Toyota Donates $1 Million to Underground Railroad Freedom Center
31 August 2000
Toyota Donates $1 Million to National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
CINCINNATI, Aug. 30 Toyota Motor Manufacturing North
America, Inc. has announced a $1 million gift to the National Underground
Railroad Freedom Center, a national interactive learning center to be built in
Cincinnati, Ohio. The Freedom Center will commemorate the nation's first
human rights movement-a series of networks to freedom for enslaved African
Americans during the period of the antebellum South. Toyota, which opened its
North American manufacturing headquarters office in the Cincinnati area four
years ago to support its growing number of assembly plants in the United
States and Canada, joins a leadership group of companies and foundations from
around the nation that have provided strong support for the Freedom Center.
Toyota's donation was announced at this month's Second International
Freedom Conductor Award gala which honored South African Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, a 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner. Rosa Parks received the first
International Freedom Conductor Award at a similar dinner two years ago.
The co-chairs of the Freedom Center's $90 Million capital campaign are
John Pepper, Chairman of Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, and Andrew Young,
former Ambassador to the United Nations. In announcing Toyota's grant, John
Pepper said, "This is our first major gift from a corporation headquartered
outside the United States. The gift signals the global and universal relevance
of our purpose."
Freedom Center president and CEO, Ed Rigaud added, "I see strong ties
between Toyota's concern for quality of life and cooperation between all
people and the vision of the Freedom Center. Toyota's generous gift is not
only a statement about quality and diversity but also that impact on families.
We deeply appreciate this gift.
The initial concept for the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
began in 1994 as a golden anniversary project of the Greater Cincinnati Region
of the National Conference for Community and Justice (founded as the National
Conference of Christians and Jews, Inc.), a human relations organization
dedicated to fighting bias, bigotry and racism in America. In 1995, the
Freedom Center was formally established and Mr. Rigaud was appointed as leader
of the project.
The Freedom Center's National Advisory Board and honorary campaign co-
chairs includes such nationally-known cultural and business leaders as Maya
Angelou, Julian Bond, Bryant Gumble, Vernon Jordan, Jack Kemp and Elie Wiesel,
among others. Cincinnati was selected as the site for the Freedom Center
because the city played a significant role in the history of the Underground
Railroad. The Ohio River, which runs just south of Cincinnati, was the legal
and symbolic dividing line between slavery in the South and freedom in the
North. Scholar's estimate that over 50 percent of those who escaped through
the Underground Railroad escaped through Cincinnati's "Freedom Corridor"
between Maysville, Kentucky and Madison, Indiana.
Commenting on why Toyota's manufacturing headquarters has chosen to make a
leadership gift to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, president
and CEO Teruyuki Minoura explained, "It has always been Toyota's way to give
something back to the communities where we do business. Our gift is a 'thank
you' to Greater Cincinnati for its warm welcome of Toyota. Additionally, by
helping to highlight the greater good that occurs when diverse groups work
together, we are acknowledging the increasingly important role diversity plays
in our ongoing relationships with customers, employees and suppliers."