Memorandum for the President
The attached Memorandum is nine pages of dynamite about the Negro situation.
It was prepared by Pat Moynihan as a Memorandum to you from me.
I agree with Pat’s analysis and concur in his recommendations.
But if this were to be a formal Memorandum it would have to be put in different form. I think you will want to get the full impact of Pat’s more vigorous approach. So I am transmitting it this way. We can prepare something else later in the light of your reactions.
The key points in the Memorandum are these:
- Negros are now going to demand not just equal opportunity but equal results.
- Most of them don’t have enough education and background to achieve equal results even if they get equal opportunity.
- The principal reason for this is the breakdown of Negro family structure. This breakdown is getting worse, not better.
- Federal policy should be built around the necessity to restore the structure of the Negro family.
- Seven specific recommendations are made at the end of the Memorandum.
—W. Willard Wirtz
Memorandum for the President
On every hand there are unmistakable signs that the civil rights movement is entering a second stage, and a new crisis.
In the first stage Negro Americans fought for and won rights which are traditionally associated with Liberty:
- the right to vote
- the right to assemble and to petition
- the right to move about freely in public places
- the right to compete for jobs and other rewards of the market place.