be of some help. But we will only be of help where there is a request from the local authorities for assistance.

Senator ERVIN. Being a sinful southerner who attended segregated public schools during his youth, I lack the power to comprehend why the administration asks Congress to authorize the Federal Commissioner of Education to use Federal tax funds by way of grants for the adjustment of problems of so-called racially imbalanced schools if the administration has no opinions or policies in respect to the matter. simply cannot understand why the administration would ask for authority to use tax funds in a certain way if the administration does not favor such use of such funds.

Attorney General KENNEDY. Senator, there are problems-problems of school attendance, problems in voting, problems of public accommodations, many racial problems in the United States. I do not think we can close our eyes to them. They happen to exist. We are suggesting some legislation which will be of help to the country in facing those problems.

Senator ERVIN. Your statement does not dispel my lack of understanding. My understanding is not a lack of understanding of the problem, but the problem I do not understand is why does the administration ask Congress to authorize one of its policymakers to spend money for a certain purpose, or to make grants of money to school boards for a certain purpose if the administration does not have any opinion as to whether that purpose is wise or unwise.

Attorney General KENNEDY. You asked me specifically about the transportation of students from one city to another. I said we did. not have any policy in favor of that. There are other solutions to the problems, I am sure, and the school districts are attempting to come up with some of those solutions, Senator.

May I just ask you a question? Do you feel that there is a problem in a number of our major metropolitan areas, at the present time, dealing with racially imbalanced schools?

Senator ERVIN. I do not. I think that

Attorney General KENNEDY. You see, we are not talking the same language, Senator.

Senator ERVIN. We are both talking English.

Attorney General KENNEDY. But that is as far as we get.

Senator ERVIN. I do not think that there is any problem of this nature other than the artificially created problem made by those educators who insist that all schools must be racially mixed in certain proportions and those people and organizations which misconstrue the holding in the Brown case and insist that it is the duty of the State to provide integrated education for all of America's schoolchildren. The public schools of this country have been operated for a long time on the theory that all students should attend their neighborhood schools where they can associate with their friends rather than with strangers. I will not press this argument any further, but I must confess that I cannot understand why the administration asks Congress to authorize the use of Federal funds for certain purposes if the administration does not have any opinion or any policy in respect to the purposes for which such funds are to be used.

Attorney General KENNEDY. Senator, I go back to my answer. I think that many school districts across the United States feel that this is a problem. I do not know that any school district yet has

come up with a solution to it. Maybe they are just going to continue as they have in the past. Maybe that is going to be the answer. But again, all you have to do is read the papers and statements that have been made to realize that people are concerned about this in local communities and feel that there is a problem.

We do not have the answer to it. Each local area must try to figure out what is best for the community and what is best to further the education of the individual students. Maybe we can be of some assistance to them. That is as far as it goes, Senator.

Senator ERVIN. It seems to me that the problem is created by the people who demand that the races be mixed in all public schools. If attendance at the nearest school will bring about compulsory integration of the races, they insist on the right of all children to attend the nearest school; but if it is necessary to haul children away from their home districts into other districts in order to bring about compulsory integration in the public schools, then they insist on that.

I would like to put in the record at this point an Associated Press dispatch from Stanford, Calif., of August 7, 1963, entitled "School Desegregation Seen Harming Students" and an article by David Lawrence, which is called "False Theories of Integration," which appeared in the Washington Evening Star of July 19, 1963.

The CHAIRMAN. So ordered.

(The material referred to is as follows:)

SCHOOL DESEGREGATION SEEN HARMING STUDENTS

STANFORD, CALIF., August 7 (AP).—More harm than good can come from desegregating schools attended by students of predominantly one race, a New York educator says.

Henry T. Hillson, principal of New York City's George Washington High School, spoke yesterday at a conference on big city schools at Stanford University. The 62 delegates are trying to determine what should be done to improve secondary education for the underprivileged.

Mr. Hillson cited a New York City proposal to send children by bus from one school to another to break segregation as "political, not educational."

"It would do nothing but destroy the schools they moved from," he declared. "The ones who'd leave would be the better students. When they've gone, what have you?"

Mr. Hillson insisted that "breaking up a segregated school does more harm than good."

He also told of "an even more severe and harmful proposition. They call it reverse open enrollment, in which students are sent into Negro schools.

"If this issue is forced, it will cause a parents' revolution. You can't bus white children 5 to 6 miles outside of their community and put them in a Negro school."

He said the political problem is forcing the Negroes into an assertive position that they don't want. The educators are too frightened to take positions on this. They are afraid of being called either Uncle Toms or reactionaries.

[From the Washington Evening Star, July 19, 1963]

FALSE THEORIES OF INTEGRATION-IDEA of Quota SYSTEM FOR NEGRO JOBS IN ANY AREA SHOWN TO BE IMPRACTICAL

For a long time now, many people in the South have been saying that the newspapers of the North don't understand the segregation problem. But something has happened recently which indicates that prominent newspapers in the Norththe New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune-are beginning to understand that "integration" isn't as simple as it has appeared to be.

"Equal rights," for instance, are being found to be impractical if they are literally applied in education. Even the viewpoint of the Supreme Court of the United States-that a Negro child can't get as good an education in a segregated

as in a desegregated school-is turning out to be more theoretical than practical. Perhaps the most realistic editorial that has been written on the impracticality of racial equality in the public schools appeared yesterday in the New York Times. The full text is as follows:

"New York City is doing some hard and needed thinking these days about how to give the Negro his equal opportunity in every way-education, jobs, housing, everything. That is good. But the Negro, equally with the white man, should be wary of easy solutions, quick remedies that seem to promise instant success. One of these is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is the quota system.

"It has the temptation of surface plausibility. If the population of the city is 15 percent Negro, why shouldn't the Negro have 15 percent of the jobs? If the population of Manhattan is 25 percent Negro, then he should have 25 percent of the jobs in Manhattan. Easy, isn't it? But go on from there.

"If this reasoning were valid, the quota should be immediately applied in every business, in every industry, and on every level-whether there were qualified applicants or not. And it would apply to religions, nationalities—and how many other kinds of divisions? Every floor in every office building would have to have its quoted shade of color, race, or whatnot. To state the proposition is to show its absurdity and also its inherent evil.

"Now let us look at the public schools. With the best will in the world how, in Manhattan, can 'quota' be achieved even if it were desirable to do so? Negro and Puerto Rican children in that borough total 76.5 percent of elementary school enrollment and 71.6 percent junior high school enrollment. Citywide, there are 117 elementary schools whose pupils are Negro or Puerto Rican by 90 percent or more. These schools cannot be made 'white.' A satisfactory percentage of integration can be achieved neither by busing, nor by zoning, nor by governmental fiat, nor by magician's wand.

"What is possible in this impossible situation? The board of education can do its best with the fullest use of the tried previous methods, which include the open enrollment policy of moving some Negro children to underutilized schools in white or mixed districts. New schools can and must be built in fringe areas. But the best thing it can do for the Negro now is to bring him the best school that can be bought, with money and talent.

"Joseph P. Lyford, staff member of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and author of a study being made for the Fund for the Republic, for nearly a year has been working in a 40-block area of the upper west side of Manhattan. The other day he said:

"In my interviews over the past 10 months with low-income Negro and Puerto Rican parents in the area, never once has the question of racial percentages been raised as a concern. The parents' interests have been in the type of teachers the children have . . and the various facilities the school has to offer. All this leads me to feel that there is a considerable gap between the concerns of the low-income Negro families in my area and the avowed aims of various organizational leaders who presume to speak for them.'

"The novel idea was thus presented that parents are more interested in good teachers and good teaching for their children than in color quotas. It is to their credit that they are. The best thing the city can do for the Negro is to make the schools better."

The New York Herald Tribune just a week earlier-on July 11-said in an editorial:

"True equality doesn't lie in mathematical formulas, in the careful maintenance of a 'nice balance,' or in a reverse racism that seeks to boost the Negro through preferential hiring or arbitrary advancement. Racial quotas are as un-American as discrimination itself. They separate, they categorize, they label; they inherently contradict the ideal of equal opportunity, because they establish separate ladders of opportunity."

But what becomes of the view that Negro leaders have been expoundingnamely, that equality should mean equality, that for all jobs held by white men there must be a certain percentage of Negroes working alongside them, and that the same rule applies in the schools? Also, what happens to the views of those moderates in the South who have felt token integration to be adequate?

Anybody who has insisted heretofore that the practicality of the problem rather than theoretical equality must be taken into account has found himself classed as "racist" or a "Negro hater." In the end, it will be discovered that the best friends of the Negro are those who want to see such changes made as will truly benefit and not injure him or his opportunity to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Senator ERVIN. Mr. Attorney General, do you not agree with me that denying a schoolchild the right to attend his neighborhood school and transporting him into other communities in order to mix the schools in the other communities racially, is a violation of the 14th amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Brown v. The Board of Education?

Attorney General KENNEDY. I am sorry, Senator, I did not hear the beginning of the question.

Senator ERVIN. I ask you if you do not agree with me in the proposi tion that denying a child the right to attend his neighborhood school and transporting him by buses or otherwise to schools in other communities for the purpose of racially mixing the schools in the other communities does not deny that child his constitutional right under the 14th amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in the Brown case?

Attorney General KENNEDY. Well, I think it is questionable, Senator. I think you can make an argument along these lines.

Senator ERVIN. I do not see how it can be questionable. When a child is denied the right to attend his neighborhood school and is transported by bus to schools in other communities by order of the public school authorities in order to enable the school authorities to obtain what they conceive to be a proper racial balance in the school in the other community, he is clearly denied his right to attend his neighborhood school on account of his race, and the Brown case holds squarely that when the public school authorities deny a child the right to enter a public school on the basis of his race, they deprive him of his right to the equal protection on the laws under the 14th amendment. The child is denied the right to attend his neighborhood school and is transported to school elsewhere simply because they need a child of his race in the other school to mix the races in such other school. Attorney General KENNEDY. That might not be the only factor involved, Senator.

Senator ERVIN. What other factor could be involved?

Attorney General KENNEDY. Well, I think just the overall education of the child. It might be felt that for the child to go to some different school might be helpful in his overall education, or for a group of children to go to different schools.

Senator ERVIN. Suppose the only reason why the school authorities are denying the child the right to attend his neighborhood school and are transporting him to another school in another community is to mix the races in such other school in such other community in the proportion which the school authorities think is necessary to secure a racial balance in the other school in the other community.

Attorney General KENNEDY. Would you say, Senator, that the procedures or practices which are followed in southern communities, where an individual is not permitted to attend his neighborhood school, but is taken maybe 10, 15, or 20 miles so that he attends a segregated school; is that in violation of the rights of the individual? Senator ERVIN. I am asking you another question. But I do not mind answering your question. The Supreme Court of the United States held in the Brown case that whenever the school authorities representing a State deny a child the right to attend any school on account of his race, they are violating the Constitution. That is true

not only in the South, but it is also true in the North. And when the school board says to a child, "You cannot attend your neighborhood school because we are going to put you in a bus and transport you to schools in other communities in order that those schools may have the right proportion of students of your race," I say they are violating the interpretation placed upon the 14th amendment in the Brown case. They are denying those children the right to attend their neighborhood schools because of their race.

Attorney General KENNEDY. I think if that is the only factor that is present, Senator, I would agree with you. Would you agree with me that in the southern communities, when an individual Negro student is not permitted to attend his neighborhood school but is transported to a segregated school, that student is being deprived of his rights under the 14th amendment?

Senator ERVIN. Certainly. Under the interpretation placed on the 14th amendment in the Brown case, if the child is actually denied that right, yes. If the child voluntarily goes to a school attended by members of his own race, no.

Attorney General KENNEDY. But you feel the student should be permitted to attend his neighborhood school in the South.

Senator ERVIN. I didn't say that. I said that where a child is denied the right to attend a particular school either in the South or the North, because of his race, he is denied the equal protection of the laws under the interpretation placed upon the 14th amendment to the Constitution in the Brown case.

Attorney General KENNEDY. That is what I said. Therefore, a Negro student who is denied the right to attend his neighborhood school because of his race is being denied his rights under the 14th amendment.

Senator ERVIN. And likewise if a Negro or white child is denied the right to attend his neighborhood school and is placed on a bus and taken to school in another area in order that the school in another area may have a certain proportion of his race there, he also is denied his rights.

Attorney General KENNEDY. So I think we agree. That is why we are trying to pass this legislation, to remedy that situation.

Senator ERVIN. That is the reason I am puzzled by the administration asking for Congress to authorize the Federal Commissioner of Education to make grants of public moneys for the purpose of carrying out something which is clearly unconstitutional; namely, the racially imbalanced school theory.

Attorney General KENNEDY. Senator, there are various factors present. There are problems in some of our major metropolitan areas of children being placed in schools other than their neighborhood schools.

Senator ERVIN. That is not what the bill says. The bill says eight times that grants are to be made for the purpose of solving problems of racially imbalanced schools. It does not say anything about education. Eight times it uses that expression, and that is the only way reference is made to it.

Attorney General KENNEDY. I think I have answered that.

Senator ERVIN. I am glad you and I have reached agreement as to the unconstitutionality of action of a school board where a child is transported solely for reasons of his race from his home district