ADDITIONAL INFORMATION REQUIRED

To the extent the information is known, the nature of the discriminations

1383

To the extent the information is known, the nature of the employment problem or problems alleged was as follows:

To the extent the information is known, the respondents involved in these matters were as follows:

SEX DISCRIMINATION

Of all the matters received and analyzed, 2432 have alleged discrimination

based on sex.

Senator CLARK. I make the additional comment that perhaps the subcommittee should urge the President in filling the existing vacancy on the Commission and any vacancies which may occur in the reasonably near future to assure himself that the nominee will commit himself to serve out his full term as a condition of being nominated and that in the course of his confirmation hearing on the nomination for the advice and consent of the Senate we too should look carefully into that matter.

It is my understanding, for reasons with which I have some sympathy, that the existing vacancy will be filled by a Republican woman. As you know, the law requires bipartisanship in the Commission, and obviously with discrimination in the field of sex an important matter within the jurisdiction of the Commission, it is highly desirable to have a woman on the Commission.

I would hope that when the President makes that selection he will give careful thought to what you gentlemen have said this afternoon, and what I have just placed in the record.

There is another matter on which I would like to get your views very briefly, and then I am almost through.

You touched on this a little bit, Mr. Mitchell, but I am not sure that we explored it as deeply as we should. That is the question of whether there is really any geographical pattern of evasion or refusal to obey the requirements of the 14th amendment and the civil rights law of 1964 with respect to equal employment opportunity. Mr. Shulman was very reluctant to discuss that. The Secretary of Labor, I thought, was somewhat more candid. As leaders in the NAACP and the civil rights movement, what can you gentlemen tell the subcommittee in respect. to whether there is substantially more denial of equal employment opportunity in the South than in the large northern cities with Negro ghettos and the like? I said this morning that in Pennsylvania, where I think we have a pretty good State law, most of the problem arises in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh because that is where the Negro population tends to concentrate. This raises the question as to what is the situation in those States of the South where there is a very much heavier concentration of Negro population than elsewhere, and also whether in those wide areas where the Negro population is quite small, the Plains States, we still find the same problems.

Can you enlighten the subcommittee on any of that?

Mr. Wilkins.

Mr. WILKINS. Senator Clark, I don't have any figures that I can cite. Mr. Mitchell said he had some figures printed on shining paper from authorities but I would suggest that the experience both in this Commission and in Mr. Greenberg's legal activities and Mr. Mitchell's activities here in Washington, all this experience suggests that, while the South may not be singled out as the worst or worse than the North, there, are certain types of employment discrimination there which apparently flourish, namely, the kind that denies upgrading and promotion and does not enforce seniority rules or, indeed, in some instances may have separate lines of seniority, so that the Negro employees, even though in substantial numbers of a corporation in some southern State, may find themselves pocketed and blanketed in a restricted category of employment and unable to employ their seniority in plantwide applica

tions.

Now, this is a favorite in the Southern States and on the other hand in the North we also find examples of the separate seniority proposition but in the North we find something else which is harder to put your finger upon and can only be done, say, case by case, and that is the uncovering of personal plant personnel practices which systematically, or as a matter of understood policy, tend to restrict the employment opportunity of Negroes.

Now, I wouldn't be able to say whether this happens more often in northern New York State than it does, say, in Indiana or more in Indiana than it does in Tennessee, but I would tend to believe that, whereas it does follow a geographical concentration of Negroes, we would also have to look at the types of discrimination, whether it is original barring from employment and here the prime example is Cleveland, certainly not Cleveland, Miss., but Cleveland, Ohio, where the Negroes are excluded originally from certain craft unions. It certainly was true here in Washington, D.C., and in Philadelphia in the matter of the structural steelworkers. McCloskey, for example, was building a building for the U.S. Government and he just couldn't hire a Negro steelworker. So it is difficult to say whether one section is worse than another.

Senator CLARK. In other words, it is a pretty sophisticated question. Mr. WILKINS. It is a sophisticated question but some of the discrimination, Senator, is not sophisticated. Some of it is very crude. Senator CLARK. Thank you.

Mr. MITCHELL. As I was going to say, Senator, you were in a position to get a good look at what we are up against. You have just been in Mississippi.

Senator CLARK. I was in Cleveland, Miss.

Mr. MITCHELL. You have seen the displaced thousands of people who have been put out of work because hands are no longer used to pick cotton. They use machines. The question I want to ask is why is it that a Negro who has been picking cotton in Mississippi can get on a train and ride on the Illinois Central all the way up to the city of Chicago where he can get a job in a plant but he can't get a job down in the State of Mississippi doing the same thing because he is supposed not to be trained enough. I think, as Mr. Wilkins has said, we are faced with a lawless, brutal, and despicable system of job discrimination in the South which even goes to the extent of taking the lives of Negroes when they try to get upgraded.

I would stake my reputation on the fact that if we want to find the people who murdered, by blowing up his car, Wharlest Jackson who had been promoted following fair employment procedures being instituted in the Armstrong Tire & Rubber Co. down in Mississippi, if we want to find out who did it we could find them right there in that plant still working there. I think this is one of the most awful things that we face in this country.

Here we have industry moving southward, out of a lot of large industrialized areas of the North, building new plants and still putting the Negroes in as janitors. The Negroes come to New York and Philadelphia and hang around on the corners because there isn't enough work to go around when if this were fair they could be employed right there in Mississippi.