lation at an educational, occupational, economic, and social disadvantage. The waste in Houston is enormous. Adequately educated Negroes should attain better paying jobs and thereby contribute greater talent, more taxes, and greater dignity and maturity to one of the South's leading industrial cities. The question remains: How long can this city and others like it continue to pay the price for unequal opportunities? TRAINING THE MAN FOR THE EXISTING JOB, The survey reveals an extremely pragmatic attitude on the part of school officials in regard to vocational training in the Houston Independent School System. The only vocational high school in the city-San Jacinto High, an all-white institute-offers full, three-year courses in air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics, automotive mechanics, drafting, machine shop, photography, printing, radio, television, and welding. None of these courses is taught in the five Negro high schools. Officials justify the practice on the grounds that "it would be wasteful . . . to educate a student for admission to a craft or trade that is not open to him." Further, they point with some pride to the fact that Negroes are offered two years of training in floriculture, commercial cooking and baking, cleaning and pressing, and trade dressmaking, courses which are not taught in white schools. However, at least one school board member, Mrs. Charles White, is not convinced that the policy of orienting vocational courses toward job availability in the immediate area is either just or wise. "It is our obligation," she recently told the school board, "to provide education for Houston children, and it is not our problem to say what they will do with it." Distributive education, an apprentice program under which students attend school part time while gaining experience and training in actual job situations, has been eminently successful for white students. In the one Negro school where offered, however, it has proved ineffective. School officials interviewed blame this on the Negro business community which they say is uncooperative. Negro leaders say there are not enough Negroowned businesses to support the program alone. Certainly few attempts are made by school officials to place Negroes in apprentice positions with white firms, for this would be against "local custom." Vocational guidance counseling in both white and Negro schools is considered inadequate by many guidance specialists in the community. The counselor-student ratio in the Houston public schools is normally one counselor per 800 students. Little interest has been shown in improving the figure in order to receive federal funds, for federal aid is viewed with suspicion by the school authorities. TAKING THE FIRST STEP IS THE MOST DIFFICULT A Negro youth discovers in Houston that white employers place little premium on his high school diploma. Without it, he may find a job as a porter, a grocer carry-out boy, or a drugstore delivery clerk; with it, he may go to work as a truck driver or stock clerk. In either event, there is little opportunity for advancement. In view of this, Negro students often feel little incentive to finish school. "Why go to school?" one asked a vocational counselor. "You have to go through the back door anyway!" Even with a college degree many Negroes find they must accept jobs far below their training. One vocational counselor told an interviewer that he personally knows women with several years of college who are working as housemaids. The Texas Employment Commission appears to be seriously concerned about the Negro employment situation in Houston. It has abolished segregated waiting rooms for those seeking employment, and its staff includes Negro interviewers and clerks, as well as janitors. In the main, however, Negro interviewers and clerks work with Negro applicants only. Recently, the Commission has begun a new program, for which it is receiving federal aid, to upgrade Negro employment. The method here is to select outstanding applicants and attempt to place them in jobs from which they are presently barred. So far, the program has not overcome any important barriers. A spokesman for the agency says that Negroes seeking first-time jobs have usually exhausted other methods before applying, and, therefore, take whatever is available. He believes that summer jobs are the most difficult for Negroes to find, even when they have college degrees; schoolteachers, for example, must often take work as domestics or cafe waitresses during the summer. DETOURS AND DEAD ENDS TO JOB PLACEMENT, JOB PLACEMENT. An official at a major oil and gas firm expresses an attitude fairly typical of a number of Houston industrialists. He reports that his company hires Negroes "only for the type of work which they normally do in this locality," that is, menial work. There are no Negroes employed, for instance, in any clerical, supervisory, middle management, or managerial position. Significant, too, is the official's statement that "we could not do any different if we wanted to." He feels that there are not enough white employees willing to work with Negroes, conceding-which he seems inclined to do-that qualified Negro employees can be found. One recurring theme in his observations, however, and in those of other white employers interviewed, is that intelligent Negroes do not wish to train themselves for professions which, due to local prejudices, they are not allowed to practice in predominantly white industries. He believes that a young Negro, for example, asks himself, “Do I know a Negro geologist?" and the answer being "No," elects to enter some other field, such as medicine, the ministry, or teaching. The same official illustrates what he believes to be his company's fundamentally liberal views by reference to non-segregated fountains and rest rooms. However, when queried as to eating facilities, he admits that here the company follows "local custom." Yet he points out that in the company's pipeline stations, where the number of Negroes employed is relatively small, all employees share eating facilities, rest rooms, and water fountains. Specific jobs actually open to Negroes in the companies surveyed are, with a few notable exceptions, menial. To cite only a few representative examples: A large retail store hires Negroes only in such jobs as drivers, delivery boys, maids, and dishwashers. Recently, however, the store upgraded a Negro to saleswoman in the ladies ready-to-wear depart ment. A steel company which does government contract work employs both skilled and unskilled Negro workers, but has no Negro supervisors in either category. There are Negro office porters, but no Negro is employed in a white collar job. An oil equipment firm employs Negroes only in service jobs, such as cleaners and porters. ity. A major insurance company employs no Negroes in any capac Another retail store, a branch of a national chain, employs Negro "stock pullers" in its service division and Negro maids and janitors in its retail outlet. Despite a company policy of non-discriminatory hiring practices an oil development firm reports that it employs no Negroes in any professional or clerical capacity. Negroes and whites, in a large mail-order house, do not work together in any way. There are no Negro helpers on delivery or transport trucks, and the company will not consider hiring a Negro to repair household appliances, for fear that white housewives would not allow Negro repairmen into their homes. In short, the store assists in perpetuating local discriminatory patterns in all its employment practices. The one contact made where considerable effort is expended to eliminate discrimination in practice as well as in theory is the Veteran's Administration hospital. Here several programs are offered, open to Negroes and whites alike. The hospital now employs or has employed in the past Negro dieticians, administrators, laboratory technicians, doctors, and nurses. The only limitation on the hiring of Negro employees, a hospital official reports, is the lack of qualified personnel. (Here it seems pertinent to recall the Houston School Board's policy of limiting vocational training to crafts and trades "open" to Negroes, and to inquire where discrimination actually begins. In many cases an employer obviously uses the lack of qualified personnel as an excuse to keep from upgrading or hiring Negroes, but from all indications the hospital official was sincere.) A talk with a union official reveals a company policy in one petroleum firm which in principle is not discriminatory, but in practice turns out to be. Although the union contract specifies that any union man can bid for any job for which he qualifies, regardless of race, the company policy prohibits the promotion of any employee who does not have a high school education. Since the company in fact rarely hires Negro high school graduates, this rule effectively eliminates most Negro employees from promotion consideration. To date, the union has succeeded in upgrading only one Negro. Segregation is in force on all levels at this firm, including rest rooms and eating facilities. And, with the exception of the one Negro who has been upgraded, no Negro works on an equal status with a white man. Menial labor in Houston-and, indeed, throughout the South-is generally regarded as "Negro work." Included in this category are household domestics, yardmen, sweepers, porters, and garbage collectors. Negroes predominate as folders in laundries-hot and strenuous work paying $25.00 for a 50-hour week-and as shirt press operators, considered by laundry owners as highly skilled work. The jobs from which Negroes are barred either explicitly or tacitly may be said generally to include any that would place them in direct competition with whites or that would lead to supervision over whites. ON-THE-JOB TRAINING. Once a Negro finds a job, however menial, what are his chances in Houston of receiving additional training to qualify him for higher level jobs or better pay? To answer this question major employers in the Houston area were questioned. Some officials were reluctant to reply. One expressed the fear that he might one day "pick up one of those New York newspapers and find the store's name splashed all over it." However, he indicated that his store does have a training program, primarily for buyers and other store executives, from which Negroes are excluded. As for labor union activity, he says, "We just don't permit that kind of thing.” Several other firms were equally non-communicative. The local representative of a nationwide mail-order house, for example, explained that his company has a rigid policy against giving out information on employee relations; he did state, however, that the company has no in-service training programs, in either its retail or service division, for whites or Negroes. Under a union contract signed in 1956, job classifications at a Houston steel company are no longer racially segregated. The company offers |