Office of the Historian

214. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kaysen) to the President’s Assistant Special Counsel (White)0

Washington, December 17, 1962.
1.
You may want to pass to the President the following. The group of Negro leaders he is seeing at 4:30 today are ostensibly coming to talk about Africa.1 In fact, according to Soapy Williams, their main purpose will be to talk about Negro representation in the State Department. Soapy will be talking with them at 2:00, and you might call before they come in to see the President.
2.
If some facts on Africa are useful, here is a handful.

For this fiscal year we have approximately $1 million available for development loans in Africa and somewhat less than $1 million for development grants.

We have aid programs in 34 African countries. In addition, we will be shipping in about $20 million worth of PL 480 food into South Saharan Africa.

The Peace Corps has about 1500 people assigned or in training for African programs, of whom about 1100 are teachers. In Ethiopia, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Camerouns, the Peace Corps volunteers provide a very substantial proportion of the teaching force. Education is the largest single item in our development grant program as well, and took more than 1/3 of all the funds.

In addition, we have a major political investment in the Congo situation. We will have spent about $40 million in support of the UN operation, accounting for more than 1/3 of its total cost.

Carl Kaysen2
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries Series, Africa, Memoranda and Miscellaneous, 11/62-2/63. No classification marking.↩
  2. President Kennedy met with Theodore E. Brown, Director of the Arden House Conference; James L. Farmer, Executive Director of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE); Dorothy Height, President of the Council of Negro Women; Martin Luther King, Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; A. Phillip Randolph, President of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters; Roy Wilkins, Executive Secretary of the NAACP; and Whitney M. Young, Executive Director of the National Urban League at 4:55 p.m. on December 17. (Ibid., President’s Appointment Books) No memorandum of the conversation has been found.↩
  3. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩