On 3-7 December 1950 the White House Conference on Youth and Children, held at the beginning of each decade, brought together over six thousand delegates and observers from the United States and abroad. The conference was the culmination of two years of preparation by 464 national organizations, including the National Education Association. The first attendance by children was in 1950.

The conference was a nonpartisan, nongovernmental project with only one-fifth of the funding coming from federal sources. The purpose was "to consider what we need to do in order to develop in children the mental, emotional, and spiritual qualities essential to individual happiness and responsible citizenship; and how the physical, economic, and social conditions of our society affect this great goal." A set of sixty-seven recommendations and a pledge to children resulted from the four days of panels and sessions. Among...