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NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE TWENTY-SECOND ANNUAL EQUAL OPPORTUNITY DAY DINNER

Each year, for the past 21 years, the National Urban League has convened this major gathering of supporters of equal opportunity in the corporate and business sectors of our society to remind America that the dream of equality of opportunity for many black Americans remains unfulfilled.

Since the first Equal Opportunity Day Dinner was held to call the nation's attention to the fact that the doors of opportunity that were open to the majority of Americans, but closed to black Americans, significant progress has been made and we have witnessed institutional policies of exclusion, change to practices of inclusion.

Thus tonight, we present our EOD Award to Donald H. McGannon, who for the past ten years has given unselfishly of himself in service to the National Urban League Movement and has done much to further the progress of black Americans inside and outside the broadcast industry. It is with great pride and pleasure that we pay tribute to one of our own.

Donald H. McGannon, President and Chairman of the Board of Group W Westinghouse Broadcasting Company has been the foremost leader in the movement for equal opportunity and corporate social responsibility within the broadcast industry.

As a broadcast executive, his efforts on behalf of minorities and the poor are unparalleled and are characterized by his ten years of totally committed service to the National Urban League Movement. Elected to the Board of Trustees of the National Urban League in 1968, Donald McGannon remarked ten years later on his last day as Chairman of the NUL Board that "my involvement with the National Urban League was born of the fact that I had to do something other than sit on my assets and in turn let the turbulent years of the sixties go by while I was very comfortable and very happy. The only activity that I felt could dovetail with my commitments and responsibilities was something such as the Urban League. I had to do it, just as I have to stay with the situation in order to justify my conscience in the future because the problems I see are different but they are significantly acute, just as acute as they were in the early and middle sixties."

Such was the spirit that was to mark the commitment of Donald McGannon during his years of service to the National Urban League including serving as Vice President, and Chairman of the Board from 1973

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[[caption]] deButts; McGannon; Jordan; Eklund and Linen [[/caption]]

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