The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, Digital Edition > My Day
My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt

[This column has emendations. View original version]

      

NEW YORK—The newspaper articles on the Foreign Aid Bill have, as usual, been somewhat confusing. Because one never knows whether money that has been appropriated has been completely spent, or whether funds allocated have ever been appropriated, the figures quoted can be very hard to understand.

I think we all feel that if a sum of foreign aid money granted to a country has not been spent within one fiscal year, that sum should be taken into consideration as part of next year's spending, since it is unlikely that the new appropriations will cover the unfinished part of last year's program and the new plans for the coming year. Therefore, it is natural for Congressional leaders to question whether the money asked for will actually be used.

I am very sure that if the cuts that have been made in the United Nations' funds for all its programs are not restored, many very necessary things cannot possibly be done during the coming year. For instance, the Technical Assistance Program—which is most important to the nations that are just beginning to develop their natural resources—simply cannot be carried on effectively if the requested funds are cut from 49 percent to 33 1/3 percent. It is too great a cut.

I hope that the Democrats in Congress are going to look at this matter with the eyes of statesmen, and with the welfare of the nation and the world in mind, and that they will not be influenced by the normal partisan desire to take advantage of the President's need for Democratic support. He does need it, and to deny it to him is a temptation which the Democrats should resist.

I think it is a disgrace that in Levittown, Pa., 300 people wanted to attack one Negro family that has moved into the home they purchased in a housing project. I am particularly disturbed at newspaper reports that the hostile crowd was largely made up of teen-agers.

The idea that, in the North, one colored family or a group of colored families cannot live quietly in a civilized community of white people is, to me, simply appalling. Yet there seems to be questioning and fear about people's behavior wherever interracial groups try to live.

Such a group, known as the Koinonia Communities, has been settled in Georgia, but because of trouble there, some of them have moved to Hidden Springs, New Jersey, where they have purchased a 129 acre farm at a cost of $37,200. They know that they must not only farm this land, but also must carry on some crafts business, in order to support themselves. One man has already started producing hand-crafted leather goods, but now they are told that this violates some local zoning regulations. Unless they can get these regulations changed, they cannot develop their community in the way they hope to.

I am sorry to see that our state peach crop is very small this year, but I live in an area where much fruit is grown, and I can assure anyone who buys the local peaches that the taste is very good.

E.R.

(Copyright, 1957, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)


Names and Terms Mentioned or Referenced

Geographic
  • New York (N.Y., United States) [ index ]


About this document

My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, August 23, 1957

Roosevelt, Eleanor, 1884-1962
[ ERPP bio | LC | VIAF | WorldCat | DPLA | Wikidata | SNAC ]

Digital edition created by The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project The George Washington University 312 Academic Building 2100 Foxhall Road, NW Washington, DC 20007

  • Brick, Christopher (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Regenhardt, Christy (Associate Editor)
    [ ISNI ]
  • Black, Allida M. (Editor)
    [ VIAF | ISNI ]
  • Binker, Mary Jo (Associate Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]
  • Alhambra, Christopher C. (Electronic Text Editor)
    [ VIAF | ORCID ]

Digital edition published 2008, 2017 by
The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project

Available under licence from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

Published with permission from the Estate of Anna Eleanor Roosevelt.

MEP edition publlished on June 30, 2008.

TEI-P5 edition published on April 28, 2017.

XML master last modified on June 9, 2017.

HTML version generated and published on May 3, 2022.

Transcription created from a photocopy of a UFS wire copy of a My Day column instance archived at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library.
TMs, AERP, FDRL