STATEMENT OF M. C. CLARKE, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL NEGRO INSURANCE ASSOCIATION, CLEVELAND, OHIO

Mr. CLARKE. I have a prepared statement, very brief. I will be pleased to read it.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. CLARKE. I wish to make it very clear to this committee that the organization I represent, the National Negro Insurance Association, a federation of 50 life insurance companies, with assets in excess of $100,000,000, is unalterably opposed to the proposal now before it, designed to give congressional blessing to the reprehensible compact between southern governors to finance and operate segregated regional schools.

We understand that this plan contemplates taking over Meharry Medical College at Nashville, Tenn., and operating it as a joint school for the education of colored doctors and nurses.

Our principal objection to this arrangement lies in our firm belief that such a proposal is a deliberate evasion of the ruling handed down by the United States Supreme Court, making it mandatory that these petitioning States provide equal educational opportunities for their citizens, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin.

This regional proposal, unless changed to develop unsegregated regional schools for the white and Negro citizens of the affected States, can in no manner be regarded as promising equal opportunities and facilities for all persons. It is our thinking that any arrangement that would compel a Negro citizen of one of these States to journey into another of these States for an education, while at the same time a white citizen of that State is afforded such educational facilities within the border of his native State, does not come without the province of the High Court's ruling in this matter.

Bitter experience is our teacher, and we have found that wherever the Negro is forced to accept separate or special accommodations, he inevitably is the recipient of inferior training and facilities.

It has been argued that these States are too poor to provide equal though separate educational facilities to their white and colored citizens and that it becomes necessary to use the combined resources of all of these interested States in order to provide the type of high educational facilities desired by the litigants in the recent Supreme Court

cases.

But this argument falls of its own weight when we consider the enormous expense to these States which persist in piling up these systems of separate and inferior schools for Negroes.

The time has come when a vast number of Americans have come to the conclusion that we must defend the rights of every minority group for which the Bill of Rights was written if we are to maintain our position as the world's outstanding example of working democracy.

The position of this committee should be clear: As representatives of all the people in all of the States of this great Nation, it must agree that we are obligated both by Supreme Court edict, and by common decency to furnish our Negro citizens with equal educational opportunities.

It is our considered opinion that endorsement of this regional proposal would do much to retard the splendid progress that looms ahead in the educational future of the Nation.

We are grateful for this opportunity to give expression of our unqualified opposition.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I do not have anything particular to say, Mr. Clarke. I think your statement expresses clearly your opposition.

I am hoping that whoever takes the stand now, instead of just giving cumulative conclusions, will aid the committee in showing where (1) the compact accomplished those things that you say, (2) if the compact is not agreed to, what effect such nonaction will have upon the matter of the failure to develop educational facilities in the South, and (3) where, if the compact is approved, it operates as has been suggested as a sort of a directive to the Supreme Court, if and when the Texas case comes up, to find that "equal rights" means that segregation could be accomplished under the Constitution.

We thank you, Mr. Clarke.

Mr. CLARKE. Mr. Chairman, would I be permitted to make just one brief observation?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, of course.

Mr. CLARKE. Someone said, or asked, rather, a long, long time ago: "Is life so dear, or is peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?"

I simply want to make that observation.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, it is a good quotation; but I assure you that I trust there was no reflection upon the personnel of this committee, that we believe in chains or slavery. We believe in development. We believe in freedom. And I want to say, in response to a previous remark that was made, that we have a lot of freedom in this country.

Mr. CLARKE. But, sir, I did not mean any reflection on this committee.

The CHAIRMAN. And we had better see to it that we keep our freedoms that we have. In other lands there is no such process as this. When we see what happens in Czechoslovakia, and wherever Russia takes over, it is clear that there is one mind that controls your thinking and your activities, under any such system and if you do not act accordingly, you are liquidated.

Our purpose here is the purpose of men of different minds.

I want to say this to you: In the United States Senate there are 96 men. If you analyze them, you will find that there are no two of them who have the same economic, social, religious, racial, and geographic background.

Now, instead of making a bad condition, that brings into this world, in America, thank God, a good condition; because it creates a condition of checks and balances, where we do not swing, cockeyed, into a thousand different cockeyed ways.

Men can be honest, having different views.

And so we find, in the Senate, that when men vote against your proposition, we give them the benefit of believing them to be sincere. and honest in their conclusions, knowing that they have different perspectives, due to these different factors that I have mentioned.

I

In this particular matter we are trying to see our way through. compliment all of the witnesses. You have been thoroughly fine in your approach to this problem, and we have gone along in good shape. I will now ask Miss Marvin Perry of the National Lawyers Guild of Washington D. C., to come forward.

STATEMENT OF MISS MARVIN PERRY, VICE CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTIES COMMITTEE, NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Miss PERRY. Mr. Chairman, I am the vice chairman of the national constitutional liberties committee of the National Lawyers Guild. Before I enter into a summary of our prepared statement, I would like to answer two questions which have been raised in the course of the discussion so far.

The first is in connection with the point raised by Mr. Marshall as to the necessity for Congress to approve this act.

I believe that Dr. Rolfe will bear me out that the State of Virginia, in the past-whether it does today or not, I don't know-had an arrangement with Meharry under which Meharry received a certain sum for the students from Virginia who attended.

Is that correct?

Dr. ROLFE. That is correct. The sum was inadequate. It did not cover the complete cost of medical education.

It was pointed out by Dr. Clawson, when he reviewed this pact that that was one sure way for the school to go broke: to give them this service and run a deficit of $400 on each student.

Miss PERRY. I would like to point out, however, that Virginia never seemed to feel that it was necessary that it should get the approval of Congress to undertake any such proposal as that, and that it did pay funds to Meharry without coming to Congress and asking Congress to do it. The reason why Congress is asked at this time to approve this proposal is because the Supreme Court has made it absolutely clear that in no case can a State send its Negro students outside of its own borders in order to get an education which is furnished to white students within its borders.

Whatever the effect which the southern governors fear such an approval would have upon the decision of the Supreme Court, I do not know, but I am convinced that Congress is being asked unwittingly to overrule, or to give its power to counterbalance, the decisions of the United States Supreme Court in this connection.

I have one other thing which I would like to say, and that is that Congress, if it approves this compact-which is based on segregation, because the laws of the States which are participants in the compact require segregation-is in effect, repudiating the findings both of the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which said that segregation could not result in equality, and the President's Commission on Higher Education, which made exactly the same finding.

I would further, then, like to point out that the National Lawyers Guild, in appearing before this committee, is not questioning the right of States to enter into a contract to provide regional education. Wholly apart from the question of approval of such a compact, in terms of its rights, and conceding that it is a proper area for a compact, the question remains whether Congress shall give its consent to a compact which is based on segregation.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, you mean based on segregation because the States, the various States, countenance it? Is that what you mean? Miss PERRY. Because the various States require it by law. They could not set up under the laws of any of these States an unsegregated

regional institution. As Mr. Marshall pointed out to you, when the University of Oklahoma sought to end segregation, they were threatened with criminal prosecution under the laws of Oklahoma.

Consequently, this compact must of necessity include the segregation laws of the States.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, then, I ask you: Assuming that the Supreme Court should follow the line that you favor, would the compact have any influence?

Miss PERRY. I don't know what influence congressional action has upon the Supreme Court, sir. I assume that the Supreme Court interprets both the Constitution and the statutes of Congress in a purely objective fashion. But I think it is absolutely essential that Congress should not lend its weight in any way toward an argument that segregation is valid, and that it should not appear, just from the point of view of what influence it may have upon the Court, to be doing so. And any ratification of this compact is that and nothing else.

I would like also to point out if I may, that we all agree that no person has a right, in this country, to enter into any contract that he wishes. The courts of our country do not enforce all contracts, and neither is Congress is any way required to approve all compacts of the States.

Congress can and must impose conditions upon compacts between the States which affect the constitutional rights of the citizens of the United States. Congress is not invading the rights of the Southern States should it simply decline to assist these States in the perpetuation of a dual school system which Congress did not authorize and which it is extremely questionable that Congress can approve.

The compact which would receive the stamp of approval by Congress, if Senate Joint Resolution 191 were adopted, would violate the constitutional rights and is in conflict with our whole democratic tradition. This is so because the facts clearly indicate that when the Supreme Court adopted the doctrine of "separate but equal" it stated that the purpose of the fourteenth amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law.

The basic requirement has been reiterated in many cases, and the assumption that equality exists underlies every attempt to establish constitutionality of segregation statutes. Therefore, this Congress, in approving a compact which employs segregation, has not only the right, but the duty to inquire into whether or not under such segregation the equality which alone can make that segregation valid, is in existence.

Mr. Marshall has indicated that his testimony contains much material which shows that segregation can never provide equality. Those facts are also brought out by the report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights, which I would like to quote:

The separate but equal doctrine stands convicted on three grounds It contravenes the equalitarian spirit of the American heritage It has failed to operate, for history shows that inequality of service has been the omnipresent consequence of separation. It has institutionalized segregation and kept groups apart despite indisputable evidence that normal contacts among these groups tend to promote social harmony.

The President's Committee on High Education states:

The more advanced the field of endeavor, the more wasteful and futile become attempts to justify a double system.

We submit that should this Congress approve a compact based upon segregated education, without inquiring into the equality of facilities which are furnished under that segregated educational system, it will be subverting and rejecting the reports of the President's Committee, and it will be violating the constitutional rights of the Negro citizens. We also, in our prepared statement, have gone into some detail as to the possibility of securing an equal education under a segregated system.

This, I understand, you will perhaps not wish to hear, but I urge upon you that both the material which was submitted in Mr. Marshall's brief, to which he referred, concerning the lack of equality under a segregated system, and the material in this statement, is germane to your decision.

The CHAIRMAN. I would like to ask a few questions.

Miss PERRY. All right, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us pursue the course that the conclusion that you state, that the approval by Congress of this compact means an approval of the segregated system. Go ahead. Amplify your position. That is what you said.

Miss PERRY. All right, sir. Let us assume that Congress had before it a compact dealing with the transportation of goods among the States, among certain States, and that it had been shown that certain States, as had been demonstrated, and was well-known to everyone and was the subject of the report of a President's committee investigating the subject, that those States were engaged in the illegal transportation, say of white slaves, and yet those States wished to enter into certain compact which would make more easy the transportation of persons between those States.

I would feel that should Congress approve any such compact as that, Congress should be said to be placing its approval upon the whiteslave trade. It could not ignore the known subject matter of the compact before it.

The CHAIRMAN. Maybe your analogy is pertinent, but I cannot see it. And this is what I am trying to get at here. Up to the present time there is a line of decisions that would seem to imply that segregation is appropriate if there is equality.

Miss PERRY. Only if there is equality, if I may say so.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Now, then, there is pending in the courts, a case that raises the point which is contended for the first time, that there can be no equality unless segregation is done away with. That is your position? Miss PERRY. That is the position taken in the Sweatt case.

The CHAIRMAN. But already the Supreme Court, in the present case, has implied that segregation is O. K. if there is equality.

Now, then, there is a compact presented to us. And there is nothing said in it about segregation. There is nothing said. And the objective as defined here by the proponents is to create higher educational facilities.

Your statement has been very clear up to the present; but the point I am getting at is how, by affirming such a compact, you in any way imply to the Supreme Court that it should enlarge its definition of equality, or should not enlarge its definition of what constitutes equality.