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Ford Foundation Annual Report 1966







Logue, coordinator of housing and redevelopment in Boston. An analysis of agencies working on welfare, youth, community action, and job training was made by Mitchell Sviridoff, head of the New Haven antipoverty program, one of the pre-Federal efforts the Foundation helped establish; following adoption of his report, he was named head of New York's new Human Resources Administration.

Another early Foundation-supported program, Action for Boston Community Development, was granted an additional $1,245,000, particularly for employment and other manpower programs and for neighborhood centers to help residents with social, legal, and economic problems. In strife-torn Watts and adjoining racial ghettoes of Los Angeles, the Foundation made grants totaling $650,000 for a program to train unemployed residents in jobs with a future. (The McCone Commission study of Watts, which the Foundation helped finance the year before, had indicted unemployment as one of the roots of Negro frustration.) Conducted by Opportunities Industrialization Center, a Negro-operated organization that develops skills and working habits, the program receives equipment and training and placement services from the Management Council for Merit Employment, Training and Research, an employer group, and from a local association of training directors in large plants.

In another scene of racial rioting, Cleveland, where several local foundations in 1961 organized to coordinate efforts to solve community problems with the aid of Foundation support, $1,250,000 was granted for five more years, with emphasis on research and action in housing, race relations, delinquency, police training, and community leadership.

The Foundation commissioned a report by the Columbia University School of Social Work on ways to bring citizens closer to the information and services they need in the welter of government and private programs in today's large cities. Proposing neighborhood information centers that would be as free of stigma as the post office, the report stimulated widespread discussion.

Race Relations

The Southern Regional Council, one of the most experienced interracial agencies working to eliminate discrimination and strengthen intergroup relations, received grants totaling $1,272,000 to assist antipoverty and economic-development efforts and to strengthen human-relations councils in eleven southern states. The funds will be used for additional staff; to monitor the effectiveness of Federal and state programs in education, employment, health, and housing; and to assist Negro and other groups working on community organization, credit unions, agricultural cooperatives, legal rights, and voter registration.

Brandeis University received $170,000 for a survey of white and Negro attitudes toward racial violence. The survey, carried out in cities where outbreaks occurred in 1966 and in others which remained quiet, is expected to be of value to scholars and community groups.

In further support of a major study of the nation's Mexican-American community, the Foundation granted $198,000 to the University of California (Los Angeles).

Housing

As Congress debated laws to remove racial barriers to housing, the Foundation assisted programs aimed at improved access and availability of better housing for Negroes and other minority groups. The National Urban League received a $1.5 million grant for pilot projects in up to eight cities. In storefront offices in slum areas, families will receive help in improving their housing or moving into better neighborhoods. The League will also work with fair-housing groups, real estate interests, and churches to expand the housing supply and to prevent the flight of white families as neighborhoods become integrated. The National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing, a coordinating body of forty-one