The time has now come for the same kind of knowledge to be applied to group tensions and conflict. Studies already conducted by the Commission have covered a wide range of problems. The Commission is now in a position to pursue its researches in great depth to seek out the very sources of group tensions and conflict so that these conflicts might best be resolved. A broadened Civil Rights Commission could well apply itself to this end.

In addition, the 1960 Republican platform provides another potential for constructive activity by an expanded Civil Rights Commission. That platform states:

"Finally we recognize that civil rights is a responsibility not only of States and localities; it is a national problem and a national responsibility. The Federal Government should take the initiative in promoting intergroup conferences among those who, in their communities, are earnestly seeking solutions of the complex problems of desegregation-to the end that closed channels of communication may be opened, tensions eased, and a cooperative solution of local problems may be sought."

An expanded Civil Rights Commission would indeed offer an opportunity to enhance the work of such groups, which are increasing in number, especially in the South. In the "border States" there have been established by law State human relations commissions in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia. And, most recently, Governor Sanford, of North Carolina, has created a good neighbor council which will function as a human relations commission in that Deep South State.

In addition, in the Deep South, we find human relations commissions have been created by city governments in, among other places:

And in still more southern cities, unofficial human relations commissions have been established by chambers of commerce, civic associations, and other community groups interested in endeavoring in every constructive way to preserve racial harmony and good community relations and avoid costly disorder.

The American Jewish Committee therefore endorses a permanent Civil Rights Commission, sufficiently broadened in scope so that it might deal adequately and fully with a prime problem which faces our Nation.

[From the Committee Reporter, March 1961]

Democratic Platform Plank-1960: We propose a Federal Bureau of Intergroup Relations to help solve problems of discrimination in housing, education, employment, and community opportunities in general. The Bureau would assist in the solution of problems arising from the resettlement of immigrants and migrants within our own country and in resolving religious, social, and other tensions when they arise.

Republican Platform Plank-1960: The Federal Government should take the initiative in promoting intergroup conferences among those who in their communities are earnestly seeking solutions of the complex problems of desegregation to the end that closed channels of communication may be opened, tensions eased and a cooperative solution of local problems may be sought. * * * We pledge the full use of the power, resources and leadership of the Federal Government * * *.

HUMAN RELATIONS GOES TO WASHINGTON

(By Senator Philip A. Hart)

Along with usual political promises, presidential campaigns have a way of generating an occasional new commitment to a new idea. This last campaign

was no exception. The concept of a Department of Urban Affairs was just such an idea and there is good reason to believe it will soon come into being.

The almost fantastic accumulation of problems facing our cities is not, however, simply a matter of physical decay and technological change. These are enormous problems to be sure, housing, highways, schools, water, transportation, and the like. But continuing population growth, on the one hand, and population movement, on the other, have added a social dimension of equal significance. Consider, for example, that we have become a nation predominately of "big" cities; about 108 million, or 60 percent, of our citizens living in 168 standard metropolitan areas. This is a city dwelling population larger than the national total in 1920. Not only has our farm population been dwindling from about 32 million to around 20 million during the period, but perhaps the most striking feature of this population shift has been the movement of more than 21⁄2 million Negroes from the old South to the urban North and West in the decade between 1940-50. This shift has continued into the sixties. Coupled with it is movement in the East of nearly a million Puerto Ricans from the island to the mainland; and in the West the movement of an estimated 21⁄2 million more Spanishspeaking people from Mexico into the States.

Movements of these dimensions had their counterpart earlier in this century, of course, with the immigration waves from central and southern Europe. It was these masses, agrarian in background, limited in education, with their distinctive cultural, language, and religious differences, who had become the first victims of the urban slum. It was, in fact, by their strong backs, and with their calloused hands that our cities were built. The heightened intergroup tension before and after World War I, the spread of the KKK into the cities culminating in the mass parade of costumed marchers in broad daylight down Pennsylvania Avenue in the Nation's Capital, the intensity of religious hatred in the Al Smith campaign had characterized the problems of urban adjustment being experienced by the immigrant. In similar fashion, new problems arising out of race were to emerge in the cities as World War II got underway.

Problems growing out of religious differences have perhaps disappeared less than they have changed. The metamorphosis from street fights, rock throwing, and vandalism, which characterized the economic fears and competitions between groups, to political factionalism and contests for power in the big city political machines now has moved on to the suburban ramparts of the country club and the industrial or financial board of directors. Thus the problem of attaining full political participation, equal economic status, and true social acceptance remains a continuing challenge to this day's city dweller of the second half of the 20th century, of whatever background, old and new alike.

While the facts demonstrated that there is no inherent relationship between poverty and group background, between illiteracy or dependency or crime and such identity, in making this point we have often failed to appreciate that group identity is a concomitant of such problems. We always make the point that racial, or religious discrimination often have created a vicious circle forcing continued limitation on the minority group member who, because of lack of education or status, is forced to remain dependent. But we have failed to emphasize and add that no attack on poverty or crime or slum housing or urban renewal can hope to be very effective without taking into account the factors of racial, religious, and ethnic group interests which are tied into them. Fortunately, from experience during the past two decades, we know that both skills and knowledge can be developed to deal precisely with those aspects of urban life which have historically been the most explosive-the problems, tensions, and misunderstandings growing out of group differences. In these 20 years some 70 cities have created official committees or commissions on intergroup or human relations. Some 25 States have established such agencies and have organized informally under the Governors' Committee on Civil Rights. Collectively, these units of government now appropriate approximately $5 million for advisory and regulatory services to assist these communities in dealing with these problems. If growth is a measure of success, then this idea is working. It has even found roots in the South with more and more communities setting up inter-racial study committees in the face of increasing pressure from the new student sit-in movement.

With the creation of a Federal Department of Urban Affairs, happily now at hand, perhaps at long last it will be possible to establish within it a Federal Intergroup Relations Service. Such a unit could function as a national service bureau for local, State, and regional intergroup relations agencies and could work with smaller communities not having their own intergroup relations committees.

Perhaps this is what then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was reaching for as a concept when he proposed his Federal Community Relations Service. Such a Federal Intergroup Relations Service is consistent with the objectives contained in the Douglas bill for technical assistance in meeting the school desegregation crisis. It simply extends this idea into other isues and other areas. Such a unit could serve as an information clearinghouse for both public and voluntary intergroup relations agencies; it could provide badly needed consultative services. It could engage in fact-gathering and stimulate research as well as providing help in establishing training programs for professional and volunteers in the field including the sponsorship of pilot projects.

Federal concern with intergroup relations problems is not entirely a new concept. Appropriately, there are intergroup relations officers in the Housing and Home Finance Agency (HHFA), the agency most likely to become the nucleus for the new Urban Affairs Department. There are similiar specialists in the Office of Education, the Post Office, the Defense Department, the Department of Labor. What is now needed, additionally, is a service that is directed toward the community.

Because of its strategic location within the Department of Urban Affairs, a national intergroup relations service would be able to cut across various functional areas all of which are manifest in urban problems. Such a service provides a challenging opportunity to bring to bear all the knowledge we have painfully obtained, all the experience and skills we have gained as part of our total attack on the problems of our cities. To fail to see this, to look upon the urban problem as physical and industrial and financial without some realization of this additional and critical aspect, the cities social existence would be short sighted indeed. If ever there was an illustration of what is meant by a "New Frontier" here is one and the opportunity for action is at hand.

Senator ERVIN. Senator, we will have your testimony.
Senator HART. We will be very brief.

Senator ERVIN. I know you have got a lot to do yourself.

STATEMENT OF HON. PHILIP A. HART, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN

Senator HART. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I will be very brief in my introduction, briefer than I had intended in the hope that you may find it possible to hear the witness. His statement is less than three pages.

Senator ERVIN. Well, we will be glad to.

Senator HART. Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I thank you for giving me what I regard as a high privilege this morning in introducing your next witness. He is Richard H. Austin of Detroit.

Mr. Austin for more than 20 years has been a practicing, certified public accountant in Michigan. He is now the senior partner in a firm bearing his name.

He is interestingly a member of the board of directors of the Michigan Association of CPA's which includes about 2,500 of our 3,000 CPA's in Michigan. He is a member of the board of directors also of the Mammoth Life & Accident Insurance Co. of Kentucky, a multimillion-dollar firm.

He is a member of the board of directors of Demidco. This is the Detroit Metropolitan Industrial Development Corp. which is the local agency formed to participate in ARA financing in the metropolitan Detroit area.

He is a member of the executive committee of the Detroit Olympics Committee. Detroit will host, we hope, the 1968 Olympics. We are the American designee authorized to extend our country's invitation. Mr. Austin actively is supporting this effort.

20-982-63-15

He is a member of the board of directors of both the Urban League of Detroit and the Detroit Branch of the NAACP. He has served in the last year as a delegate to the Michigan Constitutional Convention, and there served as vice chairman of the finance and taxation committee of the convention.

He is the chairman of the 15th Congressional District Democratic Committee and appears here this morning as a member of the Michigan Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. And I appreciate your kindness.

Senator EVRIN. We are delighted to have you and Mr. Austin with us, Senator. You have got a very fine Senator in the person of Senator Hart.

Senator HART. Thank you.

Senator ERVIN. I will also say in the person of Senator McNamara. We are glad to have you with us. I am sorry I kept you waiting so long. I would have taken you earlier.

Senator HART. Indeed, no. We understood the pressure of time that attached to the prior witness and we both enjoyed, Senator Ervin, listening to you and Senator Stennis.

Senator ERVIN. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF RICHARD H. AUSTIN, MICHIGAN ADVISORY COMMITTEE OF THE COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

Mr. AUSTIN. Thank you.

I am indebted to both you and Senator Hart for this opportunity and I can, too, feel that Senator Hart is a very fine representative for the people of the State of Michigan. I also regard him as a very close friend.

Mr. Chairman, I am from Detroit, of course, and I appear before this subcommittee as a member of the Michigan Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in support of the bill to extend the life of that Commission and substantially extend its functions.

The many faceted civil rights problem is one of the most crucial and stubborn domestic problems facing our Nation at all levels of government.

According to the 1961 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report, the Commission still has a great deal of work to do. The following are excerpts from a portion of that report:

The great American experiment in self-government began for white people only.

The inconsistency between the Nation's principles and its practices has diminished over the years *** the gains have been considerable *** the gap between the promise of liberty and its fulfillment is narrower today than it has ever been.

Yet a gap remains.

Despite * * * progress, however, the Nation still faces substantial and urgent problems in civil rights.

Now, that is the end of the quotation from the report.

There is no doubt that the events of the past several weeks have resulted in a reexamination of the facts relating to racial discrimination in every major American city. This has certainly been true in Michigan, and particularly in the Detroit metropolitan area.

Presently the city of Detroit and the Detroit Board of Education are being urged to review the school assignment policies which have

brought about segregated schools as a result of segregated housing patterns. This is an area in which American cities throughout the Nation will need the most skilled and competent advice whether they are faced with breaking down legally established patterns of segregation in the schools or with de facto segregation resulting from housing patterns.

Certainly as this problem is worked out in Detroit, the experience we have there will be of value in other cities. And no doubt our civic and school officials will be seeking advice and guidance based on the experience of other cities.

I point to this, Mr. Chairman, because it is a clear example of what use could today be made of the clearinghouse services authorized in the bills before you. It is also an illustration of the type of problem where technically qualified and experienced personnel could be of great assistance to communities seeking to end segregation in the schools.

In 1960 the Commission on Civil Rights came to the city of Detroit for one of its several public hearings. I believe it is correct to say that the community generally welcomed the careful and comprehensive look the Commission took into employment practices, segregation in housing, the resulting segregation in the public schools, the availability of vocational education and apprenticeship training to minority groups, and the treatment of Negroes by police officers.

We in Michigan have been proud that the Commission has continued under the chairmanship of Dr. John Hannah, who, as you know, is the president of Michigan State University. Dr. Hannah has the respect of a very wide cross section of the people of our State. His is the type of leadership which commands respect and attention even when there are many disagreements with specific recommendation.

Recently the Michigan Advisory Committee inquired of several community service and social action organizations and agencies, governmental as well as private, "What are the major areas of concern in Michigan in the field of civil rights?" Each organization was asked to list those problems which it felt might be the subject of consideration by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Included in the groups contacted-and this is a rather impressive group and I want to make sure that they get into the record-included in the group were the Jewish Community Council, Jewish Labor Committee, Detroit Youth Commission, Detroit Urban League, Detroit branch of the NAACP, community relations department of the Detroit public schools, Detroit Commission on Community Relations, Michigan Employment Security Commission, Antidefamation League, Civil Liberties Union, Michigan Catholic Conference, AFL-CIO, Grand Rapids Urban League and this shows you the geographical representation of the group-Burrough Community Association, Inc., Ypsilanti Human Relations Commission, Kalamazoo Community Relations Board, Grand Rapids Human Relations Commission, the attorney general of Michigan, and the Battle Creek Human Relations Commission, and this is only a partial list.

Most of the Michigan organizations responded with a letter expressing their views as to the most urgent civil rights problems of national import, scope or concern. The following appeared most frequently as the most urgent problem areas:

1. Equal employment opportunities, embracing training opportunities, hiring practices, and upgrading.