STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 94304

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS July 17. 1968 Area Code 415
>

321-1200

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Mr. Willian Gorhaw--~ a ' Boho of
Assistant Secretary--~ Ce yp port, A,
Department of Health, Education and Welfare
Washington, D. C.

Dear Bill:

I was absolutely delighted to read in Saturday's newspaper about the estab-
lishment of the Urban Institute, and particularly about your appointment as
its director. Congratulations to you for the opportunity and to the President
for a brilliant selection.

As you would readily guress, I will be following the affairs of the Institute

with the greatest interest and expectation. When you get around to establishing

a public information staff, I hope you can see that I am on a regular mailing

list of the announcements and publications of the Institue to help me keep

track of it.
b

Just like everybody else, I was of course deeply upset by the disorders of the
pastmonth. This reaction may have been accentuated by the fact that Luther
King's assassinatton came upon the eve of my wedding, and my wife and I had to
ponder whether it was better to postpone it or go ahead with w it, as a piece

of constructive symbolism. Our ceremony was in fact followed rather promptly

by a memorial service at the synagogee!

Certainly the validation of techniques to dissipate racial hostility must -be

one of the major research challenges of the Institue. I have been quite troubled ct
what contribution I could make myself to such a question, and if you had been
following my colum the last couple of wekks you may perceive the pattern that

I had sé Steed upon. I had been writing on the prémise that a dispassionate,
objective, and humanistic discussion of race differences might help some people
to look for the people behind the black skins. I realize how old-fashioned this
approach is, but I would guess that the brotherhood of man is something that can
hardly ever be emphasized too much. From a sociological standpoint, howedver,
one could certainly question the efficacy of this approach, and I am not aware
of any empirical evidence one way or the other.

Furthermore, there is a considerable body of opinoin, both black and white,

that supports the concept of black nationalism as a necessary step in emancipation.
For my own part, I am deeply concerned that this movement will almost certainly
overshoot in a very drastic way, playing as it does into the motives of radicals
of all sides, As far as I can see, there has never been a clear confrontation

of thinking about this question, and at least at some levels of analysis it

ought to be on the agenda as a spefit¢ic issue. However, the trend of the
century seems to be to the accentaation of nationalism, rather than the reserse

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
and it is hard to see other than that the world is going throughxxt a stage of
deep trouble about it.

If I may turn to a completely different platform, I am sure that you have been
giving a great deal of thought to the importance of establishing some large-

scale social experiments whose validity can be tested as a basis for nationwide
investment in the rehabilitation of repressed people. I suppose the model cities
program was intended to achieve such a goal, but I am very much afraid that the
efforts will be dissipated in a great many different projects with insufficient
leverage on any one of them to be able to demonstrate the potentials of social
investment in depressed people. For many reasons£ it seems obvious that Wwashington
D.C. ought to be the focus of such experiments, and I hope that your consultants
will be paying some attention to writing a plan and analyzing the possibly achievable
objectives of intense programs of redevdébpment, education and reeducation, etc.

If there has been any system study of this kind of large-acale effort, I hope you
will point it out to me.

With all best wihses.