Box 19, Folder 17, Document 26

Box 19, Folder 17, Document 26

8 Berkeley Street
Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

29 July 1963

The Honorable Ivan Allen, Jr.
Atlanta, Georgia

Dear Mayor Allen:

Your testimony before the Senate Commerce
Committee was the most superb statement on civil
rights made since the time of Abraham Lincoln,
and I am sure that it will go down in history.

These are the words of a man of great courage
and true nobility of mind. I read everything the
Times carried aloud to my two grown sons and a
Harvard student from Little Rock, a Negro who is
living with us this summer, and we all felt that
you had established a watershed. We are deeply
grateful to you.

My Senior Senator, Mr. Saltonstall, is fence-
sitting on the public accomodations section of the
Civil Rights Bill. I have just written to hin,
asking him to examine his soul in the light of your
statement. I am convinced that public thinking,
including perhaps the thinking of Mrs, Murphy, is
considerably ahead of Congress in this matter,

Thank you, Mr. Allen. You are a great man.

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