Official proceedings of the annual meeting: 1965

42

Civil Rights-Unfinished Business

I believe this, too. Social workers are toiling and sacrificing to
build this nation just as did the pioneers who rode the wagons
West, and those who found the ways to make our soil abundant,
and those who contrived the miracles of the automobile assembly
line, and those who carried the word of God to high and low
places.
This struggle for human dignity, with all its ugliness, pain, and
suffering, is nonetheless a part of the real beauty of America-a
beauty stretching higher than our mountains, farther than our seas.
It is the beauty of the soul of the American people struggling to
find its own best self.
II. CIVIL RIGHTS AND A
MILITANT PROFESSION
by WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR.
FOR YEARS THE SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION has been waging
a creative but lonely battle against poverty. Today, we social workers are no longer alone.
We have in our camp a powerful new ally, the civil rights movement-a movement in need of the expertise our profession can
offer; a movement which, in return, has the muscle and the might
necessary to make real the dreams for social reform which social
workers for generations have sought to enact. Some of the rights
forces across the nation have been working together in many cities
in pursuit of common aims.
Ours is a common effort to open the avenues of opportunity to
all; ours is common cause in lifting the minimum standards of
health and decency and anticipation for those on welfare.
We are of kindred spirit on the issues of family planning, expanded day care, prenatal care, improved public health, the
strengthening of family life, programs for the elderly, the quest