Senator KENNEDY. From society and from the government, and a lack of understanding also by the people who live outside of the ghetto to this very bitter condition that exists there.

Dr. KING. That is right.

Senator KENNEDY. I am just extremely concerned, as I should think everybody must be.

Dr. KING. Yes.

Senator KENNEDY. As to what that combination of factors is going to lead to in the United States.

Dr. KING. Yes; it presents all of us with a great responsibility to do everything possible to reach this segment of the population. I think what we see in all of our ghetto is a revolt on the part of the underprivileged who as you say are leaderless, unorganized, and prone to violence.

Senator KENNEDY. And many of the so-called or self-proclaimed leaders of the civil rights organizations don't live in the ghetto. Dr. KING. That is exactly right.

Senator KENNEDY. They have moved outside the ghettos, except for yourself, Philip Randolph, and several others. They come down and talk about what the situation is, but as far as their identification or association with the people there, it just does not exist.

Dr. KING. Yes.

FAILURE TO FACE PROBLEMS WOULD HAVE DAMAGING RESULTS

Senator KENNEDY. I just think that for you as a Negro leader, for those of us who are in the Senate and for ordinary citizens, that it becomes a more explosive problem rather than moving in the other direction.

Let me ask you finally, as a part of that, what you think the effect is going to be in the United States, if we do not do more in dealing with these problems from a Federal level and from a local level, for Negro leaders and white leaders, if we don't do more than we have done say over the period of the last 5 years? What do you think the effect is going to be in this country over the period of the next 5?

Dr. KING. Well, Senator Kennedy, I think it will be very serious. I think it will be damaging to our whole Nation, to its image. I think it will keep us in constant confusion in the United States.

I am absolutely convinced that many people who even at this point still maintain hope will be driven to hopeless positions or hopelessness if they do not see some changes and see changes soon.

The interesting thing about the ghetto is that it is not the monolithic group that so many people think. People talk about the ghetto in so many instances as if there are only bars in the ghetto. There are churches in the ghetto. There is not only hopelessness in the ghetto, but there is hope and the amazing thing is that so many people in our ghettos have maintained hope amid the most hopeless conditions. I would say at least 90 percent. I think maybe 10 percent have been so terribly scarred and have become so pathological that they not only respond to violence but almost anything else, but the interesting thing is that the 90 percent somehow refuse to riot. The 90 percent somehow refuse to take dope. The 90 percent somehow refuse to engage in immoral activities that they are driven to because of hopeless circumstances. This is often overlooked.

NONVIOLENT VICTORIES MUST BE WON

The thing that concerns me is that if something isn't done soon and in a hurry, we are going to begin to lose people in that 90 percent, and this can lead to all kinds of disruption in our society. I am not one to predict violence because I hate violence, and I know that sometimes the prediction of violence can be an unconscious invitation to it. But let me assure you that I would never invite violence. I know it is not only wrong morally but it creates many more social problems than it solves, and it will not be able to solve the problems that we face. But I am absolutely convinced that if the intolerable conditions which Negroes confront in the ghettos of our Nation are not dealt with and removed, and removed with haste, we are going to find ourselves facing many more dark nights of social disruption and many more people will be driven to the nihilistic conclusion that society is so evil that it doesn't intend to solve the problem, and they will just seek to create disruption for disruption's sake, and those of us who believe in and advocate nonviolence will find more and more our words falling on deaf ears.

The fact is that the leaders who try to preach nonviolence and work through the democratic process have not been given enough victories, and only when we are given victories, only when we are able to say that changes have taken place will we be able to keep the ghettos of our Nation moving up and onward in the positive way that I would like

to see.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO MORE

Senator KENNEDY. The Federal Government in your judgment must do far more than we have done in the past?

Dr. KING. Far more. I think we have lagged behind far too much. This is not overlooking the positive and the good things that have been done, but I think the demands now are so great, that we will have to come to see that we have been called to an indescribably important responsibility to do much more and to spend much more

money.

If we would spend $10 or $15 billion a year, and certainly, $20 billion wouldn't be too much, to deal with the blight and the economic insecurity and deprivations that we confront in our Nation, which incidentally would be less than we are spending on the war in Vietnam, this to my mind will certainly mean that we have a concerned government with committed empathy to really determine and face the problems of our Nation.

Senator KENNEDY. Would you also agree that the private enterprise system also has a larger role to play in the country?

PRIVATE-PUBLIC COOPERATION URGED

Rev. KING. Yes, Senator Kennedy, a much larger role. I think it has to be a concomitant relationship between the Federal Government and private industry and private concerns. I think that the responsibilities here have not been taken as seriously as they should have been, and again the challenge is there and the responsibility.

Senator KENNEDY. Dr. King, I congratulate you on many of the fine things that you have done for the Negroes and really for the

United States and for all of us. I also want to commend Reverend Fauntroy, who is your representative here in the city of Washington, for the direction, leadership, and coverage he has shown in our Capital.

Dr. KING. Thank you.

THE WHITE BACKLASH

Senator RIBICOFF. Dr. King, Senator Kennedy and I have been asking you a lot of questions about Negroes. I would like to ask you a final question about whites. Would you comment on the white backlash? Would you comment on the accusations that because of what you have done in Chicago you have caused the white backlash? Would you comment on how white America should get involved in a commitment toward these basic problems?

Dr. KING. Yes, I will be glad to, Senator Ribicoff, and I always speak on this point with a great deal of concern and sometimes passion, because it is a question that I think is so basic now.

LATENT HOSTILITIES ARE BROUGHT OUT

I think there are at least three points that should be brought out here. First, the Negro has not created the so-called white backlash. The white backlash is the surfacing of prejudices, latent hostilities, fears and prejudices that were always there, and they are just now coming out in the open. It is something like a physician discovering cancer in a patient. Nobody says that the physician created the cancer. Indeed, he is commended, because through his expertise, his instruments, his knowledge, he is able to discover, and this is all that we are saying here. The doctor can't be blamed and we can't be blamed. Through our nonviolent activites, we have brought to the surface the fact that cancer still exists in our society and the question of race and racism is still a fact.

Now we haven't even said that it is in its terminal state. We feel that it can be cured. We haven't said that it is incurable. We still believe that, and I think the Nation, the people of Chicago should commend us for bringing this out because you can never deal with a problem unless it is brought out in the open.

LEADERSHIP LAG IS REVEALED

The second point that I think we must see here is that the white backlash reveals that there is a leadership lag. This is one of the points that is so often overlooked. That when for various reasons leaders of influence, whether it is from the church or labor, whether it is from industry or the government, begin to retreat, it creates a vacuum where the forces of ill will begin to take over and begin to appeal to the hatred and the fears of the popular mind.

But let me say finally, and this is the point that I would like to bring out today more than anything else, and that is that America as a nation has never yet committed itself to solving the problem of its Negro citizens, and in that sense the white backlash is not new.

In 1863, the Negro was freed from the bondage of physical slavery, but he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful, and at the same time the Nation was giving away mililons of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, but it was marked for whites only, so to speak, so that America was willing to give its white peasants from Europe the economic floor necessary to grow and develop, and it failed to give to the Negro that kind of economic floor, and so it made his freedom a kind of abstract freedom.

Frederick Douglass said once that emancipation was freedom to hunger, freedom to the rains of heaven, it was freedom without roofs to cover their head, without bread to eat and without land to cultivate, so it was freedom and famine at the same time, and it is very interesting that in a nation which has on the Statue of Liberty a multitude of exiles, that the Negro in one of his sorrow songs had to sing, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child," for he realizes he has never found the maternal care and concern that he should have gotten.

COMMITMENT TO NEGRO PROBLEMS MUST BE MADE

But when we go beyond that we see other things that reveal this. Back in 1875, I believe it was, the Nation passed a civil rights bill and refused to enforce it. In 1964 we got a civil rights bill, and even to this day all of the dimensions of that bill have not been enforced. In 1954 the Supreme Court passed a decision declaring segregation unconstitutional in the public schools, and yet in the South only 10 percent of the Negro students are now attending integrated schools, which means we have made less than 1 percent of progress a year, and on this scale it would take another 92 years to integrate the public schools, and we go right down the line, and when we look at this thing, we have to say that America has been backlashing on basic constitutional and human rights for Negroes for more than 200 or 300 years.

So it isn't new, and the challenge now is for white America to join in a program of concern and of conscience with a timetable to get rid of racial discrimination and all of the vestiges of racism and in all of its dimensions. I think the hour is late and the clock of destiny is ticking out, and we have got to act now.

The problem in America today is not a Negro problem. In the final analysis it is a problem in white America. The crisis of commitment is in white America, and my great concern is that all white people of good will will unite in action programs to get rid of this one huge wrong of the American people.

Senator RIBICOFF. I do appreciate your coming here as the final witness in this set of hearings. I have a statement I would like to read. I would welcome any comment after I finish the statement, Dr. King.

STUDY OF CITY PROBLEMS IN COMBINATION

For 6 weeks now-3 weeks last August and 3 weeks this month-we have explored the problems of the American city.

They are the most complex set of problems we have ever faced in this country-but they are the kinds of problems a mature society inevitably must face and must resolve.

By themselves, each problem is familiar-housing, employment, education, law enforcement, justice, transportation, and many others. But our purpose has not been to study each one in isolation, but to look at them in combination, to understand

That we cannot talk about education without discussing the jobs that permit a man to put his education to use.

That we cannot talk about housing without talking about the health services that should be an integral part of every community.

That we cannot talk about employment without talking about a transportation system that takes a man to work.

That we cannot talk about any of these without talking about the poverty and lack of opportunity facing our minorities.

That we cannot talk about any of our minorities without talking about all of them-the Negro, the Puerto Rican, the MexicanAmerican, the American Indian, and the poor whites.

For we must understand that every fact and facet of American life our people, our problems, our institutions, and our hopes are tied together. This has always been a main thread in the American fabric. But today, when the twin revolutions of technology and human aspirations collide head on in the city, it is an even more important thread.

We have seen evidence of this throughout these hearings. We examined thoe role of the Federal Government in meeting the challenge posed in our cities and we learned that we needed to use all our resources-private as well as public-in this effort.

We examined the thoughts and feelings of individual Americans and we learned that regardless of their income or ethnic background they share the same dreams the rest of us do they want to be part of the American mainstream.

FEDERAL PROGRAMS MUST BE REASSESSED

Thus, the question we must now ask ourselves is: Do our Federal programs fully recognize these facts? Do they unify the country or do they, in the long run, tend to divide the Nation?

Our witnesses have cited case after case in which Federal programs have raised the hopes of many Americans without offering them any real or long-range opportunities to fulfill these hopes. The results have been frustration, alienation, and despair.

Our programs were not designed to produce these results. But if these are the results-if our performance does lag dangerously behind our promise-then the lesson is inescapable: We must reassess our programs, their basic assumptions, and the manner in which the benefits of these programs reach the men, women, and children who live in urban America.

And as we formulate new paths of action, we must take special care to think out clearly and logically where we want to go and how we should get there. We should not place oll our faith in any single ingredient-even money. For huge sums of money will be wasted if we do not know how to get the best return on the Federal dollar.

We should not place our faith in the Government alone. One lesson from these past weeks has been overwhelmingly clear: We must involve