Willison to RPW Letter [Undated] Searchable Text

[Undated correspondence; paper is trimmed irregularly.]

Dear Mr. Warren,

     So many of us were impressed by the compassion shown both
by [erasure] your address last year at Union College and by your book, 
WHO SPEAKS FOR THE NEGRO?, that the Board of the Capital District
Friends of SNCC hav erecommended that the Speakers Committee of 
the Friends write you.  As the members of that Committee, we would
like to ask you to address us and our friends and neighbors on the
whole vexed future of the civil rights movement in the United States.

     Despite the uncertainties of the hour, we Friends of SNCC
feel that SNCC, especially in the South, but also in the North, 
is legitimately struggling against direct repression, and for
direct political influence by Negroes.  We want to continue to
raise money for these purposes.

     Therefore, we would like both to clarify our own thinking
and our fellow-townsmen's, and to raise money for SNCC, by 
having a knowledgable, perceptive speaker come to Schnectady
to give an address on the civil rights movement and its future.
We are writing several possible speakers for that purpose.  Would such
an invitation interest you for a mutually agreeable date this fall
or winter?

     Please let us know your reaction at your earliest convenience.

                                              Sincerely yours,

                                              [Signed]

                                              Malcolm Willison
                                              for the Speakers Committee
                                              of the Capital District
                                                     Friends of SNCC

[A manuscript address, in a different pen than the signature, appears to the left of the signature: "66 Union Ave Schenectady, N.Y"]