Proclamation 4293—Legal Rights for Retarded Citizens Week, 1974

America's more than six million mentally retarded citizens face many hardships in their daily lives. Too frequently, they are even denied basic legal rights without having the means or the knowledge to protect themselves.

Retarded children, for instance, are too often deprived of the opportunities open to other children, and many mentally retarded adults are denied a free choice of a place to live.

Too many of the mentally retarded who, with proper training and encouragement, could lead healthy, productive lives in the outside world are needlessly institutionalized. Many are the victims of direct and indirect discrimination in their everyday lives.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week beginning May 12, 1974 as "Legal Rights for Retarded Citizens Week", and call upon all Americans to make an added effort to accord full legal rights and individual respect and dignity to all retarded Americans not only this week, but every week of the year.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this eleventh day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-eighth.

RICHARD NIXON