Riordan Donates $1 Million for Literacy

Richard Riordan, a Los Angeles attorney and civic leader, has agreed to donate the first $1 million of a $13-million campaign to eradicate illiteracy in Mississippi by the year 2000.

“The sad condition of so many poor children in Mississippi suffering further indignities as illiterate, unemployable adults is a concern everyone with faith in democracy must share,” said Riordan, 59, who joined Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus in Jackson, Miss., on Tuesday to announce the gift.

Several years ago, Riordan embarked on a personal crusade to give inner-city school children the resources they need to learn to read and write. In recent years, he has made substantial gifts of computer reading programs to schools run by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles and New York archdioceses.

Mississippi officials estimate that 400,000 of the state’s 2 million residents are functionally illiterate. According to Mabus, Mississippi will provide an IBM computer lab and an IBM program called “Writing to Read” to each of the 500 elementary schools statewide over the next four years. Officials for IBM say the computer program enables students as young as kindergarten to write anything they can say and, with the help of a voice activator, to read what they write.