Brotherhood of Man

For 46 years Indianapolis has been experimenting with the Brotherhood of Man. It works. The experiment's site is Planner House,* a center in which white men and black have worked together, have followed the commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Indianapolitans believe that Planner House helped their city escape wartime racial troubles: all the explosive elements were present, but the fuse was lacking.

This week on Founder's Day Flanner House will dedicate a new health center. It will also record what it has done to meet the 20th-century problems of housing, health, jobs, poverty, education, dependency. The center operates a cannery, a co-op store, a job-placement service. It trains for jobs and homemaking. Says softspoken, polished Cleo Blackburn, Planner House director and former Tuskegee teacher, "When we work at these problems, race relations take care of themselves."

Formalized religion is not part of Flanner House, but religious groups share its work. Before the city's Community Fund took over financing, the Disciples of Christ contributed time and money. The United Christian Missionary Society helped. The American Friends gave $8,000 this year, hope in 1946 to give $26,000. Said one of them: "If Friends live up to their principles there is no line of race to them. All men are brothers. Planner House offers a valuable opportunity for Friends to demonstrate the thing they claim to believe." To which Dr. Robert M. Hopkins, president of the United Christian Missionary Society, offered as amen: "Religion is interested in better relations between men, and Planner House provides the means by which this is done."

*Named for Frank W. Planner, Indianapolis undertaker.

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