Box 19, Folder 18, Document 39

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Box 19, Folder 18, Document 39

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————_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—_—— — ie





Toward Equality

The three sat before a cluster of
microphones in the offices of At-
torney General Robert F. Kennedy
—-a Negro woman, leader of a
racial protest movement in Cam-
bridge, Md.; a white man, an offi-
cial of that city; and Mr. Kennedy.
Their voices were weary 4s they
spoke into the microphones, telling
of an agreement for racial peace
in Cambridge which they had ham-
mered out in.eight hours of non-_
stop negotiation. But their words
were words of hope—‘“orderly de-
segregation... anew era... 4%

victory for all.” “reverb

The scene last Wednese’ !r°
its promise of a settlemen’
has been a particularly ~
cal dispute, was symbol’
tain shift in the situe
national scale, Both amon_
leaders and local white of
a greater willingness for ac
modation seems to be emergius,
and greater efforts are being made
to prevent the Negro protest move-
ent from getting out of hand.

Buttons for ‘March’

Thus, the principal Negro or-
ganizations showed last week that
they were keenly aware of fears
that their “March on Washington”
Aug. 28 could lead to outbreaks of
violence and a backfire of Con-
gressional resentment that could
hurt their cause. A special coordi-
nating committee began distribut-
ing “March on Washington’ but-
tons among the church and social
groups sponsoring the civil rights
rally. Along with the buttons went
precise instructions for weeding
out potential trouble-makers, as-
sembling in Washington for a pa-
rade up P yivania Avenue—
and getting out of town by night-
fall. ’

_ Thus, also, came evidence that
‘White Dixie was not quite as solid
ation as some of its





ate Commerce Committee, which is
holding hearings
on the Admin-
istration’s civil <@--
rights bill, ap-é

peared the Mayor
of Atlanta, Ivan
Allen dr., with
an appeal that moe
made the committee chairman,
John P. Pastore of Rhode Island,
ott faenranA in curnrise. Mavor

“Press Secretary Pierre Salinger
. : ene Lekeke f A *

he aimed (1) to make Titi HIS) CMe SHIMS = ony ecsiuisssrpereee nnn

leadership of the liberal wing of
the party; (2) to offset the damage
caused to his popularity by his re-
cent remarriage and (3) to polar-
ize his points of difference with
Mr. Goldwater, now regarded as
the frontrunner for the nomina-
tion. Mr. Rockefeller had said a
week earlier that some of the Sen-
ator’s “radical right’’ supporters
were planning an election cam-
paign based on “writing off” the
Negro vote and called on Mr. Gold-
water to disavow the “lunatic
fringe” of the party and the John
Birch Society.
The New Yorker never got to
start 7 OAAE HA A mines es ta triOd
sey? PSY Prout neverthe-
/emocrats, holding a 34-
+ in the nation’s State
aought to avoid the di-
uestion by voting to abol-
| conference's resolution com-
But the strategy back-
_fhe Democrats managed to
+ themselves look like mem-
bérs of a party trying to sweep
an issue under a rug. The in-
fighting produced’ this exchange
between Governor Rockefeller and
Goy. Richard Hughes of New

Jersey.
Mr. Rockefeller said: “This
clearly makes the Republican

party the party of civil rights.”
Mr. Hughes replied that, if the
Republican governors concur in
this, let them instruct their Con-
gressional delegations that, “We've
switched signals now; we'd like
you to support President Ken-
nedy’s civil rights program.”

Chiding by President

But even the President seemed
to chide the Democrats, He told a
group of teenagers who had voted
a resolution condemning discrim-
ination at the “Boys Nation’ in
Washington that they had shown
“more. initiative in some ways
than the Governors Conference.”

any specific issue,” but Mr.
nedy’s words were out.

In general the feeling was that
Mr. Rockefeller had scored a suc-
cess by dominating the news at
the conference, forcing the racial
issue and putting it up to Mr.
Goldwater to declare his feelings
about support from rightists and
segregationists. And, said one un-
committed Western Governor: “He

their relationship to national
needs;” second, “the family rela-

.tionship between immigrants and

persons already here, so that the
reuniting of families is encour-
aged;” third, “the priority of reg-
istration,”—i.e., first come, first
served. Total immigration would
be increased slightly, to about
165,000 a year.

Possible Changes

The general rule would be that
no country could provide more
than 10 per cent of the total an-
nual immigration; actual details
of how the 165,000 spaces would
be distributed have yet to be
worked out. For some nations, the
change would increase immigration
to the U.S.—Italy’s total could rise
to 16,500. For others, there would
be a decrease—English immigra-
tion, now about 25,000 a year out
of a 65,000 quota, would be limited
to 16,500. For any nations that
would be “disadvantaged” in this
way, the President requested au-
thority to raise the 10 per cent
figure. Mr. Kennedy also asked
for repeal of the “national origin”
laws, which require that if half a
person’s ancestors come from an
Asian or Pacific nation he must
be considered under the quota of
that nation, no matter where he
himself was born or lives. Thus a
person of Japanese descent living
in England must apply under
Japan's quota. Mr. Kennedy called

that a “discriminatory formula’ to-

prevent the admission of Orientals.

It is doubtful that Congress will
get to the bill this session. When
it does, the outlook in the Senate

‘is good. But in the House it is.

dim, despite the death this year of
Representative Francis Walter, the
most powerful opponent of major
changes in the quota system. The
House traditionally is reluctant to
increase immigration, particularly
in times of widespread unemploy-
ment. And it is also likely to be

countries,

Embassy Row

With increasing frequency, for-
eign governments represented in
Washington have been abandoning
their embassies in downtown com-
mercial areas and moving out to
fashionable residential sections.

to themselves t
to interfere in (
ness. Their case
fore the House
partment, whicl
Russians build |
so that the Rus
let the United
its cramped Mo
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the department
to assure newly
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to find embassy
ton,

Man font

Project Apol
on the moon bei
of the Russian:
down by what |
say has been
feud between I
director of the
gram, and Jan
the National Ac
Administration,
observers, Mr.
ruffled by wh:
terference by
to-day admini
Last month Mr
resign, and it v
Mr. Webb wou
est in the selec
for the mann

Last week =
man—Dr. Geo)
a vice preside
nology Laborat
with 23 years’
ous aspects
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a move that it
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colleague, of
charges (inte
driving and

an accident).
May 19; five
when a ear,
Mr, Martini:
reened head-
cle. The cas
ET

ce le A

a ee

ate Commerce Committee, which is
holding hearings Y
Admin-

a,




on the 6
istration’s civil
Tights bill, ap-
peared the Mayor!
of Atlanta, Ivan ‘
Allen Jr., with “*% ee
an appeal that we
made the committee chairman,
John P. Pastore of Rhode Island,
sit forward in surprise. Mayor
Allen said that Atlanta and other
Southern cities need the help of
a new “national law” banning all
sepregation as “slavery’s step-
child.”

Nevertheless, all over the coun-
try racial unrest was continuing,
breaking out in new areas even as
it subsided in others. Last Fri-
day’s issue of the New York Times
carried 25 stories dealing with
various aspects of the Negro move-
ment; half the items were about
pickets, demonstrations, arrests.
And there was still doubt as to
whether the civil rights bill, the
Administration's main answer to
the problem, will be enough to
restore peace to the country even
if it passes with its key provision
—a ban on discrimination in publi
accommodations—intact.

Legal Controversy

On that score, some legislators
have objected to the bill because
it is based on Congress's power to
regulate interstate commerce; they
feel this may involve improper
infringement on private property
rights, and they would prefer to
base the ban on the “equal protec-
tion of the law” clause of the 14th
Amendment, Last week the Ad-
ministration accepted a proposal
by Senator Kenneth B. Keating,
Republican of New York, that the
bill be based on both the com-
merce clause and the 14th Amend-
ment. One witness in Congress,
Dean Erwin M. Griswold of the
Harvard Law School, suggested
reliance on both those clauses and
also a third—the 18th Amendment.
This amendment freed the slaves,
and Dean Griswold argued that
discrimination is a “vestige of
slavery.”

The compromises thus suggested
improved the bill’s prospects, but
the main question is whether the
Administration can round up the
two-thirds majority it will need in
the Senate to break the filibuster
planned by the Southern Demo-
erats. For that it will need all the
non-Southern Democratic votes,
plus 22 of the 83 Republican votes,
and whether these votes are to be
had is still in doubt.

Rockefeller’s Round

Once a year, the Governors of
the 50 states meet at the National
Governors Conference. Its declared
purpose is “to serve as a medium

for exchange of views on subjects

a

President “was not referring to
any specific issue,’ but Mr. Ken-
nedy's words were out.

In general the feeling was that
Mr. Rockefeller had scored a suc-
cess by dominating the news at
the conference, forcing the racial
issue and putting it up to Mr.
Goldwater to declare his feelings
about support from rightists and
segregationists. And, said one un-
committed Western Governor: “He
made a lot of friends here.”

Miami Beach made it certain that
Mr. Rockefeller is not counting
himself out of the race. Corrobora-
tion came from Albany, where it
was learned that he plans a swing
through nine states this fall and
the usual candidate's tour of Eu-
rope. This weekend, he is taking
his case before some 2,000 leading
Californians.



‘The Huddled Masses’

In 1958 the junior Senator from
Massachusetts, John F, Kennedy,
wrote a pamphlet called “A Na-
tion of Immigrants.” In it he de-
clared:

“The famous words of Emma
Lazarus on the pedestal of the
Statue of Liberty read: ‘Give me
your tired, your poor, your huddled
Masses yearning to breathe free’
... Under present law it is sug-
gested that there should be added:
‘as long as they come from north-
ern Europe, are not too tired or
too poor or slightly ill, never stole
a loaf of bread...and can docu-
ment their activities for the past
two years.’”

The U.S. immigration law—
passed in 1924 and modified slight-
ly in 1953—sets up an annual im-
migration quota of about 150,000,
with each nation’s quota based on
the percentage of persons of that
national origin living in the U.S.
in 1920. In that year the popu-
lation was predominantly northern
European—English, German and
Irish—and as a consequence the
quotas are weighed heavily in fa-
vor of that area.

Asks End of Quotas

In recent years the northern Eu-
ropean countries have not been
filling their quotas: England, Ire-
land and Germany, with a total
quota of 109,200, send over only
53,000 immigrants a year, Coun-
tries with low quotas—lItaly,
Greece and Poland in particular—
have large backlogs of immigra-
tion applications. Italy, for exam-
ple, has a quota of only 5,500 and
a backlog of about 300,000 persons
who would like to come to the
U.S. But the law does not allow
transfer of unused quota numbers.

Last week President Kennedy
asked Congress to make the law
more equitable, He proposed that
the quota system be abolished over
five years and that applicants be

A LS ARI a Lh AE Ee a a ae

crease in thé’ proportion of immi-
grants from the “non-Nordic”
countries,

Embassy Row

With increasing frequency, for-
eign governments represented in
Washington have been abandoning
their embassies in downtown com-
mercial areas and moving out to
fashionable residential sections.
Not all Washington residents have
welcomed this trend. In the Chevy
Chase area, residents have banded
together against construction of a
new Soviet Embassy there—they
say it would cause “embassy
blight.” And at Belmont Road,
N.W., the French, who want to
add office space to their embassy,
have had trouble with an influen-
tial neighbor—William Fulbright,
chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.

‘To prevent further “blight,” Mr.
Fulbright sponsored a bill in the
Senate to prohibit construction of
embassy offices in Washington res-
idential areas—embassy residences
would not be affected. Last week
the Senate passed the bill by voice
vote. Even if the bill is passed by
the House and signed by the Presi-
dent, work on the French Embassy
would not be stopped, since it is
already in progress. But construc-
tion of the Soviet Embassy could
be affected—it has been postponed
by a court injunction issued last
week, and would not get under way
at ali if the bill were passed before
the injunction’s Oct. 1 expiration
date,

Fhe bill aroused deep resent-





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colleague, of
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May 19; five.
when a car,
Mr. Martinis |
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further investi
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torney and t














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nuclear test

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anniversary last Friday. W.



1. Pair these men—President Kennedy, Prime
Minister Macmillan, Premier Khrushchev —wj
the following statements concerning last week's
Than, agreement: (a) “Let us now aq.
vance further toward the easing of international
tension .. .”; (b) “This treaty is not the millen.,
ium. It will not resolve all conflicts ...°; (c) «f
am very anxious that we should regard
as a step to something very valuable.”

2. Before a proposed nuclear test-ban agreement
can become effective, it must be approved by
both Houses of Congress, (b) the Secretaries of,
Defense and State, or (c) two-thirds of the Senate!

8. President Kennedy proposed to Congress Jac)
week that the railroad dispute be submitted {4
the Interstate Commerce Commission.
chairman of the I.C.C. William McChesney Martin|
Jr., Rupert L, Murphy or Newton N. Minow?

nations that were original members of the U.N a
5. The “July 26 movement” celebrated its 10th
here? "

Answers wil] Ba

















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(a)

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