No Miracles

Last week's White House conference on Negro problems was a year in gestation. Lyndon Johnson conceived it in a speech at Howard University last June, then appointed a 30-man council to bring it to life. An amalgam of civil rights leaders, businessmen, educators, labor-union representatives and public officials, the council dreamed up a 104-page report that seemed to ask for a pie in every sky. Specifically, it called for sterner enforcement of civil rights statutes, "guaranteed employment" for all able to work, and equalization throughout the country of per-pupil spending on public education while nearly doubling the figure to $1,000 a year.

The "central issue"? Said the report: "The national Government's response to the compelling cry of the Negro American for justice and true equality has not been matched by state and local government, by business and labor, the housing industry, educational institutions and the wide spectrum of voluntary organizations that, through united effort, have the power to improve our society."

Dissent-Proof. The plan was to submit the report to the 2,300 conference participants, not for their formal approval--there was to be no voting--but only for discussion by twelve working groups. A dissent-proof plan, it seemed. But not quite. First, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNICK) boycotted the conference. Then the Congress of Racial Equality, grown more militant under new leaders, demanded that the conferees frame their own report. CORE National Director Floyd McKissick wanted a resolution demanding U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam, derided the conference as "rigged" by the Administration.

The night before the opening session, a compromise was reached. Resolutions and voting would be allowed within each of the twelve working groups, but the conference as a whole was still barred from formal, collective expression. Yet McKissick's Viet Nam issue left most of the participants unexcited. In only two of the twelve groups did the resolution get as far as a vote, and both times it was defeated overwhelmingly. In the group of which McKissick was a member, the participants even adopted an alternative measure urging Johnson "to continue and intensify his efforts to bring the war in Viet Nam to an early and honorable end."

There was plenty of other dissent. Many delegates were dissatisfied with the lack of specific spending proposals and timetables in the council report. Ruth Turner, a CORE official from Cleveland, wanted a minimum of $8 billion for housing alone. Bill Russell, the professional basketball player, criticized big business for being seen little and heard less at the conference. "What good is education without jobs?" Russell said. "It is big business corporations that control good jobs." Five of the panels urged that the pending civil rights bill on juries and housing be broadened. Others proposed a federal program to upgrade local police forces. One group voted unanimously for an investigation of J. Edgar Hoover's administration of the FBI.

Centuries of Wrong. Outside the Sheraton-Park Hotel, a splinter group called Associated Community Teams picketed. The demonstrators shouted "Uncle Tom!" but failed to keep Negro delegates from entering. The protesters staged a get-together of their own in a nearby Negro neighborhood, where Harlem Rebel Jesse Gray said of the conference: "If they can't do better than this, let the ghettos burn."

Obviously, a two-day conference in Washington could not manufacture instant panaceas, and the President was only being candid when he told the assembly: "Do not expect from me, or any man, a miracle. Do not expect us, even together, to right in one year or four all that took centuries to make wrong." Hubert Humphrey recounted the Negro's progress in recent years but also stressed the difficulties of living up to the conference's high-flown name: "To Fulfill These Rights." Said the Vice President: "This will be a hard, sometimes unglamorous, frequently frustrating responsibility."

Yet the rank-and-file participants must have thought the meeting helpful. Half the panels urged that similar sessions be held at local and state levels and that another national conference be held next year.

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