white teachers and another for Negro teachers. The differential is wholly on the basis of race or color and not on qualifications. A suit was brought against the County Board of Education of Anne Arundel County. The court refused to pass on the constitutionality of the law, but instructed the plaintiffs that they should bring suit against the county board. Accordingly, a second suit was brought in which the court held that the county board of education was violating the fourteenth amendment when it maintains a salary differential based wholly on race or color.

Then the question was brought up in Virginia against the School Board of the City of Norfolk. In that case, the differentials were based on a contract. It was contended that since it was a matter of contract it was not a matter to be inquired into by the courts; if the Negroes did not want to teach school for the salary offered they did not have to sign the contract. The court held it was a violation of the fourteenth amendment for the board of education to even offer such a contract with the differential.

The CHAIRMAN. You say that was so held in Virginia?

Dr. DAWSON. It was so held by a three-judge court of appeals. The decision was appealed to the United States Supreme Court and the Court refused to review the decision, which, of course, was the same thing as sustaining it.

The CHAIRMAN. The court of appeals was a southern court?

Dr. DAWSON. A southern court; yes, sir; of Virginia. Furthermore, it was held that the contracts already signed were invalid, because a citizen of the United States cannot contract away his constitutional rights, and any contract that purports to do so is null and void, because it is contrary to public policy.

As a result of those decisions, action is being brought in a number of southern cities to do away with the differentials based on race or color. Agreements have been made in some cases. Without going into the exact evidence as to what is being done to rectify the situation, I would like the permission of the committee to file a statement for the record that shows the reports as to what is happening in a number of places.

The CHAIRMAN. We will be glad to have the statement.

Dr. DAWSON. That statement quotes these three court decisions, and then presents three or four typewritten pages of interpretation and financial implications of the decisions.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be included with your testimony.

Dr. DAWSON. All right, sir. I would like to add, however, that the suits being brought for equalization of salaries are, for the most part, being brought in the border States, where the proportion of Negroes to the total population is very small; in other words, the places where the problem is least pressing.

(The statement referred to is as follows:)

EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES FOR NEGROES

Seventeen States provide by law for the maintenance of separate schools for Negro pupils. In all cases where the constitutionality of providing separate schools has been before the Supreme Court of the United States it has been held that the States have the constitutional right to require and maintain separate schools for Negroes. The question of maintaining separate schools is not a legal issue and there is no probability that it will again become such. The question of equality of educational opportunities for Negroes is, however, a live and pressing issue.

The Supreme Court has said that the laws providing separate schools meet the requirement of the Constitution if equal privileges are provided for the children of the separate races. In practice, however, it is well known that equal facilities have been furnished only rarely. That equal facilities have not been provided is hardly surprising when one takes into consideration the fact that the Federal Government, after abolishing Negro slavery and conferring citizenship upon the Negro, left the entire responsibility of educating the Negroes on the shoulders of the Southern States whose economic system had been utterly ruined by the War between the States and the aftermath of the impunity of reconstruction.

Recently at least three important decisions have been made by the Federal courts interpreting the constitutional provision as to certain aspects of the equality of educational opportunity for Negroes. Suffice it to say here that in the case of State of Missouri v. Canada (59 S. Ct. 239) the courts held that the State of Missouri, if it chose to maintain a law school available only to white students, it must also maintain equal facilities for Negro students. The implications of this decision, of course, apply all along the line to higher education of all types, and certainly to secondary education which in many areas is not available at all to Negro students.

In the case of Mills County Board of Education v. Anne Arundel County (Md.) (30 F. S. 245) and in the case of Alston v. Board of Education of the City of Norfolk (Va.) (112 F. (2d) 992), it was held that the salaries paid to Negro teachers must be equal to those paid to white teachers if the Negro teachers have equal qualifications and responsibilities. In the Virginia case, which was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States for review and the appeal denied, the Court held that the policy of paying lower salaries to Negroes than to whites for services requiring equal qualifications "is as clearly a discrimination on the ground of race as could be imagined, and falls squarely within the inhibition of both the dueprocess and the equal-protection clauses of the fourteenth amendment."

It is not possible to make an exact statement of what will be the cost of making effective the requirements of the Federal court decisions in the financing of Negro schools. In the 15 States having the heaviest Negro population it will require $25,000,000 annually in additional funds to raise the average salary of Negro teachers to the average of white teachers. This additional amount would represent about 80 percent more than is now spent for salaries of Negro teachers. One of the studies of the President's Advisory Committee on Education shows that for 17 States, if the average amount per pupil for current expenses had been the same for Negro pupils as for white pupils in 1936, about $56,000,000 additional funds would have been required. If expenditures for buildings and equipment are taken into consideration, about $80,000,000 annually in additional funds would be required. If Negro pupils should attend school in the same relative numbers as white pupils, the additional annual amounts required would be $100,000,000. If school-building facilities are to be equalized, it will be necessary to make capital outlays amounting to about $325,000,000.

Taking all these facts into consideration, it is safe to say that not less than $50,000,000 is needed annually to begin to make effective the fourteenth amendment as it affects equal educational opportunities for Negroes, and that this amount may be expected to increase until it passes well over $100,000,000 annually-a sum in excess of 20 percent of the total expenditures for elementary and secondary schools in the States affected.

In the light of the economic conditions of long standing in the States having the heavy Negro population and in light of the superior effort of these States to support schools, there is no likelihood that they will be able by their own effort to raise the additional funds. But funds must be had or eventually a considerable part of the money spent on white pupils must be spent on Negro pupils. Any destruction of standards in the best white schools of the South would be an economic and social calamity of concern to the entire Nation as well as to the South. The problem is one that must be faced by the Congress of the United States if it is intended that the constitutional requirement for equal opportunities is to be more than a scrap of paper.

(A further statement on this subject is inserted on pp. 27 and 28.) Dr. DAWSON. Testimony will be offered to the committee going into some of the other technical aspects of the problems of financing schools for Negroes by Charles H. Houston, the general counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and who is the attorney in some of these cases, perhaps all of them,

and by Dr. W. W. Alexander, assistant to the Federal Security Administrator, the former Farm Security Administrator. Also Dr. Sidney B. Hall, State superintendent of public instruction, Virginia, has testimony to offer on this aspect of the problem, as well as on defense and for general equalization.

Another circumstance that requires the attention of the Federal Government, that is somewhat of long standing and considerably akin to the problem of educational facilities in defense areas, has to do with the children residing on Federal reservations and properties. In many places in the Nation the Federal Government has reserved properties that are not subject to State and local taxation. The people that reside on these properties are, for the most, employed by the Federal Government. The Government has never had any consistent policy for providing for the education of these children. Provision is made in a few places but in the majority of cases none whatever is made. In some places the children have schools, because the parents pay tuition or maintain private schools of their own, but in many cases they are dependent upon the charity and good will of the surrounding local school districts. More than $1,000,000 a year is contributed by local school districts and by States to pay for the education of children of Federal employees residing on Federal properties. There are about 7,500 of these children that have no school facilities whatever, and never have had. In a sense they are wards of the Government.

Certainly that problem ought to be taken into consideration and the Government should adopt some consistent, permanent policy with respect to taking care of the children who are, in the first instance entitled to look to the Government for educational opportunities.

Another problem that is not new but I think has not been given consideration by any committee of the Congress considering educational matters has to do with the children of migratory workers. A House committee during the last session of Congress investigated this subject for some months and reported that ordinarily there are about 4,000,000 of these people moving from one place to another to get employment, chiefly in agricultural pursuits, largely in commercial agriculture, as for example vegetable gardening in New Jersey, fruit harvesting in Florida, California, southern Arizona; the harvesting of onions in Texas; picking strawberries in strawberry fields of Arkansas and Louisiana; the harvesting of hops in Washington and Oregon; and so on. Of these 4,000,000 people, about 1,000,000 of them are children of school age. The State of California is the only State that has made any effort to try to provide school facilities for these children. In some States the situation is so bad that the compulsory school attendance laws do not apply to these people on the ground that they are nonresidents. For the most part the people that employ these families will employ only families that have a large number of children, because they can have the children working at low wages. It is a clear case of exploitation without education.

Senator ELLENDER. Dr. Dawson, is it not a fact that most of these people work in one locality for a couple of weeks and then move on to another locality?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes.

Senator ELLENDER. That being the case, how could you cope with a situation of that kind?

Dr. DAWSON. I think, Senator, we have had sufficient experience to show it can be done fairly well. For example, in California, there are portable schools, sometimes in the form of trailer trucks or buildings which can be dismantled, laid up, hauled to the next crop, and the teachers migrate with the children.

Senator ELLENDER. That may be practical in a State like California where there are such large, extensive fruit orchards, and the like, but how would you do it in other States, for instance in the wheat fields or other places where people work for a couple of weeks and then move on, and the number employed would not justify the equipment?

Dr. DAWSON. That is a very good question. Of course there are many difficulties in it. The problem among the wheat harvesters probably would not be so acute as it would among people working in the fruit harvest and vegetable gardens. Let us illustrate it by New Jersey. A good many of the migrants in New Jersey come from around Philadelphia, and are there for some weeks, may be for 2 or 3 months, some of them engaged in harvesting vegetables of different kinds. Some of them come from Florida. They have more or less regular routes that they follow. Now, if in Florida we had schools operating while these people were there in the fruit harvest, with teachers who took care of the situation, and also schools in New Jersey for the period the migrants are there, either with the same teachers or not, you would at least be sure that they had school facilities and teachers, books and supplies. It is certainly an interstate problem. For that reason we think that the States need Federal assistance to take care of it, as far as it can be taken care of.

Senator ELLENDER. For such a system as that you would have to have some kind of understanding between the various States as to the subjects to be taught, so as to give the same course.

Dr. DAWSON. Yes.

Senator ELLENDER. Do you think that would be practical?

Dr. DAWSON; Yes; I think it could be worked out very well. One of the home mission boards of one of the churches, I believe it is the Methodist Church, has experimented in that field with private schools. They have worked pretty well. I have read some of the reports. I think it could be done, Senator. That is the general opinion of the school people that have studied it; recognizing that there are a good many difficulties, of course.

The CHAIRMAN. Having been on this question of migratory labor for a number of years, having held hearings, I believe that the educational program is one of the easiest to solve, and that in its solution we may have a key to a solution of the bigger problem of migratory labor which has faced the country now for a number of years, longer than the years of depression. The more we go into this study, the more we learn that it is a problem that has been with us for some time, and probably will be with us for some time. Instead of it being an emergency problem it is a problem that we have got to face in an ordinary way.

Dr. DAWSON. I would like to say that two people will appear before the committee to give facts and opinions on it, Dr. W. W. Alexander, to whom I referred a little while ago, and Congressman John J Sparkman of Alabama, who was a member of the House committee that investigated this subject.

Senator ELLENDER. Will there be witnesses produced who will discuss school facilities in and about our Army camps and defense projects?

Dr. DAWSON. Yes, sir; the complete data will be presented by some of the people with the Government, the Federal Security Agency, the War Department, and Office of Education.

I have called attention to the needs in defense areas, the needs of children on the Federal reservations and properties, the children of migratory workers, and the need for the equalization of educational opportunities for Negroes. The other problem is one that has been given much attention during the past few years and that is the need for Federal assistance to the States for equalization of public elementary and secondary schools among the States and within the States. I have a few items of information I want to present on that subject, but there are other witnesses who will appear that will go into it more fully; for example, Dr. Floyd W. Reeves, who was the chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Education and perhaps has better command of information on this general subject than anybody else in the country, will appear before you today.

In general, the case for Federal assistance to the States for equalization of educational opportunities rests upon certain facts whose implications are extremely difficult to avoid unless one simply wants to close his mind to the facts or else assume that education is not so important, that it hurts a few million children that do not have its benefits.

Federal aid for education is necessary to the reduction of inequalities of educational opportunities. There are the most appalling differences in educational opportunity, both among and within the States. All of these differences are not due to lack of efforts on the part of the States, it being an established fact that the States having the smallest amount of funds for schools are among the States having the most diversified tax systems at the highest rates of taxation. These differences are due to economic conditions that are largely beyond the control of the States and their communities, differences in wealth, income, and taxpaying ability, in the extent of absentee ownership of national resources and industries, and differences in the number of educable children in proportion to adults, the poor States and communities having the largest proportionate number of children.

As Senator Josh Lee, a member of this committee, has frequently said, "in this country the kids are where the money aint."

The extent to which that is true is not generally recognized, I think, by the public.

I can illustrate it in this way: If, by some magic process, we could destroy two-thirds of the wealth and income of the State of California so that it could not be recovered and at the same time multiply the number of school children by two and one-third, we would then have South Carolina and California on an equal basis with respect to the support of education, because in proportion to the adult population South Carolina has two and one-third times as many school children and they have less than one-third the wealth and income per capita. Taking the Nation as a whole, the differences in educational opportunity correspond almost directly with the differences in ability of the States to raise money to support education.