December 15 in A.A. History

In 1945, Dr. James Clark “Jim” S., Jr, founder of the Washington Colored Group in Washington, D.C., wrote to Bobbie Burger, National Secretary of the Alcoholic Foundation in New York City:

    I wish to state at this time that several of the White group members have visited our group meetings and have taken an active part, many times addressing the group or acting as group leaders. We have found them very inspiring and enthusiastic.

In 1949, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, presumably from the local Poughkeepsie Group in New York, founded in 1946, spoke to members of the Dutchess County (NY) Social Planning Council during a luncheon meeting. The next day's article, titled “Social Planners Discuss Alcoholism,” [right] in the Poughkeepsie Journal (p. 3), included the following:

    Alcoholism is both a physical and spiritual disease and should be treated as a disease…
    The organization of between 80,000 and 100,000 has no opinions and no programs, dealing only with the alcoholic who signifies the desire to stop being one. The individual with whom Alcoholics Anonymous works must be willing to admit that he is an alcoholic needing help.…
    The speaker spoke of two kinds of skeptics, those who cannot understand the spiritual side of the program because of their own materialistic attitudes, and those evangelical persons who believe faith alone can produce a cure.
    The speaker does not consider an alcoholic ever cured, he is arrested. Judges, he continued, can be of great help in explaining Alcoholics Anonymous, as can policemen. The latter are impressed, he said, when habitual drunks abandon their former habits and voluntarily stay sober. There are five types of drinkers, he said, the occasional social drinker, the heavy social drinker, the habitual drinker, the compulsive drinker who drinks to deaden the pain, or because he wishes to forget, and the alcoholic.
    There is an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous at Christ Church every Friday night at 8:30 o’clock.

In 2006, this was the final date on which Delegate Area (DelArea) 3½" floppy disks containing Alcoholics Anonymous group information were accepted at the General Service Office in New York City.