The CHAIRMAN. That is a matter of opinion. If you belong to an organization that is engaged in crime and that is its principal activity, if that is shown to be the fact, then you belong to an organization that is committing crime.

To label it one that is likely to become a Mafia or something might be justified or might not. Here is what the record shows and I think this is what you referred to. This was Mr. Moore testifying.

The chairman asked him this question:

Do you think public morale or morale of the community has suffered by reason of such a program, in other words, on respect for law and order? Has it enhanced respect for law and order?

Answer by Mr. Moore:

No, it has destroyed respect for law and order. In fact, these kids will tell you that they are beyond the law. They have reached the point where they no longer feel that the law applies to them. This is the same situation you get in the Mafia. They are outside the law.

That is the testimony.

Reverend BRAZIER. That might be true, Senator, of individuals, but I don't think that can be applied to all those thousands of kids in the Woodlawn community.

I refuse to accept Mr. Moore's interpretation.

The CHAIRMAN. It is not saying the Woodlawn community. It is saying the Blackstone Rangers.

Reverend BRAZIER. I say all the children in the Woodlawn community and there are a lot of them in here

The CHAIRMAN. These are the Rangers, the members of the Rangers he is talking about.

Reverend BRAZIER. Senator, what I am trying to say is in Woodlawn you are either a member of the Blackstone Rangers or the East Side Disciples. There are very few who are not members of either one of the groups.

The CHAIRMAN. You say that is a fact. You are testifying to that as a fact. That is an unusual thing that you are a member of one gang or another.

Is it because they have to be a member or suffer violence and intimidation and threats?

Reverend BRAZIER. I would say that you have two points, Senator. I would say that there probably are some individuals who threaten. I am not going to deny that.

I also say, and I witnessed this, that there is a tremendous amount of status and a sense of prestige that these youth feel by being identified with one of these groups.

Don't ask me about that psychology because I am not in a position to say why. What I am saying is that a lot of these youths are in these youth organizations not because somebody threatened, although some may have been threatened but a lot of them I have met are in there because they want to be, they seem to be proud of the fact.

Senator CURTIS. You say there are some that are unwilling?

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes, I would probably say there are some who would be unwilling.

The CHAIRMAN. That have to be in there.

Reverend BRAZIER. That is the case of practically all gangs from time immemorial.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know what the penalty is for not being a member?

Reverend BRAZIER. No, I do not.

The CHAIRMAN. But you do believe that that occurs?

Reverend BRAZIER. I believe that probably that does occur to some degree.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you about something else. Since we are on this phase of it at the moment, do you have information that the Blackstone Rangers who are participating in this program in a paid capacity as instructors, chiefs and so forth, do you have any information that they induced or threatened or intimidated youths in the public school to get out of that school to come and join the Rangers rather than attend this school?

Reverend BRAZIER. I have no basic information on that fact. I have heard that charge.

The CHAIRMAN. You have heard that charge?

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you look into it to see if it is true?
Reverend BRAZIER. We did.

The CHAIRMAN. What did you find?

Reverend BRAZIER. We have not found yet that any person was induced to come into our project by being threatened with bodily harm. Let me enlarge on that a bit, Senator. I am not saying that that could not have happened in individual cases. What I am saying is that that was not the characteristic of our program.

In order to discourage that the Woodlawn Organization, not OEO but the Woodlawn Organization, established a rule that one had to be out of school 6 months before he could get into the project. The CHAIRMAN. Did you enforce that rule?

Reverend BRAZIER. We tried to enforce it.

The CHAIRMAN. How did you try?

Reverend BRAZIER. We sent letters to the public schools, every one of them, asking them if they knew of anybody in our project who should not be in there, who was attending their school.

The CHAIRMAN. Why could you not go to the people in the project. those there working, and ask them about it, ask when they left school? Reverend BRAZIER. We did. We had it on the applications. The CHAIRMAN. They misrepresented to you?

Reverend BRAZIER. Some of them did, yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Did others?

Reverend BRAZIER. I told you in my testimony we dropped 80 at one time because we found out there was misrepresentation in their applications.

The CHAIRMAN. Is it because they had just left the public schools? Reverend BRAZIER. No, it is because they didn't tell us what school. They said they dropped out of one school. When we notified that school that school said they never had any record of them so we just dropped them.

The CHAIRMAN. We have had further testimony here from the school principal that students in the public school who had to cross what is known as Ranger territory were charged by the Rangers $1.25 a week, I believe, to cross their territory.

In other words, each day they crossed they had to pay a quarter, otherwise, they got beat up. What do you know about that?

Reverend BRAZIER. Not a thing.

The CHAIRMAN. You never heard of that before?

Reverend BRAZIER. I heard of a lot of things, Senator. I heard that same principal testify that his school was like a Vietnam battleground. He is a man who is given to sensational testimony. I know that principal well. He overstates. He is a very dramatic person who loves to be on TV and get his name in the paper.

Most principals don't get a chance to make testimony before a Senate committee.

The CHAIRMAN. You are getting your chance.

Senator MUNDT. We never had the principal before us.
Reverend BRAZIER. No, but you had a sworn affidavit.

Senator MUNDT. He did not get on TV.

Reverend BRAZIER. I don't know anything about the affidavit where he said they were charged $1.25. I have heard a lot of things going on but I have no firsthand knowledge of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you deny these things are going on?

Reverend BRAZIER. I can't deny anything that I have no knowledge of. I don't have any knowledge of it.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us go back to this Hairston that you said you let out.

Reverend BRAZIER. No, he resigned.

The CHAIRMAN. You did not let him out. He resigned the day he went to jail.

Reverend BRAZIER. He may have. I know he resigned in my office. I don't know when he went to jail.

The CHAIRMAN. The record shows that it was on September 20, 1967, that he was incarcerated. I believe that is the date of it.

Did you learn why he was sent to jail? He is one of the leaders, the top man in one of these gangs. He is the president. He was in a position of helping in this project.

Reverend BRAZIER. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you learn why he went to jail?

Reverend BRAZIER. Yes, I did. I read it in the newspapers.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you have any other information about it?
Reverend BRAZIER. NO.

The CHAIRMAN. You did not seek any other information about it? Here is a man at the head of your project.

Reverend BRAZIER. What was I supposed to do, Senator? He was in jail.

The CHAIRMAN. You might have ascertained the circumstances under which he went to jail, what the charges were and what the prob

lem was.

Reverend BRAZIER. No, we did not. One of the reasons we did not was because we did not want to be charged with coming to the aid of people arrested and using Government money.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me answer that by saying

Reverend BRAZIER. That is one of the charges that always went around. Whenever they got in jail we suspended them from the project because people were saying we were paying while they were in jail and getting lawyers for them and bailing them out.

So when they got arrested we just stayed away.

The CHAIRMAN. The Reverend Fry said that was his principal occupation.

Reverend BRAZIER. You see, Reverend Fry, I don't know too

much

The CHAIRMAN. You dissociate yourself

Reverend BRAZIER. What I am saying is that Reverend Fry's program was different from this program.

The CHAIRMAN. Is different from this?

Reverend BRAZIER. Different from this program.

Senator CURTIS. This man LaPaglia, he was not connected with this project, was he?

Reverend BRAZIER. No, sir.

Senator CURTIS. He was a part of Reverend Fry's operation?
Reverend BRAZIER. He was part of Reverend Fry's project.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you another thing about it. Do you know anything about kickbacks from the trainees who were attending, kicking back money to the Rangers?

Reverend BRAZIER. I do not.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you hear of that?

Reverend BRAZIER. I did hear of it late in the program, Senator, but I didn't hear of it-you know, it was sort of like something came floating in. Somebody might have mentioned it.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that they could have exacted that from all of them and you not know about it over this long period of time?

Reverend BRAZIER. If no trainee comes in and says, "Reverend, they are making me kick back," if nobody makes a complaint there was no way for me to know that and that never happened.

The CHAIRMAN. Was it not common knowledge in the whole community known by everybody?

Reverend BRAZIER. I didn't know about it. It never came to me.

The CHAIRMAN. After you heard about it, did you investigate that? Reverend BRAZIER. No. I did not investigate because it did not come as a complaint. It did not come as a charge.

It just came as somebody just talking about, I heard somebody had to kick back some money. There was no complaint ever made to me. The CHAIRMAN. Did you have your supervisor check into it? Reverend BRAZIER. We never had a charge to check into.

The CHAIRMAN. You had to have somebody make a charge for you to do the supervising necessary to ascertain whether things like that are happening?

Reverend BRAZIER. We had no knowledge it was happening. Why would we be making any charges on something like that when we didn't have any idea it was going on?

The CHAIRMAN. Did you discuss it at any of your monitor meetings with the police department?

Reverend BRAZIER. I don't remember. We may have, we may not have. I don't recall.

The CHAIRMAN. Would that not have some significance to you of hearing a rumor or statement to that effect that a thing like that was going on, would it not discourage you enough to want to find out if it is true?

Reverend BRAZIER. It would. To my recollection, I never had any problem.

The CHAIRMAN. Would it disturb you to the extent that you would want to try to find out if it is true, if there were reports that they were having marihuana parties and that these folks who are employed here in this project were engaged in peddling marihuana? Would that disturb you?

Reverend BRAZIER. Senator, let me make this point: We were not responsible, nor did we try to assume responsibility, for any activity that anybody became engaged in outside of our project.

The CHAIRMAN. As long as they were in the project if they wanted to get outside and violate the laws it was of no concern of yours?

Reverend BRAZIER. You misunderstand it. It is like in the public schools. The public schools do not take responsibility for one of their students who goes out and sells marihuana.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not talking about students. I am talking about teachers here. If one of your teachers went out and sold marihuana, wouldn't your schools do something about it?

Reverend BRAZIER. Would the schools do something about it? Let me make this point, Senator

The CHAIRMAN. He did it outside of school.

Reverend BRAZIER. Let me make this point. We are talking about a hypothetical case.

The CHAIRMAN. I am not. I am getting down to specific cases. Reverend BRAZIER. No one has said to me that "your teachers are selling marihuana, your instructors are selling marihuana, your assistant project directors are selling marihuana." No one has come to me and made that charge. I don't know what they were doing on their own. But we do know this, we had a difficult population and we knew probably some of them would get in trouble with the law even after getting into this project.

We were dealing with this population.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know what Hairston was arrested for? Reverend BRAZIER. I thought it was on a charge of murder. I read that in the newspapers.

The CHAIRMAN. Soliciting to murder. You had no further interest in it other than what you read in the newspaper notwithstanding he occupied this position?

Reverend BRAZIER. I did have an interest in anybody who was in jail but I did not see any reason for me to play the part of investigator to go and find out why he was in this.

The CHAIRMAN. You said it was no burden on you to play the part of an investigator. Here is a man employed to teach youth.

Reverend BRAZIER. He was not employed to teach youth.

The CHAIRMAN. What was he doing?

Reverend BRAZIER. He was assistant project director.

The CHAIRMAN. He was directing a project?

Reverend BRAZIER. He was not directing. He was helping to direct. The CHAIRMAN. When the director was not there would he be directing?

Reverend BRAZIER. The director was always there.

The CHAIRMAN. How do you know that?

Reverend BRAZIER. Because the first part