Inspired By Abe Ribicoff

When I was a student in high school at the Pomfret School, during my summer vacation between semesters, I was privileged to work on Capitol Hill as an intern doing legislative analysis and handling constituent relations for Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-Conn.). I was thus more readily able during my college years to convince him to speak at the University of Pennsylvania through the lecture bureau I ran called Connaissance. In his Irvine Auditorium speech, the former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare told the audience on March 2, 1970 that "if integration is our goal, let's not slow down in the South. Let's speed up in the North." Ribicoff added: "If segregation is bad in Mississippi, it is bad in Philadelphia." He almost lost his constituency through a speech denouncing the behavior of Mayor Daley during the National Democratic Convention that he called one of the proudest moments in his life. He again touched off a national wave of controversy and debate by supporting a proposal by Sen. John Stennis (D-Miss.) to impose the same federal aid sanctions on Northern segregated schools as well as Southern ones. Ribicoff said "institutional racism is as deeply embedded in the large metropolitan areas of the North as in the small rural communities of the South." He added: "Here in Philadelphia, 68,000 children are in schools that are 99-100 percent black." Ribicoff called for upgrading the skills of the 2 million teachers then in the system. He also advocated pre- school education programs for poor children, improvements in educational techniques, and year-round use of schools. And he proposed schools also be used as neighborhood centers. He also told the audience: “We will not truly integrate our schools until we integrate our society." Ribicoff said that the crisis in the cities requires including the suburbs in any solution. He also answered fears that his stand on school desegregation in the North would allow Southern legislators to delay integration in the South by explaining that no act of Congress could reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling that Southern school districts must desegregate immediately.

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