To the Editor:
May I reply to a letter from Elwyn Silverman published in the June issue. He refers to my statement quoted in “The Battle of Abington Township” (March) regarding the refusal of big mortgage investors to take mortgages on housing projects of mixed Negro and white occupancy as “offhand irony.” He considers it “grossly paradoxical” that our group should “so lightly dismiss Negroes from participating in the Cooperative.”
The leadership of the Cooperative and the great majority of its members began with the firm determination that there be no discrimination. Tremendous effort was made to find a way to finance the project without sacrificing this purpose. Only after every possibility was exhausted did we reluctantly arrive at the conclusion that we must have a “white” community if we were to have any at all.
We would like to have been able to solve all of the great problems that beset the world in our little community of homes. We found that that could not be done and that we would have to limit ourselves to taking on the great problems one at a time.
Robert K. Greenfield
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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