40th Anniversaries of Day of Hope Tours

Rally on Wall Street in late September 1973 to drum up interest for the Oct. 1st Speech at Carnegie Hall in New York City - Photo courtesy of Joe Kinney

Almost 40 years ago the first legendary Day of Hope Campaign tour to 21 cities kicked off with a rally at New York’s Carnegie Hall. From early September of 1973, 400 brothers and sisters worked street corners in Manhattan and went door-to-door selling tickets for what sounded like revivalist events dubbed “Christianity in Crisis: New Hope.” Each three-night stop featured speeches by True Father, on “God’s Hope for Man,” “God’s Hope for America,” and “The Future of Christianity,” according to Footprints of True Parents’ Providence, by Unificationist historian Dr. Michael Mickler. The following report draws heavily from this book.

Day of Hope Rally at unspecified date in 1973, the Day of Hope Tours were emphatically public rallies, including entertainment and prior visits to city and state officials. Virtually all of the participants were in their 20s - courtesy of Joe Kinney

Earlier, in mid-July, as a result of an influx of missionaries from Japan and Europe, two 40-member IOWC (International One World Crusade) teams had been formed to travel the 21-city itinerary, preparing the way for Rev. Moon’s lecture series the following fall and winter. By the end of August, more than 400 members gathered to prepare for the Day of Hope talks scheduled to begin at Carnegie Hall on October 1st. A five-member Day of Hope planning staff consisting of a campaign coordinator, PR director, media director, technical director, and logistics coordinator helped generate public visibility, according to Dr. Mickler. Newspaper and magazine ads, bus and commuter train posters, and mass leafleting introduced the series to the people of each city. The staff also sent professionally made tapes to

540 radio stations for public service announcements.

According to campaign coordinator Mike Leone, the purpose of the staff’s work was two-fold: first, “to bring to the public eye Rev. Moon of South Korea, a dynamic and inspiring spiritual leader of thousands of people,” and second, “to fill every hall, every night.”

Rev. Moon speaking at Constitution Hall, Washington, D.C.

Civic proclamations also enhanced the Church’s public visibility. The previous February 14, 1973, as a result of the intercessory efforts of Benjamin Swig, a prominent San Francisco hotel owner and friend of Rev. Sang Ik Choi, one of Rev. Moon’s earliest disciples, Rev. Moon was awarded the key to the city of San Francisco. During the 21 tour, campaign workers secured a multitude of proclamations of honorary citizenship, and days, or weeks, of “Hope and Unification.” Many of these proclamations were read at Day of Hope banquets. Held prior to opening night talks during the tour, the banquets featured entertainment, introductions and greetings from Rev. Moon to civic and religious leaders, educators and businessmen.

The results of the twenty-one-city tour were remarkable. In New York, where 400 members worked a month prior to the Carnegie Hall opening, the movement attracted widespread media coverage. The September 22, 1973, New York Daily News carried a large photo and article on a Day of Hope rally on the steps of Federal Hall on Wall Street. Time, Newsweek and Christianity Today all carried stories on the campaign, and Associated Press religion writer George W. Cornell’s generally positive feature story appeared in seventy-nine newspapers throughout the United States. More than 250 prominent New Yorkers attended the inaugural Day of Hope banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Telegrams of congratulations were read from New York mayor, John V. Lindsay and columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., as well as from several U.S. congressmen. In Baltimore, Cardinal Sheehan sent his blessing to the banquet.

In Washington, D.C., where the movement also concentrated its efforts, close to 400 citizens turned out for the banquet, and more than three thousand people for the three nights of talks at the Lisner Auditorium. During that Washington, D.C. campaign Ray Mas was both a church member and a full-time student at George Washington University, of which Lisner Auditorium is a part. “The auditorium was packed,” he tells Unification News. One of the persons who came was a young John Dolan, a very spiritually sensitive man, who came to the Upshur Street Center afterwards and told the center director, the late Joseph Sheftick, that he wanted to join the church and move in. Sheftick said no and wouldn’t budge. “However, Dolan camped out in the backyard for some nights until he could move into the center,” Mas said in an interview. “College campuses were excellent places for us to have events in those days. There were many students in the area who were spiritually searching.”

Joe Gaval, at the time a newly-minted member in Washington, D.C. recalls it this way, “ I remember returning to the National Headquarters building on Connecticut Ave. near Dupont Circle after a day of selling tickets ($3 per night) for Father’s three speeches. As we were standing in line for our usual dinner of tuna casserole, someone said something that created a buzz of excitement: “Father is in town and might come at any time. My first thought was ‘Wow!’ My second thought was ‘Oh, no,’ so I excused myself, found my shaving kit, removed my army code-compliant mustache, and returned in a far more

relaxed and prepared state of mind and body.”

In Atlanta, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter proclaimed November 7, 1973, a “Day of Hope and Unification.” The January 17, 1974, San Francisco Day of Hope banquet attracted more than 500 guests to Benjamin Swig’s Fairmont Hotel. In Berkeley, where Rev. Moon spoke at Zellerbach Auditorium on the University of California campus, The Daily Californian reported, “Rev. Moon’s followers have waged one of the neatest and best-run publicity campaigns seen here in years.” In San Jose, January 17-24, 1974, was proclaimed “Hope and Unification Week,” while in Oakland, Mayor John H. Reading proclaimed the period from January 21-24, 1974, as “Day of Hope Days.” Single days of “Hope and Unification” were proclaimed in Berkeley and Hayward, and on January 21, 1974, Rev. Moon was awarded the key to the city of Berkeley by Mayor Warren Widener.

Dr. Tyler Hendricks remembers joining other members from New Hampshire and campaigning for the Day of Hope tour to Boston. He recalls: “We were mobilized to Boston to sell tickets for the 3-night speaking event at the John Hancock Hall. We were selling tickets for $2 each, and the whole team would report our results at the end of the day, and it was pretty discouraging that there were less than five tickets sold for a team that consisted of 30 people, from all over the New England centers.

“Then Paul Werner’s 40-person IOWC team rolled into town, and Rev. Werner took command of the domestic members along with his team. He moved us into a Catholic monastery much closer to Boston with lots of bedrooms and dining space. Our ticket results went up to 60-70 tickets a day under his leadership. On his team some members were selling 10 tickets a day, just by themselves. They were quite disciplined and high-spirited. Rev. Werner and wife Christel would sometime pick up teams of two and take them out for an ice cream cone.”

Itinerary of 21 City Day of Hope Campaign

New York, New York Tampa, Florida Kansas City, Missouri Carnegie Hall Sheraton-Tampa Hotel Capri Theatre October 1-3, 1973 November 3-5, 1973 December 16-18, 1973

Baltimore, Maryland Atlanta, Georgia Tulsa, Oklahoma Lyric Theatre Regency Hyatt Hotel Civic Center October 7-9, 1973 November 6-8, 1973 December 20-22, 1973

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Omaha, Nebraska Denver, Colorado Scottish Rite Cathedral Burke High School Phipps Auditorium October 11-13, 1973 November 26-28, 1973 January 8-10, 1974

Boston, Massachussetts Minneapolis, Minnesota Seattle, Washington John Hancock Hall West Bank Auditorium Seattle Center October 16-18, 1973 November 30, December 1, January 13-15, 1974 2, 1973 Washington, D.C. San Francisco, California Lisner Auditorium Cincinnati, Ohio Scottish Rite Auditorium October 20, 21, 23, 1973 Convention Center January 18-20, 1974 December 4-6, 1973 New Orleans, Louisiana Berkeley, California Theatre for the Performing Detroit, Michigan Zellerbach Auditorium Arts Masonic Auditorium January 22-24, 1974 October 26-28, 1973 December 9-10, 1973 Los Angeles, California Dallas, Texas Chicago, Illinois Hilton Hotel Convention Center Theatre McCromick Place January 27-29, 1974 October 30, 31, November 1, December 12-14, 1973 1973