tion of low-middle income housing because the community feared there was a “devious plan" to move Negroes in."

Some 4,500 workers commute daily from Cleveland to work in the industries located in suburban Solon-a city with one Negro resident. Asked whether there was "any public means of transportation to bring these people to work," Mr. Kruse testified that "[t]here is a very, very limited bus service there." 12

The Commission also heard testimony bringing into question the social responsibility of industry in dealing with the problems co fronting ghetto residents.

For example, Leonard Mitchell, the Director of Industrial Relations of the Lockheed Missile and Space Company-an almost 100 percent government contractor located in the suburban community of Sunnyvale, Calif.-testified that although Lockheed was required by its government contracts to take affirmative action to hire minority employees, the company did not think its responsibility included assuring minority workers that they would be able to find housing in Sunnyvale.1 When employees are recruited no attempt is made to assure them they will be able to find suitable housing in the Sunnyvale area, no list of housing available in the area is maintained, and no attempt is made to raise with local public officials the question of the availability of housing on a nondiscriminatory basis. "We are not involved in the housing aspects at all," Mr. Mitchell stated.1*

The Rheem Manufacturing Company has a plant located in an unincorporated area of Contra Costa County, Calif., adjacent to the City of Richmond. Although the company has a labor force (half of whom are unskilled workers) which is nearly all white,1 the area in which it is located, North Richmond, is an all-Negro slum.1o North Richmond has the usual physical and social problems associated with slums, compounded by the absence of services a city government could provide.17

Several residents of North Richmond instituted proceedings for the annexation of North Richmond by the City of Richmond. Proponents believed that annexation would result in the provision of better services, particularly police protection—highly inadequate in North Richmond.18

The Rheem Manufacturing Company opposed annexation, and along with other property owners was instrumental in blocking it on the ground that annexation would increase taxes.1 Witnesses estimated that the tax increase would have been no more than $10,000 per year. The North Richmond plant had a total of $7,000,000 a year in sales and the total sales of the corporation were $135,000,000 annually.

20

21

"It's really, pure and simple, a financial matter as far as we are concerned”,22 said the plant manager. He testified that he was not aware of the problems which existed in the neighborhood of his plant.23

Racial Isolation and White Attitudes

Some white parents have expressed concern over the fact that their children are growing up in an all-white environment. Dr. Leon Trilling of Brookline, Mass., directed a program designed to bring Negro children from city schools to suburban schools. He explained that one of the reasons why parents in that suburban community favored the program was:

...concern over the fact that the youngsters in the subur-
ban towns surrounding Boston were . . . all white,
segregated in a sense, and that our youngsters, therefore,
have an especially narrow view of the society in which
they are later going to work and, hopefully, some of them
take positions of responsibility."

Dr. Trilling's program was organized by the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), a nonprofit corporation. A white parent, Mrs. Katherine Endris, who worked with the program, testified about the benefits derived from it:

[A]s a white parent, I feel, that if my child grows up with
a prejudiced, bigoted, narrow mind, and knows nothing
about those who differ from him in any way, he isn't
really fully educated, and when he goes out into the
world... he will associate with people of many differ-
ent races, then he will not be prepared to really relate to
these people.25

A white high school student at one of the schools involved in the METCO program testified that she had been "shocked" at her younger brother's remarks about Negroes and attributed them to his lack of contact with Negro students.26

Most white persons, however, seem to prefer to maintain their isolation from minority groups.

27

Jack Maltester, Mayor of San Leandro, was asked why Negroes do not buy homes in San Leandro. He answered:

I don't think it is the real estate people nor the lending
institutions. I think it's the people themselves. I'm quite
sure that
any real estate man would sell any home in San

Leandro to a Negro if the seller of that home

the go-ahead.

gave

them

There is still the fear that if one home is sold to a Negro
the whole block will be sold to Negroes and then the next
block....I guess... [this] did happen in the West Oak-
land area. And this, I think is the basis of fear.

28

Donald Dillon, former Mayor of Fremont, testified that white homeowners fear “an avalanche . . . of minority groups moving into the community.'

" 29

M. L. Sanford described the feelings white people in San Lorenzo have about Negroes moving into the area in significant numbers:

...I think they fear the concentration, and number two, I
think they are inclined to look at some of the worst or the
most unsatisfactorily maintained areas of Oakland or
Richmond or elsewhere where you have this large con-
centration and where the homes are not properly main-
tained, and I think the people fear an economic loss if this
should occur. . .

...

This is not the only expression I hear. I think... there
is very definitely a prejudice in our community, in our
whole area.30

Mr. Sanford described the response of the Village Association to the prejudice in San Lorenzo:

My board of directors, who are elected by the people, have
consistently, in all the years that I have been there, you
might say, completely ignored the subject of integration.
They have remained silent on the subject.31

Rev. Londagin attempted to find a home for a Negro family in San Leandro. He stated he would do this for any parishioner who comes into the community:

When it was made known that I was showing this [house] to colored people, I received phone calls and a great deal of interest was developed, some who sympathized with my concern and some, most, who did not.32 Although the Negro family never moved in, Rev. Londagin testified that:

[A] great deal of anger was developed in the community
and directed primarily toward me and the church.

The real estate industry often uses white prejudice to further its own

277-917 067- -6

34

ends, reinforcing residential segregation. Mrs. Genevieve Jefferson, a white resident of the middle-income Merced Heights area of San Francisco, testified that the real estate industry played upon economic fears and racial prejudice during the period that the population in her neighborhood was "in transition." The area had had very few Negro families in 1950, but in 1967 the population was more than 60 percent Negro. She described the concerns expressed by her white neighbors when Negroes began moving into the neighborhood:

There were some people who clearly are prejudiced.
There were some other people who were honestly puz-
zled. They really didn't know what was happening to
their neighborhood, and these are people whose income
is not too great. Their home was their greatest investment
and they just weren't sure what was happening to their
neighborhood and their home. . . .35

Mrs. Jefferson thought that "some of their fears were deliberately fanned by real estate dealers in their effort to secure listings for reselling." 36 She stated that she and her husband had been contacted by real estate people who encouraged them to sell their property because Negroes were moving into the neighborhood:

I guess the first impact was when a very intelligent man came by and started to chat. We were mowing the lawn and he asked if we had thought about selling our home and would we like an appraisal, and we told him firmly we weren't at all interested, and then he launched into the conversation which went something like this. "I would sure be damn mad if I were you folks with something like this happening in the neighborhood." And I was puzzled at this point. I was still pretty naive, and we exchanged conversation, and finally I said, "What do you 1 mean? Because of Negroes moving in?" And he said, "Well, of course." So I told him that both my husband and I had been very proud of the way our neighborhood integrated without any unseemly activities, that there were no demonstrations and no unhappy events. . . . Asked whether the person who had contacted her was a real estate man, she replied:

37

Yes. He was securing a listing and he went right on urg-
ing that we get out while we could get our money out.
Another one that I recall talked to me at some length and
his approach was, "We are relocating families in this area."

And I said, "What do you mean, relocating? Is this an
urban renewal area?" And he said, “Oh, no, no, no. We
are helping families who want to get out to live in a
decent place." Well, our conversation terminated shortly
thereafter, but there were these kinds of ways of playing
on the fears of people. One elderly woman who was re-
cently widowed was helped to move to a "safer" place and
she didn't want to move, but her fears were just played
upon.38

Proximity of white and Negro families in an area will not itself produce racial harmony where the white people involved are unwilling to accept Negroes on an equal basis. In San Francisco's Potrero Hill area, for example, white and Negro people live in close proximity but are not part of the same community. The majority of Potrero Hill residents are white and live in private single-family structures around the sides of the hill. At the top of the hill are 833 public housing units occupied by 4,000 people, the large majority of whom are Negro. Robert Jacobs, a former resident of the public housing project and a community worker in the project, described the separation of the races on Potrero Hill:

[W]hat we have in our area, known as Potrero Hill, is
an invisible wall... People understand that when you
get to the apex of the Hill, which, as far as the blacks and
whites are concerned, is about 22nd Street. When you
start over that, you are out of your territory and this is the
way they feel.90

40

Walter Robinson, a Negro who works in the Potrero Hill project as a community organizer for the Economic Opportunity Council, testified: "[Y]ou have two separate communities on Potrero Hill, the ... homeowners and the project dwellers." " According to Mr. Robinson, attempts to communicate with the homeowners have been unsuccessful, and there is little spirit of cooperation between the groups. Mrs. Emma Fleming, a white housewife who lived on Potrero Hill all of her life, stated:

There is a lack of communication. Even when we sit
around the table we don't communicate.

41

The OMI project-involving the Oceanview, Merced Heights, Ingleside area of San Francisco-is an example of successful interracial cooperation in an integrated community. Lee Diamond-a Negro resident of the area-was asked to compare the successful OMI