Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the bellwether of the civil rights movement from the very beginning. The school segregation cases were brought by private civil rights lawyers. All of the great advances in the civil rights area have come initially, later with social assistance, assistance from society in general, assistance from government associations but initially have come from litigation filed by private civil rights lawyers.

I might give some examples: The Hill-Burton Act, the Hill-Burton Hospital Conditions Act had for many years a separate but equal provision and for well over a decade civil rights proponents went to what had been the predecessor of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Government and said, "You can't enforce separate but equal since the 1954 Court decision," and they said they were unable to overlook the provisions and finally a lawsuit was filed by private civil rights lawyers, and I was privileged to be involved in that case, and the U.S. District Court for the Fourth District held that unconstitutional and HEW followed the law as it well might have done in advance, but it needed this private initiative in order to do it.

The guidelines that the Commissioner of Education in the Department of HEW follows are largely guidelines that have been developed in private suit and as the private litigation has developed in some of these cases, and by private I don't mean by persons who were retained as a corporation might retain a law firm, but I mean by civil rights organization, the guidelines have evolved along Government suit and so we say these two portions of the law are extremely important: one, Government enforcement as a matter of giving a pervasive treatment to the problem; and, two, preservation of the right of private suit so that an independence and certain pioneering spirit can be maintained in the implementation of the law.

I give a good many examples of this in my prepared statement. I give a good many examples of how lawsuits have accomplished a good deal. I would like to refer to one of them and that is the Newport News Shipbuilding case. That is a case which for quite a long while had been under the jurisdiction of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the conditions of segregation and discrimination continued there even though there was theoretical Government administrative control and power over this.

Finally, when a private law suit was filed under title VII people got down to serious negotiations and a settlement was arrived at which has provided jobs for Negroes in volume heretofore unknown, in capacities and so forth. We have a good number of other observations mostly directed toward technical considerations in the act, and I leave that to you, Senator Clark, and your staff to refer to those. Senator CLARK. Thank you very much, Mr. Greenberg. Who next, Mr. Wilkins?

Mr. WILKINS. Senator Clark, my good friend Mr. Young here, although he is last on the alphabet, would like to have a word to say. STATEMENT OF WHITNEY M. YOUNG, JR., EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL URBAN LEAGUE

Mr. YOUNG. Thank you, Senator Clark.

First for the record I am Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League.

Senator CLARK. We know who you are.

Mr. YOUNG. We want to express our appreciation for the invitation to apper before this committee; also to you, Senator Clark and Senator Javits, for introducing this particular legislation. I don't know how I can point out strongly enough the seriousness of this legislation being passed. It is now fairly apparent that there is developing a growing cynicism among many of our Negro citizens, particularly our younger Negro citizens, about laws and the extent to which they are made effective. I think this is a serious situation. In fact, for the first time last year we had the spectacle of some civil rights groups actually not supporting civil rights bills, but actually opposing them. I think this growing feeling of disillusionment and discouragement is one that has to be met forthrightly. It is bad enough that we have in the EEOC a situation where the victim himself, oftentimes the one in the most disadvantageous position with the least possible security, has to initiate action.

I wish there were some way where purely on the face of it, where there is obvious discrimination, that the Commission could more aggressively move in on these cases. I certainly want to associate myself with the requests of Mr. Greenberg about the importance of the ceaseand-desist order. Without this, this largely becomes purely conciliation, and negotiation, or mainly good advice. It still is not effective and it means that we are extending a consideration, if you will, to violators of this law that we would certainly not do, say, with antitrust or even traffic regulation.

It seems that we can always be so much more considerate when it is the other fellow who is victimized. I think this growing cynicism about laws and legislation is somewhat justified when you observe the actual facts as released by the Labor Department and others showing that in spite of the law we have practically the same gap remaining in the average income of Negro as related to white citizens. Today the average Negro man makes 60 percent of the yearly income of that of the white employee. A Negro with a college education today makes less in the course of a lifetime than a white fellow with a high school education.

The other point I would like to make that is not included in my testimony is that one of the great values of laws like this, that are really rigid laws, is that it makes it possible for the business that wants to do the right thing to do it. It has been my experience that we have businesses in this country, businessmen who would like to do right in their employment policies but who lack the courage to go ahead and do it. If you have a law that has teeth in it, then this man who has these exaggerated fears

Senator CLARK. Just a minute, Mr. Young.

Senator Prouty?

Senator PROUTY. Mr. Young, I am sorry that I have to leave. Before I do I wish to say that in you and Mr. Wilkins and Mr. Mitchell I think we have three of the most distinguished Negro leaders in the country present. I am proud of the work that you have been doing and I am sure that your people should be. We are going to give great weight to the views which you are expressing this afternoon.

Thank you.

Mr. YOUNG. Thank you very much.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Young, knowing the vagaries of the live quorum as I do I thought that I would stay here a few minutes and let you finish your preliminary statement, and then we will recess so that can go to the quorum too and by that time maybe Senator Prouty will be back and we can go ahead without unduly interrupting your time schedule.

Mr. YOUNG. I appreciate that. I want to point out that I have direct information from businessmen that they need to do the thing that they don't have the personal courage to do.

There is a great deal of exaggerated fear and just as the hotel men in the South wanted a public accommodations bill but they were afraid to initiate the action themselves this would give them the opportunity. There are the obvious moral reasons but I am also concerned about what we call America's bigotry budget. In this country some $25 billion in purchasing power of the Negro is lost. We spend in this country some $50 billion for private and public welfare, not all Negroes, but a disproportionate amount of it; $27 billion for crime.

I think the time has come that we have to have laws that are more than pious platitudes, laws that in effect will provide the teeth so that it can be effective.

Senator CLARK. I guess you would like to see a freedom budget substituted for a bigotry budget.

Mr. YOUNG. I certainly would.

Senator CLARK. Mr. Wilkins, I think I can stay for one more.

Mr. WILKINS. I wanted Mr. Mitchell to have a word to say at this point if he wants to add something to what these gentlemen have said, and anticipate what I might say.

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE M. MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU, NAACP

Mr. MITCHELL. Thank you, Mr. Wilkins.

Senator, I wanted merely to address myself to a couple of the things that came up in the morning hearings.

Senator CLARK. Would you mind getting that microphone over

there?

Mr. MITCHELL. In the morning hearings the question arose of why is it that colored people are not present in large numbers in apprentice training, and I would say that information which I took the trouble to check on during the lunch hour would indicate that most of the people who become journeymen in the skilled trades do not become journeymen because they have been through apprentice training. I managed to pick up some very distinguished authorities to support that. There is a professor out at the University of California, or at least his material was published by the University of California. He is Mr. George Strauss, who published some material on apprenticeship and evaluation of the need and it was published by the University of California Press. He makes this significant statement.

He said that in practice the majority of construction journeymen entered the skilled trades through channels other than apprenticeship. They go in by completion of a part of the formal apprenticeship training. They have informal apprenticeship. They learn the trade in the nonunion sector of industry or a related industry. Some come from vocational schools and some come by way of working up from unskilled

trades through the so-called helper classification and then he says there is a procedure of coming in by what is known as stealing, whatever that is, through the back door.

In other words, it is my opinion that it is very unrealistic and unfair to say that what colored people need is more training before they can become skilled workers. I heard Secretary Wirtz, for example, mention that atrocious case in Cleveland where the people had been trained through MDTA and then they were all disqualified on some kind of an oral examination. But look at what would happen to them if they had not been disqualified. They would have had a year of training in the MDTA and then under the requirements of the Electrical Workers the apprenticeship training program is 4 years after that and I submit that this is wholly unrealistic in this country. If we are going to reach these young people who are between the apprenticeable ages of 18 and 24, and there are over a million of them who are Negroes, we have to do something that shortens that process and which is more realistic, I think that this is a real challenge to Government, to employers, to unions, and to everyone else to stop talking about colored people not being ready because they haven't got the training.

I think what we have to do is make the process of entering simpler and I think we will get better results.

Senator CLARK. Thank you very much, Mr. Mitchell, for a very provocative suggestion.

Now Mr. Wilkins, are we ready for you?

Mr. WILKINS. Mr. Rauh is counsel, of course, for the leadership conference on civil rights.

Senator CLARK. The counsel will recognize the good precept of the appellate lawyer, which is when you are ahead shut up and sit down. I am teasing you. You are going to have your day in court.

STATEMENT OF JOSEPH L. RAUH, JR., GENERAL COUNSEL,
LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Mr. RAUH. Senator, your predispositions have always been with the civil rights movement, so that when you said that we were ahead, why, you spoke from the heart on that.

I will just make three points very quickly.

First I think the most important proposal being made by us for change in your bill is the proposal that would put public employees under the law. If you think of a Negro being arrested in the South, arrested by a white trooper, a white sheriff, he goes to jail in a "black Maria" run by white people. In jail he sees only white people. When he gets in the courtroom the next day there are only white people running the place. It seems to us that if you really want to do something toward integrating justice in the South, we should apply this equal employment law to all of the public agencies, State and local, in the South.

Second, I agree with everything that has been said that the center of this bill is the cease-and-desist order. It must be. There is no sense having a Commission whose sole authority is to play pattycake with the problem. This Commission is set up for the purpose of doing something. It is a Federal body. It is almost a parody of a Federal body to have it there but with no power to act.

80-226 0679

Third, we urge the subcommittee to bring this bill through the full committee and on to the floor as soon as possible. There is a need for civil rights legislation now and we feel that this bill is the vehicle. It is the vehicle if for no other reason than the fact that we have a subcommittee that is favorable to civil rights, a chairman of the subcommittee who is favorable to civil rights, and a full committee that is favorable.

We look to you. We pin our hopes on you for getting civil rights to the floor soon. And if we don't get it there soon, we start to run into threats of filibuster. You are really our hope for some action. Senator CLARK. Thank you, Mr. Rauh.

Mr. Wilkins.

STATEMENT OF ROY WILKINS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NAACP

Mr. WILKINS. Senator, I would like to echo what Mr. Young has said in thanking you for this opportunity to appear. I speak today and I want this understood, and on the record, as the director of the NAACP rather than in the role of chairman of the leadership conference on civil rights. This particular statement I submitted is an NAACP statement and has not been endorsed by all of the organization in the civil rights conference. I don't want to repeat what others have said nor take a lot of your time here.

We want to reserve for whatever questions you might have but it strikes me, sir, that it ought to be repeated that the heart of this matter, of course, is the cease-and-desist order. I go back to 1946 when we first had before us here in Washington the question of fair employment practice legislation, when there was such bitterness about it after the wartime FEPC of President Roosevelt and when certain forces in the Senate vowed to cut off all funds even if the bill were enacted.

To find here 20 years later a piece of legislation, welcome indeed for President Kennedy and President Johnson have introduced it and to have pushed it, and for you and Senator Javits, for example, to have introduced this supplementary legislation, is all very welcome to the civil rights forces.

We commend the President and our assassinated President for their forward action in the matter. Nevertheless, the fact remains that 20 years after 1946, the legislation now on the books does not have the cease-and-desist order and the young people who hoped that this legislation would open up job opportunities for them are correspondingly discouraged when they find that the Commission before which they have spread their case and their complaints doesn't even have a right to order a company or corporation, even when found guilty, and patently guilty, of certain practices, to cease and desist, so this must be the heart of the bill. We have made certain suggestions about amendments to the bill which you have noted and said you are going to refer these to be collated and to examine into each of them. I will not stress those except to say that we stand behind every recommendation in the bill and indeed some of the others that have been made because they are the same.

I think, Senator, in closing the brief remarks I have to make that I would like to read verbatim from two paragraphs only of the state

« AnteriorContinuar »