James Nabrit, Vice-President Stewart Nelson, my very good friend, Sam Yette, members of the freshman class, and then all of you older people who are here today: I guess the best thing to do would be to declare a recess and go out and sit alongside that lake out there, and just take it easy at this point, because we do have a beautiful day. But I’m afraid that I’d lose some of you if we went out of the building, and I don’t want to lose any of you—not even for a few minutes. I consider this a great opportunity to come here to Howard University, and to have the chance to speak to all of you informally, and then to answer some questions you might have about the Peace Corps.
I consider it a great opportunity because we in the Peace Corps have had, I think, an unequalled record of bringing into the peace Corps — both as Volunteers and staff members — persons from minority groups within the society of the United States. I’m very glad that Dr. Nabrit mentioned (in his introduction) the question of segregation in the Chicago public schools. When I was President of the Board of Education, there I was one vote out of 11. There were 11 members on that Board of Education. But as Director of the Peace Corps, my vote counts a little bit more heavily than all the other votes. I can get some of the things done that I like to do myself.
And I’m happy to report to this group that the Peace Corps has got more members of minority groups working in staff jobs in Washington at higher levels than any agency in the history of the United States government. Lots of people talk about what they’re going to do in the future about civil rights in this country, or that they’re going to get into some struggle; but I’d like to affirm to you that the Peace Corps has been in this struggle ever since we opened our doors.
Twenty-five per cent of all the employees of the Peace Corps are members of minority groups—a large portion of them Negro Americans. We refused very early in the game to make a contract with any institution which had any form of discrimination in any of its facilities, even when such restrictions were not imposed upon trainees whom we would send to the institution.
We have sent white men to black men’s countries in Africa. We’ve sent Jews to Moslem countries. We’ve sent Protestants to Catholic countries. We’ve sent Christians to Moslem countries. We were told at the beginning that this couldn’t be done, that if you sent Protestant Americans to work in some of the small towns of rural South America where the Catholics were very strong and very anti-Protestant that they would throw the Volunteers out, that the priests in those towns would say that the Volunteers who were Protestants were such bad people that if you talked to them you would commit a sin. We were told these things. I had a distinguished member of the Senate tell me that if we insisted on sending Jewish people to Moslem countries we would never get an invitation from such a country. The truth is that we’re working in four or five Moslem countries. There are Jewish Peace Corps Volunteers in every contingent we have sent to those countries. We’ve never had an incident in any of them.
We’ve done the same thing in South America. We have Protestant American Volunteers working all over South America, and in rural villages very closely dominated perhaps by a priest—and yet our Volunteers have had no trouble.
We were also told that we couldn’t get qualified Negroes to do certain types of work abroad. They didn’t exist, we were told. But we took the position that the reason they didn’t show up was because they never were sought. People sat in business and government offices waiting for persons to come in to apply for jobs, when, in fact, those persons representative of minority races knew there wasn’t a chance for them to get a job. So instead of just sitting there and waiting, we went out and actively sought minority group members to work with the Peace Corps.
The result of that is that 25 per cent of our staff is composed of minority group members. They’re not all just down on the lower levels of the Peace Corps either. The Peace Corps is divided into four regions: a Latin America region, an Africa region, Middle East, and Far East. The men in charge of those regions operate the entire Peace Corps in those regions. Two of the four persons running those regions for the Peace Corps are Negro Americans.
Dr. Sam Proctor, the President of North Carolina A&T College in Greensboro, has worked with us for 18 months. Then he went back to his job as President of N.C. A&T. But in the last few weeks he’s decided to come back with the Peace Corps. He’s going to be one of our five Associate Directors — those five highest officials in the Peace Corps.
Maurice Bean, a graduate of this University, is a Deputy Director of the Far East for the Peace Corps. Dr. Gregory Newton, the former Basileus of Omega Psi Phi fraternity, is one of our senior training Officers, and so is Dr. Marie Gadsden in the same department. We’ve got people running the Peace Corps in African countries, and I can remember very well when we started that I was given a lot of expert advice that this was not good.
The argument ran something like this: “Americans treat the Negro Americans as if they were second class citizens here in the United States, so if you, as a government agency, send a Negro American to run a program in an African country, the Africans will take that as an insult. They will say you can’t think very much of us if you send here to run a program a citizen whom you at home consider to be a second class citizen.”
And frankly, I said to myself, “nuts!” I said that I didn’t believe anybody thinks that way. And so we set out to find qualified people—I didn’t care what race or color they were to run our programs in Africa, Asia and South America. And Negro Americans were in charge of three of the first five programs we opened in Africa. We’ve never had any trouble at all. We’ve never had anybody in any African nations say that these men were not qualified.
And let me repeat to you that those were the first Negro Americans ever to hold such jobs for the United States government. Today, a Negro American is running the Peace Corps in Liberia, Nyasaland, Ghana, Togo, British Honduras and Tran. Also, the Deputy Director of the program in Nigeria is a Negro American, and we have Negro American staff members on every continent, in every country. That didn’t just happen. It happened because we had a program of action; that’s what the Peace Corps believes in, and that’s what we stand for: an action program that represents, I hope, the best of America—the dreams and, ideals of American society.
I think that we cannot only do this within the Peace Corps, but we can do it within American business; we can do it with respect to housing, and job opportunities in this country. I was very much pleased when just a few days ago, a group of Peace Corps staff members downtown took annual leave from their jobs at our headquarters and went out and picketed a real estate firm right here in Washington, D. C. which had refused to give a lease to a returning Peace Corps Volunteer. A fellow had done excellent work as a PCV overseas for two years on behalf of his country. But the real estate firm refused a lease to him because he was a Negro American. And our employees at the headquarters took annual leave and went out and picketed that landlord and that ex-Peace Corps Volunteer will get that apartment.
Now that’s what we think about race relations in the United States, and that’s the way we run them within the Peace Corps. If we had never done anything other than just that, I would say that the Peace Corps had justified its existence. But for those of you who are thinking perhaps about-service in the Peace Corps, I think there are other things that you could consider about this organization.
First of all, the Peace Corps is doing exactly what we said we would do. Now, you may say that’s nothing very unusual; but allow me to assure you that in government that is unusual. We said at the beginning that we would send American Volunteers overseas at a specific cost, that they would live in local housing, that they would eat local food, that they would live under the local laws without diplomatic privileges and immunities, that they would speak the local languages, and use the local transportation, and they would not have to patronize the PX, and get duty-free liquor, and duty-free cigarettes — and everybody laughed. I can remember the famous newspaper called The Times of India stating at that time that this was a ridiculous thought - that young Americans would never do such a thing; that they couldn’t get along without air-conditioning and television, and hamburgers and bobby sox, and bobby pins, and-other “extras.”
Today, these Americans—of all races and creeds, incidentally—are living in 47 countries, and they’re living at the village’s level. They’re working there, and so far, they have performed as well,or even better than we ever expected. I don’t know whether it’s because of these reasons, or because we’re doing it very inexpensively—at the cost that we said we would do it — that the Peace Corps is alleged to be the only agency in the U. S. government which enjoys the combined simultaneous support of Hubert H. Humphrey and Barry Goldwater. But we’re grateful for the support of both those men, and not long ago Billy Graham endorsed the Peace Corps, and we’re for that, too. We all know whose side he’s on, and we want to be on that side too.
At the beginning of the Peace Corps it was stated that this would be some sort of a Democratic partisan politics-type of an operation. But I’m happy to report to you that we have three Saltonstalls in the Peace Corps. We have had—we don’t have right now—but we did have a Rockefeller in the Peace Corps, and he hasn’t left for political reasons either. We even have the grandson of the late Senator Robert A. Taft working with us out in Tanganyika.
Now we’ve got all these distinguished Republican names, and I want you to know that, we also have some room in the Peace Corps for people named Hernandez, and Mankiewicz, and Sonski. And we even have room for a few Irishmen like O’Brien in the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps, as I said before, has done what it said it would do. There are no barriers on race, creed, or color; there are no barriers on religion. And because of this we have an open society which has attracted Americans of all classes.
A second thing about the Peace Corps you might remember is the fact that it is competent—that is, the Peace Corps Volunteers have proved to be competent. Now again, when we started the Peace Corps, people said you can’t possibly send American kids overseas to do jobs that experts have failed to accomplish. It was a ludicrous idea to send people like you. It was stated that you didn’t have either the moral courage or the physical stamina, or the intelligence—they had a very high opinion of you. You had none of these things which were required for these jobs. They predicted, in fact, that when you got over there you’d cause more trouble than you were worth; you’d prove to be incompetent in the work; the American diplomats would be in the throes of despair because of all the problems you would cause, and foreign governments would be sending you home.
The truth of the matter is that after three years of operation we have yet to have any foreign government declare even one Peace Corps volunteer to be incompetent for the job he was sent over there to do —- whether he was sent over there to be a school teacher, or lawyer, social worker, an architect or a Volunteer working in educational television — not one has been declared incompetent.
And they’ve done all these jobs that I have just mentioned. In addition, we have over 300 university teachers overseas, teaching in Africa, in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. These are difficult jobs, requiring high levels of competence, and those Volunteer teachers have done very well with them.
Now we’ve had some unusual jobs too. For example, one country asked us to send a person to operate a tire re-capping machine. I thought that was a rather odd request—I wondered why they needed somebody to do that, but then I found out that the United States had given them the tire re-capping machine. Now you might say it’s not too hard to get a person to run a tire re-capping machine—there are probably a thousand of them right here in Washington. But if you try to find a fellow to run a tire re-capping machine—who also can speak Farsi-that’s difficult. Well, we’ve got that fellow—he’s out in Afghanistan, and he’s running that tire re-capping machine, and he speaks Farsi quite well. I saw him out there just about two or three weeks ago.
We were asked to send English teachers to Togo, because Togo, having been formerly a French colony, used French as the official language. Yet, the government people there, and others, were very much interested in learning English so they could communicate more easily with the Nigerians and the Ghanians, and so on. So we sent English teachers out there to teach in the schools. Little did we realize that when one of the girls in this group—a 26-year old Negro American, incidentally—went out there, that shortly after she arrived, about a year later, there would be a coup d’etat. President Olympio was killed. A new president—named Grunitzky—came to power. About two or three months after President Grunitsky came to power, he called on the Peace Corps and asked us to send somebody who could teach him English. And this young, 26-year old Negro American girl now goes three or four days a week to the Presidential Palace of the President of Togo, and gives English instructions. That requires a certain degree of competence! She had it. As a result, we’re not only giving English instruction to him, but to other members of his family, and to other members of his Cabinet.
Another thing about the Peace Corps Volunteers that might interest you is that they’re popular. I remember when we started the Peace Corps, the slogan “Yankee Go Home” was the most prevalent slogan in the underdeveloped world. And the theory was—at least in some people—that we had too many Americans overseas. They were over there causing us a lot of bad publicity, and creating a bad impression, and the objective was to bring as many of them home as possible. So it was a great idea when we decided we’d try to send 10,000 more overseas. Everyone threw up his hands at that prospect.
But it was about two years ago—I mean it was two years after we started—that I was in Thailand. I had the honor of calling on the Prime Minister at that time, whose name was Sarit. And afterward, the Bangkok World had a streamer headline on an inside page. It said, “Send Us More Peace Corps Volunteers,” and it was signed “Sarit.”
In every nation to which the Peace Corps has gone, almost without exception, the government and the people of those countries have asked us to double or triple or quadruple, or quintuple the number of Volunteers we sent out there to begin with. These Volunteers have proved to be popular. As an example of what’s happened, I’ll just cite Afghanistan, where I was visiting just three weeks ago. We sent nine Volunteers there to start our program. That was the smallest contingent we’ve ever sent to any country — nine. About a year later they asked us to send 30 more, and then they asked us to send still 30 more, so that by the time I got to Afghanistan, there were about 68 Peace Corps Volunteers in that country.
Afghanistan has had a long, long history of being conquered and laid waste by one invader after another; and they’re very suspicious of foreigners. It doesn’t make any difference what country the foreigners come from—they don’t like them. While I was there, the Cabinet of Afghanistan had a meeting, and for the first time in contemporary history of that country, they granted to one organization the right to work all over Afghanistan, in the small villages, as, well as in the large cities and in the capital. And the organization which got that unique privilege was the Peace Corps. And as I left that country, I was handed a letter requesting us to supply 220 additional Volunteers to Afghanistan, a country where we started with nine just two years ago.
In the Philippines, there’s an award named after the famous President of the Philippines, Magsaysay. The Magsaysay Award is known in some quarters as the Nobel Prize of Asia. It’s a nongovernmental award, given by a distinguished board of directors, all of them Asians. Last September, for the first time in the history of that award, the award was bestowed upon a group of non-Asians, a group of Westerners—and that group was the Peace Corps Volunteers working in Asia. And with the award came a $10,000 check in recognition of the contribution made by these Peace Corps Volunteers working in 14 different Asian nations.
I’ll never forget a picture I got about a year and a half after the Peace Corps got started. It was a picture from Ghana. It was a picture of a fellow named Michael Shea, a Peace Corps Volunteer who was teaching in a high school in Ghana. As an extra-curricular activity, Mike Shea coached the soccer team, and the soccer team at his school won the high school championship of Ghana. I received a picture of the team showing the students carrying Mike Shea off the field in jubilation on their shoulders. And I said to myself, “I wonder how many white men are being carried around in jubilation on the shoulders of Africans today?” I think you’ll agree with me, there are very few. But this Peace Corps Volunteer was being acclaimed in that way—another sign of what I mean when I say they are popular.
Now, just in the last few months, another extraordinary thing has happened. The country of Panama severed relations with the United States of America. There are some 50 Peace Corps Volunteers in Panama, but the Panamanian government has never even hinted at the suggestion that maybe the Peace Corps Volunteers should be thrown out of Panama because they had broken relations with our country. In fact, it’s just the opposite—they want more Peace Corps Volunteers.
We, the United States, suspended diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic about six or seven months ago. But there was never any suggestion at that time that the Peace Corps Volunteers—190 of them—be brought out of the Dominican Republic. They stayed there all during the period when diplomatic relations were suspended, and in fact, the Dominican Republic asked us for more Volunteers.
In West Africa, in Ghana, the newspapers attack the Peace Corps about once a month, and use rather violent language at times. Lots of people back home here get very excited about this. One of the things they don’t realize is that I think there are 9-10 million people in Ghana, and the circulation of the largest newspaper is something less than 40,000 Nevertheless, we get very excited—some people do back here—about that. And, yet, when the attacks on the Peace Corps sometimes are at their height in the newspapers, the government of Ghana asks us to send more Peace Corps, Volunteers. A rather interesting example of that was two years ago when President Nkrumah went to Moscow to receive the Lenin Peace Prize. He received the Lenin Peace Prize, and made a big trip to Red China, then came back to Ghana and asked us to double the size of the Peace Corps.
So I think you have to look upon the Peace Corps as something a little bit different than a part of a governmental operation, or as something which is part of any cold war, or colonialistic operation or imperialism. It’s not any of those things, and these actions which I have just cited to you indicate the fact that not only in our own country, but all around the world, the Peace Corps is looked upon as something different.
But these things about the Peace Corps and the Volunteers in it perhaps are of some interest to you. But some of you may be saying to yourself, “Are two years in the Peace Corps going to be a waste of time for me? Is it going to be an interruption in my career, let’s say, planning to be a teacher, or lawyer, or a doctor, or social worker, or pharmacist? Will I get behind the competition, if I’m a man?” Or, sometimes, the girls think that all the guys will be married if they go overseas and come back two years hence.
On that point I might mention that we’ve had quite a few marriages in the Peace Corps—something like 300 now. Consider the Howard co-ed who dates a certain fellow on campus tonight—how much does she really know about that fellow? He may be a friend of the family, but she doesn’t know as much about him as she would if he were a Volunteer. If you’re in the Peace Corps, and you see another Volunteer—think what you know about him.
In the first place, you know that he’s got some intellectual capacity — otherwise he wouldn’t have got through the training and be able to learn the foreign language and so on. Second, you know that he’s physically O.K. He’s been all checked out by the doctors. Third, you know he’s gone through a lot of psychological testing—so this fellow is not a nut. He may act in a strange way, but even the doctors say that he’s been psychiatrically tested, so he’s in pretty good shape there. And even under extreme circumstances, you can know that this fellow has even been cleared by the FBI. Now how many times can you go out on a date here at home, and know all that?
Well, that was sort of parenthetical—excuse me. I was going to talk; for just a second about the fact that the Peace Corps should not be looked upon as an interruption in your career. In fact, it should, I think, be looked upon as a continuation of whatever academic work you’re doing. Now here’s the reason why I think so: In the first place, out of 545 Peace Corps Volunteers who came home, up until December 31st, about 50 per cent of them have gone on with their education in the United States. They’ve earned over $200,000 in scholarships and prizes. They’re studying at a whole variety of American universities. They’re doing graduate work, undergraduate work, and most of them—as I say—have gotten fellowships for this. So they have got a continuing educational career.
These are jobs and scholarships and opportunities which would not have been opened to these Volunteers if they had not gone into the Peace Corps. It explains why the Dean of Harvard College says that two years in the Peace Corps is more valuable than a Rhodes scholarship. He says that because — at least he told me because of the fact that if you go to Oxford or Cambridge, after having spent an undergraduate career here at Howard, for example, and you go over to Oxford and Cambridge, there’s very little difference. You’re still getting lectured at by people speaking English. Well, they may speak with a slightly difference accent; that’s true. They may give-you a slightly different interpretation of the American Revolution. But, basically, you’re in the same culture.
But if you go as a Peace Corps Volunteer and teach on the faculty let’s say, of a school in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, Uganda, or Togo; or go down to South America in a Latin American culture; if you go out to India, or Thailand, Indonesia for the first time in your life you may have the experience of living in a different culture all day long every day. You would have a chance to begin to look on yourself objectively for the first time—to begin to inquire why you do the things you do, why you think the thoughts you think, why you have the conclusions or attitudes that you have.
It’s been said, at least once, I know, by a famous man, that: if you know only one language, you don’t even know that one language well. Perhaps it’s true that if you know only one culture, you don’t know that culture well. The Peace Corps gives you that kind of experience, and a Rhodes scholarship cannot, and that’s why the Dean of Harvard stated that two years in the Peace Corps are more valuable than a Rhodes scholarship.
Well, I could go on talking to you about the values of service in the Peace Corps, but it would be a disservice to the Volunteers if I over emphasized the selfish values to you. The Peace Corps has not been based on that kind of selfish attitude, and it does not explain the great spirit which the Volunteers have. The true nature of the Peace Corps is better illustrated, I think, by two boys who were the first two to die—the first two to lose their lives abroad. They were killed in an airplane accident in Colombia. One of them was a fellow named David Crozier from Missouri, and the other was a fellow named Lawrence Radley from Chicago. Just before he died, David Crozier wrote a letter to his parents, and they wrote me a letter after he was dead, quoting from David’s letter, His parents quoted this sentence from their son—their son said to them: “If it should come to it, I would rather give my life, trying to help these people, than to have to give my life looking down a gun barrel at them.” And his parents put a postscript on that letter, and said, “We are not sorry that our son David joined the Peace Corps and went to Colombia.”
Now, this spirit of voluntary sacrifice which that family had and the attitude of that boy, exemplify the Peace Corps. And I’ll never forget—it was about four or five months ago, when the Selection Division of the Peace Corps put a slip of paper on my desk, and it stated that David Crozier’s sister had joined the Peace Corps and was going to South America. Once again, the spirit of that family exemplified the spirit of the Peace Corps.
And the boy who was killed with him from Chicago—Lawrence, his parents were terribly grieved, as all parents would be by that accident. But they did not stop Lawrence Radley’s sister when she joined the Peace Corps, and she’s now overseas, and that again exemplifies the spirit of the Peace Corps. When these two boys were killed in Colombia, South America, there was an editorial in the local paper there and it called attention to the fact that the first two Peace Corps Volunteers killed overseas were a Baptist boy from Missouri—David Crozier—and a Jewish Boy from Chicago—Lawrence Radley. And they were killed working in what’s called a Catholic country in Latin America.
We had a conference in Puerto Rico about a year ago, and on the last night the great cellist, Pablo Casals, came. It was quite late. He couldn’t stand up at the podium to speak because he was very elderly and had been working hard all day. So we put the microphone in front of him at the dinner table, and Pablo Casals said: “The Peace Corps, is new; it is also very old. We have in a sense come full circle. We have come from the tyranny of the enormous, awesome discordant machine, back to a realization that the beginning and the end are man, that it is man who is important, not the machine; that it is, man who accounts for growth, not just dollars or factories. And above all, that it is man who is the object of all of our efforts.”
That really is the Peace Corps—thank you.
Well, Dr., Nabrit has given me permission to come back up here and try to answer your questions, if there are some—from the podium, and I really would be happy if any of you here, including our students from abroad, if they have any questions about the Peace Corps, I’d be glad to try to answer them. Yes?
QUESTION: Are you placing Negroes to get around opposition in Africa?
If I understood the question correctly, it was sort of a barbed question. The idea was this—is the fact that we are placing Negroes at the head of Peace Corps operations in various countries, and he mentioned some in Africa—is this a way of getting around opposition in Africa? Is this a way of getting around them—tricking them, you mean—tricking them? The answer obviously is no. The answer—the reason why I mentioned that fact was not for the purpose that you imply, but merely to show, first of all, that there are many American Negroes who are qualified to run operations of this type all around the world. Second, we don’t have them just in Africa, we-have them in a variety of countries, both in Latin America and the Middle East, the Far East, and so on. So we’re not trying to trick the Filipinos, let’s say, by having Negro Americans in positions of high importance on the staff in the Philippines. What we are trying to do is to give equal opportunity to equally qualified Americans, irrespective of race. And what happens when you do that is the results that I’ve just told you.
QUESTION: May persons serve more than two years in the Peace Corps?
And the answer is “yes.” We have a — at the beginning we didn’t permit that, but about six months ago we changed our policy, and we now have two ways in which you can continue. Number one, you can continue on for another year, right in the same country where you’re working. If you volunteer to do so. So you could spend three years in one country. On the other hand, you can spend two years in a country, come home to the United States and then go to another country if you want, after going through training, of course, for the other country.
QUESTION: Possibility of Americans getting into a difficult environment overseas.
If I got it correctly, it is said that there are many places in Africa—I think you said—maybe in other countries, where Americans find it difficult to survive on account of the climate or the heat, and even because maybe it’s dangerous there, on account of local difficulties, you mean? Well, we haven’t found those places yet. (laughter) I’m sure they’re somewhere, because people have been telling me for three years that they are there, but I guess you saw a few days ago about those five girls who walked across the Sahara Desert—I should say hitchhiked—they hitchhiked across the Sahara Desert. I’m sure that before they did that, everybody in this room would have told me that five American girls could not possibly hitchhike across the Sahara Desert, but there they went and did it. As a matter of fact, you might be interested to know that a Peace Corps staff member in Nepal, the Deputy Director of the Peace Corps in Nepal, took off for three months—took a leave of absence and climbed Mt. Everest.
QUESTION: (With relatively limited backgrounds at this stage in education, would they be eligible to volunteer for the Peace Corps?)
Well, you look rather large to me—I’d think you’d probably have good experience—you can volunteer for the Peace Corps if you’re 18 years of age, or older. We’ve got a man 77 out in Pakistan, so you don’t have to worry about that yet. You don’t have to have specific educational requirements. We have excellent Peace Corps Volunteers who are high school graduates, and they do, for example, exceptionally good work if they have a foreign background, or if they’re very good with machinery, as an automobile mechanic, or a diesel mechanic. It isn’t necessarily the exact level of your education, it’s whether you’re qualified to do a job, which a foreign country has asked us to perform. Now therefore, in your case what you should do is volunteer and let us look at your qualifications, and if there’s a job you can do then we would invite you to do it.
In that respect I might emphasize one point. If you volunteer and sign the Volunteer application, you’re not committed to anything. Now I know that doesn’t sound true. You know how it is. Nobody ever believes it when you say, sign here, and you don’t have to buy the washing machine, or whatever it is. Well, the truth is, in the Peace Corps, that when you fill out the application, all you do is indicate to us that you are willing to consider service in the Peace Corps if we ask you. Now we don’t ask everybody, so you might never get an invitation.
The second thing is if you get the invitation, you can always say I don’t want to go. We might ask you, for example, to go to Brazil. You can say I don’t want to go to any place except Peru. Then we take your application and put it in the Peru file, and then if we’ve got a job in Peru that you can do, then you might get an invitation to Peru, but there’s nothing obligatory about the Peace Corps. In fact, after you’re in it, if you’re overseas, if you want to quit, you can quit. In that respect, I might mention we’ve only had about three and a half percent of all the people in the Peace Corps quit.
QUESTION: (Reference to item in Times of India being pessimistic about possibility of Peace Corps Volunteers getting along in Asian villages.)
The question had reference to the fact that during my talk I mentioned The Times of India, paper published in New Delhi as being pessimistic about the possibility that Peace Corp Volunteers could get along successfully in Asian villages. And this young lady said did I think that was partially caused by the fact that American movies and pictures in magazines and so on give a distorted impression of what life is like here in the United States. I think the answer is yes. I think there is a great deal to that. I think also that Americans who travel abroad frequently are among the richest Americans—they’re the ones who can afford to travel abroad, and they create an impression again which sort of confirms what people see in the movies, to the extent that they think everybody is exactly like that here at home. And you, now living here in the United States, appreciate that that’s not exactly accurate.
Well, let me thank all of you very much for coming here this afternoon. I’m sorry to have kept you out of that nice sunshine, but it it’s been nice to see your smiles as I talked. Thank you.
