ordered the termination of the wartime FEPC in the National War Agencies Appropriation Act of 1946.

President Truman, on July 26, 1949, implemented his recommendations to Congress by issuing an Executive order creating a Fair Employment Board in the Civil Service Commission, with the responsibility of insuring equal opportunity in the employment and promotional policies of the Federal Government.

The several State legislatures have created State fair-employment practices statutes with enforcement powers, namely: New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico, and Rhode Island.

It is well to point out at this time that the passage of the statute in New Jersey strengthened the law in New York, likewise the passage of the Massachusetts FEPC law strengthened the law in New York and New Jersey. The fact that the New England area is now pretty generally covered has added to the effect of the law in each State, and to its effect in the fact that the laws are so much alike in their terms it has enabled a cooperative effort and policy. Howevr, it is well to realize that these State laws will be still needed, after a national law is created, in order to deal with industries that are intrastate in character.

The passage of a national law in this field is entirely consistent with our American constitutional traditions. It is another important step toward closing the gap between our stated ideals and our day-to-day practices. It is the fulfillment of a promise that both political parties made to the American people.

Mr. POWELL. Our last witness for today is Representative Bennett, of Florida.

TESTIMONY OF HON. CHARLES E. BENNETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. BENNETT. My name is Charles E. Bennett. I am the Congressman from the Second Congressional District of Florida, and I appreciate this opportunity to come and speak about the proposed FEPC law.

I listened with interest to what Mr. Burnside said a minute ago when he said he campaigned in support of this law. I campaigned in opposition to the law, and I had a race in the general election last November which was rather revealing as far as race relationships are concerned, because thousands of colored people vote in my district. In the election I opposed the FEPC law, and my Republican opponent was generally believed to support it. As I remember it, I carried the sections which were predominantly colored by about the same ratio as I carried the rest of the district, which was about 10 to 1 in that election.

I would like to say, somewhat by way of introduction, that I am, of course, very much opposed to discrimination of any kind. I have helped to support activity in my district over matters with regard to better race relationships. I am not saying I am the only one, but I have certainly been belligerent and active, regardless of where the chips may fall, and, regardless of the political consequences, I have tried to make for better relationships. They are not perfect, but I personally feel that race relationships are better in the South than

they are anywhere else in the country. I believe that the people get along better there. You will find a lesser percentage of race riots, less hard feeling, and less misunderstanding in the section of the country in which I live than anywhere else in the country.

There are many opportunities for the colored people that have not been fully realized, and there are many things that can be done for the colored people. Specifically, in my home town, I have worked to try to bring about the establishment of proper recreational facilities, and better educational facilities. In the near future, I expect that several miles of beach will be set aside, which is priceless on the Florida shores, as you know, for the colored people in the vicinity of Jacksonville. I expect that a swimming pool will be built there, which I, among other people, have been campaigning for, and been very active in trying to have established.

The schools of the South generally are not what they should be. I have introduced H. R. 1201, which is a bill to provide that the Federal Government shall reimburse the state governments 100 percent for the construction of Negro schools over the next 10 years, the idea behind this being that there is a national responsibility on the part of our Government to assist these people. Our Federal Constitution was a document, a compact, a contract, between the various States by which our Government was established, and it acknowledged and allowed slavery to exist. It even allowed the importation of slaves and the slave trade until 1808. Slavery itself was abolished by fire and sword in the War Between the States, and as a consequence the National Government then washed its hands of the problem which it had helped to create. It left the South impoverished with no Marshall plan, or no program for taking care of either white or colored people.

I believe the National Government has a responsibility to aid the South in both construction and maintenance of Negro schools, although I am not asking for all that. I am just asking in my bill for aid in the construction of the Negro schools. I think the South can carry on the rest. But it is financially unfeasible for any comparable section in the country to construct the schools that should be constructed for the colored people at the present time. The money is just not there. It cannot be done. It would wipe out everything else in the area. In fact, it would exceed the possibilities of the people to pay in taxes.

I have been to see the President about this bill. I have done everything I can to forward it. Now, I realize that I am taking up your time by talking about extraneous matters, and I will get back now to talking about the FEPC law.

I am not ordinarily a very disabled person, but I am slightly disabled. I wonder when you draw up a law like FEPC why it would not be just as logical to say that it should apply to disabled people, or maybe even freckled-faced people, or people that smile the right way or smile the wrong way. How are you going to draw up a law which will be practical and really be a workable law?

I do not believe in drawing laws which offer the people things which are not actually going to come about as a result of that law. We enacted a prohibition law in the hope that everybody would stop drinking. I suspect 999 people out of 1,000 would probably agree that it would be a good thing if liquor had never come on earth and if man

had never discovered it. Most people enjoy it; most people do not get any material harm out of it. But when you do see some of the ones who are seriously injured and whose lives are wrecked as a result, there is not but one conclusion to come to, and that is the fact that we are worse off as a result of its presence.

So we enacted a prohibition law in the hope that it would eradicate the situation. But as a matter of fact it did not.

Now, this law-the FEPC law-as I understand it, is primarily designed to be applicable to the Southland. It will have, naturally, its most numerical impact in that particular area. And how will it be enforced? How will it be carried out? Will it be a mere farce? I am told that in other areas of the country where such laws have been attempted, the law is not enforced in any real sense of the word at all, but that it is just a sham, and that they hire people under the counter, you might say, so as to evade the law.

Now, personally I do not think any man ought to discriminate against any other man because his face happens to be black or his hair happens to be curly. I do not think he should discriminate against him because he happens to be disabled. I do not think he ought to discriminate against him because of his religion. But when you go to saying in a law that a man cannot discriminate, you have done something else. As a practical matter, you have said, regardless of what the words are that you use in the law, that people can litigate the question of whether or not they have been discriminated against. So as a practical matter, the chief result as far as I can see of this particular law will be that there will be litigation and trouble and strife about particular people who cannot get along with their fellow men. They are going to be bringing lawsuits to try to see to it that they are going to be employed, because they happen to be colored, and not because they were discriminated against because they are colored, but people who want to get employment are going to raise this issue and stir up a lot of strife and have a big impact on society involved simply because of some personal desire for aggrandizement or some desire for the particular job involved. Probably it will be more often the former, people who will desire to stir up strife and become the center of controversy and some sort of hero in the eyes of a few people. We do not have that kind of people in the South at the present time. One thing that always astounds me, when I read in the newspapers and magazines and hear over the radio about the relationships of people in the South, is the great distortion of facts. You would almost conclude that everybody condoned lynchings in the South, that people hated the colored people, and that they were always trying to hurt them in every possible way.

As a matter of fact, the situation is just exactly the contrary. I myself come from slave-owning ancestors. I have been reared in the southern tradition. I have never felt, and none of my friends and none of my relatives have felt, that we were superior to any other type of people just because our faces happened to be white. I think the colored people have pride of race. It does not mean that they look down on the white people; it means that they prefer to be among themselves as a general rule. They like to associate among themselves. You cannot change the nature of human understanding across the world.

When I was overseas in the Orient, I happened to be a platoon leader of some American soldiers for a while, and I had asked some

of my friends there among the Filipinos why the Filipino girls did not go more often with the American soldiers. They said, "Well, now, lieutenant, we would be happy to see to it that there are some dates provided for the boys in your platoon if you would like to do that, but most of these girls feel that Filipinos are for Filipinos and Americans for Americans. They will go with the American soldiers just to be friendly. But as far as any serious thing out of it is concerned, it would not take place." That is not because anybody there has a feeling of superiority or inferiority.

I think people who fight for things like FEPC are either not properly informed about the circumstances or they are very much misled in some manner. I think, as a matter of fact, the enactment of an FEPC law will not bring about harmony; it will bring about a lot of evil and a lot of harm. It will stir up all these troubles that have taken place in the past. They are mostly historical at the present time. I am not trying to condemn the press at the present moment, and I certainly would not want to. But when I was overseas in New Guinea I read with astonishment that the number of lynchings in the South averaged about 100 a year. Well, in the next week's Time magazine, I read in a small footnote that actually it had not been quite 6, the average. Instead of 100, it was 6. And as a matter of fact, there have not been any lynchings in my area for many, many years. Since I have been back from overseas, the most inflammatory thing that ever occurred with reference to race relationships involved the question of sex relationships. That perhaps is the basis of most of the difficulties. There have been several horrible rapes by Negro men of white women, including murder, since I have been back, and I have only been back a few years. There has been no lynching involved in it. The men have been tried and they have been sentenced for the thing they were tried for.

In the State of Florida, we have on occasion-several times-convicted white men and sent them up for long terms for raping Negro women. And you would never realize that sort of situation takes place if you read the newspapers or the magazines or listened to the radio commentators. They are just as distorted about that as they are about labor-management laws or many other things. They seem to think that Congress is entirely the puppet of people in the big unions, that everything they do up here is a lot of chicanery, and they are doing it just for political advantage.

So it is with the veterans' pension laws. You would think that Mr. Rankin is a pure demagogue, from reading most of the newspapers, and personally I think he desires very much to solve a situation which is of great importance with regard to our veterans. But you would never guess it from reading the newspapers or the magazines or listening to the radio.

I thought before I came here that there was only one portion of American society which was distorted, and that was the question of relationships between the black and the white people of the South. Since I have come here, I have come to the conclusion that distortion runs the gamut from A to Z, and that there are many things which I can hardly accept when I read the accounts in the usual newspapers. Here in Washington they are a little better.

had never discovered it. Most people enjoy it; most people do not get any material harm out of it. But when you do see some of the ones who are seriously injured and whose lives are wrecked as a result, there is not but one conclusion to come to, and that is the fact that we are worse off as a result of its presence.

So we enacted a prohibition law in the hope that it would eradicate the situation. But as a matter of fact it did not.

Now, this law-the FEPC law-as I understand it, is primarily designed to be applicable to the Southland. It will have, naturally, its most numerical impact in that particular area. And how will it be enforced? How will it be carried out? Will it be a mere farce? I am told that in other areas of the country where such laws have been attempted, the law is not enforced in any real sense of the word at all, but that it is just a sham, and that they hire people under the counter, you might say, so as to evade the law.

Now, personally I do not think any man ought to discriminate against any other man because his face happens to be black or his hair happens to be curly. I do not think he should discriminate against him because he happens to be disabled. I do not think he ought to discriminate against him because of his religion. But when you go to saying in a law that a man cannot discriminate, you have done something else. As a practical matter, you have said, regardless of what the words are that you use in the law, that people can litigate the question of whether or not they have been discriminated against. So as a practical matter, the chief result as far as I can see of this particular law will be that there will be litigation and trouble and strife about particular people who cannot get along with their fellow men. They are going to be bringing lawsuits to try to see to it that they are going to be employed, because they happen to be colored, and not because they were discriminated against because they are colored, but people who want to get employment are going to raise this issue and stir up a lot of strife and have a big impact on society involved simply because of some personal desire for aggrandizement or some desire for the particular job involved. Probably it will be more often the former, people who will desire to stir up strife and become the center of controversy and some sort of hero in the eyes of a few people. We do not have that kind of people in the South at the present time. One thing that always astounds me, when I read in the newspapers and magazines and hear over the radio about the relationships of people in the South, is the great distortion of facts. You would almost conclude that everybody condoned lynchings in the South, that people hated the colored people, and that they were always trying to hurt them in every possible way.

As a matter of fact, the situation is just exactly the contrary. I myself come from slave-owning ancestors. I have been reared in the southern tradition. I have never felt, and none of my friends and none of my relatives have felt, that we were superior to any other type of people just because our faces happened to be white. I think the colored people have pride of race. It does not mean that they look down on the white people; it means that they prefer to be among themselves as a general rule. They like to associate among themselves. You cannot change the nature of human understanding across the world.