ABSTRACT
People who feel able to repay kindness are more likely to accept help willingly than those who have little economic or emotional goods to spare. Although the poor may not like to take charity they can be generous in bestowing it. Serving others is one of the ways the poor show charity. Many parents encourage their children in charitable activities. Through schools, churches, Sunday schools, and youth organizations children and young people have long taken part in fund raising for charitable and civic causes. A survey completed in 1990 showed that the poorest American households gave 5.5 percent of their 1989 earnings to charity –mainly religion –as opposed to 2.9 percent donated to charity by the wealthiest Americans. The readiness of poor Negroes to help each other is a familiar theme in black history and literature. American courts have ruled that requests for donations by charitable organizations and by individual beggars are protected by constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech.
