00:00:00 At the beautiful Crystal Room of the Hilton Inn in Aurora, Illinois, where hundreds of

00:00:09 Rotarians have been dining and meeting during the 48th Annual District 644 Conference of

00:00:15 Rotary International.

00:00:17 Governor Sandberg called today's meeting to order at 12.30 p.m.

00:00:21 Invocation was offered by Reverend O.B.

00:00:23 Moore of Batavia, and music was rendered by Sid Crofts of Batavia.

00:00:29 The featured speaker this afternoon will be the renowned Dr. Percy Julian, President

00:00:34 of Rotary Club, Franklin Park, Illinois.

00:00:37 The next voice you will hear will be that of John Sengstacke, introducing this afternoon's

00:00:44 speaker.

00:00:45 Thank you, Governor Sandy, distinguished guests, Rotarians, ladies and gentlemen.

00:01:08 Introducing a great man always presents some difficulties.

00:01:15 For one thing, all praiseworthy references to him, however couched in careful rhetoric,

00:01:28 never seem to do justice to a brilliant career.

00:01:35 And for another, it would take a longer time than I am permitted to enumerate all the high

00:01:44 honors and distinguished awards that have come to our speaker.

00:01:55 I shall therefore refrain from taxing your patience and goodwill by not unduly making

00:02:08 my remarks lengthy.

00:02:12 There's another impelling reason why I shall be brief.

00:02:20 I don't think there is any question or any doubt about the dedication of Dr. Percy Julian

00:02:29 to Rotary.

00:02:31 He flew in this morning from Phoenix, Arizona after hearing that his daughter was ill in

00:02:39 California and he must leave immediately after this meeting to catch a plane to meet his

00:02:49 wife and family in California to see his daughter.

00:02:57 You know, ever since the Industrial Revolution, science and the scientists have consigned

00:03:06 their energy more and more toward the advancement of modern society than they did during the

00:03:15 Middle Ages.

00:03:18 Although the laws of modern physics govern much the application of atomic energy, chemistry

00:03:27 shall long remain within the structural framework of the use of atomic energy as an industrial

00:03:36 commodity.

00:03:39 After all is said and done, there are two principles which govern modern science.

00:03:47 Preservation of energy and conversion of energy.

00:03:52 My friends, today we are in the presence of a genius who has concentrated his mind and

00:04:00 energy toward the extension of those principles which are indispensable to the preservation

00:04:07 of man in a dynamic society.

00:04:12 After his graduation from DePaul University, where he received his Phi Beta Kappa key,

00:04:20 Dr. Julian went to teach at Fisk University for two years before he was awarded the Austin

00:04:28 Fellowship which took him to Harvard University where he did his postgraduate work.

00:04:37 He then went to the University of Vienna from which institution he received his Ph.D.

00:04:44 degree under the grant of the General Educational Foundation.

00:04:51 He returned to DePaul, his alma mater, as a member of the faculty of the Department

00:04:57 of Chemistry.

00:04:58 He gave up teaching to become Research Director of Soya Products of the Glidden Company where

00:05:07 he made some startling discoveries in the utilization of the soybean as a therapy in

00:05:17 certain diseases.

00:05:20 He holds active membership in a number of scientific societies and has been awarded

00:05:26 the coveted degree of Doctor of Science.

00:05:31 In 1947, he became the 32nd recipient of the Spingarn Award which was presented to him

00:05:40 by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for his brilliant contributions

00:05:47 in the field of chemical research.

00:05:50 Our distinguished speaker is Vice President of Providence Hospital, Board of Trustees,

00:05:57 and Roosevelt University.

00:05:59 He's on the Board of Directors of the Urban League, the National Conference of Christians

00:06:04 and Jews, the Chicago Theological Seminary, and a member of the advisory board of the

00:06:12 Chicago Welfare Administration and the Chicago City Club.

00:06:17 A few years ago, he was elected to the membership of the Howard University Board of Trustees.

00:06:26 And as you know, and needless to mention, he is President of the Franklin Park Rotary

00:06:31 Club.

00:06:32 Dr. Julian is one of the few scientists who had enough business acumen to protect his

00:06:41 contributions.

00:06:44 It is my pleasure and honor to present to you our distinguished Rotarian, President

00:06:52 of the Julian Laboratories Incorporated, the eminent Dr. Percy Julian.

00:07:17 Director, Dr. Salsberg, Governor Sandy.

00:07:25 Governor nominee Dick Longton, distinguished past district governors,

00:07:34 most appreciated international Rotary students,

00:07:42 beautiful Rotarians,

00:07:47 friends throughout the masses of you, ladies and gentlemen.

00:07:51 I never know how to feel and I, as long as I live, to hear introductions of the type that

00:08:00 John, and thank you John, gave to me. I see one of my dear friends from my club here who's

00:08:08 sitting expecting a story that he has heard before, but I'm going to tell it just the same.

00:08:15 Of course, it's a true story. When I was a boy, we were Methodists. I might add

00:08:22 inferentially that since then we rise up in the world and we've become Congregationalists.

00:08:32 I also might add that you know that a Congregationalist

00:08:35 is a Methodist who's learned to read.

00:08:37 It was our want in those days to come home from Sunday school and bring home what they call then

00:08:51 the golden text of the Sunday school lesson. Oh, that was in the dark days. I suppose all of you

00:08:56 are too young to remember that. But on that particular Sunday, the golden text had been,

00:09:00 it is I, oh be not afraid, saith the Lord. An adaptation of the scripture.

00:09:09 It was my day at the dinner table to give the golden text, but I had stopped to play a little

00:09:14 baseball on the way home and had forgotten it. My father sitting at the head of the table

00:09:19 looked over at me without a word and said, well, and my mother was sitting on the right of me at

00:09:25 that time. She was sort of close up to father to help with the serving and I was next to her

00:09:33 and the other children were looking at me and I scratched my head and I said to mother, mommy,

00:09:40 I've forgotten it. She said, just calm yourself, you'll remember it. And I searched through the

00:09:46 subterranean channels of my memory to try to find this golden text and I just simply couldn't do it.

00:09:52 But all of a sudden it came out and I said, oh, I remember it, mommy.

00:09:56 Oh, I remember it. I remember it. I remember it. And I said, it was,

00:09:58 don't be scared. It ain't nobody but me.

00:10:09 Well, I'm going to talk to you today about some of the philosophical implications of the four

00:10:15 cornerstones of the basic faith of Rotary as I have seen them and as it has been my privilege

00:10:22 over the past four or five years to live them with other Rotarians through Europe,

00:10:28 from one end of Israel to the other. I brought back banners to my club

00:10:33 and I brought them from many towns in Italy and I've stolen a few in Europe and I've stolen a

00:10:39 few of them for myself whenever I could get an extra one to keep. Make no mistake about it,

00:10:46 Rotary has become an image for the entire world. Also make no mistake about it,

00:10:54 history will record it as one of the great miracles of the 20th century that here in the

00:11:00 Midwest where our concept of our fair country was one of an island, an isolated island,

00:11:09 that could develop itself into an isolated arsenal if necessary for its own protection

00:11:14 and its own security. Here in this Midwest spirit of isolation, history will record it as

00:11:23 a marvel that a few men sat down and had the genius to look two decades or three decades

00:11:30 or a bit more ahead and to see a world change from geographical concepts of little isolated islands

00:11:39 and to see the nations, all of them of the world, harnessed into a geocentric system

00:11:47 of appalling intimacies.

00:11:52 There is no such thing as an island among the nations of this world today

00:11:58 and Rotary has been largely responsible for a great change in that concept coming as it did

00:12:06 out of a community that has been famed for a concept of isolation. Rotary has become an image

00:12:17 like all great institutions it adhered to the doctrine of man that he was safest if he stood

00:12:23 on his all fours and so they had the good sense in the early days to sound out four basic

00:12:32 cornerstones for the faith. You've heard this four-way test talked about so much that probably

00:12:40 it has become trite to you. I want to look at it today and have you look at some of its philosophical

00:12:46 implications if you will allow me to be serious from the standpoint of science. Now I know some of

00:12:52 you may groan when you hear that because our language, the language of the scientists, doesn't

00:12:57 lend itself to poetry. Ladybird, ladybird fly away home becomes impossible when you must call the

00:13:03 ladybird coccinella de putata and a primrose by the river's brim, a yellow primrose was to him

00:13:12 loses all of the flavor of Wordsworth when the primrose becomes a specimen of primula vulgaris

00:13:19 and yet despite that I would like to call your attention to the fact that it was just little

00:13:24 more than 100 years ago when one of the great scientists of his day made the pronouncement

00:13:30 in writing that all of the great and fundamental discoveries of science had been made

00:13:35 that it only remained for future generations to refine these discoveries

00:13:40 and adapt them to our practical needs. Yes this skeptic, skepticist said that man had

00:13:49 reached the zenith of his capacity for exploring the fundamental unknown

00:13:57 almost as if God himself had been angered by such arrogant skepticism and such lack of faith

00:14:04 in the vastness of our universe. There descended upon this pronouncement an avalanche

00:14:10 of the most glorious discoveries that have ever been credited to the human intellect

00:14:15 for hardly had the ink dried upon the words of this skeptic, skepticist that Michael Faraday drew

00:14:22 virtually a living spark from the lifeless magnet and Daniel Groban Bunsen following

00:14:28 close upon the heels of Faraday's discovery gave us an enduring source of electrodynamic power.

00:14:34 Giant cranes came into being and machines of that type that virtually lifted the physical

00:14:39 burdens of the ages from the backs of mankind and ohm in Germany before the ink had dried upon

00:14:45 this skeptical announcement taught us how to measure such a huge electrodynamic power

00:14:50 when obtained. Yes in a realm almost bordering upon the aesthetic Bessel detected the parallax

00:15:00 Bessel detected the parallax parallaxes of the fixed stars just after the scientist had written

00:15:07 his words and Adams and Le Verrier threw their grapples out into space and felt the influence

00:15:14 of an unseen and hitherto unknown planet Neptune trembling along the delicate lines of their

00:15:21 analyses. Draper, Deguerre and Talbot just about the same time discovered the wonders of actinism

00:15:31 and gave us the new science of photography and we cannot forget another thing that points to

00:15:40 the aesthetic. Agassiz in Italy rode down the Alps upon the backs of the glaciers and proved

00:15:46 their steady flow just as this skeptic had written the words that we were all washed up

00:15:54 with our capacity and our capacity to explore the fundamental unknown.

00:16:00 Darwin just about that time lifted the veil from the mysteries of organic development

00:16:07 in his theory of evolution. I like to think of another quiet man who was working just about

00:16:13 that time and who went out one afternoon in his garden in a beautiful English countryside Stokes

00:16:19 was his name. He looked at a rainbow after a refreshing rain and as he looked at the rainbow

00:16:25 from the red to the violet end of the rainbow he simply stood wondering to himself what became

00:16:31 of yonder violet as it faded into the invisible. And lo with this dream Stokes started himself

00:16:42 on research that led to the ultraviolet beyond the violet and blessed us with the sunshine vitamin

00:16:49 vitamin d3 which we happen to manufacture in our laboratories no commercial

00:16:57 and we manufactured because it is necessary for your betterment for a hen that used to a good

00:17:03 Leghorn hen that used to lay you 150 eggs a year and was considered to be a pretty good hen at that

00:17:09 now lays you 300 eggs a year because of vitamin d3 that we must feed to her

00:17:17 all because Stokes gazed at a rainbow

00:17:23 No, because Stokes had the courage to dream as we all must do of better things in the days yet to

00:17:32 come and in our own country hardly had the ink dried upon the words of the skeptic

00:17:41 before Edison Thomas Edison in his laboratory one day was heating a piece of metal

00:17:46 and as he heated this piece of metal to high temperature all of the electrical

00:17:49 instruments in his laboratory began to dance about

00:17:52 back and forth and Edison noticed that his laboratory was charged with electricity

00:17:57 historians and as you probably have seen I spend a great deal of my time in the history of science

00:18:03 is because because there I find the individuals and what has made them tick and I find out

00:18:11 whence they have received their inspiration the historian of science records that this was one

00:18:16 of the few discoveries that Edison ever made frankly some say it was the only great discovery

00:18:24 some say it was the only great discovery that he ever made all of the rest of them were inventions

00:18:31 utilizing the fundamental discoveries of others which certainly does him no discredit at all

00:18:38 namely that hot bodies give off electricity and this was the way he published it in a very simple

00:18:44 little three or four lines in the journal of the franklin institute some years uh that year

00:18:49 I have discovered that when you heat a piece of metal to high temperature it gives off electricity

00:18:58 no one thought anything about it few people read it except one German

00:19:02 Röntgen read it and as he read it he said why this piece of metal heated to high temperature must be

00:19:11 giving off fast electrons fast moving electrons and so what did Röntgen do he went into his laboratory

00:19:18 and put a piece of tungsten here and another piece here

00:19:22 perpendicular to it he heated the first piece of tungsten it gave off the fast moving electrons

00:19:28 that Edison had discovered bombarded the second piece and when Röntgen looked at his second piece

00:19:32 of tungsten his eyes saw the most peculiar rays and what had he done he had given to us the x-ray

00:19:40 enabling our eye to see where hitherto we had not dreamed it would

00:19:47 and more than that Edison had if you please written the first chapter in the history of the atom bomb

00:19:57 for he had bombarded

00:20:02 a piece of tungsten with a disintegrated tungsten with another disintegrated tungsten that had given

00:20:09 off electrons lost its electrons from its atomic structure these had bombarded the atomic structure

00:20:15 of the second piece of tungsten and it knocked out of it a part of its radiating energy

00:20:26 and when Becquerel read in France of Edison's discovery

00:20:36 Becquerel gathered a little insight greater insight into the nature of this pitch blend

00:20:41 that he had from mountainous Czechoslovakia from which he had insulated uranium

00:20:48 mark you very carefully for Rotarians should always mark this part of science this uranium

00:20:55 known to science largely because a poor Russian lad Mendeleev had struggled up through the

00:21:01 University of Moscow and out of the brilliance of his intellect he had harnessed the wayward

00:21:06 masses of the atoms into a system of periodicity

00:21:12 leaving a blank space which one day uranium was to fill and now Becquerel had it this uranium

00:21:19 predicted by Mendeleev he wrapped a photographic plate up in a piece of black paper and placed it

00:21:25 near a piece of this uranium suspecting that this uranium was spontaneously giving off

00:21:34 radiation which Edison had forced through the bombardment with electrons

00:21:39 and when he unwrapped the photographic plate just a few hours later it was as black as if

00:21:44 it had been exposed to the direct rays of the sun and Becquerel had written another

00:21:50 significant chapter a second chapter in the history of the atom bomb and then came along

00:21:56 that gallant pair working in a laboratory attic Pierre and Marie Curie and read of Becquerel's

00:22:01 work just as Röntgen had read of Edison's work and Marie Curie knew exactly where to go and

00:22:09 look for her radium and she went to this same pitch blend from mountainous Czechoslovakia at

00:22:14 that time and there she found it and gave to science not only the first remedy concrete remedy

00:22:21 against the malady of cancer but gave to us a whole new science of protons electrons and alpha

00:22:28 particles all particles charged with electricity subject to the magnetic deflections of the

00:22:35 electrodynamic field of Faraday and Bunsen and Marie Curie had written a third chapter

00:22:45 in the history of the atom bomb and then came along Rutherford who read of the Curie's work

00:22:51 and who commented at length upon the brilliance of the work of Marie Curie

00:22:56 in establishing the radiation in the form of electrons alpha particles and protons

00:23:01 being given off from uranium and radium and Rutherford decided to take our alpha particles

00:23:07 which were particles of some size and of tremendous energy and he decided to bombard nitrogen with

00:23:13 them he put them up into closed tube and bombarded the nitrogen with Marie Curie's alpha particles

00:23:19 and split the atom of nitrogen into an atom of hydrogen and an atom of oxygen at the beginning

00:23:26 of the 20th century a little afterwards and Rutherford had accomplished something that

00:23:33 chemists had dreamed and physicists had dreamed about constituting a fourth chapter and a very

00:23:39 vital one in the history of the atom bomb and then the years roll on while the words of the

00:23:46 skeptic that we were all washed up with our capacity to explore the fundamental unknown

00:23:51 were echoing vainly in the ears of some men and there comes along Irène Curie the daughter of

00:23:59 Marie Curie and her husband Joliot also working in Paris but under better circumstances than her

00:24:05 parents and there she looked again after she noticed Rutherford's work she looked again at

00:24:10 the beloved uranium and radium of her mother and there she found something which her mother's eyes

00:24:16 had not seen as children do improve upon the vision of their parents and their fathers

00:24:22 she found particles which were not electrically charged not deflected this or that way

00:24:28 by the electromagnetic fields of parity but particles which went straight to their target

00:24:33 neutrons and with this it only remained for Fermi and the others to put this knowledge together

00:24:42 and bring out of it what shall you say the monster that fell upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki

00:24:51 nay more than that it brought out the truth of the ages

00:24:59 that the skeptic had tried to discount as possible there are innumerable lessons

00:25:08 in this chronology of genius at work with which I bore you today to some extent first of all

00:25:15 let me draw a few that relate to our four cornerstones of faith in Rotary

00:25:25 it spells defeatism to that kind of skepticism that would bottle up this vast universe

00:25:31 and even God as were the genii of old I heard as a student at Vespers many years ago I remember

00:25:38 I heard Harry Emerson Fosnick tell a story of a minister who went into his study one day and

00:25:42 found his little daughter Anne busy busily sketching something on paper and he said to

00:25:47 her Anne what are you drawing and she answered him and said daddy I'm drawing a picture of God

00:25:54 but Anne no one knows what God looks like

00:25:56 well she answered they will when I'm through

00:26:02 laughable as that is it is the people with the mentality of Anne

00:26:06 who make for the trouble for us in this world they cannot conceive of the vastness of the

00:26:13 universe in which they live they cannot conceive of the vast vastness of human possibilities

00:26:20 vastness of human possibilities in the universe in which they live

00:26:27 they cannot see the future in all of its glory and its hope they cannot conceive of the yearnings

00:26:35 of mankind towards ceaseless progressive and aggressive change they cannot conceive of all

00:26:45 of this because they cannot reconcile it with their man-sized God thus theirs is of necessity

00:26:55 a devotion to half of the truth theirs is of necessity a devotion to this or that side of the

00:27:02 truth theirs is a devotion to the mere husks and rhymes of good a devotion that is the very opposite

00:27:13 to the cardinal first of the four-way test the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

00:27:28 you have often heard the story of the man who lost his house key and as he went around the

00:27:34 block looking for his house key the policeman finally found him out under the light looking

00:27:40 for it here and there and a policeman graciously joined him and they looked the policeman down on

00:27:45 his knees and finally after searching all over the place there under the light he said to the

00:27:52 man are you sure you lost your key here oh he said no I didn't lose it here I lost it over there

00:28:00 he said well for heaven's sakes and what are we looking here for

00:28:04 he said because there's no light over there

00:28:12 it's easy for us to look for truth where we know full well we cannot find it to look for it where

00:28:21 there is light instead of to look for it where there is darkness one of the little known poems

00:28:29 of Longfellow says where should the scholar live in solitude or in society

00:28:38 in the green stillness of the country where he can hear the heart of nature beat

00:28:42 or in the dark gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man

00:28:50 I'll make answer for him says Longfellow in the dark gray town

00:28:59 and a second lesson is like unto the first suppose someone had come into Edison's laboratory

00:29:07 and ask him Mr. Edison what is the use of this discovery that hot bodies give off electricity

00:29:13 well if Edison had said well what's the use of a newborn babe I don't know

00:29:18 they might have thought that he was reaching his dotage because he was

00:29:21 celebrated for making use of things and yet Edison could have answered him firmly out of

00:29:29 his experience in one way this is not only a part of the truth revealed but it is right

00:29:39 because the search for truth my dear young man

00:29:42 is and always must be synonymous with the search for goodness

00:29:47 and therefore if the first

00:29:52 command of the four-way test ask is it the truth

00:29:59 it means that it is goodness at the same time and this faith we must always have

00:30:08 and then there is a third lesson that corresponds to a third pillar of the Rotary faith

00:30:17 if you will pardon me I will use a personal illustration for this is it fair to all concerned

00:30:26 and the picture I have before me as I talk about this is a picture

00:30:34 of the three generations that stood in a little railroad station in Montgomery Alabama when I was

00:30:39 being sent off to college I can see that picture before me now as clearly as if it were yesterday

00:30:45 yesterday and yet it was many years ago there stood my little great-grandmother

00:30:51 waving her hand wrinkled with its 99 years

00:30:57 well I the tears almost come to my eyes when I think of Grandma Patsy I was proud of her because

00:31:03 she was the only woman in the state of Alabama who could pick over 300 pounds of cotton a day

00:31:10 that was for me the greatest accomplishment because I tried my very best and as much as

00:31:14 I could ever get was 150 pounds and I used to say Granny how do you do it

00:31:21 and I used to remember her answer very often down the years when she said

00:31:25 well sonny I've trained my hands to work in harmony with my mind

00:31:34 there beside her stood my paternal grandfather and my paternal grandmother

00:31:38 and there beside them stood my mother and father I'd never been to high school

00:31:45 and how was I going off to college I'd never been to high school mark you my friends because there

00:31:49 was no high school for Negro children in Montgomery Alabama the capital of Alabama

00:31:55 I was born at the corner of Jefferson Davis Avenue and South Holt Street

00:32:00 so I think I'm very much southern at any rate but there was no high school for Negro students

00:32:06 and that day the first high school for Negro students in Montgomery Alabama was established

00:32:10 in the 1930s and it was a Catholic high school named after the saint of all poor people Saint

00:32:18 Jude it was some years before the state of the city ever founded established a high school there

00:32:25 so I had been taught by my mother and father and by tutors and had taken a few courses in a little

00:32:31 mission school that had been established by a Scotsman for teachers and there I had met

00:32:36 a DePaul Unversity woman who was responsible for my interest in DePaul University my father

00:32:43 she'd been my father's teacher years before and it incited his interest in DePaul

00:32:49 and so I'd taken examinations at DePaul and Amherst which they let me do in those days and

00:32:54 I had been admitted to the two schools and I was going off to DePaul where my father wanted me to

00:32:59 go and there they were standing at that station three generations of hope and prayer

00:33:08 waving a fourth generation off to college and why because they had the undying faith

00:33:16 that the best hope and the best promise for the last best hope of earth

00:33:23 is the education and fair play for all the people

00:33:31 all the people of this nation and all of God's children throughout the world

00:33:41 and lastly

00:33:42 does it generate goodwill this deed of Rotary of a Rotarian

00:33:54 I'm going to tell you a little story that iI feel disgraced at

00:33:58 because we always feel disgraced to see how narrow-minded we have been

00:34:03 and I was on this particular occasion narrow-minded that is on this particular

00:34:10 occasion I was looking back into the past rather than following the

00:34:16 injunctions of my science to look always toward the future a group of men

00:34:23 one or two of them who are here today from my own Rotary Club came to see me one day

00:34:29 and they said doctor our program committee wants you to speak to Rotary

00:34:33 our Rotary Club in Franklin Park

00:34:40 I had been a student thank you

00:34:46 I was a student of Vienna when the Rotary International met there 1930 or 1931

00:34:51 I forget which year exactly now and I had many fellow students ask me

00:34:57 uh won't you meet many of your friends here

00:35:01 and I remember as an angry young man in that day and time

00:35:06 I said there won't be any of my friends here because all of the Rotarians here are white people

00:35:14 and I will hardly find many friends among them

00:35:20 I thought about that many years later I thought about it some years later

00:35:24 when the directors of my company the Glidden Company at that time for which I worked

00:35:27 always took me to the Lion's Restaurant on North Avenue for dinner and they didn't know it but but

00:35:32 the people in the kitchen always salted my food so that I couldn't eat it but I sat there and

00:35:37 made out as if I would eat because I was determined that no man in the Glidden Company should ever say

00:35:44 that we cannot hire a Negro lad because he can't get along and he will have trouble yes I slept

00:35:50 in my automobile at least 50 nights out of every year in the cold of Wisconsin and the cold of

00:35:57 Michigan and the cold of your whole state of Illinois because there was in that day not even

00:36:03 the even the Stevens Hotel it's now the Conrad Hilton refused to let me have a room when I had

00:36:09 two papers on the American Chemical Society program in 1935 and there was no room for me

00:36:16 in southern Illinois nor in Michigan nor even in Milwaukee I got one night to the to the Nina

00:36:22 Inn right outside of Appleton Wisconsin sent there by my company on a paper mission I went in with

00:36:28 the lawyer with the patent lawyer for my company the Glidden Company and we I climbed in and out

00:36:33 of the paper beaters all day long writing up this patent for the Glidden Company on the sizing

00:36:39 of paper came back to the Nina Inn the next night I'd spent the night before there and when I got

00:36:45 back the next night why the uh the lawyer the patent lawyer friend of mine said to me let's

00:36:50 stay overnight uh here let's all drive back to Chicago tonight I'm beaten and I said I'm pretty

00:36:56 tired too I guess we will the uh clerk met me at the desk and he said he handed my friend

00:37:05 a patent lawyer who had gone with me his key and he said to me you'll have to check out

00:37:10 well I said why how come I knew well how come because that was the first time I'd ever stayed

00:37:15 in a hotel in Wisconsin and he said well when you came in last night the lights were dim and

00:37:22 we thought you were an East Indian but this morning when you came into breakfast we found

00:37:27 you were a Negro and you will have to check out

00:37:29 and so with these experiences in mind in mind when my friends came from Franklin Park Rotary Club

00:37:39 asked me to speak to them I replied promptly well gentlemen you know how much I I I think

00:37:44 of all of you I've met all of you I don't speak to Rotary Clubs

00:37:51 and I think Dave Davis whom I saw come in here a little while ago looked up at me and said

00:37:56 why so I said I said well it's very simple I have never been able to answer satisfactorily

00:38:01 for myself why there is has never been a Negro service-minded enough civic-minded enough

00:38:12 sound enough character and with sufficient business business acumen never to be admitted

00:38:20 and with sufficient business business acumen never to be admitted to Rotary and since I'm

00:38:25 not in the entertainment world I don't speak to Rotary Clubs now a few of my friends here know

00:38:30 how viciously frank I am uh and so I hope you will pardon my telling you it just as it happened

00:38:36 although I'm not proud of it one man in the bunch Jim Kerry of curious restaurant said

00:38:42 uh in a very famous restaurateur he said well if there's anything in the Constitution

00:38:46 which prevents it they've lost one member and I began to think after they left now wait a minute

00:38:53 I put my foot into something now because sure enough 10 days later they came back

00:38:58 and told me that I had been unanimously elected

00:39:04 to present myself as a candidate for membership and role well there's nothing more you can do

00:39:12 even if you haven't aspired to be a Rotarian than to give it a trial when men actually dare

00:39:19 and these men had gone into at length they had called Rotary International Rotary International

00:39:24 to said to him it's never been done but there's nothing against it and if you want to take the

00:39:29 chance it's just never been done and so i told the story to the Chicago Rotary Club and I said

00:39:35 to the Chicago Rotary Club that invited me to speak there some years later that we shall you

00:39:40 shall never contribute adequately adequately to the glory of our great democracy until you realize

00:39:47 that just that all men must not only repeat the words of the four-way test but they must go about

00:39:54 over this sad world taking the hands of the trembling children of this earth and walking

00:40:01 with them the paths to peace

00:40:07 and the proudest scientist knows that we must become so humble and we must be endowed with such

00:40:16 intelligent humility that we see not ourselves in those whom we choose to walk with

00:40:26 but we see the trembling yearning hopeful children of this earth

00:40:33 and if he be wise he will remember that in the bowels of mother earth nature has been carrying

00:40:40 on atomic disintegration down the ages he will remember that in the sun which rises on tomorrow's

00:40:46 horizon nature has been conducting atomic disintegration down the untold ages

00:40:56 and if he remembers that and he walks beside a pond and sees a little lily bursting into bloom

00:41:03 and bringing beauty which he could never create he will stop and ponder that ancient command to

00:41:10 humility and command to goodwill consider the lilies of the field they toil not neither do

00:41:19 neither do they spin and yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these

00:41:50 and so we have heard a most stirring and challenging address from the heart of a

00:42:01 great scientist and Rotarian Dr. Percy Julian his address was entitled The Four-Way Test To Me

00:42:10 well this afternoon's conference program continues with the Rotarians to go on a trip through

00:42:16 Moussard then later on this afternoon the Extension Committee will report

00:42:22 Dr rather E.D. Gifford chairman of the Grange President John Cool of Oakbrook Secretary

00:42:29 George McCurn of Oakbrook President Charles Shannon of Mont Prospect and Secretary JC

00:42:36 Buesenhart of Mont Prospect will meet at 2:40 there will be a panel and club projects

00:42:43 with audience participation will take place at 3:10 intermission for coffee and then at 3:25

00:42:52 will be a program called "Our Students" at 4:10 there will be a panel the subject "what's on your

00:43:00 mind" this will be an audience participation program then at 4:30 there will be announcements

00:43:06 and adjournment this evening's program we'll have Rotary fellowship around the

00:43:12 punch bowl at six o'clock at 6:30 there will be a call to order by Dr C.O. Sandberg

00:43:19 the district governor and then the highlight speaker of this evening will be

00:43:27 uh Dr. rather Dr. Walter Judd he'll be introduced by Delbert Judd President of the Kankakee

00:43:34 Rotary we must include of course the fact that the Swedish glee club will present their music

00:43:41 also this evening and so the audience discourses will go on to interesting

00:43:49 events continued and planned for the rest of the day

00:43:52 the meeting is adjourned let's move people real fast ladies get out and get in the buses come back and be with us soon