The Cavalier daily :: Tuesday, February 24, 1970 :: University of Virginia Library

"We black people must become partners
at the held of the national economy
and not continue just in menial roles, for
in the final analysis black men will be
respected only in proportion to what
they produce to strengthen the nation.

"No one wants a beggar in his living
room...I have no intention of tearing
America down, but I want to build
America up."

Reverend Leon H. Sullivan, the speaker of
these words, is coming to Charlottesville Wednesday,
February 25.

Sponsored by the Graduate School of Business
Administration, Mr. Sullivan will speak at a
Conference on Jobs and Training. The purpose
of the conference is to focus attention on
problems of economic development in the
United States from the viewpoint of the poor
and to discuss various solutions to these problems.

Negro Self-Help

Mr. Sullivan, founder and Chairman of the
Board of Opportunities Industrialization Center
(OIC), is considered by some to be the nation's
most effective spokesman for Negro self-help in
developing job and training opportunities in
U.S. industry.

The program formulated by Mr. Sullivan has
created 50,000 jobs, working through OIC's in
more than 90 cities throughout the country.

One objective of the program is to develop
the "whole man" by encouraging an awareness
of man's relationships and responsibilities to
other members of his community.

Another objective of the OIC program is to
train or retrain people with untapped talents
and unknown skills, who are unemployed and
under-employed. Associated with this goal is
the fostering of a sense of increased economic
security among the trainees.

Mr. Sullivan, according to the OIC newsletter,
is "no militant, no apostle of violence
and hatred toward the whites." Rather, he is an
activist.

Mr. Sullivan's career has long been connected
with the poor. In 1950, he became
pastor of Zion Baptist Church in a North
Philadelphia community where the concentration
of black people was to become greater
than in Harlem.

Juvenile Delinquency

One of Mr. Sullivan's early efforts was to
organize a Citizen's Committee against juvenile
delinquency and its causes.

Later, he was responsible for setting up a
Youth Employment Center which succeeded in
finding approximately 1000 jobs a year for
Negro youths.

Realizing that Negro ministers exert considerable
influence in the Philadelphia community,
Mr. Sullivan persuaded 400 of them to
join in the Selective Patronage Program. In
reality, it was known as a succession of business
boycotts.

Under this program, ministers visited corporations
known to be deficient in the employment
of Negroes and they asked for the hiring
of Negroes in available jobs. If the delegation
was rejected, congregations were advised not to
patronize these particular firms.

2000 Jobs

The program was successful, opening up
more than 2000 skilled jobs to black workers.

Realizing that jobs were available but only
to the skilled, Mr. Sullivan established the
Opportunities Industrialization Center, devised
to train youths for skilled jobs.

Thomas Wolfe stated the OIC philosophy
when he wrote: "To every man his chance - to
every man regardless of his birth, his shining,
golden opportunity. To every man the right to
live, to work, to be himself, and to become
whatever thing his manhood and his vision can
combine to make of him. This is the promise of
America."

The Conference on Jobs and Training will be
held in Newcomb Hall Ballroom beginning at
1:00 p.m. Students and professors, employers
and those seeking employment and representatives
of business and government, will makeup
the audience.

After Mr. Sullivan's address, the audience
will be divided into smaller workshop groups.