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THE PARADISE POST Paradise, California, USA 12 January 1951 (page 11)
To Raise Funds for Education of California Indians
A nationwide fund raising campaign to establish scholarships and an industrial education and training program for Indians living on California reservations is to be launched this month by the Indian Welfare Foundation of California.
The program is part of a long range plan to rehabilitate the 24,000 Indians living under impoverished, sub-standard conditions in the state, due to remoteness of facilities for education and job training. Its long term objective is to bring the new generation of California Indians up to the same educational standard and technical and industrial capacities as other residents of the state in order to achieve complete assimilation into the economic and cultural life.
All the directors of the foundation are Indians who have had the fortune to achieve higher education and won success in their economic undertakings.
The president, Grady L. McMurtry, member of the Cherokee Tribe, who served as an officer in the armed forces in World War II, is studying for his doctor’s degree in political science at the University of California, and is president of the Society of American Indians; Ernest L. Godfrey, vice president, a member of the Karuk Tribe, was raised on the Hoopa Reservation, is a graduate of San Francisco City College and is a watchmaker and jeweler-maker; Betty Sanderson, secretary, is the well known soprano of the San Francisco Opera Company; and Juanita Poulton, treasurer, a member of the Mono Tribe, is president of the Four Winds, Indian unit of the YWCA.
At the present time there are
approximately 8,000 Indian children of school age and 100
who have demonstrated such special academic talents as to
recommend them for higher education scholarships. |