It used to be that Family PAC, run by Paul Caprio, held an annual fundraising cruise on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

Covid-19 prevented that last year and the event was held at Fontana’s Abbey Resort.

So was the dinner this year.

The main speaker was Robert Woodson, an 84-year old man I met in Washington, D.C., during my first post-college job in 1966.

I was working at the United States Bureau of the Budget as pretty much the only publically recognized Republican during the Lyndon B. Johnson Adminstration.

My senior Budget Examiner, Roger Adkins, who told his boss he “could work with anyone” when Sam Lawrence asked if he could work with a “Goldwater Republican” set up a meeting with Woodson, who was working with inner city businessmen.

My agency budget was the Small Business Administration’s. SBA was getting into the minority loan business.

During the book (“Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers“) signing before the speeches I told him of our encounter in 1966, which, of course, he did not remember. He asked the name of the Budget Director. “Charlie Schultz,” I replied.

Woodson, who is founder and President of the Woodson Center and the 1776 Unites Project started his talk with information about growing up in South Philly.

“I never heard a gun fired, even in a segregated city,” he said, completely catching my attention.

He said he was “raised in a proud black Christian community.”

But he dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade, because he didn’t want to be affiliated with a gang.

Woodson chose the military instead.

He earned twelve credits at the University of Miami “when I couldn’t even step on campus.”

Returning to his home town, he found the juvenile jail had no programs. (He may have been working there, but my note taking was not fast enough to keep up.)

Taking some kids to dinner he had a “burning bush experience before I knew what a burning bush was.”

“I knew I had to dedicate my life to these kids.”

Becoming active in the Civil Rights Movement, he concluded that “lower income Blacks were being used as bait.

“When money came (in the War on Poverty), it came to people like me, political leaders.

“$2.2 billion. Seventy percent went to those who served the poor, not he poor.”

He realized “the kind of hustle that was going on.”

Continuing, he said, “The opposition of segregation is not integration, i’s de-segregation.”

Woodson argued for a pluralistic society.

Education that is Black should be preserved.

If excellence in education “is integration, what is that saying about Blacks?” he asked.

Seventy percent of Black children being born out of wedlock is “not the result of slavery or Jim Crow.”

“Eighty-five percent in 1965 had a mother and a father.

“Welfare was stigmatized in the Black community” when he was growing up.

“Nobody wanted to be on relief,” which led to the separation of fathers.

“When you say something’s in the DNA, where do go from there?

“The Civil Rights Movement has [said] slavers thought Blacks were property.

“The Radical Left considers them pawns.”

Woodson argued, “Ten percent of what we are is our environment. Ninety percent is our responsibility.

“We have a choice. It’s up to us to choose.”

At thus point he pitched his book, which is a compilation of essays

“Conservatives have the right message, just not the right messengers.”

They have “no ground game.”

Woodson observed, “When whites were at their worse, Blacks were at their best.”

He cited Chicago’s Bronzeville, when those born out of wedlock was only 12%.

“The elderly could walk in their neighborhoods without fear of being assaulted by their grandchildren.

“All that change in the 1960’s.”

Woodson moved on to the de-segregation of the Armed Forces.

In 1944 Eleanor Roosevelt prevailed on her husband to allow Blacks in the Navy officer’s training program.

White got sixteen weeks, but Blacks were only allowed eight weeks.

The Blacks figured out this was a set-up for their failing, blacked out their windows and studied well into the night.

Upon testing, the Blacks hit the 90th percentile.

Suspecting cheating, the Blacks were re-tested individually.

They hit the 93rd percentile.

“The best antidote is performance,” Woodson stated.

“We must talk about resurrection, not crucification.

“We must take race off the table.

“The highest cause of death among Blacks is homicide.

“We have a remedy.

“We have recruited ‘healing agents,'” he said describing people who try to tamp down violence in their neighborhoods.

He promotes Blacks becoming entrepreneurs.

“Three percent of [businesses] create 90% of the jobs.

“They tend to be ‘C’ students, not ‘A’ students.

“They take an entrepreneurial approach.”

He quoted the first Black millionaire, Arthur George Gaston, a man from Alabama.

Commenting on his success, he said,

“Better to say, ‘I is rich,’ than ‘I am poor.'”

In short, education does not necessarily lead to success.

Then, back to his younger days in Philadelphia.

He told of a woman who offered sanctuary in her home to members of different gangs.

After four years, she had gathered one hundred boys in various houses.

She concluded, “There’s peace in out community, but not in our city.”

She called a meeting of gang leaders on New Year’s Day.

No Black church would provide a meeting place.

“Only the Quakers would open their doors.”

The annual New Year’s Day Mummers Parade (which I remember watching when we at my grandmother’s) was cancelled.

There were no gang fights that day, and during the next year gang deaths fell from forty to seven.

“Solutions to our problems exist, but it exists among the people suffering the problems.

“But we won’t do that if we approach that through the prism of race.

“I got transformed when I called out to Jesus Christ.

“If our problem were economic, God would have sent an economist.

“If our problem was education, God would have sent an educator.

“Because our problem was sin, He sent a Savior.”

= = = = =

Woodson seems to be in the tradition of Booker T. Washington.