Panel of Americans, Inc., is an organization designed to improve human relations through frank and open discussion of racial and religious differences. As launched at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1942 by the University Religious Conference, each panel consisted of five or six volunteer students who each represented a different faith, race, or cultural group. They candidly discussed and answered audience questions concerning their differences with the aim of increasing understanding and promoting brotherhood.
Their usual audiences were campus or community organizations but occasionally they spoke to more volatile groups. One instance of this was an appearance at a correction farm for delinquent boys. “Trouble was brewing when prisoners banded together in racial and national groups and began ganging up on one another. Fearing an outbreak of bloody rioting, the warden sent for the Panel of Americans...They put on a panel program for the prisoners. A few days later the warden was able to report: 'Nothing to worry about.'”
In 1947 the U.C.L.A. Panel made a national demonstration tour. The result was such a great demand for help in organizing similar panels that the University Religious Conference established a Panel Extension Service. It soon became clear however that a national program needed a national supporting body. In June, 1953, the National Council for the Panel of Americans was formed to provide the support of concerned citizens. In the same year, the Panel of Americans, Inc., was established as a tax-exempt educational corporation. Headquartered in New York City, it employed a full-time staff who worked at fund-raising, assisting local panels with both advice and finances, conducting training conferences for panelists, and organizing new panels. With this backing, the program spread to over two dozen campuses located throughout the United States.
In the autumn of 1958, the national office for the Panel of Americans was requested by the New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations to prepare panels for assignment in tension situations. This request ultimately led to a decision to concentrate staff attention on the New York area, and by the early 1960s, this change of emphasis was reflected in the national program.
