

New York, N.Y. --- In celebrating the 17th anniversary of 

the historic 1954 Rrown (school desegregation) decision, the NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) last Friday (5/7) 

hosted more than 1,690 guests at its 1971 Institute, “One Nation/ 

Indivisible?". For the event, which went on all day at the 

Americana Hotel, LDF brought to New York some 30 experts to discuss 

such subjects as black labor problems, the disparity in municipal 

services between ghet:ito and white neighborhoods, the intolerable 

black political power, and sex 

discrimination and the black woman. 

On hand were AtTanta Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson; 

Lou Hamer, founder of the Mississippi 

Winston Moore, d etor of the Cook County (Chicago) jail system; 

Louis Stokes, U.S. Representative from Ohic; Jimmy Wechsler of the 

New York Post; the Rev. Andrew J. Young, director of Atlanta's 

Community Relations Commission; and Mrs. Medgar Evers, to name 

few. 

At the luncheon, which was chaired by the Hon. Basil A. 

Paterson, Senator Walter Mondale (Minnesota) warned the gathering 

that America's children -- black and white, rich and poor -- are 

being damaged by economic a i isolation fostered by govern- 

mental institutions, both federal local. 

Specifically, he attacke prictive ming laws in the 

ven for wealthy whites from the growing 

while pinning the poor and low-income w eS 

-- even with unbearably increased taxes - 

they cannot m 

facilities for the city's children. 

(MORE) 

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. | 10 Columbus Circle | New York, N.Y. 10019 | (212) 586-8397 

William T. Coleman, Jr. - President Jack Greenberg - Director-Counsel 



LDF INSTITUTE PAGE 2 

Mondale noted that between 1960 and 1970 “the central 

cities lost 24 million whites and gained 3 million blacks," 

white "of the 990,000 new jobs created between 1959 and 1969 in 

the New York metropolitan region, 75% were located outside the 

city," and effectively out of reach of the poor. 

The Senator blamed the federal government for playing a 

major role in building ghettos and creating isolation through 

massive public housing projects which deliberately reinforce 

segregated living patterns, through federal highway programs which 

destroy viable urban communities and amputate the inner city from 

the suburbs, through urban renewal programs which produce more 

crowded slums, and through the location of federal offices in 

suburbs which bar low and moderate income housing. 

As partial solutions to what is fast becoming America's 

major problem, the Senator suggested that the government, rather 

than acceding to the fears of suburbanites, many of whom believe 

that any sizable entry of low-income housing into their neighborhoods 

will depress the value of their homes, consider the use of property 

value guarantees for homeowners in areas where low-income households 

are introduced. He further suggested federal educational subsidies, 

or other new means of financing local educational costs, "to take 

the financial penalty out of accepting low-income residents in a 

community and convert it to an advantage." 

In summing up, Mondale said that "this country is rapidly 

coming to resemble South Africa. Our native reserves and Bantustans 

are the inner city. And our apartheid is all the more disgusting for 

being insidious and unproclaimed. That is the barren and dangerous 

future now in the making for our children. Unless we act soon, we 

will have lost the chance to refind our way toward domestic justice 

and the peace it alone can ensure. 

=30= 

For further information: Sandy O'Gorman 
(212) 586-8397