Proclamation 3846—White Cane Safety Day, 1968

"Mobility" is a precious word to the sightless. The blind person who can move about with ease and confidence has access to people and places that immeasurably stretch his horizons and broaden his experience. With energies freed, his imagination, too, can soar. Often the key to this mobility is a simple White Cane.

The White Cane enables the visually deprived to overcome his handicap and conquer his environment. With the White Cane, he can detect steps, obstacles, and dangers which bar his way. When he has mastered the special technique required for traveling with a cane, he can make his way without assistance to his job or other destination with remarkable confidence and speed.

Yet the blind person making his way alone over today's hazardous streets requires confidence, not only in his own skill and judgment, but also in his fellow citizens. To every blind person walking with the aid of a White Cane, any moving object or person is a potential threat to his safety. To proceed with confidence, the blind pedestrian must know that those about him will understand the meaning of his cane and will yield the right-of-way.

So that Americans—and especially motorists—may more fully appreciate the significance of the White Cane, and the need to exercise caution and courtesy when approaching persons carrying a White Cane, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved October 6, 1964 (78 Stat. 1003), has requested that the President proclaim October 15 of each year as White Cane Safety Day.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 15, 1968 as White Cane Safety Day.

I call upon all our citizens to join in this observance, that blind persons in our society may continue to enjoy the greatest possible measure of personal independence.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 22nd day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON