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Equal Opportunity Day Dinner

Twenty-five years have come and gone since the National Urban League first set aside a day in November to promote the cause of equal opportunity. The initial observance was held on November 19, 1956, the 92nd anniversary of President Lincoln's Gettysburg Address that began with the immortal lines: "Four score and seven years ago our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."

Those moving words have rolled on through the years, memorized and recited by generations of school children, enshrined as a vital part of American memorabilia, endowed with a spiritual like quality. But the equality those words seemed to promise remained a myth, an unreality, an illusion, an unobtainable dream for Americans of African origin.

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