
          Of Hungry Children, 1967
          By Wheeler, Raymond M., M.D.Raymond M. Wheeler, M.D.
          Vol. 6, No. 6, 1984, p. 15
          
          I am distressed and concerned that Senators Stennis and Eastland
interpret my remarks this morning as libelous to the state of
Mississippi.
          I was born and reared and educated in the South. I love the region
as much as they do. I reported what I saw because it is intolerable to
me that this situation should exist in the region I love. I saw those
children and their parents, and I told you what I saw and the message
of despair and helplessness which they communicated to me.
          For the past twenty years I have worked in the South, my birthplace
and my home. During that time I have come to know in depth the white
and the Negro--their problems, their sorrows, their joys.
          Throughout these years, my heart has wept for the South as I have
watched the southern black man and white man walk their separate ways
distrusting each other, separated by false and ridiculous
barriers--doomed to a way of life tragically less than they
deserve--when by working together they could achieve a society finer
and more successful than any which exists in this country today.
          And through all of that dreadful pageant of ignorance and suspicion
and mutual distrust, the most distressing figure of all has been the
southern political leader who has exploited all of our human
weaknesses for his own personal and selfish gain--refusing to grant us
the dignity and the capability of responding to noble and courageous
leadership--when all of us had nothing to lose but the misery and
desolation which surrounds our lives.
          The time has come when this must cease, for we are concerned with
little children, whose one chance for a healthy and productive
existence--into which they were born--is at stake.
          I invite Senator Eastland and Senator Stennis to come with me into
the vast farm lands of the Delta and I will show you the children of
whom we have spoken. I will show you their bright eyes and innocent
faces, their shriveled arms and swollen bellies, their sickness and
pain and the fear and misery of their parents.
          Their story must be believed--not only for their sakes--but for the
sake of all America.
          --From New South, Summer 1967
          
            In July 1967 before hearings of the Senate Subcommittee
on Manpower, Employment, and Poverty, a team of six physicians
presented the results of a field trip into six Mississippi counties in
which they surveyed the, health and living conditions of black
children. Their report, published by the Southern Regional Council
under the title HUNGRY CHILDREN, states in part: "In sum we saw
children who are hungry and who are sick--children for whom hunger is
a daily fact of life and sickness, in many forms, an
inevitability. . . By the many thousands they live outside of every
legal, medical and social advance our nation has made in this
century. " The report was filed by Dr. Joseph Brenner of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Robert Coles of Harvard
University Health Services; Dr. Alan Mermann of the Departmentof
Pediatrics, Yale University; Dr. Milton J. E. Senn, Sterling Professor
of Pediatrics, Yale University; Dr. Cyril Walwyn of Yazoo City,
Mississippi; and Dr. Raymond M. Wheeler of Charlotte, N. C., chairman
of the Executive Committee of the Southern Regional Council. Following
the presentations of the physicians, Mississippi Senators James
0. Eastland and John Stennis challenged the doctors' testimony as "a
libel to the state of Mississippi. " Dr. Wheeler then made the
following reply.
          
        