When the Alamo fell, the flag that flew over the Alamo was a Mexican flag with the constitution of 1824 written on it, and there were Mexicans and Texans fighting together for the Mexican principles of 1824 who died at the Alamo.

Senator CHAVEZ. Now, the descendants of those boys who died at the Alamo, and who fought for the principles that you speak about, are denied restaurant service and even the right to work?

Dr. CASTANEDA. You are right.

Senator CHAVEZ. Now, during the period of years of the history of this country, after Texas became part of the United States, have those Mexican-Texans participated in the emergencies, dying in the different wars?

Dr. CASTANEDA. Yes, Senator. They took their part in the Civil War. They took their part in the Mexican War. They took their part in the war of 1898 against Spain. And they certainly did their part in the last World War and are doing their part in the present war. Senator CHAVEZ. They actually appear in the casualty lists that are submitted by the War Department?

Dr. CASTANEDA. In large numbers.

Senator CHAVEZ. In the formal notice, "I regret to advise that J. C. Gonzales, of Houston, Tex., has been killed in action," their names appear there?

Dr. CASTANEDA. Yes, Senator.

Senator CHAVEZ. Notwithstanding that, you still insist that there is discrimination as to jobs in Texas?

Dr. CASTANEDA. Yes, Senator.

Senator CHAVEZ. Anything further you want to state before the committee?

Dr. CASTANEDA. I would like to add one word. The President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice at its regular meeting yesterday authorized a public hearing to attempt to settle cases of discrimination against mining companies in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The date has not been fixed, but the hearing has been authorized.

Senator CHAVEZ. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF AL BARNES, METROPOLITAN DETROIT COUNCIL ON FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE, DETROIT, MICH. Mr. BARNES. I am Al Barnes. I live at 635 East Elizabeth Street, Detroit, Mich. I have an older brother who is now serving in the armed forces in New Guinea. My education includes high school and 1 year college at the Winston-Salem Teachers College, WinstonSalem, N. C.

Senator CHAVEZ. Where were you born?

Mr. BARNES. Buffalo, N. Y.

Senator CHAVEZ. How long have you been living in Detroit?

Mr. BARNES. For the past 9 months.

Senator CHAVEZ. What was the reason for you going to Detroit? Mr. BARNES. The reason was, I wanted to see my mother.

Senator CHAVEZ. She is living in Detroit now?

Mr. BARNES. Yes, sir.

Senator CHAVEZ. Do you occupy any official position with some organization with reference to the matter under discussion now?

Mr. BARNES. The Metropolitan Detroit Council on Fair Employment Practice.

Senator CHAVEZ. How long have you been connected with that organization?

Mr. BARNES. I was selected because I am a veteran.

Senator CHAVEZ. How long have you been connected with that organization?

Mr. BARNES. They got in touch with me day before yesterday. Senator CHAVEZ. You are new?

Mr. BARNES. Yes; I am new.

Senator CHAVEZ. You think you know the subject matter under discussion?

Mr. BARNES. I think I do.

Senator CHAVEZ. All right; proceed.

Mr. BARNES. During my high-school days I drove the school bus for Carver High School for Forsyth County at Winston-Salem, N. C., for 4 years, during 8 months each year. This involved transporting children from their homes to school, and back again, over county routes. During my attendance at high school I also served as treasurer for 3 years of the Hi-Y Club.

As you know, I come here as a witness to urge you gentlemen of the committee to get this bill for a permanent F. E. P. C. adopted.

In my early work experience, after leaving college, I worked as a truck driver at the Norfolk Naval Base, P. W. D., from October 1942 to September 1943. Here I drove all kinds of equipment, including semitrailers.

I left this job to be inducted into the Navy. After induction I was in the Navy for 2 months and 3 days. In November 1943 I received a medical discharge.

After leaving the Navy I went to work at the Chrysler Corporation in Detroit at the Kercheval gun arsenal. Here I assisted in the manufacture of antiaircraft guns of Army and Navy types.

While here I was ordered to report to my draft board in WinstonSalem for induction into the Army. The reason for this is that Army physical examinations are not as rigid as Navy requirements. When I left Chrysler for induction I was told that if I didn't pass my physical I could be reinstated. But on my return I was told that I would have to be rehired. That meant losing my seniority and taking a job at less pay, which I did not think was fair to me. They said that the United States Government had passed a law that anyone called to report for induction should not leave the city they are in. This I did not know, or I would have remained in Detroit and had my physical there instead of going to Winston-Salem where my local board is located. However, going to Winston-Salem made it possible for the Chrysler Corporation to say I must be rehired. I felt then I should try for a job somewhere else.

I went to the United States Employment Service office at 112 East Jefferson, Detroit. They gave me a referral card as a semitrailer truck driver and sent me out to the Fleet Carrier Corporation at 53 East Outer Drive for employment. I immediately went to this company's office. There I was told that they would hire me, but before I could get the job I would have to join the teamsters' union and that the fee would be $20, if the union would accept me.

I told the interviewer that that would be satisfactory to me, that I would be very glad to join the union. At this the interviewer smiled and said, "If they will accept you, you will have a job." I then asked him whom I had to see in order to join the union. He directed me to see Mr. Hoffa, the business agent of the teamsters' union.

I then went immediately to the union hall on Trumbull Avenue, where I arrived at 3:45 p. m. Here I was told that the office was closing, and that Mr. Hoffa was not in, anyway. I asked if I could see someone else but was told that no one else could take care of membership. They then told me he would be in the next morning at 9 o'clock.

The following morning I was there at a quarter to 9. I then asked for Mr. Hoffa but was told that he was not in. At 9 o'clock I asked again, only to get the same answer, and so on throughout the day. Every time I asked I was told he was not in. Again I was told he was the only person to handle membership for Local 299. During this whole day, and I stayed until 3:30 p. m., I noticed white men coming in and getting consideration without waiting. There were no other Negroes that came into this office. It seemed very strange to me that a big union like this, which has contracts with so many companies, couldn't take care of my membership.

I then returned to the War Manpower Commission and told my story. I also told it to Mr. Anderson at the Metropolitan Detroit Council on Fair Employment Practice, who referred me to the F. E. P. C. office in Detroit to file a complaint, which I have done.

Meanwhile, I heard from other people that I had been wasting time trying to get a job to drive a semitrailer because the teamsters union permits no Negroes in its membership.

For that reason I am again urging you gentlemen of the committee to do your best to get a Fair Employment Practice Commission created.

In conclusion, I want to thank Mr. Anderson and the organization he represents, the Metropolitan Detroit Council on Fair Employment Practice, for assisting me to come here and tell my story. I am also grateful to the F. E. P. C. for accepting my complaint. Last, but not least, I want to thank you gentlemen of the committee for affording me the opporunity to be here.

Senator CHAVEZ. Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF BROADUS MITCHELL, ACTING CHAIRMAN, POSTWAR WORLD COUNCIL, NEW YORK, N. Y.

Senator CHAVEZ. Kindly state your name for the record.

Mr. MITCHELL. My name is Broadus Mitchell and I am acting chairman of the Post War World Council.

Senator CHAVEZ. What is that?

Mr. MITCHELL. That is a national organization of persons interested in securing a just peace and in American institutions of democracy when the war is won.

Senator CHAVEZ. Is it Nation-wide?

Mr. MITCHELL. Yes.

Senator CHAVEZ. Where are the headquarters?

Mr. MITCHELL. 112 Nineteenth Street, New York.

Senator CHAVEZ. Who is the chairman?

Mr. MITCHELL. Norman Thomas is chairman.

Senator CHAVEZ. You may proceed.

Mr. MITCHELL. I would like to appear, Senator, as a southerner. My father is a Mississippian. My mother was a South Carolinian. I was born in Kentucky and I have lived all my life until 5 years ago below the Mason-Dixon line. My accent has been somewhat contaminated in the more recent years.

Senator CHAVEZ. After you went to New York? [Laughter.]
Mr. MITCHELL. That is right.

Senator CHAVEZ. We can understand that. [Laughter.]

Mr. MITCHELL. Some testimony has been given to the committee conveying the impression that the South is very much opposed to this legislation because it would require employment practices repugnant to southern institutions. I would like to do what I can as a southerner to disabuse the minds of the committee of that idea. The South's intelligence and conscience does not hold with the demagogs who appeal for political support by crying out discriminations against. Negroes either in their job opportunities or in their civil rights. Senator CHAVEZ. Mr. Mitchell. may I interrupt there? Mr. MITCHELL. Yes, sir.

Senator CHAVEZ. Of course, we are now considering a bill that has to do with the economic feature of all American people. My observation has been that discrimination as a whole, whether it be economic or political, is not confined to the South whatsoever.

Now, for instance, political discrimination. I have heard people of my own political faith in the North say we could not elect a Presi dent that comes from below the Mason-Dixon line. I have heard it stated that you couldn't elect an Irish Catholic as Governor of Pennsylvania. I have heard the statement made that you couldn't elect this particular man because he happened to be a Jew, or we couldn't elect this man Senator or Governor of New Jersey because he is an Irish-Catholic. Those things are just as vicious as discriminating in an economic way.

Mr. MITCHELL. That is right.

The discrimination against the Negro in the South, I think, has lessened. This morning when you asked Mr. Ross whether the experience of the President's Fair Employment Practice Committee has indicated a mounting volume of discrimination, he answered very properly from his statistics. But I think he would be the first to agree, if he enlarged on it, that those figures show an accumulating number of complaints coming to the committee are susceptible of a very different interpretation. It is because we have the committee. It is because there is machinery for adjustment that more cases come to life. It is not necessary for me to remind you that the discriminations against Negroes in many Southern States are so inveterate that the opportunity to complain even hardly arises.

We used to say in the South in slavery times that we had less crime than the industrialized North with its free labor, and we quoted police records. If we had been even elementary statisticians or candid, we would have recognized that offenses against the law on the plantations were dealt with in informal ways and that the cases never got in the criminal records.

The larger number of cases coming to the F. E. P. C., therefore, I would interpret as a hopeful and wholesome sign. The labor unions operating in the South, more particularly the C. I. O.-and I hasten to explain that I am connected with a union in the A. F. of L.-have made a campaign against discrimination. And this is making progress Perhaps I could mention a little incident which explains the progress. My brother happens to be working in Atlanta and was talking recently to a white man in a typical small southern community in which the white people live on one side of the town and the Negroes live on the other side. This white man was saying that his union had recently accepted Negroes and that he was consulting with the Negroes on their union problems, and he pointed out a path running from the white community over to the Negro community. He said to my brother, "You see that path," and my brother said "Yes." This man said, "It got there because when problems arise I go over and talk to Tom Jones about them. I never did that before but now I climb up on his front porch and we talk it out. And the next night, if he has a problem, he comes across this path and gets up on my back porch and we talk about it." There is still a difference between front porch and back porch, but there is the path.

What we need in the South, in my judgment, is a national requirement that we shall live up to American standards. Now, we in the South have been pretty good at pleading that our sectional disabilities suggested that we have preferred treatment. We did that before we had the Fair Labor Standards Act. We wanted to continue low wages of our workers, white and black. We said that we were poor; we had the miserable heritage from the Civil War; we were making progress; give us time and all that. We maintained those differentials until the Nation spoke and we were compelled to conform, and we did it not only without injury to our industries but with great assistance to our labor standards, to the purchasing power of our people, and to our self-respect.

I think that another illustration of it is in the matter of child labor. I do not need to remind you of the eloquent pleas made by southerners for continuance of child labor, particularly in our cotton factories. We defeated the national child labor law and it was declared unconstitutional on cases coming up from North Carolina. When we got the first N. R. A. and then the Fair Labor Standards Act, it was discovered that ridding the mills of children was an essential step toward standards for adult labor and for our general economic well-being in the South. And now no one hears regrets on that score.

Compulsory education was the same thing.

When it was first urged that marriage licenses be required in the State of South Carolina, where I was living at the time, an editorial appeared in the leading newspaper of the State stating that they hoped very much that the legislature would not require marriage licenses, that the absence of marriage licenses in South Carolina was one of the few remaining distinctions that set South Carolina off from the barbarian States around it. Well, we have marriage licenses now and no one thinks it is an indignity to secure one before going to the altar.

Senator CHAVEZ. I suppose they are issued for identification purposes. [Laughter.]