Down-to-Earth Experiment

Nothing quite like it had been attempted before. The 81 Negro children (ages nine to twelve) who left Manhattan this week to spend a fortnight in homes of white Vermont families was a new kind of experiment in race relations.

The idea was the brain child of the Rev. A. Ritchie Low, white pastor of the United Church, Johnson, Vt. Last fall the tense, energetic Congregational minister lived for several weeks with a Negro family in Manhattan. He wanted to find out what Negroes thought about white people. He also preached at Manhattan's big (14,000 members) Abyssinian Baptist Church, whose Pastor A. (for Adam) Clayton Powell was enthusiastic about the Negro children's visit to Vermont. So were Pastor Low's white parishioners.

At the Abyssinian Church more than 150 children filed applications to go to Vermont. Church workers interviewed each child and his parents, selected the children they thought most needed the change, would be happiest in white homes, would best represent the Negro race. About half of the children did not attend the Abyssinian Baptist Church, but the church paid all transportation costs ($1,000). It also spent $800 for new clothes for about a third of the children.

Some of the Negro children will live in Vermont towns, others on farms. As a rule, one Negro child was assigned to a white family. But some enthusiastic Vermonters asked for two.

Said Pastor Low: "To take white youngsters off the city streets is ordinary, but to accept Negro youngsters in the home isn't done every day. . . . It's going to be a worth-while project for us church folk who are quite content to give money and to say prayers so long as neither bring these people too close or cause us too much personal effort."

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