DISCRIMINATION AND FULL UTILIZATION OF

MANPOWER RESOURCES

THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 1952

UNITED STATES SENATE,

LABOR AND LABOR-MANAGEMENT RELATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMITTEE ON

LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10 a. m., in the Old Supreme Court room, the Capitol, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.

Present: Senators Humphrey, Lehman, Pastore, and Ives.

Also present: Jack Barbash, staff director; Merton C. Bernstein, subcommitte counsel; Ray Rodgers, assistant clerk; Dwyer Shrugrue, administrative assistant to Senator Ives.

Senator PASTORE (presiding). The hearing will please come to order. Our first witness is Walter White. Is Mr. White here?

STATEMENT OF WALTER WHITE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, AND CLARENCE MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE, ACCOMPANIED BY WILLIAM DERRICK

Mr. WHITE. My name is Walter White. I am executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. My address is 20 West Fortieth Street, New York 18, N. Y.

These hearings on fair employment practice legislation are second only to the hearings held by the Senate Committee on Rules to consider the various proposals for eliminating filibuster. Therefore, I begin my testimony by congratulating the members of this subcommittee and, particularly, the chairman. There has been a great deal of misinformation about fair employment practice proposals. These hearings will help to clear the air on the eve of the most important national election in the history of our country and the world.

The members of this subcommittee know that our country cannot survive as a free nation unless we strengthen our democratic processes by creating safeguards against all forms of racial and religious discrimination. This is why you are committed to support the civil rights program set forth in the historic document called the Report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights. Unfortunately, not all of the American people know this. So many selfish interests have combined to malign and distort the report on civil rights that its high purposes must constantly come before the public through congressional hearings and by whatever other means we can use to tell the story.

Before commenting on S. 1732 and S. 551, the bills before you, I wish to tell you about an incident affecting a high Government official from Ceylon who came to the United States recently to study.

This is a direct quote from him: "It is a great bore, you know, to run about your country loudly proclaiming that we're not Negroes." This same gentleman, who on the whole tour received royal carpet treatment throughout his United States tour, had one personal experience a day or so before his departure. A barber in Cincinnati refused to cut his hair, saying that he did not cater to "niggers. This man, enthusiastic about America until then, left the country in a rage, and when he hit London, he made some anti-American statements in public which made headlines.

Some people will try to dismiss this incident as unimportant but this is the kind of experience that completely negates all of the fine speeches or splendid radio broadcasts that we make on the Voice of America to tell the world how much we believe in democracy.

An eminent Pakistani journalist who was particularly eager to see the TVA made this comment after his visit: "Certainly TVA is a magnificent spectacle but I am afraid that what will stick longest in my mind are the signs saying 'colored drinking water' and 'colored picnic grounds"."

There is another story along similar lines of a social worker from Ceylon who, after some humiliating encounters with segregation in Nashville, Tenn., and other parts of the South, returned home and subsequently became active in the Communist Party in Ceylon.

These aspects of racial discrimination in the United States remind us that the proposal to eliminate job discrimination by passing Federal legislation is only a part of many things that we must do to support the proclamation of our democracy that all men are free and equal.

There are minor differences in language in S. 1732 and S. 551 but the important principle of establishing a fair employment practice agency with enforcement powers is contained in both of these measures. Hence, a favorable report on either of them or a combination of them would be desirable. We hope that this subcommittee and the full Labor Committee will act quickly to get these proposals on the calendar in this session of the Senate.

This subcommitee has already heard testimony from the Department of Labor and the National Security Resources Board on the need to utilize fully all of our citizens in the national defense program. This is not happening now. The experience of the NAACP shows that colored persons are being barred from jobs in the following industries: Aircraft, communications, transportation, atomic energy, and a great many others. We also find that there is incredible discrimin. tion in steel and other industries where the numbers of colored employees are great but where they are confined to the least desirable jobs by deliberate employment patterns.

This subcommitee should know that when our North Carolina delegates to a civil rights conference held in Washington on February 17 and 18 told Senator Willis Smith, of their State, that an FEPČ was needed to correct employment discrimination in the textile industry, he advised them that colored people should open their own plants if they wanted employment in that industry on a nondiscriminatory basis.

During World War II, the need for textile workers was so great that consideration was given to a plan for releasing members of the armed services to work in this industry. It has been estimated that more than 50 percent of the jobs in this industry can be filled by persons who have been given 6 months of training. Therefore, it cannot be argued that lack of training is the reason why colored people are denied skilled jobs in this industry.

A few days ago, I was in Canton, Ohio, where the Timken Roller Bearing Co. refuses to promote colored people above the grade of porter and unskilled worker.

During the week of March 14 to 21, 1952, one of our field secretaries visited Port Huron, Mich. There he found that only two industrial plants, the Mueller Brass Co. and the New Haven Foundry Co., employed colored people. Even in these plants the colored people were confined to the least desirable operations. In six other plants, no colored people are employed. These were the Chrysler, Pressed Metals, Auto-Lite, Motor Valve, Detroit Gasket, and the Knight-Morley Cos. Right here in the city of Washington, Mr. J. A. B. Broadwater, president of the Capital Transit Co., told a committee of prominent citizens in February that they were wasting their time by trying to persuade him to hire colored people as streetcar and bus operators. He admitted that the company was spending money to recruit out-of-town workers for these jobs even though qualified colored people were available and could be recruited within the city limits.

We have been shocked by the employment practices of the Lockheed Aircraft Co. in Atlanta, Ga. At the start of World War II this company embarked on a policy of employing whites only in its plant near Los Angeles, Calif. President Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practice Committee in 1941 and one of its first hearings was on this company. Even though FEPC did not have the prestige of some of the older Government agencies, the revelations it made on this company were sufficient to jar the conscience of California and the Nation. The result was that Lockheed became one of the model employers so far as fair practices were concerned. Now, 11 years later, and in spite of the knowledge it has gained on the value of fair treatment for all employees, Lockheed is again heading the list of companies that flagrantly discriminate against applicants for employment solely because of race. In response to inquiries by our Atlanta branch and our Washington bureau, the company has admitted that it is not employing colored people for skilled jobs in the Georgia plant. There is hardly a more eloquent argument that could be made for a continuing and vigorous Federal fair employment agency.

The opponents of fair employment practice legislation constantly harp on the question of whether this is the right way to correct discrimination in employment. It is ironic that these same people are the opponents of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People whenever we go into court to challenge laws and regulations that require segregation and other types of discrimination. In other words, they want laws as long as those laws promote immoral racial discrimination but they are against any legal requirement that all persons be treated as free and equal citizens.

Fortunately, in the United States, the great majority of our people believe in fair play. This is evidenced by the overwhelming record

of compliance in the Federal field when the wartime FEPC was functioning and in the State field now where State agencies have been set up. It is also attested to by the reports that are coming in from municipal FEPC agencies. I know that the subcommittee has either heard or will hear testimony from State and city FEPC officials. Hence I shall not elaborate on this statement.

I do wish to emphasize, however, that those agencies that lack enforcement powers cannot achieve the practical results that are possible if all persons involved in a fair employment dispute know that there is a means of obtaining final settlement through court enforcement. As long as settlement depends entirely on negotiation, most of the difficult problems will not be solved. For example, a weak union leader who must go to his membership for reelection will not take a courageous stand during negotiations on racial employment policies. if he knows that an opponent will use that stand to defeat him in the next election. On the other hand, if the agency of Government handling the dispute has power to require a just and equitable settlement, more union leaders will be encouraged to follow the splendid examples that have been set up by such international unions as the United Mine Workers, the UAW, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, and the International Ladies Garment Workers.

As an example of this, I offer a recent experience we had with the bricklayers union of the AFL. The Anchor Fireproofing Co., of Washington, D. C., had a contract to do the brick construction on a hospital for veterans in Cincinnati, Ohio. The contract contained nondiscrimination clause. Although there was an acute need for bricklayers, the local union in Cincinnati would not give support to efforts of our branch in that city to obtain employment for qualified colored bricklayers who were members of other locals of the union. The company employs a number of skilled colored workmen on its building projects in the Washington area. However, it had declined to act in Cincinnati. Fortunately, the constitution of the bricklayers union forbids discrimination against members because of race. It is also fortunate that the existence of a nondiscrimination clause in both the prime and subcontracts on this job made fair employment mandatory. The international officials of the union directed the local in Cincinnati to follow the requirements of that organization's constitution. The Veterans' Administration advised that the nondiscrimination clause had to be complied with. The result was that the colored bricklayers went to work. Without the possibility of required compliance, this problem would not have been settled in a reasonable period, if at all.

As an illustration of how some of the courageous white citizens of the United States feel about employment discrimination, I wish to submit the following statement from Mrs. Jane Louise Hanson, who was formerly employed in the personnel department at the United States naval ordnance plant in Indianapolis, Ind. Her statement follows:

I, Jane L. Hanson, hereby swear that while employed at the United States naval ordnance plant, Indianapolis, Ind., Mr. Frank M. Spreen, employment manager, made it known to me that he or the plant would not hire Negro stenographers for office work. Mr. Joe Morris, one of the two interviewers, also stated that the guard knew "they didn't hire Negro stenographers, so why

did he let the girl in?"—when a Negro girl was accidentally summoned to come in by letter and appeared at the plant. The girl was quickly disposed of.

Civil service rules were broken several times when Negro girls' names were high or highest on the register, and I was asked not to write them the availability letter, while all the others were asked to come for interviews. The ways they were checked were by location in the city of Indianapolis and by the schools they had attended. Also, there were times when highly qualified, well-groomed, and well-mannered Negro stenographers appeared to ask if there were openings in these positions. They were always told definitely there were no openings when there were several open positions, because it was my duty to keep the lists of open positions, to keep them up to date daily, and to post them once a week on three bulletin boards.

There were times when I compared the applications of Negro girls and white girls, and the white girls were always selected even though many of them had very little, if any, stenographic experience. One supervisor who had one of these girls "given" to him for work was finally let out because she couldn't type the simplest sentence without many mistakes. Several Negro stenographers who appeared or called in had worked for a considerable time with the Veterans' Administration, and several of those persons were being released only because the Veterans' Administration was cutting down on personnel, and had asked that the naval ordnance do everything it could to help their former employees by hiring them if needed. Several white girls from the Veterans' Administration were hired, however.

Additional proof of intended discrimination was the time I answered a telephone call. A young man identified himself as a good stenographer, with good experience, and saying he was living at the Senate Avenue Y, which is a Negro Y in Indianapolis. I had him hold the phone while I went into the processing room to explain this young man's call to Mr. Spreen, since we were desperate for stenographers at the time. I asked Mr. Spreen if he'd like to talk to the boy since his experience sounded good. Mr. Spreen said to me in front of all the girls in the processing or filing department, "Why, Jane, he's a Negro" (with emphasis on "Negro"). "We can't hire him. Oh, well, I'll take care of him." With that he went into answer the phone and we hadn't heard or seen of the boy since.

(Signed) JANE LOUISE HANSON.

There are very few people who would have the courage to go on record as Mrs. Hanson has done to show discrimination that they knew about personally. But most of them would welcome a change in existing discriminatory practices if for no other reason than to have peace with their own consciences.

Elmo Roper recently made a speech pointing out that discrimination costs the United States approximately $30 billion a year. Mr. Roper has documented his thesis very thoroughly and I wish to quote this pertinent paragraph:

If you take into account the amount of purchasing power which is denied minority groups by low wages sometimes on work where machines could do the work even cheaper, if you add the possible contribution to society by workers of minority groups who could move into high-paying vocations where there are manpower shortages, such as doctors, chemists, engineers, and so on; if you add the costs of crime, delinquency, and social maladjustment which can be traced directly to discrimination and prejudice, and if finally you add the costs of segregation which are the direct result of discriminatory practices, you'll find on calculation that this discrimination comes to roughly $10 out of every $75 pay check, or in total dollar terms $30 billion lost every year.

Some indication of the cash toll that is taken by employment discrimination may be found in these excerpts from the 1950 census reports:

The median income received by families and unrelated individuals in the northeast, west, and north central regions (about $2,900) was approximately 50 percent higher than the median for the South ($1,940). The relatively low median cash income for the South is attributable in part to the fact that * * * the South contains about three-fifths of the Nation's nonwhite families and un