National Committee of Negro Churchmen Meets
Diocesan Press Service. November 6, 1967 [59-2]
Plans to provide a sound economic basis from which the Negro community can rise to a position of equality will soon be implemented. The National Committee of Negro Churchmen, which has called for such efforts, met in Dallas, Tex. No. 1 - 3 to draw up detailed plans to provide development capital for the Negro community.
The NCNC, which until now has been a rather loosely knit ad hoc group, also took steps to formally organize. It was born in the summer of 1966 when a group of Negro clergy issued a position paper on Black Power and is now composed of 300 Negro church leaders from 12 denominations.
Among proposals considered at the November meeting were plans for an economic development corporation which would channel funds into the development of colleges, job-training programs, consumer cooperatives and housing programs.
In order to obtain the necessary funds, the Committee has also called for a National Negro Appeal month and has pledged, itself to raise $1,000,000. They have also called for the establishment of a National Economic Development Bank. Such a bank would channel public and private funds into the Negro community at below market rates and would be administered by those specially sensitive to the needs and requirements for economic development of communities historically denied access to the opportunities of the nation.
In a statement issued prior to the Dallas meeting, the Committee stated that such a bank "would provide a core around which many needed, but now fragmented programs could be oriented. Through this bank those who, being without capital today, feel doubly the impact of capital on their impoverished communities, would be enabled to fashion their rightful stake in the capital economy of this Nation."
The Committee felt that it now had to formally organize in order to implement these, and other, suggested programs.
The Rt. Rev. John M. Burgess, Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts, and the Rev. Nathan Wright, Jr., of the urban department of the Diocese of Newark, have both served, on a rotating basis with six others, as chairmen of the group.