1960 marked the beginning of NCJW Dallas’ first community-wide project: Operation Lift (Literacy Instruction for Texas). The challenge was to recruit volunteer teachers and students and to establish a community-wide system of teaching centers. Accepting our challenge, for six months, Dallas Morning News half and quarter page ads with coupons for teachers’ and students’ registrations three times a week.

WFAA and KERA agreed to run a television teaching series as a public service at 6:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., five days a week. The project became a citywide effort. Classes began on June 5, 1961, with 250 volunteers, 150 from NCJW, 175 volunteer teachers, and served 600 students during the first year. Today, LIFT continues to serve over 500 students each year. In 1961, NCJW Dallas received the very first Dallas Times Herald Club of the Year Award and its first major award for Operation LIFT.

NCJW Dallas’ 50th birthday celebration was set to feature David Schoenbrun, a renowned CBS tv journalist. His assignment during confrontational entry of the first African-American student to the University of Mississippi, however, changed the plan. Improvising, Schoenbrun spoke to a ballroom of members and community leaders via a private radio hook-up.

NCJW Dallas’ response to the black day of November 22, 1963 was to lead in the reform of welfare and health services for children and youth in Dallas County. A convention center filled with community leaders, elected officials, and community service professionals watched a dramatization of one of the latest youth study research. Its conclusions, revealed how painfully inadequate children welfare, education, and health care services were at the time.

NCJW Dallas addressed the race-based discrimination in public education during a community-wide School for Community Action, “Equal Opportunity for Youth.” Held at SMU, the forum focused on the lack of opprtunity and its dire consequences for children of marginalized backgrounds.

The West Dallas school tutoring project is s direct result of that community action, which even today enjoys great volunteer participation and ongoing advocacy.

450 people, representing thirty volunteer organizations, including eighteen women “in poverty” with incomes of less that $3,000 a year, participated in the School for Community Action, “Women on the Move.” The forum was co-sponsored by the Community Council of Greater Dallas and Dallas County Community Action Committee (“War on Poverty”).

In addition, during “Operation Ready,” NCJW Dallas volunteers wrote simple booklets in English and Spanish to educate low-income families on employment, saving, and buying, and distributed them in the Dallas public schools. A Social Service Directory was published for the benefit of those in need of welfare services, and for the use of the thirty participating organizations.

NCJW National’s 75th year was commemorated with another school for Community Action, “Spotlight on the Family.” NCJW Dallas advocated the need for a Graduate School of Social Work in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, which eventually resulted in the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Texas at Arlington. Moreover, we also urged for the hiring of a social worker at the Dallas jail and the establishment of a Dallas Human Relations Commission.

NCJW Dallas was also involved in the” War On Poverty”, a national initiative to help those on the poverty level, and held a workshop meant to educate our members on the vicious cycle of poverty.

Our pressing advocacy and educational campaigns led to the launching of the first School Volunteer Program in the city of Dallas, and in Texas. Prior to that time, volunteers were not utilized as academic tutors. The program started at one small school in West Dallas, and was replicated throughout the city, and later, the state. To his day, thousands of children are still benefiting from NCJW Dallas’ School Volunteer pilot project.

Presidents:

1960-1962 Pat Peiser*
1962-1964 Anita Marcus*
1964-1966 Selma Ross*
1966-1968 Edna Flaxman*
1968-1970 Jeanne Fagadau*

* of blessed memory