This brings me to our present interest. When Congress established the Federal Community Relations Service and gave it an appropriation to start operations in the fall of 1964, we at the conference were greatly encouraged. We recognized that many communities, especially the smaller ones in the South, were in great need of an objective, technically competent source of assistance to devise new solutions to very old and very difficult problems. There was also need to insure the closest possible cooperation between local and Federal agencies in expediting Federal aid programs that would have a major impact on the needs of disadvantaged minority citizens whose population number has been growing at a very rapid pace in the central cities of our major metropolitan areas, both North and South. We were, therefore, very happy to cooperate with the Federal Community Relations Service in working out its program to expedite such Federal programs last summer affecting several northern industrial cities, On the whole, these beginning efforts of the Federal Community Relations Service, and especially the brilliant conciliation role played by Gov. LeRoy Collins in guiding the Service in its formative period, have been well received. We are hopeful and optimistic that the further development of the Service under its outstanding new Director, Mr. Roger Wilkins, will continue to make it an increasingly effective Federal resource.

In the discussions of our Community Relations Committee and of the Conference of Mayors' Executive Committee in January of this year of the proposed transfer of the Community Relations Service from the Commerce Department to the Justice Department, our interest was not one of opposition but of concern. The position which the conference has taken, therefore, is not to oppose Reorganization Plan No. 1 but to express our concern that the functions which have been identified with conciliation and with cooperative planning between Federal and local authorities on programs that will expand equal opportunity in housing, in jobs, in places of public accommodation, in schools not be overly identified with the law enforcement function. Further, it is our concern that such functions not be exclusively identified with the processes of law enforcement. There must be, in our view, a community relations type capability outside of the Justice Department that is assigned the task of orienting the Federal interest and the programs of the many Federal agencies as they affect local community problems toward processes of planning, of working out agreements on specific courses of action, of interpreting the intent of programs to groups whose interests feel threatened, of changing traditional practices by conciliation and negotiation.

If we have learned one thing from our local experience in the field of race relations, it is that the law enforcement function should be clear and direct. Law enforcement agencies should enforce the law and will maintain citizen respect and confidence only as long as they do so impartially and effectively. This is equally true whether you are handling racial demonstrations, stopping illegal efforts to prevent Negro families from occupying their homes, apprehending church bombers, or enforcing a fair employment ordinance. When the violation has occurred, the law enforcement agency must act.

But we have also learned that new patterns and procedures can be worked out in most situations-whether they involve employment recruiting practices, the location of urban renewal sites, or the way students are assigned to schools, for example, by bringing to bear processes designed to insure full participation by all concerned in local decisions and by programs of education and persuasion designed to produce agreement. Sometimes new resources are needed more than litigation. But when these efforts fail and where civil rights are involved, litigation is inevitable and is the proper function of the city attorney or the Justice Department.

Confusing these two functions can be damaging to the confidence needed for the effective employment of both functions.

A second basis for our concern over the way the Federal Government sees this non-law-enforcement function and develops its role in relation to local community relations problems has to do with the growing needs of cities.

I know that you, Mr. Chairman, because of your vast experience on both the State as well as the Federal level, appreciate the terriffic burden that has gradually been shifting from our rural areas to our cities in meeting the social and economic needs of our population.

The Census Bureau has estimated that two-thirds of the urban poor now live in the relatively few central cities of our major metropolitan areas. Some 10 million people are involved.

The movement of Negro families into our central cities during the past 25 years has been phenomenal. Last year the Census Bureau reported a total Negro population of 21 million, with only 12 million persons left on farms. Further, only half the Negro population is left in the South.

Our cities have been and will continue to be the central arena for the war against poverty and for the national effort to expand equal opportunity. If we are to find effective ways of meeting the needs of our disadvantaged citizens, of whatever race, we are going to have to find more effective ways of linking together our physical redevelopment efforts and our economic development efforts with our social development programs. During the past two decades the Federal Government has, thankfully, undertaken vast new programs of economic assistance that have helped our cities-housing and urban renewal, schools, hospital construction, roads, public facilities, mass transportation, manpower training, health care, improved welfare benefits, economic development, small business assistance, and the poverty program. These new programs are complicated. They have produced serious problems of intergovernmental relations which we are trying to unravel through the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. They have been undergoing constant change-much of it quite rapid. They are new and not fully understood. Necessarily and understandably many new functions will be realined with old ones. The new Housing and Urban Development Department is a good case in point. The proposed new Department of Transportation is another.

Our interest, therefore, in the Federal community relations function is that it be made as relevant as possible to the need of our cities to take effective advantage of these urban development aids in ways that will contribute to equal opportunity and an improved quality of life in our cities. Let me be specific about some of those needs for which we feel Federal assistance would be helpful

1. For rural and smaller communities which cannot afford a staff, there is need for a technical assistance program that can be called upon to help plan and work out improved ways of meeting their race relations problems.

2. For those communities that have limited professional staffs there is need to strengthen their capacity to understand and deal with their local problems. This need might be met through a technical assistance program in the field of community relations similar to the university-based workshops sponsored by HEW under title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to help school systems deal with problems growing out of school desegregation. The Office of Education will allocate about $6 million for these programs this year and the Presi dent has requested $9 million for next year.

3. For our major cities, there is, in addition, urgent need for trained professional staffs-a local resource incidentally which has been seriously depleted by the Federal Government as it has expanded its own personnel needs—recruiting heavily among the ranks of our most experienced local personnel. The development of a program of intern grants, specialized seminars, and university scholarships might be considered. The establishment of urban development training centers could be undertaken as a means of meeting the need for both professional and lay leadership training.

4. A program of systematic experimentation and demonstration with new techniques of community organization, citizen participation, and intergroup cooperative action should be launched jointly with local government.

5. Better procedures and channels of Federal-local cooperation to meet the community relations problems growing out of the new demonstration cities program will be needed and might well point the way toward an eventual realinement of the overall community relations function within the Federal Establishment.

In phrasing our needs at the local level this way, Mr. Chairman, I think it should be clear that we see the Federal community relations function as being essentially supportive of local initiative rather than as direct Federal intervention either between local government and its citizens or between conflicting local private interests in working out their problems. In those instances where there is a failure or refusal on the part of local leadership to act reasonably in protecting and insuring the civil rights of citizens, then, clearly, Federal action to uphold the law and promote reasonable solutions is needed. We also see the Federal community relations function as essentially supportive of efforts to insure that Federal programs which have a local impact on intergroup relations are administered and interpreted in ways that will contribute to better understanding and enlarged equal opportunity rather than to group conflict.

We are mindful that there currently exists within the Federal Establishment a sizable technical assistance capability to meet some, if not all, of these needs apart from that provided by the Federal Community Relations Service. It may be that a further strengthening of these-within HUD, HEW, the Agriculture Department, the Commerce Department-around the various independent substantive Federal programs will adequately meet our concern.

We would respectfully suggest, however, that your subcommittee, as it continues its important review of the problems of Federal executive reorganization, may find it useful to look at the Federal impact on local communities as a sequence of related Federal aids that are part of a total community program. They each have interrelated consequences on the capacity of local leadership to meet broad community needs. Both the Federal Government and local government need mechanisms for integrating these program aids as well as interpreting them and insuring local understanding and support for them. To the extent that racial or other group differences may be involved, therefore, there continues to be a need for an overall community focus on the impact of Federal programs. We hope you will continue to search for appropriate ways to carry out this function outside of the framework of litigation or law enforcement. While we do not believe that our local experience is conclusive, or that such commissions are the sole avenues of assistance, we believe it is significant that not one of our city governments have located this function in either the police department or their city attorney's offices. Nor do we advocate combining this function with any regulatory agency-modeled either on the Federal Trade Commission or the local fair employment practices commissions. Even though such agencies are very different from the regular law enforcement agency, generally, the regulatory functions in the field of civil rights have been State functions rather than city functions. Even in those few cities which have combined these functions, the experience has not been altogether satisfactory. At least one major city, Minneapolis, has recently separated them by establishing two independent commissions. Several States, I might add, have separated the regulatory and education functions and carry them out through separate and independent commissions-Delaware. Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

Recognizing that the status of both existing Federal programs and local needs will continue to change very rapidly in the years ahead, we stand ready to continue to share with you our local experience in the hope that it will help your subcommittee as you weigh the pro's and con's of various approaches. We accept the inevitability and the necessity to continually adjust structure to funetion in anything so vast as the Federal establishment. We are delighted that the President is giving us the badly needed leadership to take a new look at these organizational problems and we commend you, Mr. Chairman, and the other members of your subcommittee for the thoroughness and diligence with which you are pursuing this difficult and thorny task.

RESOLUTION ON EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES ADOPTED BY THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING ON JUNE 12, 1963

Whereas the President of the United States has honored the U.S. Conference of Mayors by appearing at its 30th annual conference to address the mayors of the country on a critical problem confronting the Nation; and

Whereas the President has given us a sobering account of some of the difficulties in human relations which have not yet been resolved nationally and locally; and

Whereas the President has appealed directly to the mayors for help in finding solutions to this problem and has recommended several courses of action for mayors to take in their home communities: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the U.S. Conference of Mayors supports the President in his objective of attaining understanding and goodwill among all citizens; be it further

Resolved, That the U.S. Conference of Mayors endorses proposals by the President that: (1) Biracial human relations committees be set up. (2) Care be taken that local ordinances are in accordance with constitutional law. (3) Municipal employees be hired and promoted in accord with nondiscriminatory practices. (4) Equal opportunities be provided for all people. (4) School dropouts, which contribute to unemployment of the unskilled and other social and economic problems, be discouraged; be it further

Resolved, That all citizens be encouraged to recognize the correlation of responsibility and duty with right and that quality of responsibility be encouraged along with equality of opportunity.

Senator HARRIS. The committee will now be pleased to hear from Mr. Higgs.

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM L. HIGGS, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON HUMAN RIGHTS PROJECTS

Mr. HIGGS. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, the Washington human rights project is a nonprofit, educational project located in this city dedicated to furthering human rights through the concentrated efforts of students, principally during the summer months, in educating activity. The project is proud to have had among its 36 participants in the last 2 summers 2 of this year's 32 Rhodes scholarship winners, as well as many other students that have gone on to distinguish themselves.

As legal adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, I also have been a member of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights for 3 years, spanning the drafting and enactment of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, to which process I devoted a great deal of time and effort. In recent months in the leadership conference I served as one of six on its committee to study the problem before this subcommittee. I hasten to add that I am in no way speaking for the conference or for its leadership.

Unfortunately, time does not permit the preparation of the numerous points and pages of testimony that I would desire to present in opposition to this proposed transfer of the Community Relations Service. I hope there will be some opportunity to develop this in oral presentation.

First it seems to me that the reorganization plan submitted by the President is in direct violation of the Reorganization Act of 1949, particularly the provision codified as 5 U.S.Č. 133z-3(4). This section clearly prohibits using a reorganization plan to overstep substantive statutory authority and prohibitions.

Second, the very worst place (except for the Defense Department) for a conciliation agency is in the Department directly responsible for enforcement. This point has been made many times, but it cannot be overstressed. The immense value of the independence of the Civil Rights Commission illustrates somewhat this point. Time and time again the Civil Rights Commission has had to withstand powerful pressures or opposition from the Justice Department. I firmly believe that the Civil Rights Commission's independence has helped the Justice Department to do a far better civil rights job.

Third, the Commerce Department is probably the very best placeand I would like to emphasize that-for the Community Relations Service, since economic concerns evidenced by boycotts and other means of economic action are becoming increasingly-perhaps the major civil rights activity-witness the current drive of the Free D.Č. Movement here in Washington and the Natchez and Fayette boycotts in Mississippi.

And I believe there are a number of other examples which illustrate this point.

Finally, I believe that this plan is in direct contradiction to the clear intention of almost all of us associated with the drafting and supporting of the 1964 act. Indeed, contrary to the Attorney Gen

60-816-66- -9

eral's testimony, the Justice Department was the one place where we did not want the Community Relations Service.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to continue to make a few additional remarks in terms of my direct testimony.

Senator HARRIS. You certainly may.

Mr. HIGGS. Thank you, sir.

I particularly wanted to elaborate on the first point that I made which, it seems to me, really should preclude, as a technical matter, this plan from being approved by the committee.

Now, this section of the Reorganization Act is very short, it is just about one sentence, and if it is OK, I would like to read that. Senator HARRIS. Go right ahead.

Mr. HIGGS. This is in title 5 of the United States Code, executive departments, section 113z-3:

Limitations on powers respecting reorganizations; termination date

(a) No reorganization plan shall provide for and no reorganization under sections 133z to 133z-15 of this title shall have the effect of

and skip to 4

authorizing any agency to exercise any function which is not expressly authorized by law at the time the plan is transmitted to the Congress.

Now, it seems to me that in reading section 1003 (b) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as pointed out earlier by Senator Javits, in effect, this reorganization plan does clearly violate the substantive provisions of the act. A particular sentence that I think it violates is the second sentence of that subsection, where it says-

No officer or employee of the Service shall engage in the performance of investigative or prosecutive functions of any department or agency in any litigation arising out of a dispute in which he acted on behalf of the Service.

And let me also mention the first sentence as well. It says

The activities of all officers and employees of the Service in providing conciliation assistance shall be conducted first, "in confidence" and second "without publicity," and the Service shall hold confidential any information acquired in the regular performance of its duties upon the understanding that it would be so held.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I read the Congress when it says "in confidence" that it means that it shall be kept in confidence. And I personally read that it shall be kept in confidence from the Attorney General-particularly from anyone who is likely to use it to prosecute these people. And I think that "without publicity" means something different, contrary to what the Attorney General testified yesterday, as I recall.

It seems to me "without publicity" means that the Community Relations Service should not let the public know that it is in a town, that it is in Natchez or in Fayette, Miss., doing this. Whereas, keeping the material in confidence means it is not going to turn them over to prosecuting branches of the Government who might use this directly against the people that gave them the information.

Now, I think, as I recall, Senator Ervin has made this point, and I think very, very well, that this should not be done.

So I do read that language in that way, and I read the two sentences together as making it very clear that a transfer of this agency to the Department of Justice, and putting the head of the Community Relations Service under the Attorney General, whose responsibility