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one city after another went up in flames. And all of a sudden everybody in the U.S. was saying, “What are we going to do about this?” This is a terrible situation and here we are getting the National Guard out shooting blacks. I don't know how old you were then, but you remember it was a rather terrifying situation. It was close to civil warfare. And it wasn't limited to New York, or Detroit. It was Watts, it was every city and it was essentially blacks trying to break out of their poverty ghetto.

Being at Urban America and being the head of it everybody urged me to mount an effort to mobilize the American system, American structure, into doing something that would, A: calm the county, and B: give hope to these people. We had been having meetings. We, Urban America, had been having meetings with mayors to discuss the problems of their cities. But when everything blew up our staff urged me to take the lead in making a national gesture.

[End of side two, tape one.]

[Side one, tape two.]

Today is March Ninth 1987, this Jessica Holland with Andrew Heiskell. Go ahead.

Urban America, I think, at that point had a budget of, around seven, or eight hundred thousand dollars,