When I listened to your reports from St. Louis, I thought to myself "wouldn't it be interesting if he crossed the river"--but that would never happen because St. Louis all but ignores and looks down on its brother across the river. So I was stunned, pleasantly so, when I heard your report today. Between graduate school and law school, I taught junior high school in E. St Louis for three years. This was 1968 -1971. I hadn't been back until last year, and I was shocked at how much worse it had become, and when I was there, it was bad. Still, I have to say that those three years were the most rewarding times I have ever had. And the hardest. I thought going in that I had some idea of what I would experience, having come from Detroit. But nothing would have prepared me for how society could totally neglect and abandon an entire city, an entire people--and the effect it would have: these kids didn't know what state they lived in, half had no running water. When the whites fled, the place just imploded. Back then, it was known as the armpit of St. Louis, and whenever people from the area learn of my experience there, they are shocked that I survived. I really write only to say that these were the kindest, warmest, most generous people I have ever known, and they had nothing.

Your report focused on the employment differential, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg. These folks have been neglected so long, and left to themselves for so long, that they are totally outside the mainstream of American life. None of the Federal programs of the last thirty years made a dent.

So thank you for your report. Maybe something will come of it, but I rather suspect that it will be left to die a very slow painful death.