Morris Milgram

Morris Milgram was a lifelong crusader for social justice. In 1947, he joined his father-in-law’s construction fi rm with the hopes of building interracial communities throughout America. In 1954, with the assistance of Quaker investors, he built one of the nation’s earliest and most successful racially mixed communities, Concord Park, just outside Philadelphia. Greenbelt Knoll, a similar community completed in 1955, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2006 and was designated a historic district by the Philadelphia Historical Commission. In 1964, the nationally televised documentary Seven Who Dared featured Milgram as a civil rights pioneer. In 1968, he became the first recipient of the National Human Rights Award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. That same year, he became a member of the Rutgers Board of Trustees and served until 1974. In 1975, he helped form and became president of the Fund for an OPEN Society—a nonprofit organization that promotes racially and ethnically integrated communities. The fund also grants emergency loans, enables renters to become owners, helps modest-income families to retain their homes, and converts apartments into co-ops. Milgram died in 1997 at age 81.