the Commission received voting complaints the percentage of nondilapidated dwellings with hot running water and toilet ranged from 10 to 54 percent. In 11 of the 25 counties, fewer than 20 percent of the dwellings met these standards. Twenty-two of the twenty-five fall below 50 percent in this minimum measure of housing quality.10 At its worst, the problem involves a massive demoralization of a considerable part of the nonwhite population. This is the legacy of generations of slavery, discrimination, and second-class citizenship. Through the vote, education, better housing, and other improving standards of living, American Negroes have made massive strides up from slavery. But many of them, along with many Puerto Rican, Mexican and oriental Americans, are still being denied equal opportunity to develop their full potential as human beings. The pace of progress during the 96 years since emancipation has been remarkable. But this is an age of revolutionary change. The colored peoples of Asia and Africa, constituting a majority of the human race, are swiftly coming into their own. The non-colored peoples of the world are now on test. The future peace of the world is at stake. Moreover, science and technology have opened new realms of freedom. In the present competition with the Soviet Union and world communism the United States cannot afford to lose the potential intelligence and skill of any section of its population. Equal opportunity and equal justice under law must be achieved in all sections of American public life with all deliberate speed. It is not a court of law alone that tells us this, but also the needs of the Nation in the light of the clear and present dangers and opportunities facing us, and in the light of our restive national conscience. Time is essential in resolving any great and difficult problem, and more time will be required to solve this one. However, it is not time alone that helps, but the constructive use of time. The whole problem will not be solved without high vision, serious purpose, and imaginative leadership. Prohibiting discrimination in voting, education, housing, or other parts of our public life will not suffice. The demoralization of a part of the nonwhite population resulting from generations of discrimination can ultimately be overcome only by positive measures. The law is not merely a command and government is not just a policeman. Law must be inventive, creative, and educational. Alabama: Barbour, Bullock, Wilcox; Louisiana: Bienville, Red River; Mississippi: Bolivar, Clairborne, Jefferson Davis, Sunflower, Tallahatchie; Tennessee: Haywood. 10 In addition to those listed above, these were: Alabama: Dallas, Macon; Florida: Gadsden; Louisiana; Bossier, Claiborne, DeSoto, Iberia, Jackson, Quachita, Webster; Mississippi: Leflore. To eliminate discrimination and demoralization, some dramatic and creative intervention by the leaders of our national life is necessary. In the American system much of the action needed should come from private enterprise and voluntary citizens' groups and from local and State governments. If they fail in their responsibilities, the burden falls unduly on the Federal Government. This Commission would add only one further suggestion. The fundamental cause of prejudice is hidden in the minds and hearts of men. That prejudice will not be cured by concentrating constantly on the discrimination. It may be cured, or reduced, or at least forgotten, if sights can be raised to new and challenging targets. Thus, a curriculum designed to educate young Americans for this unfolding 20th-century world, with better teachers and better schools, will go a long way to facilitate the transition in public education. Equal opportunity in housing will come more readily as part of a great program of urban reconstruction and regeneration. The right to vote will more easily be secured throughout the whole South if there are great issues on which people want to vote. What is involved here is the ancient warning against the division of society into Two Cities. The Constitution of the United States, which was ordained to establish one society with equal justice under law, stands against such a division. America, which already has come closer to equality of opportunity than probably any other country, must succeed where others have failed. It can do this not only by resolving to end discrimination but also by creating through works of faith in freedom a clear and present vision of the City of Man, the one city of free and equal man envisioned by the Constitution. PART SIX GENERAL STATEMENTS BY COMMISSIONERS GENERAL STATEMENT I. By Commissioner John S. Battle I have stated my objections to certain specific recommendations contained in the report. In addition thereto, and without in any way impugning the motives of any member of the Commission, for each of whom I have the highest regard, I must strongly disagree with the nature and tenor of the report. In my judgment it is not an impartial factual statement, such as I believe to have been the intent of the Congress, but rather, in large part, an argument in advocacy of preconceived ideas in the field of race relations. II. By Commissioner Theodore M. Hesburgh I should like to explain my personal position on the basic issues of this report and, especially, on those recommendations which were not unanimous. May I say, at once, how deeply I respect the persons, the convictions, and the judgments of all my distinguished fellow Commissioners, and may I frankly disavow, for myself, any personal claim to ultimate wisdom in these difficult questions of prudential judgment. One can only, in good conscience, do his honest best. In appraising admittedly thorny situations in the various areas of civil rights examined by the Commission, one must be guided by his own general philosophical and theological convictions. I believe that civil rights were not created, but only recognized and formulated, by our Federal and State constitutions and charters. Civil rights are important corollaries of the great proposition, at the heart of Western civilization, that every human person is a res sacra, a sacred reality, and as such is entitled to the opportunity of fulfilling those great human potentials with which God has endowed every man. Without this spiritual and moral concept of the nature and destiny of man, our political philosophy is meaningless, bankrupt, and defenseless in the face of the opposite philosophy of man that stalks the world today. I begin then with the proposition so well enunciated in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are indeed created equal. Equality, however, is not the same as egalitarianism, for all men are not created with equal intelligence, equal ambition, equal talent. But all men are entitled to an equal opportunity to exercise and develop whatever intelligence, ambition, and talent they possess. Ultimately, the full flowering of the democratic process depends upon the full development of all the various human talents existing in the Nation. As I read American history, the unfolding story of our Nation centers about the often agonizing attempt to achieve the fullness of human dignity through the ever-widening application of that equal opportunity which has best characterized America in the family of nations. Deep and often dark emotions have been aroused by the discussion of integration and segregation, but anyone who really understands the majesty of the "American dream" cannot fail to see in our history that equality of opportunity for all men has been our most valid response to the inherent and God-given dignity of every human person. I firmly believe that if all Americans are given the equal opportunity to be educated to the full extent of their human talents, equal opportunity to work to the fullness of their potential contribution to our society, equal opportunity at least to live in decent housing and in wholesome neighborhoods consonant with their basic human dignity, and, moreover, equal access to housing and neighborhoods as befits their means and social development, and, finally, equal opportunity to participate in the body politic through the free and universal exercise of the franchise, then the problem of civil rights for all Americans will eventually solve itself, to the end that America, and the human dignity of all Americans, will be the richer for this solution. The growth of equal opportunity on this fourfold front of voting, education, work, and housing is the full and unavoidable price of completely eliminating second-class citizenship across the face of America. The civil rights problem differs, of course, from place to place, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find any section of America where all of these equal opportunities flourish in their fullness. And there are localities in America today where not one of these four opportunities exists for nonwhite Americans. Several myths impede a reasonable approach to a solution. Perhaps the most basic is the myth of white superiority: that any white man is, simply by reason of his being white, superior to any nonwhite man. Apart from the philosophical, theological, and scientific absurdity of this myth, it is best disproved in practice. Deprive any white man, however talented and ambitious, of the equal opportunity to become educated; to work as befits his education, ambition, and talent; to live in a decent house and neighborhood; deprive him of the opportunity of participating in the political process; continue this total depriva |