STATEMENT OF REV. WILLIAM H. JERNAGIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE BOARD AND DIRECTOR OF THE WASHINGTON BUREAU, FRATERNAL COUNCIL OF NEGRO CHURCHES, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Senator CHAVEZ. Please identify yourself for the record.

Reverend JERNAGIN. I am Rev. William H. Jernagin, pastor of Mount Carmel Baptist Church, Washington, D. C.; president, National Sunday School and Baptist Training Union Congress; chairman of the executive board and director of the Washington bureau, Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America.

Mr. Chairman, just before I start I just wanted to present the ministers of the Gospel, leaders from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington that are here. I will ask them just to stand, with their laity that have come with them here. I just want us to bow our heads a moment in silent prayer that this bill will pass.

Thank you.

Senator CHAVEZ. In your statement you will present what you consider the views of the persons present?

Reverend JERNAGIN. Yes, sir.

Senator CHAVEZ. Proceed.

Reverend JERNAGIN. Honorable Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am speaking today as a representative of the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America, which organization is a federation of 11 affiliated denominations with a constituency of more than 6,000,000 members.

The authority has been vested in me by the United Negro Church to appear before you today to speak in behalf of the Chavez-DowneyWagner-Murray-Capper-Langer bill, S. 2048, for a permanent Fair Employment Practice Committee.

In pointing up this piece of legislation, I shall speak far less, I trust, as a Negro than as a representative of the Christian Church, whose duty it is to uphold the Christian ideals and to work for their realization with the belief that the conventions and customs of society can be changed by the persistent pressure of Christian influences.

As churchmen, we have respect for government and believe that reasonable, intelligent administration can achieve results "if the spirit is right."

At this hour of crisis the church is concerned specifically with economic distress which deepens as the world crisis develops. When the war ends, jobs will disappear for from one to twenty million workers in war production in the United States. To these within a few months. will be added 10,000,000 servicemen who will return to civilian life. Already the Labor Department figures show more than 12,000 unemployed. It is needless to say, minority groups will suffer most due to manpower surplus.

Jobs and security must be provided for all our citizens if we expect our institutions of freedom to survive. The protection of minorities. is a sacred trust for our democracy. Our democratic institutions cannot endure if we condemn 15,000,000 or more of our citizens to want and insecurity. Fear of poverty and the threat of insecurity and unemployment are the seeds out of which fascism springs and before fascism those sporadic outbreaks of insurrection which stimulate police violence and race riots.

Already we have seen evidences of this fear in the recent transit strike in Philadelphia where white worker was pitted against black worker, and the old rule of divide and conquer, of dog eat dog, was put into effect. These conditions pose problems of unprecedented magnitude. There is no hatred and strife more bitter than that which can come when people of different races compete for too little food and too few jobs.

We would be morally derelict in our Christian duty if we failed to call attention to the unethical basis of an order which permits this kind of distress to continue. The church must exert its influence to eliminate the causes of economic distress and also to help to set in motion those administrative and legislative measures which must be taken as a preliminary to the establishment of a just social and economic system.

A Fair Employment Practice Committee established as a permanent function of the Federal Government is one of the best agents for a just society that we know.

The purpose of this Committee, as it exists at present is to defend the economic rights of minorities among whom are Negroes, Jews, Spanish-Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, American Indians, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Catholics. All these groups have suffered and are suffering economic discrimination in the war effort. It has been a hard and tedious fight to get them integrated into American industry at any time upon a truly democratic basis.

These minorities are denied equal opportunity in both public and private employment. They are discriminated against in training, placement, upgrading, and wages in war industries. Sometimes this is true when the Government itself is the employer. Moreover, 33 international labor unions bar Negroes from membership.

If this condition prevails now when the Nation is infinitely in need of manpower to successfully prosecute the war, how much greater the difficulty becomes and how much more acute the situation will be when the war is over and the Nation settles down to peacetime employment.

As Christians we are committed to the belief that no one person more than another shall be debarred from the opportunity or means to a satisfactory life. This race myth, upon which discrimination against Negroes is organized and maintained, offers a superiority open on equal terms effortless to all white men. Through the very fact of birth white men belong to this superior entity. There is one highest right to which it is assumed God has elected them and that is the right of the superior to rule the inferior.

This mystical concept of racial destiny is employed to conceal the actualities of economic exploitation. For based on this racist propaganda certain persons have been and are still being indoctrinated with the idea that there are certain jobs and certain job classifications that belong exclusively to white men and certain others that belong to black men; that the black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect and that the Negro was somehow ordained from the beginning of things to be a drawer of water and a hewer of wood and capable only of being a servant to a white master class. This discrimination denies the Negro his standing as a human being, shuts him out of the family, and deprives him of the moral dignity with which God clothed him.

Jim Crow and isolation breed distrust, suspicion, and fear. It first confuses and then divides Negro against poor white and poor white against Negro and prevents the common unity of the great mass of American workers that should normally be united together to meet a common situation.

This racist propaganda is out of all step with our belief as Christians. It is contrary to the findings of science and the principles of reason and religion. For our Government to continue to put its stamp of approval upon it by its failure to take any positive step to outlaw it is but to invite the tragic destruction of our democratic institutions.

The United States Senate must pass this bill making freedom from discrimination in employment based on race, creed, color, national origin, or ancestry a policy of the United States Government.

We cannot rest the case for economic security of minority groups in this country solely at the mercy of private and public enterprise. We cannot expect one individual employer to have the moral integrity to stand out against or defy an unjust economic system when our Government and its lawmakers lack the moral courage to resist it or to establish any laws to abolish this discrimination.

Our privileged position as representatives of a minority group makes it painfully easy for us to see the tragedy that would befall our Nation if she should lapse once again into that state of mass frustration and economic depression that immediately preceded her entry into this war and which precipitated the promulgation of Executive Order No. 8802 by the President.

In presenting this argument I speak not only for the "gentlemen of the cloth" but also for the 6,000,000 or more Negro worshippers who make common cause with us and who look to us for spiritual guidance and for Christian statesmanship. The awakened masses of our people have begun to rise and demand their democratic rights. The church is called upon for greater faith and greater courage than it has ever needed before.

The church cannot survive if its membership is dying from poverty, fear, and insecurity.

In response to a mandate issued by the Negro people calling upon the church to present their cause to our Government and its lawmakers, and on April 18 and 19, 1944, Negro clergyman from all denominations and representing 27 States gathered in Washington for the National Conference of Christians for Religion, Democracy, and Building a World Community. Here they promulgated a manifesto setting forth the grievances of our people and establishing our demands for justice. This document was signed by 1,000 Negro pastors of churches and included the following proposal on employment and I quote:

We urge:

1. A progressive public program for full post-war employment without discrimination on account of race, creed, or color, or national origin. Federal legislation guaranteeing freedom from discrimination in employment because of race, creed, or national origin.

2. An end to the efforts on the part of high Government legislative officials to nullify the effectiveness of the Fair Employment Practices Committee.

3. An adequate appropriation of funds to make permanent the work of the Fair Employment Practice Committee.

And again on June 1, 1944, at the annual meeting of the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America, convening in St. Louis, it was

voted to send this manifesto to the President of the United States of America, Members of Congress, Governors of States, mayors of all large cities, and to the resolutions committee of each of the major political parties in convention assembled.

It is the feeling of the church that our Government must have the moral courage to set in motion that kind of political and economic machinery that will enable all its citizens to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We cannot continue to accept this discrimination and degradation even though submission to it seems to have certain initial advantages and resistance may bring suffering upon us. But neither can this Government continue to permit. practices of discrimination that have brought not only us but white men as well to this sorry pass and the continuance of which can only lead to greater woe. The situation must be met frankly and squarely.

We can conceive of no mere disastrous world misfortune than for our divinely favored Nation to forfeit its claim to moral world leadership at this tragic and critical moment in human history, for, following this war-even as during it-we shall stand before the bar of public world opinion to defend our claim to world faith and confidence as a truly democratic commonwealth. Injustice and exploitation do not work. The world and human beings are so made that you cannot organize life securely or permanently on injustice and oppression. Let us then face our common problem together, both church and Government, each of us having the courage to meet opposition with love and with the determination to build a new America in which you and I may stand and walk as free men in a free country. As professed Christians, can we not break over the boundaries of race and act in the spirit of common brotherhood?

We want to take the opportunity to commend this committee and its chairman for the magnificant spirit with which it is conducting these hearings. We want again to commend to your attention the Senate bill 2048 and pledge to this committee the wholehearted support of the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches in America in getting this piece of democratic and Chiristian legislation passed.

We feel that this bill really has the force in it that it is going to take to bring this situation about. The Government in some way or other must take a firmer stand than ever before, because these millions of Negroes that have had such strong faith in the Government are looking to their own Government, that they have never betrayed, to come to their rescue and not allow conditions as they are to continue when it comes to their rights as American citizens.

Mr. CHAVEZ. Thank you, Doctor.

Mrs. Ross.

STATEMENT OF MRS. EMERY ROSS, ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, THE UNITED COUNCIL OF CHURCH WOMEN, NEW YORK, N. Y.

Senator CHAVEZ. Will you kindly identify yourself for the record? Mrs. Ross. Senator Chavez, I am Mrs. Emery Ross, assistant executive secretary of the United Council of Church Women. I am here today representing the committee on social, industrial, and race

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relations of the United Council of Church Women and the national board of the United Council of Church Women.

Senator CHAVEZ. Would you care to make a statement to the committee?

Mrs. Ross. Yes. Thank you very much, Senator Chavez.

First I would like to express our gratitude for the opportunity to make the statement, because we of the United Council of Church Women, with all denominations represented in our group, which is a group united for action, we have some 66 denominations of Protestant Christian women represented within our group, and through these denominations 10,000,000 Protestant church women. I cannot speak for every one of those 10,000,000 women, naturally, but I do speak with authority for our committee on social, industrial, and race relations, whose chairman is Miss Louise Young, of Nashville, Tenn., and for our national board, which, at its meeting in June in Evanston, Ill., passed the following resolutions which I would like to read. Senator CHAVEZ. Where was the meeting held?

Mrs. Ross. In Evanston, Ill.

Senator CHAVEZ. And representatives from the entire United States were there?

Mrs. Ross. That was the national board, and representatives from the entire United States were there; yes, sir.

Senator CHAVEZ. Thank you.

Mrs. Ross. The principles came to us from the committee on social, industrial, and race relations and were adopted by the board June 14, 1944.

Those areas in community life, local and national, which affect individual growth in Christian citizenship and the building of a Christian community, are the concerns of the committee on social, industrial, and race relations. In the United Council of Church Women are represented the needs, experiences, and resources of a wide and varied group-women who spend their lives making homes; women who work in offices, shops, industries, and the professions; women who are leaders in community life; women of different races and nationalities. The problems of any one group are the concern of all. Joint study will promote a better understanding of the problems that restrict our expression of Christian citizenship through community living, and concerted action will be more effective in bringing about needed changes than will the limited approach of denominational groups acting alone. Our belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man means that we must all work together in our communities to establish freedom, opportunity, and justice for all racial, cultural, and economic groups. To this end the following principles are proposed as a basis for study and action by local and State councils:

1. Democratic planning for economic security and the abundant life is an instrument for the realization of our Christian ideals. This means cooperation between industry, labor, and Government in planning so that every adult who desires it may exercise the right of working for a livelihood in useful employment, under fair labor standards, and without restrictions based on sex, creed, race, or nationality.

2. Social security for all workers must be provided for in a Christian democracy. An adequate plan should include provisions for unemployment, old-age retirement, health and medical services, maternity allowance, and child protection. 3. The principle of collective bargaining must be maintained in a Christian democracy.

4. No community can be Christian unless the families of which it is constituted provide the basis for creative Christian nature of its children. Constructive measures for the protection of the home and family include the provision of adequate housing and wholesome living conditions, which help to remove the causes of family tensions and prevent delinquency; and the provision of standards of living commensurate with human needs and self-respect. Such standards are inseparably related to such conditions of work as are set forth in the preceding principles.