MS01.01.03.B02.F23.073

Harmon Foundation
Page 6

support and involvement of developers who could identify and provide
playground areas in their comunities before they were developed.
Due to the slow reaction from towns and cities to the Foundation's
idea and its inability to make large donations to communities, the
Foundation advertised in leading newspapers throughout the
country that it would expend $100,000.00 toward the purchase of
acreage for play tracts in rapidly growing communities. The
requirements were straight forward and simple. All towns and cities
submitting applications for available funds had to have a population
of at least 3,000; a growth rate of 30% or more, a tract of land of
no less than 2 acres and the official endorsement of the mayor or
president of the Board of Education. Mary Brady kept a close watch on
the racial climate in places where playgrounds were proposed. It
was through this watchful interest that she made contact and
subsequent friendship with Black cultural and political leaders in the
communities where playgrounds were being established.

During the first year that the Division of Playgrounds was in
operation, the Foundation received 850 applications from the
fourty eight states, Washing, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Of the applications
received, the Foundation funded 77 play areas, of which five were in
Black neighborhoods. The Black playgrounds were located in Coffeyville, Kansas; Fort
Worth, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; Orangeburg, South Carolina; and,
Williamsburg, Virginia. Mary Brady administered the programs of the Division of Playgrounds for a period
eight years during which time the Foundation participated in the
purchase and establishment of 120 playgrounds in thirty-five states.
After the demise of the playgrounds program,
Mary Brady continue to stay in touch with several
members of the community with whom she had either
corresponded or met in person. On numerous ocassions
she used these newly found friends as sounding
boards, throwing out ideas relating to other
programs she had in mind establishing in
future years. But seldom did these associations bear
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