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Ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure for me to be here the Overseas Press Club because I get to get this all the time never you get an avril Harriman or if I can imagine myself in the same breath with that great American when it comes to the Overseas Press Club the government points out as I point out now that until you took over this building we weren't allowed in here. And I stammered threats of please that. I do now have this what was formerly the national Republican Club. I may regret however that you got me on this particular day as several of you in the room no hope back there has been trailing me around the only wretched freshness I get follows me from place to place. This is a bad day for me not because of the pressures that exist in the civil rights and human rights. Efforts here in the city of New York but taking on a very personal level as I just happened to be I had a series of X. rays this morning. Looking for whether I've got gall bladder. The doctor of course doesn't know me as well him other people and the real problem I've got is that I've got too much to do and it comes out in the middle of my stomach and he thinks maybe I am go over with that I got my fingers crossed. I did was telling both of these gentlemen on each side of me however and I always like to have a slice of this what we're going to get bricks thrown at you not by the press which has been very nice to us at the commission and nice to me in particular. Both radio T.V. and press so I'm very nice but when you get bricks thrown at you in a particular capacity it's much more helpful to have the brick it you in the face if people know that when you're bleeding you're not getting paid for it and I I was asked the question so I'll tell you too of course something that some of you know but from the surprise expressed up here that the members of the Commission on Human Rights the chairman and the fourteen members are all volunteers we don't get paid not even the proverbial dollar we don't even get expenses. And they sometimes can add up to I think that those of us who are members of the commission feel. Deeply and strongly about the problem that is Americans today and that's been America's for some time in the past and therefore are willing to give ourselves but as I think I've said before I think this voluntary effort no longer is really sufficient and speaking for myself this point is chairman of the commission the rest of the commission has not voted on this. And the mayor indicated yesterday we are in the process and throes of thinking about a reorganization of the commission a method that would put the people who are doing this kind of work on twenty four hour corps in the city. I am I'm just ordinary lawyer and I have to make a living and it's almost impossible to do under the present circumstances I used to estimate that I spent thirty percent of my time when things were not in crisis stage on commission business and it's now jumped up to eighty five when itis impossible to do this and I think most of the commissioners are in somewhat similar position though they don't spend as much time as I do was chairman so that in the next few days. We are actually coming out with a report which is going to recommend or present various alternatives various alternative methods of functioning for this type of agency and we will send this on to the mayor who will use write. You a message yesterday indicated that he was prepared to make whatever changes were appropriate for the functioning of the agency. And I told the Barracora in that some of the others I what I would like to do is run down some of the problems as I see them I'm talking to people who I consider to be professionals. I don't talk down to anybody ever and I certainly won't talk to you. And I will therefore try and run through this and at the highlights and hope that I can leave as much time as I possibly can for the kind of questions that I usually get from people in the press and I will be glad to answer any and every question that I'm able to handle. When I say able to not that I want to talk anything but when I say ABLE TO means if I have the capacity to answer it first of all I think very strongly that. America today is going through what I consider to be a social revolution I think that it is much to do a revolution in America as we have had as we've watched in Africa in the post world war two years of the analogy which can be made except for the fact that we have been for fortunate in America that forced is not the whole mark of this revolution there malady as to what happened in Kenya and what happened in some of the other African states which finally achieve freedom from colonialism and I think that the American Negro in particular is in the same identical way is in effect saying that he's throwing off the shackles of the past and even though we're not a colonial power he is seeking only one thing from our society he is seeking what every American citizen wants and gets the quality of opportunity. I think what the American Negro wants today is to be treated just like another American and if he wants this and he fights for it in the way that he is doing and it's not I was a kind hearted way his fight alone but that of all of us Negro and white I think that he's going to achieve it for the same change for the same winds for the same pressures that have freed the African continent and that in the same sense of raid many of the colonial. Countries in in Africa or in other parts of the world. And speaking as somebody who's been deeply involved in civil rights or civil liberties for some twenty odd years some of them very odd. I would say that. If you look back and think to yourself. Or ask every human being really to do this try and look at yourself in America look at America in America and think of what we think of a society this is supposed to be the most progressive society society in the world this is the society of the Bill of Rights this is a society of the Declaration of Independence that we say that our democracy is the purest that exists we say and I remember back in college and my government cautious this is the best experiment in government that mankind that man fallible man has ever created and here we are looking in this mirror. Here as he which I gave a couple of times before is remember that all picture Dorian Gray where the father spent twenty years by selling your soul to the devil or something and all of his sins didn't show up and he looked at himself in the mirror of those twenty years between thirty and fifty I guess it was and he was still young still thirty years old no creases in his face there on vibrant Well if we look in that mirror as Americans I think that we have to say to ourselves that suddenly like Dorian Gray the. The protections that have something ourselves of the devil have disappeared his case to disappear and we've got scars and lodges and. Discriminations and prejudices which is what I'm talking about on our face and all over our body that make us into an all gold man and I say that the reason why the American Negro is going to succeed in its battle for equality and equality of opportunity and their battle for equality and equality of opportunity is because in my judgment. They are in effect doing the job that we have to do for ourselves they're doing the job and that's the reason have so much support from the white community in America. They are doing the job that we must do in order to have ourselves live up to the image that we have of ourselves. Well. Let me try and shift this from that context down to New York I have always said that I believe that the problem of discrimination in American society and in New York City in particular is like the Great Pyramid. Down at the bottom of this period the vast larger area or the most important area the foundation of other discrimination is job discrimination economics dollars. If the negro can achieve job equality job opportunities job advancement then he will be able that much more readily to solve his problem as we move up that pyramid. And above that on the pyramid above job opportunity and I'll come back to these in particular I put housing discrimination here in New York we've got still best areas Jim Crow housing vast pockets where people live and it would appear are required to live socially not legally because of their color and. I say that they are part of the responsibility for the housing discrimination is due to the inability of the Negro to have the dollars in his hand to buy his way out of that Jim Crow area and we see this at the commission we have a law in New York the fair housing practices law says that it's illegal to discriminate in private housing as well as in government housing. We know of many apartments in the city of New York which pay over one hundred twenty five one hundred fifty dollars in areas when the city which over the last five years since this law came into effect have really changed their complection we are in a position to be able to put on a map the number of negroes who moved in to what were previously all white areas you'd see real progress in New York Nevertheless we know of apartments in those areas and I'm not talking to the areas where no negroes we have been able to break through. Where the negro we can't find a Negro family to go in there are enough negroes in the middle income or lower middle income to passerby who want to move. Who have the money to go there. So that's why I say this permit it goes up like a pyramid then above housing discrimination following like day follows night his school discrimination. Which is another way of saying that we've got areas in the city which have as of water that has told us with over eighty five percent of all over ninety percent of one ethnic group. And this of course follows like. Just automatically because of the housing pattern that exists and then above that at the tip top of this little permit that I've described I would say is public facilities public accommodations and here I think New York has an excellent record because I mean we don't have that in other public facilities other than the school situation which I was just some detail. That we don't have instances of discrimination but basically the public facilities in the city of New York are open to all that regard to racial color and the Negro community in New York has no need to be concerned about this I will say Kyra that if we hear that this is why I. Go I know that the city of New York officially I came from the. Mayor's issuance of the proclamation on jobs and freedom. At city hall at level thirty twelve o'clock by the city of New York officially supporting the March on Washington. And I have a claim the day officially March on March for Jobs and Freedom Day and. I'm going now some members of my commission I understand the mayor indicated that he is going to try to come down on that if not more on that August twenty eighth day. The even though we are going and they're going to be thousands of thousands of New Yorkers going I think that I can say that the federal bill will have almost no effect. In the city of New York we don't need this federal legislation and public accommodations are open to all in New York City I don't think that this is a problem which exists for a community like New York City and. The need is for what it will have the effect it will have on the south and perhaps some other areas in the north but not for York City Well let me go back to the bottom of this permit that I described before. I said at the bottom of it was dollars The bottom is it was economics bottom it was job opportunity and I feel very strongly that that the Negro community once in a Chivas this capacity to buy its way to some extent like all others you're going to have a lot more self help in outlawing some of the and eliminate some of the other discrimination. In New York City in particular right now. What we are wrestling with the commission and that's on the front pages of your newspapers today in these last several weeks is the problem of alleged discrimination in the construction trades. To my mind you've got a couple of sociological background factors involved here I think that we can all agree that. About thirty or forty years ago in our American society the unions as a group as an action group as a power group representing labor the employee organized and this group like it's big like sociologist which I'm not. Achieved by. It's action at the polls by citizens incidentally of almost a quarter nature what's going on today by strikes by picketing this group achieved less a position under the Wagner Labor Relations Act which I guess was one hundred thirty five an hour or so ago already act a few years before legislation around that time roughly thirty to forty years they achieved a position in our community where the society through its recognized legal entities passed legislation to protect the school. And collective bargaining was protecting the union in effect was given status public protection. Here we are in a situation today in an American society where in effect what the Negro community is asking as another group coming up is seeking its own position its own place in the sun and what we have happening all over the United States in the construction trades in the most flagrant is a conflict between these two organized groups one protected stablished set in its position and the other vibrant new opening up for the reasons I described before demanding it's position. And I think that what has happened today in New York and throughout the country is that these two groups are in conflict and they're fighting each other and when they need grow community says we want in on jobs in the construction trades the people who've been in before say oh wait you can't we don't want you stepping on our toes all the father son methods of bringing people into the various construction trade unions sponsorship requirements all these were methods by which these unions which used to the people in these trade used to suffer tremendously. Succeeded in limiting the membership of the union creating a union shop Ridgeley the closure outlawed now only the union shop but very effectively protecting their position a union with like we had testimony yesterday with a with thirty three hundred members no negroes and a man testified before the commission perfectly honestly I believe you will lead them saying we were discriminating you can sneak drugs which is protecting ourselves I missed all he said to me I was on the streets for four months I was affected from two houses Corsican time I rent and what he's saying is that they've succeeded in creating they go creating their craft protecting their position you just need more than thirty three hundred plumbers of the kind that he's got in his union in New York City but they don't have or they're never out of work because they've got a very rough and I should say never there their rate of unemployment is very small their wages are comparatively high and what do you have in effect is saying is we're just protecting ourselves against anybody coming in and creating conditions where if we had nine thousand plumbers we would only be working one third of the time but I say to you in my own personal judge the commissions made no finding yet in any of these cases but their responsibility on the part of this group the union group this group that was protected thirty years ago by our society protected by the laws by the National Labor Relations Act and whatever came there after. But this is a public entity at this agent's that that unions are public and in fact our public agencies and public groups because they're protected by the laws of our society and that equality of opportunity no matter what the technical nature of whether or not there's been deliberate discrimination against makers and I'm not making a judgment on that at this time but I certainly would say affirmatively that equality of opportunity requires that union to be open so that any man regardless of race or color or religion is in a position to join and so that is not limited to the few and so that it can't be. Only the relatives of those who are before or in a position where they can join the union and I say this without regard to the question of whether or not we're going to make a finding in a particular instance as to whether. Any union or series of units may have to become a native New Yorker you connection with the construction trades Well I'm sure you have other questions on this and I will reserve them let me talk a little bit about what's going to happen in the schools in New York what I hope will perhaps will not happen in schools I'm going to skip over housing because here as I said before we're making progress very slowly very slowly but it's amazing if I can say these few words about the housing situation in New York it's amazing to see how much people are willing to accept or accept. Negroes wear Reagan's people of another color another background into their community I'm the eternal optimist and I say he always honest layers with his deep conviction as I can that the stories we hear about the North much less the south are just not true I for example believe that the southern community today is in control of about ten percent at most maybe it's less I think that the Wallaces and The Barnetts reflect the unfortunate or inability in the in our American Society for the ninety percent of the people with good will to stand up and be heard if there are afraid to be heard they won't speak out the same way as I don't as a Jew I don't condemn what was done in all Germans I think that they were afraid to speak out what happened in Nazi Germany so literally sleeping the people of the South really would like not to be led by Wallace isn't buying it and yet I think they're afraid afraid of the White Citizens Council as it's reflecting the small percentage and I think that here in New York if I can flip this over and speak in very affirmative terms we have found that people are not as resentful people are not as antagonistic to the change housing prices are not as untidiness to to the school integration program which the city of New York has been engaged in for the last three and I think that. While there are those who would not like us not to make this progress and I would not like this to be the really the judgment of the communications media and those who form public opinion I would urge upon you as I do anybody I talk to that you look at the affirmative aspects of this because I think they do exist I think that. I think this is going to come more and more to the fore as we get the movement of peoples of different color different races in and you're see that they're perfectly able to live side by side without any concern let me put it to you in a different way I think that what happens with respect to some people and I say this very honestly is that when they think of a negro moving into a white community the some people have started to make their way here lies themselves living on one hundred twenty sixth Street you know in an area which we would all agree Negro in white is a slum area and this is a concept they have of where they are they will be living if Negroes would have moved to Europe because this is pure nonsense if you are a man who has the ability to earn one hundred twenty dollars a week and then one hundred twenty dollars Negro family moved into your community they have the same standards and background educational activity that you and the chances are that the question of the color of the skin isn't what's involved you've got to people have a preconception which I thought of well let me move on from housing to the school. I understand that superintendent Gross was here that we always Press Club last night and he has a. Fine public official which is New York City kidnapped from Pittsburgh. He's got a tough charge. He's been thrown at the two difficult situations with little time to even orient yourself about what it all means I'm not all involved in the question of. Of the stitches right now I saw Dr Grossman the day before yesterday at Gracie Mansion we were both very gather to see the mayor. On something and we were waiting for the mayor and I said to Dr Grossman and I repeated to the mayor I said look see for both of grocers problems come to an on September ninth the teachers' strike and the potential withholding of children because integration is not what they wanted to be the cancer was just themselves out to boast no takers. They hear I will tell you that the mayor smile but Dr Gross didn't think it was very funny with. The. Here in New York we've got a situation which I think you have some back you know background on. New York City's Board of Education has the best policies for integration of the schools of any other metropolitan community in the United States they moved first and fast three years ago. I will concede that we had the Commission on Human Rights were in there plugging away and we take some minor credit for what they did started some private civil rights groups and they deserve credit as well but the Board of Education moved and they had the option of normal program which permitted children on the consent of their parents and I underline now. From areas where the schools were over eighty five or ninety percent a very of want to find a group to go to from these so-called sending schools to what they thought of Education euphemistically called receiving schools sending schools were also called Subject schools and nobody ever wanted to give them a name other than those of the schools we're talking about. And this program resulted in the movement of substantial thousands of children in the study but didn't really dent the problem what the Board of Education and what the Commission on Human Rights because we share this responsibility with the Board of Ed. And what do you whole New York City community is faced with today is coming up with a timetable and a program which will do more than the open enrollment program do. Now. The Board of Ed is in the process of coming up with it we issued a statement that we did so ago which we've made some number of suggestions. I think that there isn't any one answer to this and nobody should feel that there is one of. The it perfectly clear that. Dr Gross's proposal which has not yet been adopted by the board of that which we made to the civil rights groups in the parents group the last two days proposal for permitting any child and to move to any other school which had placed for him throughout the entire city is the beginning of making the open enrollment program which this is an expansion of it even that much more effective not much more successful but that's not going to solve the problem there are other techniques the problems of there's a method of what we call the Princeton plan which takes two schools one which is basically in the segregated area where there are in the main Negroes or negroes in Puerto Ricans another school right across the line from that which isn't on which is an area which is in the main. A white community with some Negroes whatever it is and it pairs them and they let the children from grade one kindergarten through third grade go to one school and then the whole group go from the fourth the sixth grades to the other school and therefore you get a fusion of the populations of these two fools and they're not far apart there may require some bussing of children back and forth and out of the potential. School population there are other things which the board is considering and I was used to some extent in the past with the Commission on Human Rights recommended that is in effect if you for that zoning out the zones which are used for schools where good children acquired to go which should be used to further integration of schools. There are other methods which as you heard recently. Crossed. Arouse a tremendous amount of feeling because I gather that the groups which are opposed to it feel that what this means is that there's going to be wholesale taking. White children and wife orphan effect I mean without the consent of their parents sending them into a Negro community I don't think this is anything that anybody has proposed but I know. They remember the open enrollment program moderate expanded form or the form which which was adopted three years ago is a program of consent parents' consent every single child in a long program Negro Puerto Rican gets passed through a so-called receiving school with the consent of the child's parents nobody sends a child and I think that we have to keep this in mind we think about. There are other things like teacher assignment and this time for what I believe personally is the most important aspect. New York City has had a program in existence for the last several years which we probably all heard it's nationally known It's called the highrises program it was an effort on the part of the city of New York to throw into the two fools two or three schools one of them in the Upper West Side of Manhattan near where I live. If you can imagine resources so that they just had the teaching the psychological services social services testing all the facilities that go to make the young person a whole party from an educated person they through always into that school in a question of particular school I understand. An amount of money you know schools amount of money which came to about three hundred dollars per pupil more than was spent in the average school. What he has done on the basis of it's been in existence long enough so that the results are in the highrise program is done. You know in the most amazing way show that all the stories about the Negro pupils inability to complete a pure stuff or not and that the children given the opportunity given the teaching to. Break out given the other testing facilities and all the other aids which were part of the program literally had them. In the face of Iraq two or three years so that actually I.Q. tests had fabulous differences from among the same people between. The. Program started and after going through. Now I mention this because people as responsible leaders of community as Dr Kenneth Clark. Are aware of the fact that it's not physically possible and I would hope that the group that met with Dr Grossman before yesterday understand that. It's just not physically possible in Manhattan for example seventy percent need. To go into greater stores in Manhattan but you're going to get the kind of integration that anybody would even begin to feel in a community with only twenty percent was acceptable ridiculous it's impossible to even if you were to try and go across which is. Very close together it's not possible at the periphery of. School I couldn't cross the bar line if you're going to have Princeton. No reason why children up in the north end of the time couldn't move right across the bridge and go to school in the Bronx. But despite all that. I think the acoustics are such that it would be almost impossible for us to expect the seventy percent of children in Manhattan when they go to where it is to be integrated in the way which whatever the ideal is one would do for the ideal or even less for the idea so people like Ken Clarke and others have now said that what we are basically looking for in the present kind of he said something like this yesterday I think what we're basically looking for is the quality of education and what we propose is that such an upgrade on a crash basis of schools which are not able to be integrated fully so that these children these Negro children will be in a position to get the education that they need in order to be able to compete successfully in the decades ahead now let me make it perfectly clear that I'm not suggesting here that this is a substitution for a further physical integration of our school system I'm not suggesting that a player with those items which I mentioned briefly before and others these techniques should not be used to integrate the schools as best we can but I am suggesting is that as part and parcel of that package must be. And upgrading of those schools where there is not an ability at this time or immediately to integrate in the way that we've just we've been discussing so that the educational opportunity for those Negro children will not be any less than may exist in some of the other areas and I think that. I'd like to close with one the one thing this is really a word of one. Concern I don't use that as a better word the word of concern on my part. The commission was attacked by the civil rights groups yesterday. For presumably acting as a smoke screen for the governor and the mayor connection with the construction trade if any some of you people in this room were at the at the hearings for three days and anybody who was there who believe this must have had his ears stuffed with much more than cotton nothing got through I explained to the president of the chamber of the Joint Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity Reverend Hildebrand on Friday that I had been misquoted in one paper when I said when I was quoted as saying that the major responsibility was on a contract as I said contract to share the responsibility with the unions and they do and that this was something new that came out of here and I pointed out to him that if we were going to do any cancellation of contracts in the city or the fact the state government was going to cancel contracts as a civil rights groups have proposed that we had to do it on the basis of findings after a hearing and we couldn't do it because someone charged in a press release and this is my note of concern. I think that we have to be very careful as we move civil rights along and I'm forum under present that we don't forget about civil liberties and I'm for those one hundred percent. There are two foundations of our American freedom to foundations of our American democracy two foundations in the Bill of Rights and in the Constitution that make this Issiah what it is what I would agree is the best experiment that mankind has produced so far in government and that is the whole facet of due process the hall of facets of civil liberties where a man has the right to be heard to know what the charges are against him to have a hearing where he can respond and then have a responsible body impartial make a finding on those charges and I said to referee over brand I said to her but hear from the N.E.A. C.P.A. labor secretary I said you're not satisfied that we're moving fast enough we'll I said Have you had someone charge you with a crime or some offense against society would you like it to be tried and the conviction to be on the basis of a press release issued by somebody else out on a street corner or in a room when you want to responsible body in this instance a judge if it was a crime hearing that could be the charges and coming to a conclusion well yes but was the answer we cannot at the commission rely upon the findings and the report of the United States Civil Rights Commissions of New York advisory committee we can't rely upon a three year old report that they say Commission for Human Rights issued on apprentice training we have to get the facts for ourselves and we're getting them under oath we have to find out the reasons we have to find out who's responsible and we have to find out which contract there is involved in a particular job because of the sin is going to make the judgment that is going to cancel a contract it can only be done on that kind of due process and with a hearing as I've described and I repeat. That we should be very concerned and careful not to sacrifice the civil liberties of us all as we've battle in a battle which I am with for civil rights Thank you. For all of our all. Thank you Commissioner law for that and inspiring and rounded presentation of this unique city crisis I know there are many many questions. That we will know how to take on the floor I'd like to begin with one of my own. Some time ago there was talk of getting the help of the police department in the Stop wishing an ethnic map of the city I would assume that that would include ethnic trends and to help you know as you were speaking of getting the facts to help you were brought material on what are the long range ethnic trends in New York has anything come out of that you have. You know if you're referring to an ethnic map of the city I think that that's been done by this the city planning commission and one exists you probably are referring to the. The ethnic survey which we so into the mayor's executive order which every department was directed to comply with where we asked each department to make what we call a site survey you know that no one is permitted to keep records of race or religion nobody's personnel card indicates in any way what race religion or color someone may be but as a kind of a rough God there was an attempt made and we have the figures in from I think every city department in an attempt made to get a site survey of who is working in this particular classification a supervisor just looked like I would look out over you right as I around the room and made a judgment and that's not accurate it's inaccurate and nobody's going to do anything about it in the sense of we're going to move people around on a basis alone but it's considered to be a healthy tool a useful tool I guess is the word and we're in the process of trying to put those for this together. Have any other questions lots of only I don't like anywhere there's probably a sentence because of the next it's intended to be constructive. And it's based on a personal problem as it seems to me first of all I think I think we have two situations we got in the Grose the south and the north and I think the two are different in this respect I've come to the conclusion that the Southern problem has been a legal one and all efforts to resolve it have been all along legal istic lines I also feel that. In the north it's not a legal problem but a social logical. Now. It seems to me that the answer therefore lies in overcoming the social logical barriers. But when you have a parent let's say a white individual who has purchased a home across the street from the school because he's interested in starting his child of that school and because of legal listing or legal legislation call it what you will he now finds that his child cannot go across the street but must go three miles away when you have a taxpayer who discovers that. A Negro family that lives on one hundred seven street and Amsterdam Avenue. Can legally request and has been able to achieve the city to provide transportation so that its third grade children are sent to a school public school in the Bronx because the family believes that public school is better for a variety of reasons when you have organized groups that approach industry and say because of statistical bases. You should have X. number of negro when you have this sort of thing and I mean this constructively is a possible that in the north with this problem is not being faced properly on social logical grounds but on a legal list of grounds which are in essence increasing the antigun in some of certain groups are adding to those people who have been on the fence let's say but now because of personal The reasons are moving to the anxiety grow side. Is it wrong I at this time to approach this are legal is the grounds or should we pay more attention to the socialistic answers socialistic social logical answers. I don't really I think I understand your question my think those are all those examples you gave are different and I think they might be treated differently first of all I would say that the head of the basic question I think you've asked. I agree that the problem in the north is different from the south I've been frequently quoted as saying that in the south it's a legal problem that the president's civil rights bill is aimed at that legal problem in the north we've got the lowest you know what we're looking for equality of our equality now and we're doing what the in effect we're looking for what you have said. However. If you are saying in effect that there is some consciousness of color which is apparent in the. Willingness on the part of the city. To have a little negro boy be in a position where. He can be bused to a from a resending to receiving school as I tried before under the open enrollment program but there's another example which you didn't give but the real City Housing Authority makes up the liberal and calculated effort not to commit it's new housing developments it's public housing developments to go all Negro or only grown Puerto Rican and they are laid carefully try to make them integrated housing developments this again is a consciousness of color now what I say is that in the struggle for equality and for equality of opportunity. Color consciousness is a perfectly valid worthwhile necessary tool we use it in the integration of the schools we use it in the housing areas such as I just described and I think that we should and I go one step further I think that consciousness of color has to be a part of our reach us. It has to be a part of our. Remedying the Hundred Years of discrimination if I can put it a different way in the whole field of employment I think that it is not improper if for a particular union for example which has no need arose or its token negro one or two to not take away the job of the existing employed men not take away the not reduce the standards of the Union no one is required ask but in its apprentice training program. And in its journeymen program if it finds qualified men able to move into that you know I think that there's nothing wrong with putting some Negroes at the head of that particular line so that they can get into that craft there are none of them there I mean I'd like I have this problem with a lot of my liberal friends I guess most of the people in this room call themselves liberals with a small L whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or a liberal party in New York most of us are all consider ourselves lucky to many people are caught in the all phraseology we all terminology of the individual I say well how can you let anybody get ahead we have rebuilt should be treated equally and we all agree about that but I ask a question of people who ask me who say this to me starting when. I give you an example I was given to me by a negro judge in New York a very fine man I had given a different example of the same thing and he came up with a clear one the minute he said. Let's take an audience. That's got five hundred seats he said I never let negroes in I don't. Filled up with five hundred white men. And let make the analogy of that audience that got a Tory and to some. Industry where no negroes have jobs some craft where nobody grows up. He said Nineteen sixty three arrives and at that point our American society catches up with what we think we are and then the people in that industry say Negro should be admitted without discrimination OK now the auditorium sphere with five hundred seats What is the people who take the tickets there what I mean by that is they mean that the negroes get on line outside. Like everybody else. And if a Negro gets online when he gets reached when there's a vacancy in the auditorium then they'll be one Negro in that auditorium and four hundred ninety nine whites and I think I don't once you accept the premise that there's been something wrong with what we've done over the past hundred years or maybe it's only fifty I would guess it's one hundred years there's been something wrong with what we've done over one hundred years not all of us not the whole society condemn but craft by craft or industry by industry there are some and they know themselves then I would say that this is what Martin Luther King is saying this is what Whitney Young you say it's too easy for you to say well OK you are right but you've been talking about for the last fifty years the Urban League is fifty years old we were wrong about that and so one thousand nine hundred sixty three get online. And. Then those people who say that they're very careful to say we're not going to let the first guy lie and he will whatever comes up that's who we're going to let it while you know it might take another ten or twenty years before a Negro gets into my fictional auditorium I've just described what certainly going to take five or ten years before you get more than one or two or three Now if you go back to the very first thing I said. And you think of America as a society where everybody gets treated on the basis of equality without regard to the color of their skin no other religion or their racial background or the national origin and that's what we think of ourselves as then you have to think that maybe Whitney Young and maybe Martin Luther King have a point. That this does not mean quoting us and we suggesting quote but this means that the society has to go to give a little bit don't all of a sudden become legal istic about protecting ourselves against anybody getting in front of anybody else when you spend fifty years covering these people and. So that I don't feel as badly as you do but some of the consciousness of color would you describe. I don't have. That. Not very. But I don't think you answered back since. You say that only pray you say this but not by oratory which is a private thing not by what. You guys thanks to the brain there show over to another school to make room for another child and how many people are willing to do that and that our while yet. I hear any I saw just R.P. that your second I live there are. Large and gave me right place to buy a better. Life but. Exactly. Where not and it's a question of individuals not a group I don't tell individuals all of my stuff I see all the energy I have their United States. What is your what is your problem. Well let me say items are you don't think I answered this question but know what to my knowledge nobody has yet proposed it is not the board of education policy not the board of education policy you misunderstand what the open wrong program is not the board of education policy to take. My job out of a particular school so that Negro children to go into that particular school that's not at all what has been proposed but the program is that in all schools where there is you know it's all Dr Gross because the other day but in those schools where there is room anywhere in the city he says we're going to be in a position where we're going to move from it individual children with the consent of their parents to go to those particular school but what he describes a situation where the zone is drawn in such a way that there's a school across the street and the child would have to go. Three miles but might have to go to the school eight blocks the other direction or this is happened in New York City over and over and over again without regard to the race question I don't think that's a serious thing. You state your name and good honest critique of. That but. Earlier. And. I. Heard. There. Might be some legal remedy. You think. Oh. Well we would not it would not be able to be done with the laws on the books that exist in the city other than the cancellation of contract provision which I think you are familiar with and here we've been trying to walk a legal tightrope to make sure that any case that we come up with if we come up with one. As I said commissions made no judgment if we might have a case that it will be will be in a position to cancel a contract under those circumstances if they are finding is there. Of the person or the entity the contractor who has the contract with the city. At least some of the civil rights groups say that if we find that the union has discriminated and then the contractor is discriminated. Because he has become the agent the union is become the agent of the contract or in giving him his employees. The Corporation Council of New York is looking this up for us to see just what is the legal is that you are. I understand however that what I had read a reference to before was the federal law. Because the unions you know are certified as the bargaining agent and they have a special laws which protect them under the National Labor Relations Act they have the union shop provisions. They in the construction trades they even have greater protections with the union hiring halls I've learned all this on the level oil list in the last few weeks and this is an area where I think we might be able to get some help if it turns out that what we've got in the city or in the state is not sufficient but I think I'm a try to denigrate what we've got in the city mostly because I think that label ought to twenty and the administrative call provision three forty three point eight I have lots of teasing them when they would permit the cancellation of a contract. With the city or with the state. Right. I think what. Question I raised was completely misunderstood and really I might question the sense of this make sure of my position is not mistaken I know because of the stories but my point was this really I was trying to be constructive in what the question I should've asked was this. Is just not better to get people to want to do something rather than force them to do something in which case you tag a nice and carry it just a bit further the question here is. All the energy the genius the effort that is being devoted at the present time in the law to getting to be to force people to do things and therefore increase the number of people in tact it is stick to you because people don't want to be forced if that's a half right you do have a right to Jane years' work where you make people want to do something I think would be more effective I think we all understand one of the very well we all feel deeply about this critical problem and I'm sure that we're all grateful to commission all over the truly brilliant up of. The mayor has been able to induce him to give it such an enormous personal sacrifice there is a television program waiting upstairs has been waiting since two o'clock I promise to when the time if there is one final question. I'd like to present that to the commissioners their final question. If. You say. You're. Right you're smart people. And. Also you hear some. Fear. Is a sign you know based on what you know it's a it's not based on fact or stress my feeling I have I guess it's part of my own personal optimistic philosophy or affirmative approach on these things I think that. If you talk to lots of individuals something as I told them of this is not a good sampling perhaps. There's a tremendous rejection of the kind of access that is represented by the parents and by the well that's what I'm saying and I think that movement in the south I would imagine put it this way that the average housewife and homeowner in New York watching his T.V. set. The way we did three years ago and seeing those terrible people screaming at that little four year old negro girl being taken by that beautiful negro mother into that school felt the same chill of unhappiness the same noise you're almost that we in the north felt that I know everybody unanimously condemned it and I say to you that that's I bet that's the way they feel it is not I'm not proposing here that most of the people in the south want the integrated society we're talking about and I'm saying that the excesses that exist in the South do not have to exist and we could have much better progress if the people of goodwill were in control and from my conversations with people like with Whitney Young and Jim Farmer and I welcome to I've been down there and I talked to lots of people and have lots of friends in the white community in the south I think that this is true let me say only one final word about the little byplay that win here none of this progress would have taken place none of this move none of this pro play for education. Unless the Negro community used an all-American legal concept most basic time cept of all right there is a lot someone takes your horse you can sue him for it you can go to court and get a replacement action but first of all you can go on take your horse back that's called Self-Help and that's what the Negro is doing. Thank you very much. Rick.