Cecil A. Partee Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

served or rehabilitated as well as in other areas of the state.
would be my motivation.
And,that
Q: Was there anyone particular in your district that called this to
attention, or called any particular buildings to your attention?
A: No, I don't think so. They wouldn't have had to, I would have just recognized
it on my own.
Q: In 1971, with Senator Cherry, you made a mernorlal to the U. S. Congress
to continue the model cities program. What was your concern with the model
cities program, sir?
A: Well, the Congress had given the impression that they were going to
eliminate it and we felt that it should still obtain. You see, model
cities came into existence when there was a lot of strife and unrest in the
inner-cities across the nation. There were riots and other kinds of things
and we felt that the model cities prpgram would be a very stabilizing
influence on helping people to rehabilitate themselves and to get themselves
started toward the regular job market. We wanted the Congress to know that
it was our view that it would be disasterous if that program went down.
Q: Was the program active in your district?
1
A: Oh, yes, very active in my district.
Q: In what way? What was being done?
A: Well, the model cities program, they hired a large number of people and
the focus was on neighborhoods, and getting people within a particular
neighborhood, through various kinds of federal.programs, to upgrade themselves,
prepare themselves for additional kinds of responsibilities in the
work market. And it also offered employyent to people during the period of
transition between poverty and--moving forward. There were programs that
actually fed people who were in necessitest circumstances. There were
programs that were geared toward freeing women to work, like day care
centers and things of that sort where their children could be kept in the
daytime to free them to work. A11 of those programs, we felt, had a
salutary effect on government in that, if you can get people off of welfare
rolls and off of necessitest circumstances, where they are not earning, into
giving them a viable kind of an existence, it would mean a great deal more
to the state, to the people themselves and to the revenue impact on the
state. It would be upgraded.
Q: And did it continue?
A: The model cities program continued until probably--it was just phased out
in 1978, as a matter of fact. There were some other programs which came
into existence which helped to support the same concept. At the federal
level, many of the programs that were a part of the Democratic administration
previously were eliminated but then the new concept of revenue sharing