Testimony of Roy Wilkins, Executive Director
National Association of the Advancement of Colored
People before the Senate Subcommittee on Executive
Reorganization November 30, 1966, 10:00 a.m.
Washington D.C

My name is Roy Wilkins and I am the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose national headquarters are at 20 West 40th Street, New York, N.Y. I wish to thank Senator Abraham Ribicoff and the members of this Senate sub-committee for the opportunity to appear here today. 

            The problems of minorities are but one part of the gigantic and awesome problems of the cities.

            When we discuss the Negro minority we ought never to forget how the modern Negro probelm developted and who was responsible for much of it.

            Item: As farm laborers, sharecroppers and some few renters, they were almost as completely controlled as though they had still been in slavery. There was a low ceiling on their earnings. Schooling for their children was a cruel joke. They were barred from voting or participating in any civic activity.  The administration of justice never included them; they were lynched, ordered into peonage, imprisoned, beaten and shot with impunity. They developed a resentment towards the law which in personnel and execution was ‘‘white.’’

            Item: The North not only ignored the exploitations and terror inherent in the Southern agrarianism, but met earlier migrations of Negroes in the Twenties and Thirties with a but-slightly modified Southern system of rigid ghetto housings, de facto segregated (and inferior) public schools and tightly restricted, low paying employment.

            Item: When the Negro was thrown off the land in the South by industrialization, mechanization and diversified farming he flocked to the cities. He was wholly unprepared, through decades of imposed and deliberate neglect, to function in an urban society.

            Item: The Senators, the Mayors and Governors who are now surveying with dismay this present-day problem are the victims, along with the Negro, of the criminal practices of the past one hundred years, and of the winking at them by non-Southerners, or, worse still, of active and knowledgeable collusion in their perpetuation.

            Let us remember these items when we are tempted to blame the Negro for his predicament and for the discomfiture of the white population.

            Obviously urban problems cannot be considered in a vacuum, They do not originate or terminate solely within the boundaries set up by the city limits. They include, definitely, the emotional and explosive issues of race.

            We must therefore consider the city and its inhabitants in the context of what is going on in the whole nation and treat their problems in a comprehensive manner that has as its objective the solving of the problems of Ameria–poverty, health, education, housing, unemployment, transportation, racial discrimination in all of its ramifications and many others.

            Anything less than a national plan to eliminate these general inequities in our society and the glaring inequities suffered by the Negro solely because of skin color will fall short of meeting the needs of our cities.

            I am not here to present such a plan. It is my purpose to point out some of the areas of life that such a plan must touch. Fortunately there is thought being given to the type of national approach I suggest. The President’s concept of the Great Society, his Howard University speech of 1965 and White House Conference of 1966 are indicative of this. The Freedom Budget, recently unveiled by the unselfish civil rights leader, A. Philip Randolph (president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters), may be the most comprehensive plan yet proposed to accomplish the objectives we all seek. I understand Mr. Randolph will appear later before your sub-committee, and I am sure he will give details of his plan.

            In the Negro community unemployment is at least twice as serious as among the population at large. According to the Department of Labor, in March 1966, nonwhite workers constituted only 11 percent of the civilian labor, but accounted for over 21% of the unemployed and 25% of the long-term unemployed. Among young people this rate is even higher. Last summer the unemployment rate among colored youths rose from 27 to 32 percent while that for white youths decreased from 19 to 14 percent.

            When Negroes are employed, they are nearly placed in less desirable and lower-paying jobs than their white contemporaries. This results in another Department of Labor statistic, namely, that in 1964 the average family income among nonwhites was 56 percent of that of whites. Among Negroes 37 percent of the families had income below the poverty level ($3,000).

            Existing government programs have fallen far short of providing any substantial cure of these conditions. Training and retraining programs, such as MDTA (Manpower Development and Training), OEO (Office of Economic Opportunity), EDA (Economic Development Administration), have resulted in few gains for the colored community. Unfortunately, their administration has often been marked by outright racial discrimination and by preconceived stereotyped ideas of what jobs Negros can and should hold. When colored applicants have been accepted, they have often found themselves being trained for blue collar, service employment (frequently in dying industries) while their white colleagues are being trained for automated and computerized employment. We need more, better organized and nondiscriminatory training programs. Added to this we need adamantly color-bind placement programs that do not demanded Negro Ph. D.s to fill high school graduate slots.

            Among those working, higher pay among the lower categories is essential. We applaud the action of the 89th Congress in amending the minimum wage law to increase the basic wage rate and to extend coverage to millions of new workers. But we do not believe that one of the objectives of the 1963 March on Washington–an increase of the minimum wage of $2.00 per hour–is an unrealistic goal for the near future. Nor do we think that it is too early to begin serious discussion of a guaranteed annual family income – one of the recommendations supported by the White House conferees last June.

            In the meantime, while plans of implementing these suggestions are in the discussion stage, we believe some effort should be made through increased public works programs to provide employment for all who are ready, willing and able to engage in useful occupations.

            Hand in hand with the need for employment goes the need for decent housing. This is hard to come by in the city, particularly in the older sections now occupied heavily by Negroes. Overcrowding, rent-gouging, inadequate facilities, health and accident hazards are the normal, even the expected lots, of the Negro family seeking decent quarters. Crime, drug addiction and immorality flourish. Existing open-housing laws and regulations offer him little remedy in view of the slick Jim Crow practices of the real estate industry aimed at thwarting the enforcement of such laws.

            We supported President Johnson in his efforts to enact a comprehensive fair housing law. We were pleased that a majority of both houses of the Congress also supported him. We wish to express our disappointment and more strongly, our dismay, that the Senate leader of the Republican Party joined with the Southern bloc to again impose minority rule on the Senate of the United States to prevent consideration of this much-needed legislation.

            We will seek a change in Senate Rule 22, the filibuster rule. Under majority rule we have no doubt that open housing legislation will pass in the Senate. But whether or not the filibuster rule is changed, we shall continue to press for open housing.

            In the meantime, we seek improvement in the housing executive order. Our lawyers disagree with the limitations that the Department of Justice, in this and preceding administrations, has placed upon the President by the advice given him. One of our top priorities when the new Attorney General is appointed will be to ask him to reconsider prior Department of Justice opinions in this area.

            While we support open housing legislation and executive action with all of our resources, we realize that no matter how many housing opportunities such legislation and action will create, they will not create new housing. Therefore we advocate increased Federal legislation to promote more housing in the middle and low income categories.

            We have supported the creation of the Department of HUD, rent supplement legislation and the demonstration cities bill. We will continue to support such constructive legislation. But we emphasize what has been done up to now and what will be done in the immediate future under these new legislative proposals can only serve as the nearest beginnings. Reform in housing depends upon implementation and enormous expansion of the authority already granted.

            Only this week it became known that a comprehensive urban rebuilding and new housing plan, involving both government and the private sector, whose tentative cost is $50 billion, is under serious consideration. This figure shows some realistic appraisal of the huge task facing the nation. It is not unreasonable to spend the equivalent of the national defense budget upon healthful, adequate shelter for our 70 percent urban population. Who knows – it may save us some people to defend.

            The demonstration cities plan cannot be permitted to degenerate into glorified urban renewal under which people are moved around without improving their basic living conditions. I have confidence that Secretary Robert Weaver (of the Department and Urban Development will carry out the basic objective of these new programs – to provide more, imaginative, and adequate housing.

            But then a demonstration city will be just that– a demonstration. For every resident of such a city whose housing needs are met, there are thousands in other cities whose needs continue and whose hopes will be frustrated if the program is not expanded to include them within its coverage. The Congress must meet these wholly reasonable expectations.

            Educational deprivation for his children is another risk that the city dweller must face. There is no doubt whatever that many white and colored urban children, especially colored children, are short-changed when it comes to educational opportunities. Thirteen years ago the Supreme Court ruled that segregated education is inferior education. Yet the Office of Education has found that the overwhelming majority of children attending American schools today are segregated and the segregation is increasing, not decreasing. Much of the increase occurs in our cities. Call it racial imbalance, call it de facto segregation, or whatever you will, it is segregation as truly as that imposed by law in 17 states prior to May, 1954.

            The Supreme Court decision that segregated education is inherently unequal is not just legal theory. It is borne out by results as measured by the recent Office of Education study, “Equality of Educational Opportunity.’’ This shows that Negroes attending segregated schools in the North lag behind white children and that the average gap increases year by year, reaching 3.3 years in grade 12. In the South the gap is even greater.

            Examinations for the armed services reveal a failure rate of 67.5 percent for Negroes as against 18.8 percent for whites. In New York State the Negro failure rate was 53 percent. In the State of Washington, the Negro applicants failed at the rate of 25 percent, which was five times the best-in-the-nation white rate of 5.5 percent!

            Other studies show that where integration - true integration–takes place, the average standing of the minority group students increases, and in some cases the increase is phenomenal.

            The question has arisen repeatedly as to whether the NAACP should decrease its efforts to achieve school desegregation in favor of increasing the quality of education in the ghetto. In the light of the NAACP history and commitment, only one conclusion was possible – the effort for school desegregation will proceed unabated while at the same time improvement in educational standards and opportunities for those children trapped in the de facto segregated school system will be pressed in every area.

            We recommend a similar program to Congress–the encouragement of full integration and an overall increase in the quality of education, especially where most needed, including the mid-city areas of our great metropolises. We must be on guard to see that the increase in quality of city education does not, by emphasis on improvement of physical facilities, result in the further entrenchment of segregation. The proposed $60,000,000 school building program in Houston, Texas, posed such a problem. If allowed to proceed as planned, this expansion program could, by the use of school site selection, insure school segregation in the city for decades to come. An attack on this plan is now in the courts, and it is our hope that judicial relief will be afforded.

This brings me to the problem of the treatment of racial imbalance in our schools by the 89th Congress. In the educational bills, it not only prohibited the Office of Education from requiring correction of racial imbalance as a precondition to received Federal assistance, it also rejected programs, such as the one proposed by Senate Edward Kennedy, that would allow the Office to provide incentives for the correction of imbalance.

In the demonstration cities bill, Congress, while - rejecting extreme anti-busing and pro-segregation amendments, treated the problem of racial imbalance as if it did not exist. Future Congresses must meet this issue and provide a cure. Otherwise support for grant programs could diminish.

Our system of welfare must be reconstituted in a manner that will afford dignity to those who participate in it. It might be more correct to say to those who participate in it . It might be more correct to say to those who are victims of it. The mechanical, inhuman treatment of those on relief, the affront to their dignity as humans posed by midnight raids and similar tactics, the discrepancies in treatment based on race, the red tape that frustrates relief, and the technical application of rules to deny it, must be eliminated.

The “man in the house’’ rule must be modified to take into account family stability and the reality that all persons physically able to work cannot support a family when employment is non-existent or so marginal as to deny a family wage. This is again an issue that directs attention to consideration and discussion of a guaranteed family income. When the Congress next year considers increases in Social Security benefits, the time may be ripe for treatments of social revision of social security and social welfare programs.

Pure myths about welfare and welfare recipients continue to flourish not only in neighborhood gossip, but in editorials and, of course, in political campaigns. The government has an obligation to combat these with basic factual information.

            Closely related to our social security and social welfare programs and vital to our cities is the war on poverty. We commend President Johnson for his initiation of this program and urge its continuation and expansion. On no account must the anti-poverty  funds be sharply cut or sacrificed in deference to war costs or to the cost of the space race. The war on poverty and other existing programs must be considered carefully to determine how, by increased appropriations, better administration and new ideas, they may become an integral part of a total commitment by the Nation to the solution of the problems of the cities. In making such a suggestion, I would note that this is the responsibility of the legislative as well as the executive branch of Government.

            No treatment of city life would be complete without some consideration of police–community relations. The turbulence of recent years in so many of our cities emphasizes something that many of us have known for a long time – that the police simply do not have the trust of many residents of our cities, particularly in the ghetto areas.

            No one condones violence as an expression of this distrust. But no one should condone the practices that generate this distrust. Violence to those being arrested or under arrest, force in excess of that needed, trumped-up charges of resisting arrest or of assault on an officer made for the purpose of covering up physical abuse are not rare. Abusive language and lack of courtesy are common. The ghetto dweller knows he is more subject to police intimidation and less likely to receive protection for his person or property than a resident of suburbia. Denial of his constitutional rights is routine.

            Until the practice became so notorious that is was curbed, District of Columbia police made investigative arrests by taking into custody all Negro men in a geographical area! Wholesale midnight raids without warrants by Baltimore police led to a Federal court injunction restraining them. These are but two examples of practices that police resort to, if unrestrained by outside authority. In the white suburbs the force of public option keeps these practices under control. But in the inner city often lawsuits or mass demonstrations are the only corrective action available.

It would be ideal if cities would provide the means by which such abuses could be redressed. But the recent effort to provide such a remedy in New York City through a civilian review board was defeated, partly through a deceptive public relations campaign based upon despicable appeals to race and sex. We ask that the Federal Government provide assistance in the training, restraining and recruitment of police with emphasis on higher standards and salaries to attract more qualified applicants. More importantly, we ask the Government to use its authority to stop existing police abuses and if necessary, for Congress to enact additional legislation.

We are advised by our lawyers that 18 USC 241 and 242 could be used more extensively by the Department of Justice, and we so recommend. But realizing the deficiencies of these laws in the light of court interpretation, we would support revision of their antiquated provision and enactment of the 1966 Civil Rights Bill that was killed by the filibuster.

I would like to conclude by expressing my faith in the capacity of the Negro residents of our cities to succeed, as their white predecessors in years gone have done, in achieving a part of the American dream. The great majority of them is hard-working and law-abiding, seeking what is right for themselves and their children. Given the same opportunities as those who have gone before they will respond accordingly.

It bears repeating that what we call the Negro problem is but one part of the gigantic problem of urbanization. Neither the big problem nor its smaller component is going away. The trend to the cities has been constant over the decades. The concentration will become greater. The Negro is not going anywhere – to Bali, Madagascar, the Congo, Labrador or Tierra del Fuego. He was here when the shooting started in the Revolutionary War, he fought in that war and has survived and forged ahead under the kind of onerous, virulent, persistent and ingeniously cruel deprivation and persecution faced by few people in history. He’ll probably be around in the twenty-second century, holding America, as he has in past generations, to a course that will vindicate the morality of individual liberty and equality and dignity embodied in the immortal Declaration of Independence.

At a previous hearing of the committee, a description of people and events in Harlem was presented as if it were an accurate picture of the average Harlem residents and of his normal, everyday activities. It was not. It was a caricature of the nearly 300,000 Harlem inhabitants, most of whom seek to correct or to escape the conditions described.

            My knowledge of the solid Negro citizenry across the nation inspires my confidence that the people of our Harlem and all the other Harlems of America will, with the encouragement and assistance that they deserve, surmount their present difficulties and help in building greater cities and a greater America.