A few weeks ago, I received a letter from a woman in Skokie, Illinois, saying – I know you’re busy, but could your secretary let me know in what country, state or city most of the poor people live? Thank her, because I’m collecting money for the poor.
The writer of that letter meant well. She really did. But for her, the poor still live in another country, in another state, in another city. And Americans seem to have a particular fixation about poverty in West Virginia -- about poverty in Appalachia! You must be getting tired of that attitude -yet it persists. For example, when President Johnson first established our task force to-plan the war against poverty, the Toledo Blade approached us. They wanted to take a look at poverty -- first-hand. And they asked if we could arrange a tour for them -- to see poverty some place --like Appalachia. The answer we gave them was: - “Go to Toledo"-take a good hard look where you are. That’s where the poverty is.
I’m not sure how much that answer pleased them. But it was the right one. And we gave it because one of our principal objectives is to interrupt the American preoccupation with poverty in India, China, Africa or Appalachia. We want all Americans to take a frank look at themselves, in their own home towns.
We all have poverty problems --in West Virginia; in my home Chicago; in New York; in Georgia; in Hawaii.
But you -- this state -- and this region:
-rich in human resources
-rich in natural resources
-rich in initiative and self-reliance
And it was those riches -- those untapped riches -- that impressed Jack Kennedy and all of us who worked with him in West Virginia during the 1960 primary. His attitude was not one of pity – not condescension -- not charity. But shock -- at what this nation was not using -- at what we all were losing by not using the people and resources of West Virginia, creatively! He saw that West Virginia had thousands of people who could work -- who wanted to work -- who had worked all their lives -- people who came from pioneer stock -- people who knew what it was to carve a country out of the wilderness -- but, these kinds of people were not being pressed into service to build an even greater America.
We were missing this opportunity because we were not creating new opportunities or new organizations to meet the challenges of new times.
It reminds me of this very day four years ago. Fifteen to twenty people were working - night and day - in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel trying to establish the Peace Corps. West Virginians participated in some of the discussions: Charley Peters from Charleston: Audy Houveras from Huntington. So did dozens of other businessmen, labor leaders, lawyers, churchmen, and educators.
But outside the hotel, the overwhelming majority of “experts” on Foreign Affairs were laughing at the idea of a Peace Corps. They and most adult Americans were scoffing not only at the idea. They were openly skeptical, even disdainful of the capacity of young Americans to live and work abroad -- “Kids can’t succeed in jobs overseas.” They said, “Even mature men and women and trained Diplomats have failed in this kind of work.”
Today we know they were all wrong. The doubters, the skeptics, the cynics, the faint-hearted were wrong.
But their attitude then dramatizes our greatest national problem now: We are our own worst enemies! We sell ourselves short. Too often we lack confidence in our capacity to find new ways to solve problems.
Too often the cynics, the doubters, the experts at doing nothing win out. They stop action because the rest of us lose the courage of our convictions.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt told this country: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Today, I tell you: “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves!”
We are fighting a war -- two wars -- one against poverty -- the other, world-wide, against communism. Still, the real enemy is ourselves -the myths we indulge in, the fears we entertain -- and our own lack of faith.
Last summer, for example, when we were trying to get Congress to pass the war against poverty legislation, I heard all the arguments of the skeptics and the cynics, the doubters and the fearful. Here are some of the things they said:
-- The poor are shiftless and lazy. Any red-blooded American who wants to work can get a good job these days. The poor deserve to be poor.
--The Federal Government can’t eliminate poverty...."they” will just establish a big new Federal Buracracy and waste the taxpayers money.
--These new programs aren’t really “new’.’ -- they’re just a rehash of old, tired ideas. No one will respond to these programs -- there’s no need for them.
-- This “war against poverty” is just a political gimmick, it is just the brainchild of a wheeler-dealer named Lyndon B. Johnson.
Similar charges were made right here in West Virginia, by; the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, speaking in Charleston in October, 1964 -- less than five months ago. Well let’s look at the record.
Today the war against poverty has been in business for 144 days short of five months. And these are the results:
-- One thousand American communities have organized themselves into community action groups
-- over 500 of these have sent their ideas and plans to Washington and we have already provided financial support to 150 such local communities. By June, the total will exceed a thousand. And these programs will cover every city with a population of more than 50,000 in the entire U.S.A.
-- A new nationwide organization called the Job Corps has been created to help young men and women 16 to22 years of age. In the first 60 days, 138,000 Americans have volunteered to join this new program aimed at job training and basic education. By June, I predict a half million youngsters will volunteer. And all of these volunteers are “kids” out of work and out of school-- the young Americans sometimes classified as “social dynamite” -- the young Americans for whom five months ago there was no chance of escape from poverty.
-- A domestic Peace Corps has been started. It’s called VISTA -- Volunteers in Service to America. The first thirty VISTA volunteers have been recruited, selected and trained and dispatched to a dozen locations. They are on the job now. The vanguard of thousands of Americans, aged 18 to 80, who soon will be fanning out all over the United States to help the poor.
--A neighborhood Youth Corps has been established. This organization gives jobs -- local jobs to high- school youngsters who stay at home but need money to finance their education. Thousands of boys and girls are already in this program. And so are their college aged counterparts who are covered by another program in the war against poverty.
What does all this prove?
First, it shows the poor want to work -- they do have ambition. They will volunteer if given a chance for work, job training and education.
Second, this program has not led to the creation of a vast new Washington bureaucracy. Less than 500 people have been hired on our permanent payroll and in five months they have processed, approved, and financed more than 700 local projects in every state in the Union. The cynics and skeptics were wrong again.
Third, the overwhelming public response proves that America wants and needs these programs. These are not tired, old idea a rehash of previous suggestions. On the contrary they are in tune with the times.
Fourth, everyone of these new programs has been approved by the Governors of the several states. Not one Governor has vetoed a project - Republican and Democratic alike they have said “Yes.” Once again the cynics and skeptics were wrong. This program has not proved to be a political gimmick.
I could go on, citing specific examples - but the point is clear: We must reject all those with little courage and vision and even less faith in Americans who happen to be poor. We must agree that new ideas and programs are needed. We must be willing to experiment with new weapons in this new war.
Ten days ago in Washington we announced another new program called Project Head Start. This one is aimed to help the most innocent victims of poverty - the five and six-year-old children, of the poor.
These children are destined to be poor all their lives unless we do something now. Unless we act most of these children will end up on public welfare or in state hospitals and institutions principally because their homes, their health and their education are grossly substandard.
There’s no guess work about this. The children are alive - about a million of them. They will enter school for the first time this September. They are poor.
Educators tell us these children will start first grade already six months to a year behind children from “normal” homes and families. By third grade they will be one year to 18 months behind, by eighth grade they will be two years behind. At tenth grade, if they get that far, they will drop out of school and into hopeless poverty forever.
Doctors tell us that these children require medical care, desperately. Out of every 100,000 of these children of the poor we are told we can expect to discover; - 500 cases of active tuberculosis, 4,000 cases of partial blindness, 15,000 of eye difficulties and 10,000 of partial deafness.
There will be about 5,000 cases of nutritional anemia “that saps the strength of these children” so they cannot learn, 250 cerebral palsy victims, 2,000 mentally retarded, 15,000 with no immunization for diphtheria or tetanus and 50,000 who have had no booster shots
And there are 14,600 children just like this in West Virginia. None of them is in kindergarten. All of them should be. For them this summer is their last chance to get a “fair start” in life. Deprived and neglected all their lives, they need a “jet assist takeoff” to catch up, even partially, with other youngsters. Thats exactly what “Head Start” will give them.
“Head Start” will give medical evaluations and dental examinations to the poor children.
“Head Start” will inaugurate “schools” for their impoverished parents so they can learn how to care for their children better. Responsible parenthood is essential to a free and democratic society.
“Head Start” will provide guidance and counseling to the families of these poor children.
“Head Start” will be financed 90% by the federal government. But to be truly successful “Head Start” depends on you.
First, “Head Start” will require at least 15,000 volunteers next summer. Here’s a genuine woman-sized job for every college girl and every single woman, and for every talkative and affectionate grandmother in the state of West Virginia. Even wives are eligible.
Second, “Head Start” will require the help of every medical student, every nurse, and every doctor in this state. But unlike “Medicare”, this program has been endorsed by medical associations like the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Third, “Head Start” will require fast action by every school superintendent, public and private, and by all the social welfare agencies in your state.
And finally, it will require 10% matching funds from state or local legislatures, or from private welfare resources.
These requirements reveal the single most essential, American quality of “Head Start”.
“Head Start” relies on local plans, local leadership, local effort, and local management.
No one from Washington is going to operate “Head Start” in West Virginia. You must do that. And no one from Washington is going to force “Head Start” on West Virginia. Your Governor could veto that.
To get going with “Head Start” this legislature must move to appropriate money, Paul Crabtree must energize the West Virginia antipoverty office, local school boards must fill out the application forms, doctors and nurses must volunteer, women’s clubs must mobilize themselves. All of West Virginia “must get on the go.
The only limitations on total success are time (which is short), volunteers (West Virginians may prefer to do nothing ... just hang around the country club, the bridge tables, the garden club, or, the nineteenth hole), and local management or executive ability. These are the limitations. But here is the opportunity:
If you can produce the necessary local ingredients, we can produce the money. Every poor child in all of West Virginia can be covered this summer by project “Head Start”.
That is our pledge to you.
Yet, despite this pledge and the manifest need, we can all forsee, we can even detect in this gathering itself, that these words fall, upon some ears where the reaction is negative. Some men here today are saying to themselves:
“We can’t afford it” (or)
“I earned my own way. Why can’t those poor people do the same” ...
“This project “Head Start” is pure idealism, impractical, utopian”...
“The poor are not really interested in education. They don’t know what they want. They are happy as they are”.
To which I cannot reply -- convincingly -- in my own words – for I have not truly suffered from poverty. But listen to these words spoken just three weeks ago by a poor woman who attended a conference on poverty held in Tucson, Arizona, Mrs Janice Bradshaw of Pueblo, Colorado. Mrs. Bradshaw never graduated from the 8th grade. She is desprately poor. She is a Negro.
She said: "...Poverty is a personal thing.”
Poverty is a personal thing!
Poverty is taking your children to the hospital and spending the whole day waiting there with no one even taking your name – and then coming back the next day, and the next day, until they finally get around to you.
Poverty is having a landlady who is a public health nurse -- who turns off the heat when she leaves for work in the morning and turns it back on at six when she returns. It’s being helpless to do anything about that, because by the time the officials get around to looking into it, she has turned the heat back on for that day and then it will be off the next!
Poverty is having the welfare investigators break in at four o’clock in the morning and cut off your welfare without an explanation and then when you go down and ask, they tell you it is because they found a pair of men’s house slippers in the attic, where your brother left them when he visited last Christmas.
Poverty is having a child with glaucoma and watching that eye condition grow worse every day, while the welfare officials send you to the private agencies, and the private agencies send you back to the welfare, and when you ask the welfare officials to refer you to this special hospital they say they can’t -- and then when you say it is prejudice because you are a Negro, they deny it flatly -- and they shout at you, “Name one white child we have referred there” --and when you name twenty-five, they sit down -- and they shut up -- and they finally refer you, but it is too late then, because your child has permanently lost 80 percent of his vision -- and you are told that if only they had caught it a month earlier, when you first made inquiry about that film over his eyes, they could have preserved his vision....
That’s the voice of the poor!
It speaks to us from Chicago and New York and from Pueblo, Colorado. It speaks to us from Beckley and Parkersburg; and from the hollows adjoining fashionable White Sulphur Springs.
That voice of the poor is calling out for help--- all over this land.
How many of you will turn a deaf ear? How many of you will vote neither “yea” or “nay” - but only “present”?
