 CHAPTER V. REJECTION AND PROTEST, AN HISTORICAL SKETCH, PART IV. Freedom Now and Civil Rights Laws As the direct action tactics took more dramatic form, as the civil rights groups began to articulate the needs of the masses and draw some of them to their demonstrations, the protest movement in 1963 assumed a new note of urgency, a demand for complete freedom now. Direct action returned to the northern cities, taking the form of massive protests against economic, housing and educational inequities, and a fresh wave of demonstrations swept the south, from Cambridge, Maryland to Birmingham, Alabama. Northern Negroes launched street demonstrations against discrimination in the building trade unions, and the following winter school boycotts against de facto segregation. In the north, 1963 and 1964, brought the beginning of the waves of civil disorders in northern urban centers. In the south, incidents occurred of brutal white resistance to the civil rights movement, beginning with the murders of Mississippi Negro leader Medgar Evers, and of four Negro schoolgirls in a church in Birmingham. These disorders and the events in the south are detailed in the introduction to Chapter 1, The Profiles of Disorder. The massive anti-Negro resistance in Birmingham and numerous other southern cities during the spring of 1963 compelled the nation to face the problem of race prejudice in the south. President Kennedy affirmed that racial discrimination was a moral issue, and asked Congress for a major civil rights bill. But a major impetus for what was to be the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the March on Washington in August 1963. Early in the year, A. Philip Randolph issued a call for a March on Washington to dramatize the need for jobs, and to press for a federal commitment to job action. At about the same time, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic churches sought and obtained representation on the March Committee. Although the AFL-CIO National Council refused to endorse the March, a number of labor leaders and international unions participated. Reversing an earlier stand, President Kennedy approved the March. A quarter of a million people, about twenty percent of them white, participated. It was more than a summation of the past years of struggle and aspiration. It symbolized certain new directions, a deeper concern for the economic problems of the masses, more involvement of white moderates and new demands from the most militant, who implied that only a revolutionary change in American institutions would permit Negroes to achieve the dignity of citizens. President Kennedy had set the stage for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. After his death, President Johnson took forceful and effective action to secure its enactment. The law settled the public accommodations issue in the South's major cities. Its voting section, however, promised more than it could accomplish. Martin Luther King and SCLC dramatized the issue locally with demonstrations at Selma, Alabama, in the spring of 1965. Again the national government was forced to intervene and a new and more effective voting law was passed. FAILIERS OF DIRECT ACTION Birmingham had made direct action respectable. Selma, which drew thousands of white moderates from the North, made direct action fashionable. Yet as early as 1964 it was becoming evident that like legal action direct action was of limited usefulness. In deep south states like Mississippi and Alabama direct action had failed to desegregate public accommodation in the sit-ins of 1960-61. A major reason was that Negroes lacked the leverage of the vote. The demonstrations of the early 1960s had been successful principally in places like Atlanta, Nashville, Durham, Winston-Salem, Louisville, Savannah, New Orleans, Charleston and Dallas, where Negroes voted and could swing elections. Beginning in 1961 Robert Moses of SNCC with the Cooperation of Core and NAACP established voter registration projects in the cities and county seats of Mississippi, he succeeded in registering only a handful of Negroes, but by 1964 he had generated enough support throughout the country to enable the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which he had created, to challenge dramatically the seating of the official white delegates from the state at the Democratic National Convention. In the black ghettos of the North direct action also largely failed. Street demonstrations did compel employers from supermarkets to banks to add Negroes to their workforce in northern and western cities and even in some southern cities where the Negroes had considerable buying power. However separate and inferior schools, slum housing and police hostility proved invulnerable to direct attack. New Directions. Although Negroes were being hired in increasing numbers, mass unemployment and under-employment remained. As economist Vivian Henderson pointed out in his testimony before the commission, no one can deny that all Negroes have benefited from civil rights laws and desegregation in public life in one way or another, the fact is, however, that the masses of Negroes have not experienced tangible benefits in a significant way. This is so in education and housing. It is critically so in the area of jobs and economic security. Expectations of Negro masses for equal job opportunity programs have fallen far short of fulfillment. Negroes have made gains, there have been important gains, but the masses of Negroes have been virtually untouched by those gains. Faced with the intransigence of the Deep South and the inadequacy of direct action to solve the problems of the slum-dwellers, Negro protest organizations began to diverge. The momentum towards unity, apparent in 1963, was lost. At the very time that white support for the protest movement was rising markedly, militant Negroes felt increasingly isolated from the American scene. On two things, however, all segments of the protest movement agreed. One, future civil rights activity would have to focus on economic and social discrimination in the urban ghettos, and two, while demonstrations would still have a place, the major weapon would have to be the political potential of the black masses. By the middle of the decade many militant Negro members of SNCC and CORE began to turn away from American society and the middle-class way of life. Cynical about the liberals and the leaders of organized labor, they regarded compromise even as a temporary tactical device as anathema. They talked more of revolutionary changes in the social structure, and of retaliatory violence, and increasingly rejected white assistance. They insisted that Negro power alone could compel the white ruling class to make concessions. Yet they also spoke of an alliance of Negroes and unorganized lower-class whites to overthrow the power structure of capitalists, politicians, and bureaucratic labor leaders who exploited the poor of both races by dividing them through an appeal to race prejudice. At the same time that their activities declined, other issues, particularly Vietnam, diverted the attention of the country, and of some Negro leaders from the issue of equality. In civil rights organizations, reduced financing made it increasingly difficult to support staff personnel. Most important was the increasing frustration of expectations that affected the direct action advocates of the early 1960s, the sense of futility growing out of the feeling that progress had turned out to be tokenism, that the compromises of the white community were sedatives rather than solutions, and that the current methods of Negro protest were doing little for the masses of the race. As frustration grew, the ideology and rhetoric of a number of civil rights activists became angrier. One man more than any other, a black man who grew up believing whites had murdered his father, became a spokesman for this anger, Malcolm X, who perhaps best embodied the belief that racism was so deeply ingrained in white America that appeals to conscience would bring no fundamental change. BLACK POWER In this setting the rhetoric of black power developed. The precipitating occasion was the Meredith march from Memphis to Jackson in June 1966. But the slogan expressed tendencies that had been present for a long time and had been gaining strength in the Negro community. Black power first articulated a mood rather than a program. Disillusionment and alienation from white America, and independence, race pride, and self-respect, or black consciousness. Having become a household phrase, the term generated intense discussion of its real meaning, and a broad spectrum of ideologies and programmatic proposals emerged. In politics black power meant independent action, Negro control of the political power of the black ghettos, and its use to improve economic and social conditions. It could take the form of organizing a black political party, or controlling the political machinery within the ghetto without the guidance or support of white politicians. Where predominantly Negro areas lacked Negroes in elective office, whether in the rural black belt of the south or in the urban centers, black power advocates sought the election of Negroes by voter registration campaigns, by getting out the vote, and by working for redrawing electoral districts. The basic belief was that only a well organized and cohesive block of Negro voters could provide for the needs of the black masses. Even some Negro politicians allied to major political parties adopted the term black power to describe their interest in the Negro vote. In economic terms, black power meant creating independent, self-sufficient Negro business enterprise, not only by encouraging Negro entrepreneurs, but also by forming Negro cooperatives in the ghettos and in the predominantly black rural communities of the south. In the area of education, black power called for local community control of the public schools in the black ghettos. Throughout the emphasis was on self-help, racial unity, and among the most militant, retaliatory violence, the latter ranging from the legal right of self-defense, to attempts to justify looting and arson in ghetto riots, guerrilla warfare, and armed rebellion. Phrases like black power, black consciousness, and black is beautiful, enjoyed an extensive currency in the Negro community, even within the NAACP and among relatively conservative politicians, but particularly among young intellectuals and Afro-American student groups on predominantly white college campuses. Expressed in its most extreme form by small, often local fringe groups, the black power ideology became associated with SNCC and CORE. Generally regarded today as the most militant among the important Negro protest organizations, they have developed different interpretations of the black power doctrine. SNCC calls for totally independent political action outside the established political parties, as with the Black Panther Party in Lowndes County, Alabama. It rejects political alliances with other groups until Negroes have themselves built a substantial base of independent political power, applauds the idea of guerrilla warfare, and regards riots as rebellions. CORE has been more flexible. Approving the SNCC strategy, it also advocates working within the Democratic Party, forming alliances with other groups, and while seeking to justify riots as the natural explosion of an oppressed people against intolerable conditions, advocates violence only in self-defense. Both groups favor cooperatives, but CORE has seemed more inclined toward job training programs and developing a Negro entrepreneurial class based upon the market within the black ghettos. Old wine in new bottles. What is new about black power is phraseology rather than substance. Black consciousness has roots in the organization of Negro churches and mutual benefits societies in the early days of the Republic, the antebellum Negro convention movement, the Negro colonization schemes of the 19th century, Du Bois concept of pan-Africanism, Booker T. Washington's advocacy of race pride, self-help, and racial solidarity, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Garvey movement. The decade after World War I, which saw the militant race-proud new Negro, the relatively widespread theory of retaliatory violence, and the high tide of the Negro support of Negro business ideology, exhibits striking parallels with the 1960s. The theme of retaliatory violence is hardly new for American Negroes. Most racial disorders in American history until recent years were characterized by white attacks on Negroes, but Negroes have retaliated violently in the past. Black power rhetoric and ideology actually express a lack of power. The slogan emerged when the Negro protest movement was slowing down, when it was finding increasing resistance to its changing goals, when it discovered that nonviolent direct action was no more a panacea than legal action, when core and SNCC were declining in terms of activity, membership, and financial support. This combination of circumstances provoked anger deepened by impotence, powerless to make any fundamental changes in the life of the masses, powerless, that is, to compel white America to make those changes, many advocates of black power have retreated into an unreal world where they see an outnumbered and poverty-stricken minority organizing itself entirely separately from whites, and creating sufficient power to force white America to grant its demands. To date the evidence suggests that the situation is much like that of the 1840s, when a small group of intellectuals advocated slave insurrections, but stopped short of organizing them. The black power advocates of today consciously feel that they are the most militant group in the Negro protest movement, yet they have retreated from a direct confrontation with American society on the issue of integration, and by preaching separatism unconsciously function as an accommodation to white racists. Much of their economic program, as well as their interest in Negro history, self-help, racial solidarity, and separation, is reminiscent of Booker T. Washington. The rhetoric is different, but the ideas are remarkably similar. The Meaning By 1967, whites could point to the demise of slavery, the decline of illiteracy among Negroes, the legal protection provided by the constitutional amendments and civil rights legislation, and the growing size of the Negro middle class. Whites would call it Negro progress, from slavery to freedom and tort equality. Negroes could point to the doctrine of white supremacy, its persistence after emancipation, and its influence on the definition of the place of Negroes in American life. They could point to their long fight for full citizenship when they had active opposition from most of the white population, and little or no support from the government. They could see progress towards equality accompanied by bitter resistance. Perhaps most of all they could feel the persistent, pervasive racism that kept them in inferior segregated schools, restricted them to ghettos, barred them from fair employment, provided double standards in courts of justice, inflicted bodily harm on their children, and bladed their lives with a sense of hopelessness and despair. In all of this, and in the context of professed ideals, Negroes would find more retrogression than progress, more rejection than acceptance. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the course of Negro protest movements in the United States, except for slave revolts, was based in the cities of the north, where Negroes enjoyed sufficient freedom to mount a sustained protest. It was in the cities north and south that Negroes had their greatest independence and mobility. It was natural, therefore, for black protest movements to be urban-based, and until the last dozen years or so, limited to the north. As Negroes migrated from the south, the mounting strength of their votes in northern cities became a vital element in drawing the federal government into the defense of the civil rights of southern Negroes. While rural Negroes today face great racial problems, the major unsolved questions that touch the core of Negro life stem from the discrimination embedded in urban housing, employment, and education. Over the years, the character of Negro protest has changed. Originally, it was a white liberal and Negro upper-class movement aimed at securing the constitutional rights of Negroes through propaganda, lawsuits, and legislation. In recent years, the emphasis in tactics shifted first to direct action, and then, among the most militant, to the rhetoric of black power. The role of white liberals declined as Negroes came to direct the struggle. At the same time, the Negro protest movement became more of a mass movement, with increasing participation from the working classes. As these changes were occurring, and while substantial progress was being made to secure constitutional rights for the Negroes, the goals of the movement were broadened. Protest groups now demand special efforts to overcome the Negroes' poverty and cultural deprivation, conditions that cannot be erased simply by ensuring constitutional rights. The central thrust of Negro protest in the current period has aimed at the inclusion of Negroes in American society on a basis of full equality, rather than at a fundamental transformation of American institutions. There have been elements calling for a revolutionary overthrow of the American social system, or for a complete withdrawal of Negroes from American society, but these solutions have had little popular support. Negro protest, for the most part, has been firmly rooted in the basic values of American society, seeking not their destruction, but their fulfillment. End of Section 27. Recording by Maria Casper. Section 28. Of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Peter Coon. Chapter 6. The Formation of the Racial Ghettoes. Major Trends in Negro Population. Throughout the twentieth century, and particularly in the last three decades, the Negro population of the United States has been steadily moving, from rural areas to urban, from south to north and west. In 1910, 2.7 million Negroes lived in American cities, 28 percent of the nation's Negro population of 9.8 million. Today, about 15 million Negro Americans live in metropolitan areas, or 69 percent of the Negro population of 21.5 million. In 1910, 885,000 Negroes, 9 percent, lived outside the south. Now, almost 10 million, about 45 percent, live in the north or west. These shifts in population have resulted from three basic trends. A rapid increase in the size of the Negro population. A continuous flow of Negroes from southern rural areas, partly to large cities in the south, but primarily to large cities in the north and west. An increasing concentration of Negroes in large metropolitan areas within racially segregated neighborhoods. Taken together, these trends have produced large and constantly growing concentrations of Negro population within big cities in all parts of the nation. Because most major civil disorders of recent years occurred in predominantly Negro neighborhoods, we have examined the causes of this concentration. The growth rate of the Negro population. During the first half of this century, the white population of the United States grew at a slightly faster rate than the Negro population. Because fertility rates among Negro women were far more than offset by death rates among Negroes and large-scale immigration of whites from Europe. The proportion of Negroes in the country declined from 12 percent in 1900 to 10 percent in 1940. By the end of World War II, and increasingly since then, major advances in medicine and medical care, together with the increasing use of the Negro population resulting from higher fertility rates, caused death rates among Negroes to fall much faster than among whites. In addition, white immigration from outside the United States dropped dramatically after stringent restrictions were adopted in the 1920s. Thus, by mid-century, both factors which had previously offset higher fertility rates among Negro women no longer were in effect. While Negro fertility rates, after rising rapidly to 1957, have declined sharply in the past decade, white fertility rates have dropped even more, leaving Negro rates much higher in comparison. The result is that Negro population is now growing significantly faster than white population. From 1940 to 1960, the white population rose 34 percent, but the Negro population rose 46.6 percent. From 1960 to 1966, the white population grew 7.6 percent, whereas Negro population rose 14.4 percent almost twice as much. Consequently, the proportion of Negroes in the total population has risen from 10 percent in 1950 to 10.5 percent in 1960 and 11.1 percent in 1966. In 1950, at least one of every ten Americans was Negro. In 1966, one in nine. If this trend continued, one of every eight Americans will be Negro by 1972. Another consequence of higher birth rates among Negroes is that the Negro population is considerably younger than the white population. In 1966, the median age among whites was 29.1 years, as compared to 21.1 among Negroes. About 35 percent of the white population was under 18 years of age, compared with 45 percent for Negroes. About one of every six children under five and one of every six new babies are Negro. Negro-white fertility rates bear an interesting relationship to educational experience. Negro women with low levels of education have more children than white women with similar schooling, while Negro women with four years or more of college education have fewer children than white women similarly educated. This suggests that the difference between Negro and white fertility rates may decline in the future if Negro educational attainment compares more closely with that of whites, and if a rising proportion of members of both groups complete college. The migration of Negroes from the south, the magnitude of this migration. In 1910, 91 percent of the nation's 9.8 million Negroes lived in the south. 27 percent of American Negroes lived in cities of 2,500 persons or more, as compared to 49 percent of the nation's white population. By 1966, the Negro population had increased to 21.5 million, and two significant geographical shifts had taken place. The proportion of Negroes living in the south had dropped to 55 percent, and about 69 percent of all Negroes lived in metropolitan areas, compared to 64 percent for whites. While the total Negro population more than doubled from 1910 to 1966, the number living in cities rose over five fold from 2.7 million to 14.8 million, and the number outside of the south rose 11 fold from 885 thousand to 9.7 million. Negro migration from the south began after the Civil War. By the turn of the century, sizable Negro populations lived in many large northern cities. Philadelphia for example, had 63,400 Negro residents in 1900. The movement of Negroes out of the rural south accelerated during World War I, when floods and bull weevils hurt farming in the south, and the industrial demands of the war created thousands of new jobs for unskilled workers in the north. After the war, the shift to mechanized farming spurred the continued movement of Negroes from rural southern areas. The depression slowed this migratory flow, but World War II set it in motion again. More recently, continued mechanization of agriculture and the expansion of industrial employment in northern and western cities have served to sustain the movement of Negroes out of the south, although at a slightly lower rate. From 1960 to 1963, annual Negro out migration actually dropped to 78,000, but then rose to over 125,000 from 1963 to 1966. Important characteristics of this migration. It is useful to recall that even the latest scale of Negro migration is relatively small when compared to the earlier waves of European immigrants. The total of 8.8 million immigrants entered the United States between 1901 and 1911, and another 5.7 million arrived during the following decade. Even during the years from 1960 through 1966, the 1.8 million immigrants from abroad were almost three times the 613,000 Negroes who departed the south. In these same six years, California alone gained over 1.5 million new residents from internal shifts of American population. Three major routes of Negro migration from the south have developed. One runs north along the Atlantic seaboard toward Boston, another north from Mississippi toward Chicago, and the third west from Texas and Louisiana toward California. Between 1955 and 1960, 50 percent of the non-white migrants to New York metropolitan areas and area came from North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama. North Carolina alone supplied 20 percent of all New York's non-white immigrants. During the same period, almost 60 percent of the non-white migrants to Chicago came from Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana. Mississippi accounted for almost one-third. During these years, three-fourths of the non-white migrants to Los Angeles came from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alabama. The flow of Negroes from the south has caused the Negro population to grow more rapidly in the north than the west. As a result, although a much higher proportion of Negroes still reside in the south, the distribution of Negroes throughout the United States is beginning to approximate that of whites. Negroes in the north and west are now so numerous that natural increase, rather than migration, provides the greater part of Negro population gains there. And even though Negro migration has continued at a high level, it comprises a constantly declining proportion of Negro growth in these regions. In other words, we have reached the point where the Negro populations of the north and west will continue to expand significantly, even if migration from the south drops substantially. Future Migration Despite accelerating Negro migration from the south, the Negro population there has continued to rise. Nor is it likely to halt. Negro birth rates in the south, as elsewhere, have fallen sharply since 1957. But so far, this decline has been offset by the rising Negro population base remaining in the south. From 1950 to 1960, southern Negro births generated an average net increase of 254,000 per year. And from 1960 to 1966, an average of 188,000 per year. Even if Negro birth rates continue to fall, they are likely to remain high enough to support significant migration to other regions for some time to come. The Negro population in the south is becoming increasingly urbanized. In 1950, there were 5.4 million southern rural Negroes. By 1960, 4.8 million. But this decline has been more than offset by increases in the urban population. A rising proportion of inter-regional migration now consists of persons moving from one city to another. From 1960 to 1966, rural population in the south was far below its peak, but the annual average migration of Negroes from the south was still substantial. These facts demonstrate that Negro migration from the south, which has maintained a high rate for the past 60 years, will continue unless economic conditions change dramatically in either the south or the north and west. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that most southern states in recent decades have also experienced outflows of white population. From 1950 to 1960, 11 of the 17 southern states, including the District of Columbia, exported white population as compared to 13 which exported Negro population. Excluding Florida's net gain by migration of 1.5 million, the other 16 southern states together had a net loss by migration of 1.46 million whites. The concentration of Negro population in large cities, where Negro urbanization has occurred. Statistically, the Negro population in America has become more urbanized and more metropolitan than the white population. According to Census Bureau estimates, almost 70 percent of all Negroes in 1966 lived in metropolitan areas compared to 64 percent of all whites. In the south, more than half the Negro population now lives in cities. Rural Negroes outnumber urban Negroes in only four states, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Basic data concerning Negro urbanization trends presented in tables at the conclusion of this chapter indicate that, one, almost all Negro population growth is occurring within metropolitan areas, primarily within central cities. From 1950 to 1966, the U.S. Negro population rose 6.5 million. Over 98 percent of that increase took place in metropolitan areas, 86 percent within central cities, 12 percent in the urban fringe. The vast majority of white population growth is occurring in suburban populations of metropolitan areas. From 1950 to 1966, 77.8 percent of the white population increase of 35.6 million took place in the suburbs. Central cities received only 2.5 percent of this total white increase. Since 1960, white central city population has actually declined by 1.3 million. As a result, central cities are steadily becoming more heavily Negro, while the urban fringes around them remain almost entirely white. The proportion of Negroes in all central cities rose steadily from 12 percent in 1950 to 17 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1966. Meanwhile, metropolitan areas outside of central cities remained 95 percent white from 1950 to 1960 and became 96 percent white by 1966. The Negro population is growing faster, both absolutely and relatively, in the larger metropolitan areas than in the smaller ones. From 1950 to 1966, the proportion of non-whites in the central cities of metropolitan areas with 1 million or more persons doubled, reaching 26 percent as compared with 20 percent in the central cities of metropolitan areas containing from 250,000 to 1 million persons and 12 percent in the central cities of metropolitan areas containing under 250,000 persons. The 12 largest central cities, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Houston, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., St. Louis, Milwaukee, and San Francisco, now contain over two-thirds of the Negro population outside the South and almost one-third of the total in the United States. All of these cities have experienced rapid increases in Negro populations since 1950. In sixth, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and San Francisco, the proportion of Negroes at least doubled. In two others, New York and Los Angeles, it probably doubled. In 1968, seven of these cities are over 30 percent Negro, and one, Washington, D.C., is two-thirds Negro. Factors causing residential segregation in metropolitan areas. The early pattern of Negro settlement within each metropolitan area followed that of immigrant groups. Migrants converged on the older sections of the central city because the lowest-cost housing was located there. Friends and relatives were likely to be living there, and the older neighborhoods then often had good public transportation. But the later phases of Negro settlement and expansion in metropolitan areas diverged sharply from those typical of white immigrants. As the whites were more absorbed by the larger society, many left their predominantly ethnic neighborhoods and moved to outlying areas to obtain newer housing in better schools. Some scattered randomly over the suburban area. Others established new ethnic clusters in the suburb. But even these rarely contained solely members of single ethnic group. As a result, most middle-class neighborhoods, both in the suburbs and within central cities, have no distinctive ethnic character except that they are white. Nowhere has the expansion of America's urban Negro population followed this pattern of dispersal. Thousands of Negro families have attained incomes, living standards, and cultural levels matching or surpassing those of whites who have upgraded themselves from distinctly ethnic neighborhoods. Yet most Negro families have remained within predominantly Negro neighborhoods primarily because they have been effectively excluded from white residential areas. Their exclusion has been accomplished through various discriminatory practices, some obvious and overt, others subtle and hidden. Deliberate efforts are sometimes made to discourage Negro families from purchasing or renting homes in all white neighborhoods. Intimidation and threats of violence have ranged from throwing garbage on lawns and making threatening phone calls to burning crosses in yards and even dynamiting property. More often, real estate agents simply refuse to show homes to Negro buyers. Many middle-class Negro families, therefore, cease looking for homes beyond all Negro areas or nearby, changing neighborhoods. For them, trying to move into all white neighborhoods is not worth the psychological efforts and costs required. Another form of discrimination, just as significant, is white withdrawal from or refusal to enter neighborhoods where large numbers of Negroes are moving or already residing. Normal population turnover causes about 20% of the residents of average U.S. neighborhoods to move out every year because of income changes, job transfers, shifts in lifestyle position, or death. This normal turnover rate is even higher in apartment areas. The refusal of whites to move into changing areas when vacancies occur there from normal turnover means that most of these vacancies are eventually occupied by Negroes. An inexorable shift towards heavy Negro occupancy results. Once this happens, the remaining whites seek to leave, thus confirming the existing belief among whites that complete transformation of a neighborhood is inevitable once Negroes begin to enter. Since the belief itself is one of the major causes of the transformation, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy which inhibits the development of racially integrated neighborhoods. As a result, Negro settlements expand almost entirely through massive racial transition at the edges of existing all Negro neighborhoods rather than by gradual dispersion of populations throughout the metropolitan area. Two points are particularly important. Massive transition requires no panic or flight by the original white residents of a neighborhood into which Negroes begin moving. All it requires is the failure or refusal of other whites to fill the vacancies resulting from normal turnover. Thus, efforts to stop massive transition by persuading present white residents to remain will ultimately fail unless whites outside the neighborhood can be persuaded to move in. It is obviously true that some residential separation of whites and Negroes would occur even without discriminatory practices by whites. This would result from the desires of some Negroes to live in predominantly Negro neighborhoods and from differences in meaningful social variables such as income and educational levels. But these factors alone would not lead to the almost complete segregation of whites and Negroes which has developed in our metropolitan areas. The Exodus of Whites from Central Cities. The process of racial transition in Central City neighborhoods has been only one factor among many others causing millions of whites to move out of Central Cities as the Negro populations there expanded. More basic perhaps have been the rising mobility and affluence of middle class families and the more attractive living conditions, particularly better schools, in the suburbs. Whatever the reason the result is clear, in 1950 45.5 million whites lived in Central Cities. If this population had grown from 1950 to 1960 at the same rate as the nation's white population as a whole it would have increased by 8 million. It actually rose only 2.2 million indicating an outflow of 5.8 million. From 1960 to 1966 the white outflow appears to have been even more rapid. White population of Central Cities declined 1.3 million instead of a rising 3.6 million as it would have if it had grown at the same rate as the entire white population. In theory therefore 4.9 million whites left Central Cities during these six years. Statistics for all Central Cities as a group understate the relationship between Negro population growth and white outflow in individual Central Cities. The fact is many cities with relatively few Negroes experienced rapid white population growth thereby obscuring the size of white out migration that took place in cities having large increases in Negro populations. For example from 1950 to 1960 the 10 largest cities in the United States had a total Negro population increase of 1.6 million for 55 percent while the white population there declined 1.4 million. If the two cities where the white population increased Los Angeles and Houston are excluded the non-white population in the remaining eight rose 1.4 million whereas their white population declined 2.1 million. If the white population in these cities had increased at only half the rate of the white population in the United States as a whole from 1950 to 1960 it would have risen by 1.4 million. Thus these eight cities actually experienced a white out migration of at least 3.5 million while gaining 1.5 million non-whites. The extent of residential segregation. The rapid expansion of all Negro residential areas and large scale white withdrawal have continued a pattern of residential segregation that has existed in American cities for decades. A recent study reveals that this pattern is present to a higher degree in every large city in America. The authors devised an index to measure the degree of residential segregation. The index indicates for each city that percentage of Negroes who would have to move from the blocks where they now live to other blocks in order to provide a perfectly proportional so unsegregated distribution of the population. According to their findings the average segregation index for 207 of the 207 of the largest U.S. cities was 86.2 in 1960. This means that at an average of over 86% of all Negroes would have had to change blocks to create an unsegregated population distribution. Southern cities had a higher average index 90.9 than cities in the northeast 79.2 the north central 87.7 or the west 79.3. Only eight cities had index values below 70 whereas over 50 had values above 91.7. The degree of residential segregation for all 207 cities has been relatively stable averaging 85.2 in 1940 87.3 in 1950 and 86.2 in 1960. Variations within individual regions were only slightly higher. However a recent Census Bureau study shows that in most of the 12 large cities where special censuses were taken in the mid 1960s the proportions of Negroes living in neighborhoods of greatest Negro concentration had increased since 1960. Residential segregation is generally more prevalent with respect to Negroes than for any other minority group including Puerto Ricans, Orientals, and Mexican Americans. Moreover it varies little between central city and suburb. This nearly universal pattern cannot be explained in terms of economic discrimination against all low income groups. Analysis of 15 representative cities indicates that white upper and middle income households are far more segregated from Negro upper and middle income households than from white lower income households. In summary the concentration of Negroes in central cities results from a combination of forces. Some of these forces such as migration and initial settlement patterns in older neighborhoods are similar to those which affected previous ethnic minorities. Others, particularly discrimination in employment and segregation in housing and schools are a result of white attitudes based on race and color. These forces continue to shape the future of the central city. This ends Section 28. Section 29 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marwok. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Kerner Commission Report. Chapter 7. Unemployment, Family Structure and Social Disorganization. Part 1. Recent Economic Trends The Negro population in our country is as diverse in income, occupation, family composition, and other variables as the white community. Nevertheless for purposes of analysis three major Negro economic groups can be identified. The first and smallest group consists of middle and upper income individuals and households whose educational, occupational, and cultural characteristics are similar to those of middle and upper income white groups. The second and largest group contains Negroes whose incomes are above the poverty level, but who have not attained the educational, occupational, or income status typical of middle class Americans. The third group has very low educational, occupational, and income attainments and lives below the poverty level. A recent compilation of data on American Negroes by the Departments of Labor and Commerce shows that although incomes of both Negroes and whites have been rising rapidly, Negro incomes still remain far below those of whites. Negro median family income was only 58% of the white median in 1966. Negro family income is not keeping pace with white family income growth. In constant 1965 dollars, median non-white income in 1947 was $2,174 lower than median white income. By 1966, the gap had grown to $3,036. The Negro upper income group is expanding rapidly and achieving sizable income gains. In 1966, 28% of all Negro families received incomes of $7,000 or more, compared with the 55% of white families. This was 1.6 times the proportion of Negroes receiving comparable incomes in 1960 and four times greater than the proportion receiving such incomes in 1947. Moreover, the proportion of Negroes employed in high-skill, high-status, and well-paying jobs rose faster than comparable proportions among whites from 1960 to 1966. As Negro incomes have risen, the size of the lowest income group has grown smaller, and the middle and upper income groups have grown larger, both relatively and absolutely. About two-thirds of the lowest income group, or 20% of all Negro families, are making no significant economic gains, despite continued general prosperity. Half of these hardcore disadvantaged, more than two million persons live in central city neighborhoods. Recent special censuses in Los Angeles and Cleveland indicate that the incomes of persons living in the worst slum areas have not risen at all during this period. Unemployment rates have declined only slightly. The proportion of families with female heads has increased, and housing conditions have worsened even though rents have risen. Thus, between 2.0 and 2.5 million poor Negroes are living in disadvantaged neighborhoods of central cities in the United States. These persons comprise only slightly more than 1% of the nation's total population, but they make up about 16 to 20% of the total Negro population of all central cities, at a much higher proportion in certain cities. Unemployment and Undereployment The critical significance of employment. The capacity to obtain and hold a good job is the traditional test of participation in American society. Study employment with adequate compensation provides both purchasing power and social status. It develops the capabilities, confidence, and self-esteem in individual needs to be a responsible citizen, and provides a basis for a stable family life. As Daniel P. Moynihan has written, The principal measure of progress toward equality will be that of employment. It is the primary source of individual or group identity. In America what you do is who you are. To do nothing is to be nothing. To do little is to be little. The equations are implacable and blunt, and ruthlessly public. For the Negro American it is already, and will continue to be, the master problem. It is the measure of white bona fides. It is the measure of Negro competence, and also of the competence of American society. Most importantly, the linkage between problems of employment and the range of social pathology that afflicts the Negro community is unmistakable. Employment not only controls the present for the Negro American, but in a most profound way, it is creating the future as well. For residents of disadvantaged Negro neighborhoods, obtaining good jobs is vastly more difficult than for most workers in society. For decades, social, economic, and psychological disadvantages surrounding the urban Negro poor have impaired their work capacities and opportunities. The result is a cycle of failure. The employment disabilities of one generation breed those of the next. Negro unemployment. Unemployment rates among Negroes have declined from a post-Korean war high of 12.6 percent in 1958 to 8.2 percent in 1967. Among married Negro men, the unemployment rate for 1967 was down to 3.2 percent. Notwithstanding this decline, unemployment rates for Negroes are still double those for whites in every category, including married men, as they have been throughout the post-war period. Moreover, since 1954, even during the current unprecedented period of sustained economic growth, unemployment among Negroes has been continuously above the 6 percent recession level, widely regarded as a sign of serious economic weakness when prevalent for the entire workforce. While the Negro unemployment rate remains high in relation to the white rate, the number of additional jobs needed to lower this to the level of white unemployment is surprisingly small. In 1967, approximately three million persons were unemployed during an average week, of whom about 638,000 or 21 percent were non-whites. When corrected for undercounting, total non-white unemployment was approximately 712,000 or 8 percent of the non-white labor force. To reduce the unemployment rate to 3.4 percent, the rate prevalent among whites, jobs must be found for 57.5 percent of these unemployed persons. This amounts to nearly 409,000 jobs, or about 27 percent of the net number of new jobs added to the economy in the year 1967 alone, and only slightly more than one half of one percent of all jobs in the United States in 1967. The Low Status and Low Paying Nature of Many Negro Jobs Even more important perhaps than unemployment is the related problem of the undesirable nature of many jobs open to Negroes. Negro workers are concentrated in the lowest skilled and lowest paying occupations. These jobs often involve substandard wages, great instability and uncertainty of tenure, extremely low status in the eyes of both employer and employee, little or no chance for meaningful advancement, and unpleasant or exhausting duties. Negro men in particular are more than three times as likely as whites to be in unskilled or service jobs which pay far less than most. This concentration in the least desirable jobs can be viewed another way by calculating the changes which would occur if Negro men were employed in various occupations in the same proportions as the male labor force as a whole, not solely the white labor force. Thus upgrading the employment of Negro men to make their occupational distribution identical with that of the labor force as a whole would have an immense impact upon the nature of their occupations. About 1.3 million non-white men, or 28 percent of those employed in 1966, would move up the employment ladder into one of the higher status and higher paying categories. The effect of such a shift upon the incomes of Negro men would be very great. Using the 1966 job distribution, the shift indicated above would produce about 4.8 billion dollars more earned income for non-white men alone if they received the 1965 median income in each occupation. This would be a rise of approximately 30 percent of the earnings actually received by all non-white men in 1965, not counting any sources of income other than wages and salaries. Of course the kind of instant upgrading visualized in these calculations does not represent a practical alternative for national policy. The economy cannot drastically reduce the total number of low status jobs it now contains, or shift large numbers of people upward in occupation in any short period. Therefore major upgrading in the employment status of Negro men must come through a faster relative expansion of higher level jobs than lower level jobs, which has been occurring for several decades, an improvement in the skills of non-white workers so they can obtain a higher proportion of those added better jobs, and a drastic reduction of discriminatory hiring and promotion practices in all enterprises, both private and public. Nevertheless this hypothetical example clearly shows that the concentration of male Negro employment at the lowest end of the occupational scale is greatly depressing the incomes of U.S. Negroes in general. In fact this is the single most important source of poverty among Negroes. It is even more important than unemployment, as can be shown by a second hypothetical calculation. In 1966 there were about 724,000 unemployed non-whites in the United States on the average, including adults and teenagers, and allowing for the Census Bureau under count of Negroes. If every one of these persons had been employed and had received the median amount earned by non-white males in 1966, $3,864, this would have added a total of $2.8 billion to non-white income as a whole. If only enough of these persons had been employed at that wage to reduce non-white unemployment from 7.3% to 3.3%, the rate among whites in 1966, then the income gained for non-whites would have totaled about $1.5 billion, but if non-white unemployment remained at 7.3% and non-white men were upgraded so that they had the same occupational distribution and incomes as all men in the labor force considered together. This would have produced about $4.8 billion in additional income, as noted above, using 1965 earnings for calculation. Thus the potential income gains for upgrading the male non-white labor force are much larger than those from reducing non-white unemployment. This conclusion underlines the difficulty of improving the economic status of Negro men. It is far easier to create new jobs than either to create new jobs with relatively high status and earning power or to upgrade existing employed or partly employed workers into such better quality employment, yet only such upgrading will eliminate the fundamental basis of poverty and deprivation among Negro families. Access to good quality jobs clearly affects the willingness of Negro men actively to seek work. In riot cities surveyed by the commission with the largest percentage of Negroes in skilled and semi-skilled jobs, Negro men participated in the labor force to the same extent as or greater than white men. Conversely, where most Negro men were heavily concentrated in menial jobs, they participated less in the labor force than white men. Even given similar employment, Negro workers with the same education as white workers are paid less. This disparity doubtless results to some extent from inferior training in segregated schools and also from the fact that large numbers of Negroes are only now entering certain occupations for the first time. However, the differentials are so large and so universal at all educational levels that they clearly reflect the patterns of discrimination which characterize hiring and promotion practices in many segments of the economy. For example, in 1966, among persons who had completed high school, the median income of Negroes was only 73% that of whites. Even among persons with an eighth grade education, Negro median income was only 80% of white median income. At the same time, a higher proportion of Negro women than white women participates in the labor force at nearly all ages except 16 to 19. For instance, in 1966, 55% of non-white women from 25 to 34 years of age were employed, compared to only 38% of white women in the same age group. The fact that almost half of all adult Negro women work reflects the fact that so many Negro males have unsteady and low paying jobs. Yet even though Negro women are often better able to find work than Negro men, the unemployment rate among adult non-white women 20 years old and over in 1967 was 7.1% compared to the 4.3% rate among adult non-white men. Unemployment rates are of course much higher among teenagers, both Negro and white, than among adults. In fact, about one-third of all unemployed Negroes in 1967 were between 16 and 19 years old. During the first nine months of 1967, the unemployment rate among non-white teenagers was 26.5%. For whites, it was 10.6%. About 219,300 non-white teenagers were unemployed. About 58,300 were still in school but were actively looking for jobs. Subemployment in Disadvantaged Negro Neighborhoods In disadvantaged areas, employment conditions for Negroes are in a chronic state of crisis. Surveys in low-income neighborhoods of nine large cities made by the Department of Labor late in 1966 revealed that the rate of unemployment there was 9.3% compared to 7.3% for Negroes generally and 3.3% for whites. Moreover, a high proportion of the persons living in these areas were underemployed. That is, they were either part-time workers looking for full-time employment or full-time workers earning less than $3,000 per year or had dropped out of the labor force. The Department of Labor estimated that this underemployment is two-and-a-half times greater than the number of unemployed in these areas. Therefore, the subemployment rate, including both the unemployed and the underemployed, was about 32.7% in the nine-area surveyed, or 8.8 times greater than the overall unemployment rate for all U.S. workers. Since underemployment also exists outside disadvantaged neighborhoods, comparing the full subemployment rate in these areas with the unemployment rate for the nation as a whole is not entirely valid. However, it provides some measure of the enormous disparity between employment conditions in most of the nation and those prevalent in disadvantaged Negro areas in our large cities. The critical problem is to determine the actual number of those unemployed and underemployed in Central City Negro ghettos. This involves a process of calculation which is detailed in the note at the end of this chapter. The outcome of this process is summarized in the following table. Non-white subemployment in disadvantaged areas of all Central Cities, 1967, Group, Adult Men, Unemployment, 102,000, Underemployment, 230,000, Total Subemployment, 332,000, Group, Adult Women, Unemployment, 118,000, Underemployment, 266,000, Total Subemployment, 384,000, Group, Teenagers, Unemployment, 98,000, Underemployment, 220,000, Total Subemployment, 318,000, Group, Total, Unemployment, 318,000, Underemployment, 716,000, Total Subemployment, 1,034,000. Therefore, in order to bring subemployment in these areas down to a level equal to unemployment alone among whites, enough steady, reasonably paying jobs and the training and motivation to perform them must be provided to eliminate all underemployment and reduce unemployment by 65%. For all three age groups combined, this deficit amounted to 923,000 jobs in 1967. The Magnitude of Poverty in Disadvantaged Neighborhoods The chronic unemployment problems in the Central City, aggravated by the constant arrival of new unemployed migrants, is the fundamental cause of the persistent poverty in disadvantaged negro areas. Poverty in the affluent society is more than absolute deprivation. Many of the poor in the United States would be well often other societies. Relative deprivation, inequality, is a more useful concept of poverty with respect to the Negro in America, because it encompasses social and political exclusions as well as economic inequality. Because of the lack of data of this type, we have had to focus our analysis on a measure of poverty which is both economic and absolute, the Social Security Administration's poverty level concept. It is clear however that broader measures of poverty would substantiate the conclusions that follow. In 1966 there were 29.7 million persons in the United States, 15.3% of the nation's population with incomes below the poverty level as defined by the Social Security Administration. Of these, 20.3 million were white, 68.3%, and 9.3 million non-white, 31.7%. Thus about 11.9% of the nation's whites and 40.6% of its non-whites were poor under the Social Security definition. The location of the nation's poor is best shown from 1964 data as indicated by the following table. Percentage of those in poverty in each group living in metropolitan areas. Group, whites. In central cities, 23.8%. Outside central cities, 21.8%. Other areas, 54.4%. Total, 100%. Group, non-whites. In central cities, 41.7%. Outside central cities, 10.8%. Other areas, 47.5%. Total, 100%. Group, total. In central cities, 29.4%. Outside central cities, 18.4%. Other areas, 52.2%. Total, 100%. Source, Social Security Administration. The following facts concerning poverty are relevant to an understanding of the problems faced by people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. In central cities, 30.7% of non-white families of two or more persons lived in poverty compared to only 8.8% of whites. Of the 10.1 million poor persons in central cities in 1964, about 4.4 million of these, 43.6% were non-whites, and 5.7 million, 56.4% were whites. The poor whites were much older on the average than the poor non-whites. The proportion of poor persons 65 years older older was 23.2% among whites, but only 6.8% among non-whites. Poverty was more than twice as prevalent among non-white families with female heads than among those with male heads, 57% compared to 21%. In central cities, 26% of all non-white families of two or more persons had female heads, as compared to 12% of white families. Among non-white families headed by a female, and having children under six, the incidence of poverty was 81%. Moreover, there were 243,000 such families living in poverty in central cities, or over 9% of all non-white families in those cities. Among all children living in poverty within central cities, non-whites outnumbered whites by over 400,000. The number of poor non-white children equaled or surpassed the number of white poor children in every age group. Of the 4.4 million non-whites living in poverty within central cities in 1964, 52% were children under 16, and 61% were under 21. Since 1964, the number of non-white families living in poverty within central cities has remained about the same, hence these poverty conditions are probably still prevalent in central cities in terms of absolute numbers of persons, although the proportion of persons in poverty may have dropped slightly. End of Section 29. Recording by Marwok. Section 30 of the Kerner Commission Report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Marwok. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Kerner Commission Report. Chapter 7. Unemployment, Family Structure and Social Disorganization. Part 2. The Social Impact of Unemployment Problems in Disadvantaged Negro Areas. Unemployment and the Family. The high rates of unemployment and underemployment in racial ghettos are evidence, in part, that many men living in these areas are seeking but cannot obtain jobs which will support a family. Perhaps equally important, most jobs they can get are at the low end of the occupational scale and often lack the necessary status to sustain a worker's self-respect or the respect of his family and friends. These same men are also constantly confronted with the message of discrimination. You are inferior because of a trait you did not cause and cannot change. This message reinforces feelings of inadequacy arising from repeated failure to obtain and keep decent jobs. Wives of these men are forced to work and usually produce more money. If the men stay at home without working, their inadequacies constantly confront them and tensions arise between them and their wives and children. Under these pressures it is not surprising that many of these men flee their responsibilities as husbands and fathers, leaving home and drifting from city to city, or adopting the style of street corner men. Statistical evidence tends to document this. A close correlation exists between the number of non-white married women separated from their husbands each year and the unemployment rate among non-white males twenty years old and over. Similarly, from 1948 to 1962, the number of new aid to families with depended children cases rose and fell with the non-white male unemployment rate. Since 1963 however, the number of new cases, most of them Negro children, has steadily increased even though the unemployment rate among non-white males has declined. The impact of marital status on employment among Negroes is shown by the fact that in 1967, the proportion of married men either divorced or separated from their wives was more than twice as high among unemployed non-white men as among employed non-white men. Moreover, among those participating in the labor force, there was a higher proportion of married men with wives present than with wives absent. Fatherless Families The abandonment of home by many Negro males affects a great many children growing up in the racial ghetto. As previously indicated, most American Negro families are headed by men, just like most other American families. Yet the proportion of families with female heads is much greater among Negroes than among whites at all income levels, and has been rising in recent years. This disparity between white and non-white families is far greater among the lowest income families, those most likely to reside in disadvantaged big city neighborhoods than among higher income families. Among families with incomes under $3,000 in 1966, the proportion with female heads was 42% for Negroes, but only 23% for whites. In contrast, among families with incomes of 7,000 or more, 8% of Negro families had female heads, compared to 4% of whites. The problems of fatherlessness are aggravated by the tendency of the poor to have large families. The average poor, urban, non-white family contains 4.8 persons, as compared with 3.7 for the average poor, urban, white family. This is one of the primary factors in the poverty status of non-white households in large cities. The proportion of fatherless families appears to be increasing in the poorest Negro neighborhoods. In the Hughes section of Cleveland, the proportion of families with female heads rose from 23% to 32% from 1960 to 1965. In the Watts section of Los Angeles, it rose from 36% to 39% during the same period. The handicap imposed on children growing up without fathers in an atmosphere of poverty and deprivation is increased because many mothers must work to provide support. The following table illustrates the disparity between the proportion of non-white women at the child-rearing ages who are in the labor force and the comparable proportion of white women. Percentage of Women in the Labor Force Age Group 20 to 24 Non-White 55 White 51 Age Group 25 to 34 Non-White 55 White 38 Age Group 35 to 44 Non-White 61 White 45 With the father absent and the mother working, many ghetto children spend the bulk of their time on the streets, the streets of a crime-ridden, violence-prone and poverty-stricken world. The image of success in this world is not that of the solid citizen, the responsible husband and father, but rather that of the hustler, who promotes his own interests by exploiting others. The dope sellers and the numbers-runners are the successful men, because their earnings far outstripped those men who try to climb the economic ladder in honest ways. Young people in the ghetto are acutely conscious of a system which appears to offer rewards to those who illegally exploit others, and failure to those who struggle under traditional responsibilities. Under these circumstances, many adopt exploitation and the hustle as a way of life, disclaiming both work and marriage in favor of casual and temporary liaisons. This pattern reinforces itself from one generation to the next, creating a culture of poverty and an ingrained cynicism about society and its institutions. The Jungle The culture of poverty that results from unemployment and family disorganization generates a system of ruthless, exploitative relationships within the ghetto. Prostitution, dope addiction, casual sexual affairs, and crime create an environmental jungle characterized by personal insecurity and tension. The effects of this development are stark. The rate of illegitimate births among non-white women has risen sharply in the past two decades. In 1940, 16.8% of all non-white births were illegitimate. By 1950, this proportion was 18%. By 1960, 21.6%. By 1966, 26.3%. In the ghettos of many large cities, illegitimacy rates exceed 50%. The rate of illegitimacy among non-white women is closely related to low income and high unemployment. In Washington, D.C., for example, an analysis of 1960 census tracts shows that in tracts with unemployment rates of 12% or more among non-white men, illegitimacy was over 40%. But in tracts with unemployment rates of 2.9% and below among non-white men, reported illegitimacy was under 20%. A similar contrast existed between tracts in which median non-white income was under $4,000, where illegitimacy was 38%, and those in which it was $8,000 and over, where illegitimacy was 12%. Narcotics addiction is also heavily concentrated in low-income Negro neighborhoods, particularly in New York City. Of the 59,720 addicts known to the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics at the end of 1966, just over 50% were Negroes. Over 52% of all known addicts lived within New York State, mostly in Harlem and other Negro neighborhoods. These figures undoubtedly greatly underestimate the actual number of persons using narcotics regularly, especially those under 21. Not surprisingly, at every age from 6 through 19, the proportion of children from homes with both parents present who actually attend school is higher than the proportion of children from homes with only one parent or neither present. Rates of juvenile delinquency, venereal disease, dependency upon AFDC support, and use of public assistance in general, are much higher in disadvantaged Negro areas than in other parts of large cities. Data taken from New York City contrasting predominantly Negro neighborhoods with the city as a whole clearly illustrate this fact. In conclusion, in 1965, 1.2 million non-white children under 16 lived in central city families headed by a woman under 65. The great majority of these children were growing up in poverty under conditions that make them better candidates for crime and civil disorder than for jobs providing an entry into American society. Because of the immense importance of this fact, the potential loss to the society of these young people, we describe these conditions in the next chapter. Note, calculations of non-white sub-employment in disadvantaged areas of all central cities, 1967. In 1967 total unemployment in the United States was distributed as follows, by age and color. Group, adult men, 20 and over, non-white, 193,000, white, 866,000, total, 1,059,000, group, adult women, 20 and over, non-white, 241,000, white, 837,000, total, 1,078,000, group, teenagers, 16 to 19, non-white, 204,000, white, 635,000, total, 839,000, group, total, non-white, 638,000, white, 2,338,000, total, 2,976,000. Adjustments for the Census Bureau under count of non-white males in the labor force amounting to 7.5% for the teenage group, 18% for the adult male group, and approximately 10% for adult females result in the following revised total employment. Group, adult men, non-white, 228,000, white, 866,000, total, 1,094,000, group, adult women, non-white, 265,000, white, 837,000, total, 1,102,000, group, teenagers, non-white, 219,000, white, 635,000, total, 854,000, group, total, non-white, 712,000, white, 2,338,000, total, 3,050,000. These figures cover the entire United States. To provide an estimate of the number of unemployed and disadvantaged neighborhoods within central cities, it is necessary to discover what proportion of the non-white unemployed are in central cities, and what proportion of those in central cities are within the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The Department of Labor Survey had nine large central cities covering the first nine months of 1967, showed that these cities contained 27.3% of the total non-white labor force in the United States, and 26.4% of total non-white unemployment. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that non-white unemployment is concentrated in central cities to about the same degree as the non-white labor force. In turn, the non-white labor force is located in central cities in about the same proportion as the non-white population, or 57.1% in 1967. Thus, central city unemployment among non-whites was presumably about 57.1% of the national figures. Non-white unemployment in all central cities, rounded, adult men, 130,000, adult women, 151,000, teenagers, 125,000, total, 406,000. Within large central cities, about 62% of all non-white families lived in certain census tracts, which have been designated poverty areas. These tracts ranked lowest in United States cities over 250,000 persons in size, according to an index of deprivation, based upon family income, children in broken homes, persons with low educational attainment, males in unskilled jobs, and substandard housing. On the assumption that conditions in these poverty areas are comparable to those in the nine disadvantaged areas surveyed by the Department of Labor in 1966, the number of unemployed non-whites in disadvantaged areas of central cities is as follows. Footnote. The number of non-white unemployed in the more disadvantaged areas was 26% higher than it would have been had it been proportional to the total population residing there. Therefore the proportion of central city non-white unemployed in poverty areas is assumed to equal 78.1%, 62% times 1.26. And footnote. Non-white unemployment in disadvantaged areas of all central cities, 1967, adult men, 102,000, adult women, 118,000, teenagers, 98,000, total, 318,000. The number of under-employed non-whites in these areas was about 2.5 times larger than the number of unemployed, but we have already accounted for some under-employment in the adjustment for under-counting, so we will assume non-white under-employment was 2.25 times adjusted unemployment for all three age and sex groups. The resulting rough estimates are as follows. Non-white sub-employment in disadvantaged areas of all central cities, 1967, group, adult men, unemployment 102,000, under-employment 230,000, total sub-employment 332,000, group, adult women, unemployment 118,000, under-employment 266,000, total sub-employment 384,000, group, teenagers, unemployment 98,000, under-employment 220,000, total sub-employment 318,000, group, total, unemployment 318,000, under-employment 716,000, total sub-employment 1,034,000. End of section 30, recording by Marwok.