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The ridiculousness of the testimony is shown by the fact that the newspaper accounts say that Mr. Rose claimed I received the command from Mr. Hairston after he was arrested. Yet, the truth is that I was never allowed to visit him in jail. The fact is, I reiterate, that I have never received or passed on commands or suggestions for illegal activity. I am also not aware of any illegal activities being carried on in our church. I know of no violence, gambling, or other crimes there. I have seen no indication of such activities.

(At this point Senator Curtis entered the hearing room.)

Reverend FRY. It is true that guns were found in the church safe in the first raid which I mentioned earlier. What has not been told to you, as far as I know, is that the church was the repository for a large number of weapons, under an arrangement entered into with the Treasury Department of the United States and Chicago police. And after collection, the Treasury was given all weapons in violation of Federal law, and the remaining weapons were left in the church safe, after being inventoried by Treasury and the police. Thus, these official bodies knew we were the repository, and yet the police raided us. As for the claims which I have read that some weapons were withheld from the collection and hidden in the church, I can only say that I never before heard such claims, and to the best of my knowledge, they are untrue.

Finally, I have counseled no riots, I have counseled abandonment of weapons, not the possession or use of them. In short, the claims of illegal activity by me, under my direction or in the First Presbyterian Church, are wholly false. The wholly imaginary nature of those claims can be shown by such clear facts as that Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, contrary to the newspaper accounts of the claims of Mr. Rose, never have been in our church.

Let me turn now to the actual activities which I have carried on. I want you to know exactly what my association with the Blackstone Rangers has been. I am pastor of a congregation which sanctions and sponsors a ministry to the Woodlawn community. A part of this general ministry has been to support the elementary constitutional rights of citizens, and to participate with them in their efforts to achieve full justice. This has involved us deeply in association with the Blackstone Rangers, because their constitutional rights were most regularly and grievously endangered.

Our church has arranged for funds which have been used to provide legal defense and bail bonds for the Blackstone Rangers. The Chicago police apparently disagree with our intention to assure fair and full trials for Blackstone Rangers, and have conducted a vigorous multifaceted campaign designed to make us abandon our program. Misleading information has been placed in the hands of the press. The so-called raid on the church on November 10, 1966, was transparently aimed at establishing, in the minds of Chicagoans, the untruth that we have stored guns in the church for use by the Blackstone Rangers. The police have sought to create the impression that many individual shootings on the South Side were somehow related to the First Presbyterian Church.

Police officials and even Warden Moore have made speeches in which, by innuendo, and often direct statement, they have sought to implicate the church and myself as participants in widespread crimi

nal activity. The warden's statement before this committee is an indication of what I am describing.

But gentlemen, the church has nevertheless not abandoned its efforts to secure justice and improve our community. The more intense the pressure applied on the church, the more the church has determined to maintain this ministry.

Our ministry is much more than legal support, important though it is. We have found that the Blackstone Rangers are an organization of great influence and promise. They are not a gang. They are a community organization. They organized originally in order to survive in a very hostile and violent environment. They quickly came to substantial size and prominence. They are determined to use their numerical strength, and to hold themselves together for the single purpose of maintaining hope for full justice, real equality, and freedom in fact, and in the hearts of all black brothers.

They have thus used their organization to reduce violence and to create order in an otherwise chaotic environment. Our church has seen this organization sponsor a widely acclaimed musical revue, "Opportunity, Please Knock." Its first performance was held in our church, and they have gone on to nationwide television. We have seen the Rangers develop plans for commercial ventures, and their fulfillment has been limited only by lack of capital, not by any lack of desire to develop an honest capacity for self-support and dignity.

We have seen the Rangers seek adequate recreational facilities for South Side youth and children. We know their determination to win better housing.

Our church supports them in their drive for freedom. Our church supports their refusal to "go along" with a racist system.

Our church supports their efforts to obtain self-sufficiency and organization, so as to obtain a fair measure of life's blessings.

Without this achievement, they would be driven toward the activities of which they are so often unjustly accused; they would have only the options of being killed or put in jail. They do not want that kind of future and are determined to have a major and deciding voice in what the future brings.

I am here to tell you that the outrageous allegations made before this committee have not deterred us for 10 seconds. We shall maintain our friendship with and support of the Blackstone Rangers.

I do not know what inspired the malicious set of false allegations which have been presented to this committee. But I hereby call them lies and point out that the honor and integrity of this committee has been assaulted when a man under oath tells you such successive lies. Perjury has been committed before you, if newspaper accounts are accurate. And law, and your integrity have been violated by such testimony.

I come before you, however, not for the basic purpose of showing my innocence or supporting my church. Our consciences and record are clear. I come before you to give facts and conclusions which establish the merits of the TWO job training program.

Let me point those merits out to you:

1. The poor have participated in a direct, maximum feasible way in the creation and execution of this program. Woodlawn residents

(both adult members of TWO and youth members of the Blackstone Rangers and East Side Disciples) cooperated in the working of the program. These are black people who are dedicated to the American idea of self-determination and self-support.

2. The program has proved that the male youth organizations of Woodlawn are capable of participation in the general life of their community and are not in fact so-called criminals who deserve to be killed or put in jail as some policemen have, I am told, callously testified before you.

These are ghetto youth, gentlemen. They have organized themselves in order to survive. Do not be put off because these organizations are called gangs. They are community organizations, meant to collect and express power in a general environment that has done everything it can to beat and plunder them. These organizations eagerly turned toward this job training program. They expressed far greater maturity than their persecutors have. And for their effort, they are now being vilified before the Nation.

3. At least 100 young men did actually secure jobs as a result of the program. Beyond that, however, I suggest to you that there could have been 500 or even 1,000 young men working right now, had the program received cooperation from more employers and from the administration of the city of Chicago.

The fault does not lie with the program's design. The fault lies with the fear, and perhaps prejudice, of potential employers, deterred by false allegations.

Yet in spite of great handicaps, 100 young men have begun work, and 400 others are now prepared for employment when Chicago is ready to hire them.

4. Woodlawn still stands. Woodlawn stood, unharmed by riots, during the summer of 1966, when the West Side of Chicago suffered heavy destruction. (This was well before any job training funds had been granted.)

Woodlawn stood unharmed during the winter of 1967 when major looting was occurring over the rest of the city.

Woodlawn stood unharmed when many American cities were exploding, during the summer of 1967.

And Woodlawn stood unharmed during the major disorders in Chicago, following the murder of Dr. King. Why?

Woodlawn has strong community organizations. It has TWO. It has the Blackstone Rangers and the East Side Disciples. These people care for their community and seek to preserve it and better it. The great merit of the job training program was that it contributed to the hope and expectations of the community and helped to strengthen its determination to be peaceful.

Violence is lower in Woodlawn than in any other all-black poverty area of Chicago. This condition was not bought by any Federal dollars. Please do not boast too much about those dollars. Dollars alone cannot do it.

This condition has come about because the people of Woodlawn have organizations they believe in, and have real leaders. But resources aid these efforts, and gentlemen, these organizations need your support, not your denigration.

5. The greatest merit of the job training program lies at the place it has been most unfairly and regularly criticized; namely, that it has employed subprofessional youth of limited educational experience as teachers. What this program has proved is that they can and have taught more to these young men than the whole of the Chicago public school system has been able to teach, filled as it is with qualified professionals. The reason is simple but vital. The secret of teaching is making the pupil want to learn. The subprofessionals have done that superbly well; have done what no other teachers have been successful in doing. We never expected these subprofessionals to be expert teachers, or to have expert qualifications as professional educators; we expected them to inspire desire and a willingness to learn, and to place carefully selected learning materials in the hands of trainees. They did this effectively. This is a breakthrough. This process and success represents the basis for the theory and redesign of all ghetto education; I predict that in the future, ghetto education will, in fact, be generally characterized by the extensive use of subprofessionals in actual contact with pupils, and that we shall, as a nation, get our educational task performed, while now we are failing badly.

I plead with you not to accept with too great eagerness the testimony introduced here by men who fear political independence. TWO, the Blackstone Rangers, the East Side Disciples are politically independent. They do not fall automatically into line. I fear they are going to be branded as criminal, as a means of breaking this spirit of political independence. It is not yet a crime in our Nation to demand rights, and to express self-determination. Yet in the eyes of Chicago officialdom, this is the basic crime of these organizations. I implore you, as representatives of all of the people of this land, to support the thoroughly American positions and efforts of these groups. And I earnestly ask OEO to refund this program immediately.

Thank you for your kind attention, for your promptness in inviting me here, Mr. Chairman, and allowing me to respond to these charges. I shall, of course, be pleased to answer your questions.

The CHAIRMAN. There seems to be a basic conflict-maybe that is an understatement-there seems to be a basic conflict between your concept of the merit and of the value of this program and of who is more capable and competent to administer it and to teach the youth than what is the usual, customary, and what has heretofore been thought or believed to be a much better way.

Let's start with your last statement so we can get it in proper perspective with respect to your views and with respect to what we practice and what is our custom in this country.

If I understand the last statement you made, you say that the uneducated, incompetent, nonprofessional can teach the underprivileged in the ghettos, if we want to use that expression, and teach them better than can the competent professional teachers.

Is that true?

Reverend FRY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Then we make a mistake when we provide public schools for them with professional teachers, do we?

Reverend FRY. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. People who are competent to teach them, is that the wrong approach to educating our youth?

Reverend FRY. No, sir, I believe

The CHAIRMAN. If this is good, what you are recommending here, why shouldn't we follow it instead of having professional teachers and the regularly constituted public schools?

Reverend FRY. My point, Mr. Chairman, was and is that within a redesigned framework many subprofessionals working, of course, in cooperation with expert educators, and working with very carefully prepared and selected learning material can establish the kind of basic contact which is so essential to successful education.

The CHAIRMAN. What do we mean by basic contact? If they go to public school, they get the same contact that all other students get, don't they?

Why are we now suggesting that we abandon the school system that we have with respect to people who come in the category of the Blackstone Rangers, and employ Blackstone Rangers who are incompetent, who have no education, to teach Blackstone Rangers and then say they have been able to teach them something, or have them learn from these persons what they couldn't learn from professional teachers?

I would like some clarification on this. It confuses me. I don't understand that approach to education. Maybe we have been doing it all wrong all these years.

Reverend FRY. Mr. Chairman, there is an enormous and regular alienation

The CHAIRMAN. Enormous what?

Reverend FRY. There is a regular and enormous alienation between ghetto youth and the public school. This is more or less a regular feature of ghetto life throughout the United States.

I am suggesting that one way in which we might modify our present way of doing public school business is to employ subprofessionals in median roles between the professional educator and the pupil, and in that median role provide motivation and incentives which are so crucial to the success of an educational venture, and overcome, thus, the alienation.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought we wanted to give them better education. How are you going to give them better education when you have people who are not educated themselves trying to teach them? That is the blind leading the blind, in my view.

I don't see how in the world you can do it. Do you? What kind of education are you talking about? Maybe I am on the wrong track. Reverend FRY. The basic program of education in the United States, that children not only learn their entire heritage but are preparedThe CHAIRMAN. Learn what?

Reverend FRY. That they are prepared to function in the general American society with facility in reading skills, in mathematical skills. I am talking about that kind of education, as I am sure you are. The CHAIRMAN. I am talking about an education that leads a person to read and write, to start from there and learn something.

You say they can better be taught that by nonprofessionals, some of whom don't even know how to read and write themselves, than they can be professionals.

Is that your theory?

Reverend FRY. In the immediate role between a professional apparatus and the pupil, I am suggesting that the use of subprofessionals would be most creative and beneficial, yes, sir.

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