ment of Justice will not adequately represent the interest of the Chicano students.

Senator MONDALE. Of those lawsuits and the number of school districts involved, how many of them are being brought predominantly to correct discrimination affecting Mexican Americans?

Mr. OBLEDO. If I am wrong, I know I will be corrected, but I don't believe any of them were Mexican American problems.

Mr. VELA. None of those suits are basically being brought to correct discrimination against Mexican Americans. They are all concerned with eliminating the former dual system of Negro schools. The Mexican American is just added to it as a result of the Corpus Christi case.

Mr. OBLEDO. We have also filed a brief in the Houston school case which is now pending in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. asking the court to remand the case back to the district court level for consideration of that which constitutes the problem.

HEW MEMORANDUM

The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare issued on May 25 a memorandum from J. Stanley Pottinger, chief, Office of Civil Rights, to school districts with more than 5 percent national origin-minority group children-placing on those districts an affirmative duty to provide these children with an equal educational opportunity. It remains to be seen just what weight the courts will give to this memorandum.

I will, however, commend the Health, Education, and Welfare Office of Civil Rights for its action. It is clearly a thrust in the right direction.

EDUCATION FOR STABLE DESEGREGATION FEDERAL ROLE

The Chicano educational problems have previously been outlined. Now what about the remedies? They fall into both moral and legal categories. It is already well established that morality cannot be legislated.

Despite this, statutory enactments can pave the way for uplifting an educational system in need of change and direction. In this connection, the following could be given consideration:

1. Providing financial assistance to families who cannot afford to keep their children in school due to economic reasons or, in the alternative, providing stipends to potential dropouts or "push-outs."

By "push-outs," I mean those children who are being pushed out of the educational system.

2. Providing direct financial incentives to teachers with bilingual abilities-and I might add, bicultural-willing to teach in districts with a substantial number of minority group children.

3. Providing educational grants to students desiring to undertake graduate studies in any field since the Mexican American group has very few persons with degrees above the bachelor's level.

4. Providing additional funds to school districts who undertake productive, imaginative, and dynamic academic programs to aid the socioeconomically and culturally deprived student.

5. The expansion of the Federal Teacher Corps, a counterpart to the Peace Corps and VISTA, whose function would be to utilize and train Mexican American teachers for use in school districts undertaking such projects as are mentioned above.

6. Providing expenses to disadvantaged families for the purposes of moving out of school districts which continue to deprive students of equal educational opportunities so they can relocate in school districts meeting their needs.

EQUAL EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY: NATIONAL PRIORITIES

Going back over these six recommendations, you notice they all call for money expenditures, for funds, for additional moneys, perhaps, and yet, I am sure that someone will say, "We are already overburdened with finances."

Yet, as you well know, commitments of moneys are being made to efforts outside the educational field. I believe that these funds could be diverted into the educational field to provide for programs such as this.

As Senator Mansfield stated yesterday about the ABM's and the SST's, it is best to provide for the ABC's. I am in agreement with that statement.

We could curtail some of the foreign commitments and perhaps these funds could be diverted to the programs I have recommended here.

COMPLIANCE

Statutory remedies against school districts who continue practices of violating equal educational opportunities could be as follows:

1. The granting of funds to private nonprofit educational organizations rather than to the State boards of education or school districts so those groups could undertake the responsibility of providing equal educational opportunities.

2. Providing payment of legal fees for those persons being deprived of equal educational opportunities so they may seek legal redress in the courts.

3. Providing for punitive and exemplary damages against school districts and school officials proven responsible for discriminatory practices in contravention of constitutional rights.

4. Placing in Federal receivership those school districts which. intentionally or otherwise, fail to provide equal educational opportunities.

To facilitate the enforcement of these remedies, the Mexican American should be classified as a class apart, as a significant identifiable group, as the brown in contrast to the black and the white.

Too often we have had integration plans submitted to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare where the brown and the black were "integrated" for purposes of compliance. This, in my opinion, contravenes the intent of the law.

The chicano population, as stated at the outset, is in worse posture, educationally speaking, than any other sizable group, save.

perhaps, the Indian, which doesn't measure in size to the Mexican American.

In other areas of concern, it is equally as disadvantaged. One need only casually tour the Southwest to verify visually what has been stated by me orally.

It is on the sound education of the people that the security and destiny of every nation chiefly rest. The firm foundations of government are laid in knowledge, not ignorance.

We have within the confines of our country a vast pocket of Mexican American citizens, a significant identifiable class, caught in a web of hopelessness woven by the archaic educational system now in operation.

To untangle such conditions and free the aspirations of a people desiring first-class citizenship should be a task of first priority.

Senator, under the Civil Rights Act, if I am correct, for purposes of the act, de facto segregation and racial imbalance is not considered. This is where the main problem of the Mexican American lies.

We have schools that are virtually all Mexican American. Schools now with the plans that have been submitted to Justice and HEW where the black and the brown have been combined, have the same problems, of home and environmental problems.

Those are the things that are going to have to be solved by this Nation upon recommendations by this committee to the Congress. I think that one of the recommendations that I have made hereand I don't think it would be out of order-is when a school district fails to comply and fails to grant individuals equal educational opportunities and I mean meaningful educational opportunitiesthen they ought to be placed in receivership and have the Federal Government go in and take over a school district and say, "Gentlemen, we are going to run this school system as it ought to be run, to provide these people the opportunity to compete, if they wish to compete, but at least give them the opportunity to do so."

SCHOOLS AND SOCIAL POLICY

We have the other attending problems, as the Senator knows, of housing, health, and so forth. They all tie in. It is a vicious cycle of where do you start, where do you break this chain.

I think education, perhaps, would be a proper starting place to try to correct the other problems that we have.

I might state, Senator, that in my experience and in my opinion, the problems of the Mexican American of this Nation are greater than the problems of the black, and the problems of any other group.

I don't know what it is going to take to bring it to the forefront. The Legal Defense Fund is litigating in the courts. Other groups are performing their own tasks. All, I suppose, of what has been called by so-called responsible leaders, in a commendable fashion. But the people are tired of the commendable fashion that we have been operating under. It is going to be to responsible persons in the Congress, and more in the Federal agencies, than anywhere else, to try to remedy these situations.

I would be glad to elaborate on any of the recommendations that I have made, or to discuss with this committee any of the lawsuits which we have filed.

I might bring to the attention of this committee that it was really the Mexican American that brought the issue of desegregation to the forefront back in 1948 and 1946, in 1949 and 1951, when the Mexican American litigated the issue of segregation.

On those cases rests Brown v. the Board of Education. We had those problems in the Southwest. Of course, we contend we still have them, and we intend to prove that those issues are still prevalent in the Southwest.

Senator MONDALE. Thank you very much for an excellent statement. I am greatly impressed by what this new generation of young lawyers is doing for the system of law in this country and for society.

You are pioneering work with enormous potential. We see similar efforts from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the League Service Program, where the lawyers are given the freedom to bring the kinds of lawsuits that should be brought, from the Ralph Naders and the rest. These citizens are making the Constitution and the system of laws begin to work for justice and for society. However, we have a long way to go.

I will just ask one question now because we want to hear from the full panel and then question you all.

NIXON BILL: LAWYERS FUND

The President has proposed that we spend $1.5 billion through the Emergency School Assistance Act to achieve successful desegregation in our country as he defines it.

There have been proposals that a proportion of those funds, say $100 million or $200 million, be set aside to be paid possibly under court supervision to plaintiffs for legal fees and costs incurred in successful desegregation lawsuits on the theory that the Justice Department certainly is undermanned, if not, as some uncharitably suggest, somewhat short of will.

In any event, little is being done to protect the cherished Constitutional right to an equal education for whatever reason, and certainly just as the local school district hires a lawyer at public expense to resist desegregation, those who assert their Constitutional rights should be able to collect reasonable fees and costs if they are successful in a lawsuit.

Does that approach make sense to you?

Mr. OBLEDO. Yes, sir, very much so. Some of the school boards are concerned about having to pay the legal expenses involved in these lawsuits. Others, of course, take the attitude of rather than paying legal costs, complying with the law.

I would be in favor of providing moneys to the successful litigants in these segregation lawsuits, and to successful litigants that are being deprived of equal education opportunities.

Senator MONDALE. Would that be of help to your organization in spreading your limited funds?

Mr. OBLEDO. It would be of tremendous help.

Senator MONDALE. I think there has been a good response to that suggestion. Some of these lawsuits, as you know, are dreadfully expensive. If you could just recoup your reasonable legal fees, for a small amount of seed money, you could generate more of the kinds of lawsuits that need to be brought.

Since the fees would only be paid at the conclusion of a successful lawsuit, it couldn't be charged that this policy would generate frivolous lawsuits.

Mr. OBLEDO. Those expenses run very high. We have approximately 150 cases pending now in the different areas of education, employment, housing, things of the sort. We have to keep close watch on every penny we spend.

Senator MONDALE. In title VII cases, equal employment cases, you can recover reasonable fees and that makes a considerable difference, does it not?

Mr. OBLEDO. It certainly does. It makes it also attractive to the private practitioner to file those lawsuits because of the provision in the law that allows for attorney's fees in the case of the plaintiff being successful in the lawsuit.

I might add at this juncture, Senator, on my recommendations, where I call for these expenditures, the entire answer, of course, is not going to be money, eventually, and violence. It is going to depend on the morality of man. You can spend this money but if the person at the local level administering these programs does not have the attitude of doing justice to mankind, then the money, of course, is only part of the remedy.

Senator MONDALE. Our next witness is Father Henry Casso, Director of Development and Education, Department of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Father, we are delighted to have you with us.

STATEMENT OF FATHER HENRY J. CASSO, DIRECTOR, DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, MEXICAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND, LOS ANGELES OFFICE Father CASSO. Senator Mondale, may I take advantage of these first moments to express my personal admiration and appreciation for the vision and foresight shown by this committee in providing time that Mexican Americans representatives have the opportunity to share the tragedies, the happenings, the hopes and dreams of a great people in whose hands, it is my opinion, lies much of the tomorrow for this country of ours, especially as increased dealings with the 260 million people in the 26 countries to the south becomes more a political and economic necessity.

I think it is very interesting, if I might digress, to note that our President is visiting Mexico for the next 2 days.

In 1968, a new phenomenon emerged for the first time among the Mexican Americans in this country.

What I would like to do in this presentation is to show you what is happening with the young through the walkouts that have happened around the country by the Mexican American students, zeroing in first and foremost on the secondary level, and then to