Skip to Search

 

Recording by: WRUF

Title:  Florida Future #24:  Poverty and Race Relations

Dates: ca.1969

Duration: 0:14:30

Identification: Tape recording 131

File name: WRUF 27

 

Originally recorded on reel to reel at 7.5 ips

Digitally reformatted on February 2008

 

Herschel Connor introduces the Florida Future with a set of questions.  The series gave perspectives on the next ten years and was produced at Radio Center at the University of Florida with a grant from the Florida Department of Education. 

The guest on this program is Neil Butler, chair of Gainesville’s Human Relations Advisory Council and also the task force chair for the Coordinating Council of the Concerned. Neil Butler was also the first black mayor of the city of Gainesville. Jack Detweiler is the interviewer for the program.  Detweiler first asks why Gainesville was chosen by the governor as Florida’s first model city in the state’s anti poverty program.  Butler admits that he does not know why Governor Kirk chose Gainesville but that it was possibly due to the progressive atmosphere in the city.  Detweiler asks about the role of the Human Relations Advisory Council.  Butler then gives an interesting account of how a particular bar was desegregated and the role various people played in this effort.  Detweiler asks questions about the role of the task force and the team members.  Butler’s answers demonstrate the interaction the team members (mainly white persons) had by going into the black community and how that has helped.  When asked where team members were drawn from Butler states that they come from labor, student government, officials of the city government, church groups, social clubs and basically all those people who care.   

University of Florida Home Page