University of Virginia Library

King Scholarship Aided

Mr. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Chairman

Committee on Educational Opportunity

530 Cabell Hall

University of Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Dear Mr. Hirsch:

As you know, a small personal contribution
has been the only response I have been in a
position to make in your memorandum of 24
April 1968, to provide financial aid to deserving
University of Virginia students of all races
from culturally deprived backgrounds. I hope
that the fund-raising campaign is going well
and that contributions to it will come from a very
broad base of giving by a large number of
students and faculty.

I am pleased to write to you now to inform
you concerning incentive or "seed" money from
the University, which I trust will have the effect
of stimulating the general personal giving throughout
the University family for which we all hope.

The suggestion for "seed" money came first
from Mr. Robert E. Yuhnke and his fellow officers
of the Martin Luther King Chapter, Virginia
Council on Human Relations, in a letter
to me on 29 April. A few days later on 6 May
your Committee gave me helpful assurances, in a
letter over the signature of Mr. D. Alan Williams,
that the University's Committee on Scholarships
would be free to make awards from the
Martin Luther King Memorial Fund on a nondiscriminatory
basis. The Student Council gave
strong endorsement to the seed fund proposal
in a resolution adopted on 7 May. At that time,
however, as I wrote the Student Council, there
were no uncommitted monies that could be allocated.

It is a pleasure now to be able to give you
assurances that, by reason of monies subsequently
received, for every dollar contributed to the Martin
Luther King Memorial Fund by individual students
and faculty members, the University will
provide to the University Committee on Scholarships
additional funds in the same amount and
for the same purpose up to a maximum University
contribution of five thousand dollars
($5,000).

This means that every dollar from an individual
University donor will be doubled. Moreover, it is
anticipated that the availability of the resulting
local fund will result in additional matching Federal
funds under the Educational Opportunity program.

In accord with the permission that you have
just now courteously given me by telephone, I
am giving copies of this letter to The Cavalier
Daily and other news media at the same time
that it is being put in the mail for you. I do this
in hope that in this way we may receive some
favorable support now for the worthy project
that your Committee has launched. I think it will
be especially beneficial to the King Memorial
Fund to have such notice now, before students
and faculty scatter for the summer, and while
the tragedy of Martin Luther King and the
principles of justice and fairness to which he gave-himself
are so close to all of us.