CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

February 16, 1968

Page 3252

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, recent years have seen dramatic progress in providing the American Negro with the rights enjoyed by all other Americans. Laws designed to guarantee equal rights for all in using public accommodations, in education, voting, in employment opportunities, have advanced the Negro in his struggle to achieve the rights which never should have been denied him. The proposed fair housing amendment presently before the Senate is the logical, essential and inevitable next step toward a more complete realization of those rights.

The time is now for Congress to pass a law insuring all Americans an equal choice in their selection of housing. Our technology is capable of producing for us a wide range of opportunities for choices of living patterns that are the principal virtues of metropolitan life, of a free economy and of a technological society. But when those opportunities and those choices are withheld from certain segments of society, they can lead only to social disorganization and chaos.

The fact is, our social structures, and the political machinery which responds to the attitudes of our people, are changing with agonizing slowness. And as the events of last summer have demonstrated, time is running out. The performance of our society has not kept pace with the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

A number of proposals have been made to cope with this crisis in our society. They have included recommendations for massive investments in the physical resources of our cities, new approaches in terms of private investment, full appropriations for existing programs, and new techniques for the application of our national resources.

The embodiment of all of these proposals is the model cities program. This program provides for a comprehensive, concerted attack on all the ills of a specific community, to eliminate slum and blight, and to engage in physical and social renewal. The Model Cities Act was the result of our realization that we cannot deal with each aspect of poverty separately and expect to achieve any meaningful, lasting results. The aim now is to provide vastly expanded opportunities for the slum resident to help him improve every aspect of his life.

However, we must not deceive ourselves that a completely revitalized model city area, or "golden ghetto" as it has been called, is the final solution to the plight of the Negro. For no matter how livable a neighborhood is, and no matter what social and educational resources it provides, it will be of no help to the resident whose job has moved elsewhere. It will provide no satisfaction to the Negro who would like to move elsewhere but who is forced to remain because he cannot find other suitable housing due to his color.

A critical problem of the core city is the decline of industry. The office buildings which are replacing industry in our cities offer few jobs for the unskilled. Employment opportunities which do arise in our cities are being filled by suburban dwellers who take away much from our cities and contribute little to them. While we can make every effort to retain and increase employment opportunities in the city, we cannot overlook the need for and advisability of the city dweller being able to seek the best possible job wherever it is. The exodus of industry from the city has been a bitter development for the Negro. He cannot afford to commute to the relocated plant and he is denied an apartment to rent or a house to buy in the suburbs simply on the basis of his race.

Fortune magazine recently conducted a study which revealed that the majority of suburban towns have experienced next to no influx of Negroes, while the few gains which have occurred have been in towns which had a sizable Negro population to start with. The current Negro movement to suburbia is still far too slow to stem the increasing trend toward black cities ringed by white suburbs.

Americans have long prided themselves on having the freedom to achieve personal success to the extent of one's initiative and ability. For most Americans, the goal and reward of personal endeavor is a satisfying job and a good home. Regretfully, both of these are often off limits to the Negro who is told where he can and cannot live.

It is not enough to eliminate segregation in only certain, select areas of our lives. We must not rest until all segregation is banned, and certainly housing is one of the most serious areas in which it still exists. The Senate hearings on fair housing held last year pointed up time and again that the American Negro is aware of his lack of choice in housing and places it high on his list of priorities where equal rights are concerned. Karl E. Tauber, in an article on residential segregation for Scientific American, cited a block of exceptional housing built in Harlem by architect Stanford White when Harlem was a white section. After it became a Negro section, the block became known as "Strivers' Row" because so many white collar and professional Negroes sought to live there.

A "Strivers' Row" should not be necessary in this country in this age. No race should be limited by segregation in its choice of housing. No one of any race should have to vie for a home in a few select areas to which it is limited by lack of fair housing laws.

At present, 22 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands have laws banning discrimination in some kinds of housing. These laws represent some amount of progress in fair housing, but the variations in both content and the extent to which they are enforced from State to State leaves much to be desired. What is needed is a fundamental, national policy applying equally to all parts of the country. Clearly, the responsibility rests with the Congress to establish that policy.

While we seek the long-term causes of civil disorder, while we propose and evaluate and enact long-term solutions, while we appropriate moneys for existing programs, we have at hand the means to make an immediate demonstration of faith to the Negro. It is we in the Congress who should take the lead in securing the fundamental right of fair housing for the Negro in 1968.

In closing, Mr. President, I offer to my colleagues as a pertinent observation for today's discussion, the philosophy of government held by Gov. Joshua Chamberlain of Maine over a hundred years ago:

A government has something more to do than to govern, and levy taxes to pay the governors. It is something more than a police to arrest evil and punish wrong. It must also encourage good, point out improvements, open roads of prosperity and infuse life into all right enterprises. It should combine the insight and foresight of the best minds of the State for all the high ends for which society is established and to which man aspires. That gives us much to do.