Their accomplishment will require a maximum application of courage,
initiative, energy and wisdom. I think, however, that the State has every
right to expect that higher education somehow will achieve these goals,
and will do so with effectiveness and efficiency.

This is the challenge then, Dr. Jenkins and ladies and gentlemen,
that I offer you and the faculty of Morgan State College. I have every
confidence in your capacity and your willingness to meet the challenge.

ADDRESS, MARYLAND STATE TEACHERS ASSOCIATION

BALTIMORE

October 15, 1959

It was just a year ago from this same platform that I made my first
speech to the Maryland State Teachers Association. The event, you will
recall, took place in the heat of political battle, as the 1958 election con-
test rapidly approached a climax. Because of my conviction—then and
now—that public education should not be allowed to become a political
issue, I deliberately refrained from making a talk on subject matter of a
political nature that was available to me at the time.

That contest has been resolved, and the restraints imposed upon
me by the circumstances have been removed. So that, I feel free now
to discuss with you some of the background of that 1958 meeting of
this great association of teachers. Without this necessity of self-restraint,
I would have reminded you that almost every gain you had made during
the previous eight years was made over strong executive opposition. It
would have been noted that it was necessary to override a gubernatorial
veto every time a program to increase the financing of public education
had been proposed. I would have pointed out the almost complete lack
of cooperation between the executive on the one hand and those con-
cerned with public education on the other.

On that same day, and from this same platform, my opponent for
the office of Governor looked all of you in the eye and told you that you
had been treated well enough, that public education was primarily
a matter to be handled by local governments and that the State had gone
about as far as it ought to go in helping, and being interested in, pub-
lic education. In my own talk to you, I developed what I described as
my "personal philosophy" of public education, and particularly its
relationship to the State government. I said, first of all, that public
education ought never to become a political issue and ought forever to
be divorced from partisan politics. I said that I felt that the best system

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