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Statement for D.C. Blacks Visiting Shriver Family Home. 2 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Other Document], 9/9/1972
Statement by Floyd McKissick. 3 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Other Document], 9/1/1972
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WHSF: Contested, 48-21
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WHSF: Contested, 48-21
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This file contains:
Statement for D.C. Blacks Visiting Shriver Family Home. 2 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Other Document], 9/9/1972
Statement by Floyd McKissick. 3 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Other Document], 9/1/1972
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Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
Contested Materials Collection
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48
21
9/9/1972
Campaign
Other Document
Statement for D.C. Blacks Visiting Shriver
Family Home. 2 pgs.
48
21
9/1/1972
Campaign
Other Document
Statement by Floyd McKissick. 3 pgs.
Wednesday, June 03, 2015
Page 1 of 1
September 9, 1972
STATEMENT FOR D.C. BLACKS VISITING SHRIVER FAMILY HOME
We came here to visit the Shriver family home today to take
a first hand look at Sargent Shriver's commitment to racial
equality. What we have discovered should be of great interest
to black people across this country.
It turns out that Mr. Shriver comes from a family of
slaveholders in Maryland whose success in America came from
the forced labor of black slaves. We first read about this in the
Washington Post, but we had to see it to believe it. The Post
said of Mr. Shriver's ancestors: "It was a life of luxury, for the
Shrivers, if not American aristocrats, were country gentlemen
and ladies. 11
One of the things here we saw at the Shriver home was the
kitchen, and in that kitchen are a series of bells that were used to
summon the slaves and indentured servants. Also of great interest
on our sightseeing trip was one of the mementos on the walls. There
is a handbill printed in 1809 by David Shriver which offered the
sum of $30 for the return of a runaway slave.
What concerns us most is the fact that Mr. Shriver is apparently
proud of his slaveholding ancestry. Mr. Shriver visited the deep
South on August 23 and speaking in Louisiana, Sargent Shriver boasted
Page 2
that of eight forebears of military age during the Civil War,
six had served on Dixie's side and two had stayed home. And
here are Mr. Shriver's own words: "but none of them fought on
the other side (meaning the North). "
Now, we just put two and two together. Shriver goes to the
South and brags about his ancestors who fought against freedom
for blacks and then we come here to his family home and find that
there is ample evidence of his slaveholding past. And today, of
course, Mr. Shriver himself lives an aristocratic life, and we
only wonder whether he is proud that his wealth today was the
direct product of the sweat and toil of slaves against whose
freedom he proudly notes his family fought against.
STATEMENT BY FLOYD MCKISSICK
September 1, 1972
Tuesday, August 29, should have been a Day of Revelation for the
hundres of thousands of black people who put their fiath in the candidacy
of George McGovern.
On that day, under political pressure, Mr. McGovern -- the so-called
Paririe Radical of the primaries -- marched off, hat-in-hand, to New
York to make his peace with Wall Street. To soothe Wall Street, to save
the old plantation, McGovern sold his balck supporters down the river.
The $6500 guaranteed annual income, for which George Wiley and
the National Welfare Rights Organization have fought for years is also
the center piece of the Black Caucus' program in the Congress. Before
the convention, McGovern had introduced it into the Senate with the cry
'$6500 or Fight;" he had embraced it by endorsing "in toto" the Black
Caucus program; he has endorsed it again when he supported the
resolutions of the Gary Convention. But that was in the primaries, when
McGovern desperately needed black votes.
Last Tuesday, Mr. McGovern decided his own black supporters were
in the bag; that they "had nowhere else to go." So the Great White Hope
of Brothers Fauntroy, Clay and Wiley went to New York -- and to the
applause of the Wall Street Fat Cats chopped $2500 out of the guaranteed
income he had committed himself to in the Black Caucus program, and
on the floor of the Senate.
-2-
Why are Brothers Clay, Fauntroy and Wiley so silent now? Is it
because their $6500 program was jettisoned for the applause of Wall
Street bankers? Is it because their Great White Hope who promised tax
reform to hlep the poor promised the Wall Street fat cats he would make
Mr. Loophold himself, Wilbur Mills, Secretary of the Treasury in a
McGovern Administration?
Is it because McGovern -- who said he was more pro-civil rights
than Kennedy or Humphrey or Johnson -- promised the top financial
job in the U.S. Cabinet to a Congressman whose voting record is
indistinguishable from that of Jim Eastland? Why are Brothers Fauntroy,
Wiley and Clay so silent now?
The answer is because their presidential candidate sold them down the
river for a pat on the head from Big Business.
And where is their Vice Presidential candidate? Last week, Shriver
was down in Louisiana telling a white audience he was proud that all of
his slave-holding ancestors had fought with the Slave States and proud
that none of them had fought with the Union. If Brothers Clay and Fauntroy
and Wiley are a little sheepish today, well, that's understandable.
But they've got a plate of crow and humble pie to eat this morning.
Black Americans who believe in jobs rather than welfare; who want
a piece of the action, not a part of the dole, who want a political leader,
who does not primise more than he can deliver, do have somewhere to go.
-3-
They can get off the ditched bandwagon of George McGovern and get
behind the New Majority of the President of the United States, Richa rd
Nixon.