 That the president of that era was only the fortunate victim of social forces and a national mood over which he had no control That may well be true But when the forces demanded and the mood permitted for once an activist human-hearted man had his hand on the levers of power and Division beyond the next election He was there when we and the nation needed him and oh by God, do I wish he was there now But the try the try however will be made again in other days to come Between now and then the building process must continue to try to put together Those disaffected millions whose political concerns place them properly with the present and not the past all of American politics for the future Could take as its credo a statement written nearly 50 years ago by dr. Dubois who said I believe in liberty for all men The space to stretch their arms and their souls The right to breathe the right to vote the freedom to choose their friends to enjoy the sunshine To ride on the railroads uncursed by color thinking dreaming working as they will in a kingdom of God and love Finally he said I believe in patience Patience with the weakness of the weak and the strength of the strong the prejudice of the ignorant and the ignorance of the blind Patience with the tardy triumph of joy and the chastening of sorrow patience with God. Thank you. I think it's quite clear that There is enough for a thoughtful panel to chew on after the speeches that we've heard this morning could we ask Brooke Marshall and the members of his panel to come up and mr. Bond and dr. Williams. Would you take your places over there? Oh, yeah I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question We will have a the format of the neck of the we will have a panel here who will discuss among themselves Some of the issues that have been raised in the addresses thus far in the symposium and particularly this mornings And then we will ask them also to consider questions from the audience to introduce I Think there's probably no need to introduce the gentlemen at the far end of this table who will Take part in this morning's proceedings next to him is Yvonne Brathwaite Burke a member of the California legislature who will now go to the United States Congress in January to represent the 37th district of California dr. Williams you've heard Next is Vincent T. Jimenez former commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez from the 20th district of Texas Many in this audience will remember the moderator of this panel as a most effective Assistant Attorney General for civil rights from 1961 to 1965 He is now deputy dean and professor of law at Yale Law School and a very old and good friend of mine We're all delighted that he is with us. Mr. Burke Marshall The rules for questions from the audience will be the same as yesterday if you have questions you want the panel to consider Raise your hand to attract the attention of an usher. He will give you paper and pencil Please write your question out return it to the usher The ushers will deliver them to mr. Marshall who will shuffle through them as best he can the our experience yesterday Did show us clearly that there will be far more questions than the panel will have time to consider However, I want to repeat what I did say yesterday We will take the questions that are unanswered We will ask the various members of the panel to Respond to them in writing so that they can because the questions and the answers both can become part of the published Proceedings of this symposium With that marshal I turn it over to you What I would like to do is ask each member of the panel to Say whatever is on his or her mind. I hope that each of you will Address the future and as specific terms as possible In terms of an agenda the speeches that we have had Have all made the point. I think that we knew at the beginning of the 60s What our agenda was then it was to a clear way? legal segregation I Think that it is not nearly as clear what the agenda is for the future Putting aside the question whether or not We have a political climate now which will Act upon the agenda So I would like to start with you congressman Gonzales I guess that for the time being I will pass over Professor Williams and mr. Bond and come back to them afterwards to comment on the others Thank you very much. Mr. Marshall. I welcome the opportunity to say that Of course attention here in the two addresses has been concentrated on That aspect which of course should concern us and that is with the most visible Minority of all in this part of the country we have other ethnic groups that have and have had parallel histories Perhaps from the legal standpoint not a severe because after all It was only the black or the negro Who had the Jim Crow statutory provisions the state constitutional inhibition? and other ordinances and laws that Legislated race into the corpus of legislation However in practice and in the economic field particularly Such groups as the Mexican descended today popularly known as a Mexican American has also confronted very serious challenges I'd like to point out that Contrary to what may have been the impression created by some diverse reports this particular group in Texas Southwest Texas particularly and throughout the southwest of the United States to California Did give senator McGovern and the Democrats? Overwhelming majorities perhaps unmatched anywhere else in the country. I know that in my district though it isn't an Electoral majority This group voted five six seven to one in favor of the Democratic Party and it's candidate There's no question that the sense of direction is the most urgent Crying need in this area Which has been generally described as civil rights there is a Lost sense of direction that I seem to detect on the national level Particularly in the Congress But this is reflected in the contradictions That I'm sure most of us thought of as we heard the two speeches or three For one thing We have the complaints and the grievances Which are stated and implied Directed to the reelected president Nixon but There are no manifestations or demonstrations Against the Nixon administration particularly In the last three years of his term of office and they were very definitely there During the Johnson years It's interesting to raise a question. What accounts for this if mr. Nixon and his administration really symbolize such crude and obvious Disparity and indifference towards the basic cause of civil rights How come There is no writing and no outward physical manifestations of the proportion that we had During the president that we are praising and his administration I'm not drawing conclusions. I'm just saying that it's a question that is Agitating the minds of many other Americans. I Think that when the entire American nation is confronted With serious intrusions into its basic civil rights Which involves by indirection the minorities included therein that we all have a problem and when the Congress has passed by overwhelming Majorities laws that vitiate or watered down the first the fourth the fifth the sixth amendments to the civil rights or rather the Bill of Rights and This is done with apparent acceptance and Almost national consensus. I think we are indeed trouble and I think that we do need some Sense of direction both as to priorities and their level of civil rights as well as to basic economic and Political civil rights generally speaking now Clarence Mitchell as Several people have pointed out is the fourth branch of the government and Has been for many years Mr. Mitchell, I know that you have several things you want to say But I hope among them you will Answer the question what kind of a legislative agenda you see For the next few years. I'll say few years on the theory that it may not get past Well Burke I wonder how this country has been able to survive With so many creep hangers that I hear talking about how we all on the road to total destruction and There is nothing we can do about it. I would say if the atmosphere of defeatism giving up and confusion And I have sensed in some of the things that have been said here and some of the things that I hear around country had prevailed among those like yourself Ramsey Clark Roy Wilkins Jim Farmer Martin Luther King and Whitney Young and others when we were working for the passage of the great civil rights Legislation, I don't think we could have ever gotten that bill those bills passed Because the cards were stacked against us the dice were loaded but we won anyway and we won because we had a strategy for that reason I Would address myself to the question of strategy which Hubert Humphrey touched on in his Remarks, oh, then he presented them to us You remember he said that Even though we had the great marches and even though we had the great Demonstrations it was after all 75 days before we could get the 1964 Civil rights bill to the state of passage in the Senate We were able to reach that day because we had at the helm a very able and effective leader in the person of President Lyndon B. Johnson and I want to say that the students who attend the institution here the John Gronowski heads are Really getting what I have already had and that is I Along with Hubert Humphrey and some other people are the I'm a graduate of the Lyndon B. Johnson school of politics My first lesson on that came about five o'clock in the morning when we were This waiting out an all-night filibuster being stage percent of the strong Thurman and The president who was then the majority leader and in his pajamas Call me down to his office and said a number of things about the way the fight was going Then he said something that I've never forgotten and I continue to live by which is Clarence you can get anything you want if you got the votes now. How many votes have you got? Well, we didn't have money in those days, but we had sense enough to hold together what we had and We were able to win. We have never assumed that All of our strength in the Congress of the United States comes from the Republican the Democratic Party We don't write off the Republican Party because We couldn't have won any of these bills except that part of the Johnson strategy included bringing in those parts of the Republican Party that would work with us I Have a picture on my wall. It shows a little piece of paper laying beside the president of the United States and On that slip of paper. There are some names Those names were there for this reason We had a meeting with the president for the purpose of assessing our strength in the Senate in connection with the passage of the 1964 civil rights bill and I said mr.. President you have taught me well the lesson of you can get what you got the votes to get Here are the votes we think we've got and we outline them and here are the votes that we think you've got to get The first name on that list was senator Everett Dirksen of the state of Illinois. I Think that has been the characteristic of all of the efforts that we have made and It has not been a battle that could have been won by the black people of this country alone We have had to go to the Chicago Congressman Gonzales is always number one on the list that the kind of people take not because he is not committed but we just believe in touching base with everybody and So it goes we have some people who go to the churches and some people church-oriented people and others In spite of what people may say it must be remembered that in the year 1962 72 we took a piece of legislation Which was so controversial that the people were afraid to discuss it in many parts of this country and Many got defeated because they were for it or even spoke out against it Namely the enforcement powers for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission We did that in spite of the fact that the administration wasn't with us We did it because we had Republicans and Democrats Working with us and an interesting footnote to that is it was one of the things that the Republicans put in their platform as Evidence of what they had done in the area of civil rights Now we are in it We are in a situation now where we got to face the fact that the time has come to stop playing games We need the support of organized labor if we're going to get anywhere in the Congress of the United States we need the support of other organized groups and To pretend that there's some little thing that can be accomplished By all of the black people of this country getting together off in a little corner and making a decision and then selling that to the country Is delusion and I therefore think that in our Legislative objectives in the Congress of the United States and we have got to think in terms of those broad Objectives that we have always known we've needed We need a minimum wage law to protect everybody in this country And therefore it deserves a top place on the agenda And we've got the votes to get a minimum wage law passed if all of us Will stop making speeches about our awful things are and start getting some votes in order to get that legislation passed We don't need to complain and cry about the fact that people are in need of health care We all know that but there is health care legislation that can be passed in the Congress of the United States Whether the president is for it or not if we mobilize the people who in turn will help us get the votes and Vote so what you need to win in the Congress of the United States The tax structure of this country is a disgrace if you don't believe it you ask some bellhop or Made or waiter how much trouble he encounters when the internal revenue lights on him to find out What the tax and what the tips income was here these poor people already getting virtually no money And then the internal revenue says well I wonder how many tips you made because you've got to pay the government some more money Well, we have got to revise the tax laws of this country to be more merciful to the poor and we can do that We can do that if we again Are willing to spend most of our time figuring out how to get these votes that we need in the United States Senate How to get these votes that we need in the House of Representatives The last thing I want to touch on and there are many others But I'll mention this the last thing I want to touch on is the fact that we have in this country a whole Arsenal of legislation with respect to civil rights and the protection of human rights I'm a Paul at the ignorance Among knowledgeable people of what this legislation is supposed to do Now there's no need to read in the question of whether the Civil Rights Commission has power to do something because when we put the Civil Rights Commission together and It was passed by the Congress of the United States It was supposed to be a fact-finding body and it is not any Problem because that agency can point up what's wrong and not do anything about it It's supposed to be an authentic source of information But the fire power in the civil rights Legislation is found in the voting rights act. It is found in the equal employment Legislation, it is found in the public accommodations legislation. It is found in the whole galaxy of legislation that we have Enacted in this country, which is like our great big Cadillac standing in front of somebody's door all newly polished With the seats ready for occupancy and all somebody's got to do is put some gas in the tank and turn on the key What I think we need to do in this country is to get the gas in the tank of the civil rights car start that motor up and Start up the road for freedom and I want to nominate somebody to put it the driver's wheel I want to nominate human Humphrey to be at the driver's wheel in the Senate of the United States and in the Congress And I call on all of those who really want to move forward in this country To rally behind that banner and let's stop hanging creeps. Let's stop getting in hurses Let's get out there and fight and win what all of us know we can get in a democracy That's why he's the fourth branch of the government Mr.. Heminez perhaps that since the Clarence mentioned especially in his parloration the equal opportunity Part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 title 7 since you served for six years on that Commission you might in addition to whatever else you want to say Talk about that a little bit The thing is guests I want to Say just a little bit about the equal employment opportunity Commission. I am no longer a Commissioner Because I supported cease and desist powers for that Commission during the Nixon administration and Made my statements known to the Senate committee hearing on that particular subject there was another Colleague of mine here in the audience and I do not I will mention her name But she went through the same process and she is no longer a Commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I Did enjoy the six years of work there. They were fruitful. There was progress made There is still an awful lot to be done in that particular area That Commission has to be a first-class Commission if it ever is to function properly At the moment it is a second-class Commission It needs cease and desist power Unless we get those enforcement powers into that Commission the name of the game for Those people who complain the companies and the unions is delayed Delayed delayed delayed and we had complaints there of people who would have to wait for two and three years to finally sit down and Negotiate not receive justice just negotiate and conceal you And I think that there should be as Clarence has just mentioned here a real effort made To make this Commission in this next Congress a first-class Commission just like other Commission's who have those same Types of regulatory powers. They should have cease and desist power According to the invitation our particular job is to look look ahead rather than to look back In my opinion there should be an effort made to regroup dig in hold the line Bring up the rear rethink objective and re-evaluate our position If we do not the ground one in the past decade may abroad Possibly even be lost. I do not suggest that we will ever return to the blatant discrimination and segregation of the past But rather than our goal of a truly civil libertarian nation may not be reached for a long time Nor do I suggest the benign neglect of the Nixon administration My central thesis is that we consolidate the gains in education employment voting Housing and the protection afforded the minorities by the courts legislation and executive order There are wide gaps to be covered in all of the above sucker There are minorities that have yet to avail themselves of the opportunities afforded them by the progress in civil rights they helped to create and I might add that yesterday while we were reminiscing about the civil rights movement We left out a rather significant group of people and I want to try to correct that situation while I have the opportunity In the 50s and the 60s Of course in Texas one of the panelists here today Henry Was the one who was taking the lead in the Texas? Legislature on the issue of civil rights for everyone In New Mexico it was senator Chavez Who was taking the lead on these particular issues? In Albuquerque probably one of the first cities that passed a public accommodations act in 1956 or 7 as I recall and an FEPC and It was senator Chavez senator Montoya in California It's Ed Ed Roy ball who was carrying the load in those years the 50s and the 60s There were others of course like the distinguished lawyer Gus Garcia Who took his case on jury discrimination? We are none this case to the Supreme Court and won unfortunately He was never recognized for his efforts unfortunately The Chicanos at the time did not understand what he had done and the rest of society hated him for it Those are some of the individuals in this part of the country that were part of the civil rights movement And they should be included in any kind of participation or Symposium or panels or Libraries that we may create throughout this nation and so far as civil rights movements are concerned There are as I have indicated other matters that must be considered in our attempt to try to reevaluate the situation The drive for women's rights is developing a full head of steam and I realize That this kind this situation must be brought in To the civil rights movement in some fashion just as I say the other ethnic minorities must be brought in at this time I Would like to develop my thesis as presented in my opening remarks by zeroing in on some work that remains to be done Among the Spanish-speaking people of the nation. I will further narrow the work to education and employment summary Hey, the Chicano and other Spanish-speaking workers should have 80,000 more jobs in federal employment than they now have Call it quotas call it whatever you want. It doesn't really matter to me. I realized what we need at least 80,000 more jobs Even if and even if we just try to measure it on a parity basis Chicano competition with foreign Mexican labor is an unfair burden on the minority group already saddled with local adverse conditions See the employment statistics used to formulate national economic plans and national employment budgets are discriminatory and A new basis must be devised by the Congress D the gains made in bilingual education must be solidified and then expanded for languages to the Chicano What color and race is to the black? private corporations Must set numerical objectives for hiring and promotion of Chicanos at the higher level We are no longer interested in the entry level positions We're already there in large numbers and I don't see any reason for making any more attempts at manpower programs That get us into the lower levels of jobs We've got to get into middle management and into the top level We are already over concentrated in the service category the laborer category and the unskilled category Positions in this nation and the gap becomes even wider and the frustrations become even greater Because we are so heavily concentrated here and absolutely nothing at the official manager and the other white collar categories One small item I think that is a thorn on the side of the Spanish-speaking people It's a matter of height requirements that are placed by police authorities throughout the nation There are large numbers of LEAA funds that are being made available to the authorities in this nation Which do not have any kind of stipulation in regard to how they are handled in so far as Spanish-speaking people are concerned One of them is height requirement There are so many ridiculous rules and regulations throughout the nation on this issue that I heard one that in the state of Washington if a person is five foot Nine inches he needs Four years of college if he is six foot tall he needs two years of college Carl Albert would need 14 years of college to be able to call Just for purposes of just a background There are about 10 million persons of Spanish surname in the United States about six million or Chicanos who live in the southwestern States of New Mexico, Texas, California, Colorado, Arizona Nevada, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington a Significant number of Chicanos live in the Midwestern States of Kansas, Nebraska, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Ohio In Illinois, incidentally, there are more Spanish-speaking people than the combined population of Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico People do not realize that there's a tremendous number of Spanish-speaking people who were there many many years ago They are the ones that built the Santa Fe Railroad and the Burlington Quincy and other railroads that connected with the east The other Spanish-speaking are Puerto Ricans in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington, D.C Cubans reside generally in Florida and along the eastern seaboard in the south and central Americans are concentrated in San Francisco New York and Washington DC For purposes of some kind of a gauge or measure the 1970s Census shows that about one-third of the Spanish-speaking persons in the United States have income below the poverty level So you get an idea of where we're starting from Approximately one-third 1970 During the Johnson administration there was considerable improvement in federal government hiring of the Spanish-speaking The upper trend peaked in the 1967 to 1969 years Even though the federal workforce was being reduced the net gain and Spanish-speaking employees was 4,600 for an average of 2,300 per year In 1970 the net gain fell to 830 and as of now it is zero and According to the native latest announcements We have we were the ones who are hired last and I suspect we're the ones who are going to be the first ones out Whenever the cuts do occur so there must be some effort made here to hold the line At least in regard to these people who did not get into this employment situation until late in the game The economic problems of the Spanish-speaking are exacerbated by the policies of the US government With respect to immigration and contracting and commuting of workers from Mexico No other region contends with these problems on a similar scale Nor the group and the population is placed in the same continuing competition with the poverty of another nation During the Johnson administration the problem was recognized and the start was made by the creation of the border commission for friendship and development Unfortunately, the new commission was Wiped out by the Nixon administration and we no longer had even that to work on in so far as our relations with the Mexico I Can understand Mexico's willingness to export some of its unemployment in exchange for commercial trade What I cannot understand is why the costs of this arrangement are Saddled on a group of people that cannot afford it The US Chicano has been burdened for years with these foreign aid costs, and that's what they are foreign aid cost and And these costs of course are paid by the Chicano in the form loss of jobs discrimination second-class citizenship low pay and migrancy Now I suggest But I can understand this matter of trading All I'm saying is let's divide up the cost among the entire population and not just the Mexican America There is a way to do it certainly. There is a way certainly to deal make an arrangement with Mexico in regard to either An economic program We've gone so far as to tell the farmers in Turkey to put growing poppies and paying them for it So why can't we make arrangement with Mexico to stop this? Human exploitation Non-citizens from Mexico are the subject of heavy-handed discrimination, which is easily applied to Chicano citizens as well For there are no differences in the names features language and general characteristics I do not mean to imply that it is all right to discriminate against non-citizens But rather that some agreements must be reached to protect the rights of both I am of course opposed to any states Approving laws that propose to resolve the problem California passed recently one that required a person to Approve citizenship prior to employment Fortunately, the law was quickly declared and constitutional by the courts The problem must be resolved by agreements between the United States executive and the Mexican government Finally the naturalization and immigration service shuttle illegal Mexican aliens across the border by the hundreds And those of us who are Chicano citizens must think that they're there, but for the grace of God go on the Bureau of the Census Recently issued employment profiles on selected low-income areas in 60 cities For the first time in history Meaningful employment data are available for the Spanish-speaking people What I found was that in these particular low-income areas throughout the nation the rate of unemployment as It is measured by the standard statistics that we have today is About twice what it is for the rest of the nation in San Diego It's 12.7 in Miami 12.2 in Los Angeles is 12.1 in San Antonio is 10.1 in Denver is 9.1 rate of unemployment But if we dig in into these particular low-income areas It is not 12.1. It is not 10.1 in Denver is 31 This is unemployment and under employment in San Antonio is 35 in New York City for Puerto Ricans It's 43 in Los Angeles. It's 31 in Miami. It's 27 in San Diego It's 37 percent now I've realized that we're dealing with the worst situation in the nation the low-income areas and these figures reflect What I'm saying is that the data the statistics that on which we base our national plan For helping or assisting people throughout the United States do not reflect The real unemployment situation of the minorities and that includes the black Finally Languages to the Chicano what color is to the black in the field of civil rights and equal opportunities? Most of the national organizations engaged in the civil rights movement have never given proper consideration to the subject of language That said affects the civil rights of the Spanish-speaking people The national organizations have never given the language issue prior to consideration And what little has been done has been carried out without their participation The time has come to Fisher cut bait on the language issue There is widening division among the blacks and the Chicano I like many others here have fought to preserve the unity among all people for many years But the burden is getting heavier and the local Chicano and white ethnic leaders will no longer support strictly white black priority issues Perhaps if the white black leadership will include in some of their plans the top Chicano priorities We might be able to bring together The forces that open so many doors for people of all races colors national origins and religions Mr. Marshall had to step out for a few minutes, so we recognize Mr. Burke next. Thank you very much congressman Chief Justice Warren and to the distinguished guest here I Would like to address my remarks to that part of Mr. Bond speaks it Discussed reaction or appeasement politics But before I do that for I would like to at least comment on the remarks that were made by congressman Gonzales When he asked the question Why is it we don't see people walking in the streets and marching and why is it we don't see? the overt Evidence of discontent Well, I would hope that we don't misread that and believe that there is not great discontent The only question is how is that discontent being manifested? I? Say one reason that we don't see those evidences of discontent is because there has been almost and Organized suppression of leadership among minorities there has been what we have observed in the past few years And all not only suppression of leadership But dismembering of the kind of organizations that were probably in great Responsibility for part of the changes we saw during the civil rights era and When we talk about the political prisoner the political prisoners not a fragment of someone's imagination It is something that we have witnessed and we are observing today and to the extent that we're going to have change We're going to have to have first of all recognized that we have to allow People not to have self-destruction, but be able to come together and Certainly if one of the things that are really preventing progress is the fact that blacks and Chicanos Somehow often don't identify who the real enemy is and instead of fighting each other I hope that we can come together organized together If all the minorities of this country and the poor of this country ever came together We have a realignment of parties with redirection and we would get over some of those things that are now We're seeing as we're we talk about them as being the quiet Effect of the 70s. It's it's really not quiet because of a lack of something to do. It's quiet that's being placed upon us and Part of this is a great danger Within some of our political parties and I suggest that I'm sure that one of the reasons I'm here is because of my activities with the Democratic Party, so I'd like to really address myself to that party It is true that we cannot do anything Unless we bring Republicans and Democrats together in our agenda At the same time, I think as within the Democratic Party, which has been traditionally the one that we've looked to in terms of New direction We have some dangers of appeasement politics it is There's a great danger always when you lose an election, but there's nothing wrong with losing an election People lose elections all the time and maybe that's what makes them statesman, but the danger is when you start looking at opinion polls to direct your future and To me the greatest danger today Is that the Democratic Party will look around and say Because we didn't win that election We're not going to give leadership We're gonna go back and get start wallowing in some of this racism and Joining with some of those people who are the cause of us coming going back instead of going forward and To me the greatest challenge is for the Democratic Party to say we know that we're made up of People who are very discontented in and I say not just minorities We know that there's a great the hard hat the middle America is discontented But to the extent that we say we're going to then change our position to go over and join Wallace is not leadership What is needed is not the suppression of leadership or the appeasement or of of you know poll politics What is needed is really an agenda where we say we're going to re-educate Middle America We're going to re-educate them to Understand that the reason they can't walk the streets at night is not because we have to start suppressing more people and Because we've allowed people to run the street The reason is because we have not paid attention to some of the priorities that we should have paid attention to We have to give new direction and new leadership I hope when we come out up here today We can say there are any number of things that we have to address ourselves to prison reform is one of those things We have to address ourselves to the problems of poverty and it's true We have to talk about a kind of a tax system that does not keep that little man down there We've got to talk about a welfare system that gives new hope, but we've also got to talk about new leadership and new responsibility and This is our agenda because the civil rights movement is dead But we're gonna have to resurrect it But it's not going to be resurrected as it was 10 years ago because we know with new Times come new methods Today we're not going to be able to have the same kind of militancy Necessarily that we saw five years ago because we're going to have new methods What those methods are is what we have to talk about and we have to give leadership rather than reaction Julian I want to sort of make a Statementer and ask you to respond to it is in addition to responding with The people said on the panel now And the statement is is based not only on what has just been said but on the all of the speeches including the chief justices and Roy Wilkins and your own It seems to me that That it And and also because of what the congressman Gonzales and Mr He men has said it seems to me that as I said at the outset that the Agenda of the civil rights movement, which then existed in the 60s was rather clear and it was an agenda directed at black problem and The black problem was clear and it was historical and therefore it wasn't a Minority problem. It was specifically a black problem and it was caused by the Segregation system which was imposed by law By law not just custom and not just prejudice but by law Throughout 17 states and and to some extent Riding over as we will remember in 19 Before 1954 these schools as well as the restaurants were all segregated in the district of Columbia Which is the nation's capital Now So that the agenda was clear and it was directed at a black problem and it was directed at clearing away a problem which faced only blacks and You could do that through legislation You could do that by directing yourself particularly at the problem and the executive branch The legislature branch and particularly the courts. I think Have largely dealt with it well now as Senator Humphrey has pointed out as You've pointed out as Clarence Mitchell pointed out The problems that facing are facing blacks Are not problems that are just facing blacks and therefore in a sense are not facing blacks because they are blacks They are also facing other minority groups. They are facing the Chicano They are facing Puerto Rican They are facing the American Indian and they are facing ethnic groups that do not have any racial identification That those problems are are fundamentally Economic problems and problems relating to the distribution of wealth and the distribution of services such as health services it seems to me that We have a problem not just of a political coalition and Not just of putting together groups that will face those problems commonly But that we also have a problem because we do not know the answers We do not have an agenda that that can be translated into legislation or court cases or or into Executive answer that will deal with those problems not only for blacks but for People that are disadvantaged generally including whites, Chicanos Puerto Ricans, American Indians and so forth Now if that is a fair statement of what the civil rights movement was about in the past and a fair statement of Where we are now How how do you respond to that what kind of a political action do you think Should be taken by people like yourself that are black leaders To respond to that so that you don't it doesn't end up in sort of a fight for everybody getting his peace of an action Which is limited and Which is a common problem to a lot of people all of them need all of whom need help Well first let me say I don't know I think what you said is a is generally a fair representation Of what the 60s were and what the 70s have turned out to be Talk about competition between ethnic groups the one of the poor results of the poverty program has been to pit blacks and and browns against each other for the Jobs very down at the bottom and to cause these two groups to compete with each other and to Watch the program being removed from above them while they scuffle and fight over Five and four and six and seven thousand dollar a year jobs. I honestly don't know what the answer is I think it's a combination of trying to put back together the coalition that Was so successful in the era of mr. Mitchell talked about which I think has has just been fractured and shattered it developed during the Roosevelt presidency and Followed through the the Johnson presidency and began to crumble with the Humphrey candidacy and fell into complete disarray with the McGovern candidacy and I think the What's caused it to fall apart is a great many different things What would put it back together is something I have no notion of but if It was generally made up of the the churches the unions What you could call the New Deal Southern liberals the organized and respectable liberal left the the non-white ethnic minorities and the white ethnic groups in the country What you've described as happening contributed to it falling apart that each of these groups became more interested in itself than it was in the whole a Separatism not in a racial sense, but in a in a political sense became more important than seeking Political advantage that would accrue to the to the total group and so the the old coalition fell apart But how it's to be put back together. I just have no notion. I I don't think it's parts of the same as they once were A great deal the conscience found in some of these groups no longer is there or has gone off in some other direction It's just beyond me I've read part of I didn't hear senator Humphrey's speech But read part of it and seemed to me he was saying what had to be done that you had to find some way to make a new appeal to these groups of people and to Suggest to them that if you pass X piece of legislation dealing with a problem of health then not only does it affect black people but Spanish surname people Appalachian whites and Native Americans and so on But how you get the people with the real Leavers of power in their hand to respond to that in 1972 as they might have in the middle 1960s. I honestly do not know. I just just have no notion what's well Clarence, excuse me for just a minute. I have to step out for a minute. I want I was going to Say something I was going to ask you to respond to that before you do I want to read a question and the This question is from Andy Bremmer who as you know as a member of the Federal Reserve Board and has served in very distinguished way in that for several years and The question is relevant to this and so I wanted to read it before I stepped out It says on the eve of the major breakthrough in civil rights of the 1950s and 1960s Blacks had the technicians Lawyers etc and instruments courts political action mass meetings etc required for the task The movement was also guided by a central strategy Today the task is economic and the instruments technicians and strategy are not so evident How can these limitations be overcome and who can provide the leadership? In response to that question and also what mr. Marshall said earlier, I would like to say this It's I seldom accept Agreements and arrangements to participate in panel Because it's so hard to keep quiet when something said when that you don't agree with And the main reason I came down here is because I wanted to pay my respect to President Johnson For the great things that he has done But I would say this with respect to the formulation of what we were fighting for in the Period of the 50s 60s and even before as long as I've been in Washington, which is now some 30 years I have never conceived our objective to be merely getting rights for black Americans Every piece of legislation that we have tried to formulate which would cover jobs housing and things of that sort has to do with race Religion and national origin that that caused a big dispute there were many people who argued that the Religion and national origin weren't things contemplated by the Reconstruction period and therefore maybe we weren't on sound constitutional grounds to include those we used to say race religion or Something having to do with belief and many people thought well if you say belief that means you Defend somebody who is charged with being a communist and so why don't we Confine it to race religion or national origin that business about the communists never made sense to me But be that as it may we had to have a viable working force and we agreed on race religion and national origin The first time I ever came into this state on government business It had to do not with discrimination against black people, but discriminating nation against Mexican Americans And it was largely because of their Spanish speaking problem that I was down here when we were working for the 1965 Voting Rights Act There were some people who thought that they would trip us up by adding an amendment which would help the non-English speaking Puerto Ricans To vote in the state of New York to the everlasting credit of senator Robert Kennedy and senator Jacob Javits Who could have been affected politically by those? Decisions we agreed to have the law rewritten so that the Spanish the non-English speaking Puerto Ricans and indeed any other group That couldn't speak English, but was entitled to the right to vote could vote And I'm happy to say that decision was upheld by the great United States Supreme Court under a mr Justice Warren, and I just think I wonder what we've been doing in this country all these years when we've had these gigantic things happening and getting Tangible results and somebody comes up and says it ain't nothing and I mean it ain't nothing That's what they say. I had I was amazing English, but I'm purposely using vernacular and I I find too that with respect to the kind of question about economics This is a terrible mistake There is no way to separate the things that we have been working for from the economic issues When you talk about fair employment legislation you talk about people getting a job When you talk about the right to vote you are electing the people who are going to make the laws to decide whether somebody's going to be Put in jail because they erroneously got on a welfare role There's no way to separate these two things. There is this one thing and I will go again to the Johnson Lexicon The president got me over as white as one day and said Clarence I'm getting ready to do something that you didn't ask me to do Whitney young didn't ask me to do Roy Wilkins didn't ask me to do I decided to do it. He said you've got Great lawyers. Everybody knows that You have got great doctors and teachers. Everybody knows that But he said I want the white people of this country to know that you've got great business brains And I'm gonna appoint Andy Bremmer to the Federal Reserve board. Now, that's the way you do it You start bringing in and mobilizing the people like Governor Bremmer and the people who have economic resources and know how Bring them into the struggle not because the struggle is on a new dimension But for implementing the original intentions which which were to make all of the people of this country The beneficiaries of all the good things in American life Mr. Marshall, I'm gonna inject myself here. I'm falling victim to what Mr. Mitchell so aptly described as the unavoidable temptation when you get on these panels to put in a little bit in view of what was said here with respect to other minority groups first in 1957 I don't think that the picture in Texas could have been any grimmer Could have been any more despondent In fact far beyond anything we could hope to conceive as being grim today. I certainly agree with mr. Mitchell I think that it'd be a tactical mistake for us to leave here With the implication that some other ethnic minority groups Have as a main intention to Strangle in separatism I think this is not the main thrust Believe this would be an error. I think that the undying gratitude and debt To the American of Negro descent that all of us has cannot be denied But in 1957 In the in the middle of the debates here in the state Senate with respect to what was called a massive kid of resistance That came down from Virginia and around the southern states. I Found to not too much of my surprise