Perspectives; 18; 1962: Past and Prologue

[music] National Educational Television presents Perspectives, a series of informed and authoritative reports on matters of importance. Now from national and international vantage points, Perspectives. How does one take the measure of a year? How can we measure its meaning? By any standard and in almost every field, the year past, 1962, was astounding. 1962 meant five men shot into space. 1962 meant Cuba, a crisis almost without parallel, and the whole world waited and watched

and wondered and worried. And some men, like the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, did not watch intentionally. But that crisis passed at least for a time. And 1962 meant other things: crimes, scandal, espionage, honors, tragedies, losses, losses for every man and woman on earth. 1962, as we look back upon it, as we tried to find its meaning, we might remember the phrase of Shakespeare, "What is past is prologue." And the date 1962,

like any date, is an arbitrary way of locating events, because the tides of politics and intrigue, the flow of economic movements and diplomatic maneuvers, the outbursts of tragedy and comedy in all human affairs: none of these is really governed by a calendar. They respond to forces which ignore the markers of time. So in this next hour, let us see what we can learn from the recent past, which can serve us as a prologue to the oncoming and critical future. [music] You know, headlines are made by big numbers, by big names, by big distances. But often history

is not made by headlines or dramatic events, but by ideas or quiet research. And in 1962, laymen, people such as you and I, suddenly became aware that something remarkable had been happening in the laboratories. Men had entered the tiny world of the cell. Men had confronted the secret of life itself. Scientists were learning to read the language of heredity, the language of the genetic code. One man who has been working in this remarkable field is Dr. Leibe Cavalieri, biochemist and member of the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York City. Dr. Cavalieri, we hear a good deal about something called DNA. What is DNA? - Well, first of all, the letters stand for the words deoxyribonucleic acid. And you might truthfully say that this is the master chemical of life. All living things

contain their own variety of DNA, which is responsible for making them bacteria or trees or human beings. Now, as you know, all organisms are composed of cells. If you look at the chart, you'll see what I mean. Within the cell, there is another body called the nucleus and it's within the nucleus that we find the genetic information. And it's here where we find the DNA. There you see it represented schematically as a coil. - Now, what does this DNA actually do? - Well, it actually does two things. First of all, it must reproduce itself. This is a process called replication. Nucleic acids are the only known non-living things that can do this. When a cell divides, its DNA must replicate so that the daughter cell has

the same amount and kind of DNA as the parent cell. The second thing that it must do is to direct the manufacture of the proteins of the body. Both of these processes require a certain know-how. And this is what scientists call information. The information is stored in the DNA much in the same manner as information is stored in an electronic computer. Now, DNA is a very stable substance. And this leads to the stability of the species. That's why, for example, children resemble their parents and why the human race will continue to be, as such, barring any nuclear catastrophe. - In other words, this thing inside the cell, DNA, really is a kind of a code of life itself. Is that correct? - That's right. - And the

recent discoveries about it, what do they lead to? What do they suggest? - Well, first concerning the code. If you will examine the chart there, I can explain very briefly how this is thought to be done. The squares represent the chemical subunits in the nucleic acid and the circles other ones. Therefore, the arrangement of square, square circle, for example, represents a code word and that's different from circle, circle, square. - And this knowledge, which to the layman merely looks like an arrangement of squares and circles, has enormous meaning, doesn't it, to the scientists? What can this lead us to? - Well, recently there has been a discovery of another kind of nucleic acid called messenger RNA. This is like DNA. The DNA transfers its information to the RNA and then the RNA

leaves the nucleus and goes to places where proteins are made. So if you want to find out what this is going to lead to, you consider the sequence that I've just outlined of DNA storing information, transferring it to RNA and then the RNA making proteins. The character of the proteins is determined in this way, all because of certain sequences in the DNA. Eventually then, when we understand the sequence of the code in the DNA, we will be able to know why we get sometimes curly hair and sometimes straight hair. - And does this mean that human characteristics can be changed by intervening in the structure of the cell? - Well, this is theoretically possible, but I would prefer to discuss bacteria. In bacteria, such changes have been brought about. Changes brought about in the DNA, that is,

and precise changes, therefore brought about in the bacteria. But when you speak about human beings, the problem is much more complicated because there are, of course, many more cells involved and there are many problems to be solved first. I would say that scientists now are becoming aware of a certain great and great responsibility that has fallen on them, the potential ability to change genetic characteristics is a powerful and even dangerous tool. - And what does this knowledge, this new discovery, suggest about our greater control over or curing of diseases? - Well, cancer is a good example in that connection. This will be one of the diseases that I'm sure we will understand before, understand first, before

a cure can be affected. Here, undoubtedly, the DNA has gone wrong and has produced wrong messenger and wrong proteins. And therefore, we have a group of cells just growing wild. - Now, finally, can you fit all of this into the larger framework of man's knowledge about heredity? - Well, it all started with Mendel. He discovered the basic laws of heredity and his scheme was a pure abstraction. Later, chromosomes and genes were seen with a light microscope. These are the hereditary materials. Now, we know that DNA comprises the gene. So this refined study of DNA, really, is an extension of old, well-established principles. I'd like to conclude by saying that, though, we're not putting the finishing touches to the problem.

It's actually beginning or beginning to understand biology at the molecular level. - Thank you very much, Dr. Cavalieri, for an exciting brief glimpse into what this may lead to. The Cold War, in 1962, still stretched our nerves in Cuba, the Far East, and Africa. 1962 marked the eighth bloody year of fighting in Algeria. It saw an end to that war, but in its place, indelible memories of horror, and the life of another new nation, an unstable nation, began. The United States was more heavily involved in Southeast Asia, in Vietnam, helping to fight an undeclared war against an unseen enemy. And the years saw the pain of disillusionment on the face of a good, a friendly man, who was forced to mobilize his poverty-stricken nation to fight not poverty, but invasion by those he had once called friends.

For this year must have taught one dictator at least how dangerous can be the hug of a bear. Well now, out of these separate events, is there a larger meaning, a pattern that embraces them all? One man who wrote cogently and thoughtfully on the international scene, is the Washington correspondent of Harper's Magazine, Mr. Joseph Kraft, author of The Grand Design. Mr. Kraft, do you see an embracing pattern over these extraordinarily dramatic conflicts and events stretching around the world in the year 1962? - Yes, I think that there is a comprehensive pattern into which these truly complex events can be fitted. And I think it's precisely that pattern that the President had in mind when he recently referred to the period we're living through as a climactic period. I think what he meant was that a great many forces, of which we've been dimly aware because

they've been beneath the surface of events, have suddenly broken out and forced issues into the open. And in consequence, it seems to me that a situation with which we've been quite familiar is changing. If I might characterize that situation, I would say that it was a situation dominated by rigidities, which has now become fluid. You might say, to state it somewhat differently, that a situation that we are now entering from a period of rigidity, we are now entering a period of fluidity and movement. - You mean that the old pattern, the familiar pattern, at least since 1945, the balance of power and the general conflict between East and West or Russia and the United States, that there is a breaking up of this pattern. Can you give us some evidence or examples of that? - Well, I would hesitate to say that the whole pattern is broken completely or hesitate to predict how it's broken, but it seems

to me that it's very clear. For example, you look on all side of the fence, it's very clear that this situation is quite, quite different. The most dramatic difference, of course, is the unification of Europe. I think if you think back on what this means and consider that not for a thousand years, not for good or evil, not by Napoleon or Charles V or Hitler or Charlemagne, has anyone been able to unify Europe, you have some sense of what this means. Most of the postwar era we, the United States, have been a kind of Gulliver among the Lilliputians. I think now we're going to be dealing with Western Europe as an equal, and a great many possibilities open up. There are just lots of ways in which we can work together. It's not going to be as easy as it's been because it's not a dictate, but there are things that we can do, and I think that this changes matters on our side of the hill. - Well, now what about the other side? What about the pattern that we have taken for granted for some time of Soviet power and Soviet alliances and so on? Is there a breakup in these relationships? - I think it's very clear that the monolithic

Soviet empire, which many of us had seen, and rightly seen, for a long, long time, is being fragmented, is being broken up. They themselves now talk about polycentrism, and we have seen, again, something developing slowly, but now becoming dramatic and vividly apparent. We have seen the Sino-Soviet break, the tension between Russia and China, which was clearly most apparent in terms when the Chinese struck at India, and where clearly the Russians were against that move, and stood athwart Chinese policy. - So you have a realignment or a shift, and certainly a breakup of the familiar pattern in the West. Now you have a shifting, changing pattern vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and China. Now what about the neutralist or non-aligned world? Is there a great change going on there? - Well, it seems to me that clearly there is, that the long drawn out losing battle that had been colonialism in the postwar era is now at an end. 1962 saw the liberation of Algeria,

the independence of Algeria, I think is probably the proper phrase. Along the east coast of Africa, virtually that whole area is becoming independent, so that the involvement of the Western powers in colonial situations is ended. Now this means it seems to me that peripheral difficulties, which nevertheless cast a long shadow over the central axis of power, are now out of the way. And in consequence, I think the nations of the Third World, the nations of the southern continents, can approach the power struggle in the central questions of our times in a more realistic way, a way that is devoid of what I call the colonial complex. And the best example of this, of course, is India. The Indians, I think, have finally dropped the sense that somehow they have to be exactly between East and West and have come to look at their own interests and have a quickened sense of the realities.

- Well, now surely in a world in which the Chinese accuse their Communist colleagues as being timid, and the Soviets accuse the Chinese of being rash, this suggests all sorts of possible changes in the relationships between the United States and the Soviet Union, doesn't it? - I think it does. I think it's wise to be cautious and perhaps to go no further than to say that a lot of things with which we've been familiar with in the past are changing, and there are lots of possibilities for change. Maybe there'll be a change in Berlin. Maybe something can happen in disarmament. Maybe something can happen in terms of a test ban. It seems to me the important thing is that we not look too much to the past, that the old patterns really are broken. I think there are possibilities for re-examination. There's this phrase of Santayana that you know that everyone quotes about, uh, "People who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Well, it seems to me that people who remember the past too well are condemned to imitate it. And I would think that our problem is to look

ahead and see things in a new dimension, for really 1963 is going to be quite a different year. - Do you think that the Kennedy administration is adjusting itself to these new extraordinary fluid patterns that you've been talking about? - I think there was some tendency to be Cubanized, to be mesmerized by the success of Cuba. But I think that generally, particularly on the higher levels of the administration, yes, the answer is yes. They are becoming aware of what's going on and are adjusting their sights to take advantage of the possibilities. - It's always interesting for the observer to see the changes that are possible from the position of the government employee or executive and from the point of view of government policy. Isn't it hard for them often to change their line, as it were, in the light of the problems of American opinion and opinion abroad? - I would say that this would be the chief difficulty in the way of exploiting what seemed to me the real possibilities ahead in 1963, that

there is a time lag between official opinion and public opinion. My impression at least is that public opinion is very, very slow in coming abreast of the important changes that are taking place inside official opinion. If they're going to take advantage of the possibilities that exist, they need room for maneuver. They need to do a lot of things that in the past have been difficult to do because attitudes have been cultivated and have been built up on the part of all of us which restrict their freedom of movement. I think if 1963 is going to realize any of the possibilities that I see apparent, one of the conditions will be a change in public opinion and I would hope a re-examination on the part of all of us, of just what our interest is and where we are heading. - And in the United States, the government is necessarily much more sensitive to and in a sense restricted by public opinion than would be true say in one of the Communist countries.

- That is happily the case. - Thank you very much, Mr. Kraft, for this look at international power according to the 1963 possibility and perspective. The economic state of the nation in 1962, although proclaimed not wholly sound, was full of sound and much of that sound was angry. In April, Roger Blau and seven other steel company heads announced a price rise, but after a blast of heat and pressure from Washington, the price rise was rescinded. But the smiles didn't really hide the scars. For the first time since early in 1961, American gold stopped seeping abroad. And in May, the New York Stock Exchange suffered the sharpest decline since that awful time in October 1929. But 1962 was far indeed from 1929. We talked about unemployment, about under-employment, about lagging economic growth. But few men

talked of one factor which had supposedly disappeared 20 years ago: poverty in America. One who did speak out was author/journalist Michael Herrington. Here at the beginning of 1963, the holidays just over, most Americans have just known a time of good food, presents, and family. They probably think that's the way all Americans live. But it's not true. Because during these holidays just past, there were millions and even tens of millions of Americans who were poor, who were miserable, in body and in spirit. A lot of times we think that in these United States, the people all live and find brick stone elevator-type apartments with heat like some of the ones you've just seen. But actually very close to here, right over the hill, up that way, there are streets, we've been told

of them by President Eisenhower's Civil Rights Commission that they are so dense, so packed with human beings, that if the rest of America were like them, we could fit the entire population of the United States of America into three boroughs of New York. The tragic thing about this, in this 1963, is that many of us, and perhaps most of us who have known the good holiday season, don't know that these people exist. But once was a time in America, when the poor in a sense were our strength, when the poor were the immigrants, when the slums were teeming places, a people who were on the verge of hope, who were entering into the society. But now more and more, and this is the tragedy of poverty, 1963. More and more, the slums are not the waystations of hope for immigrants. They are prisons for people who are caught there. For example, they're the old people in the United States. Over half of them, about eight

or nine million people, who are not only poor in income, but who are sick, who are living alone, who are frustrated, who are in neighborhoods that they don't understand. There are Negroes in the United States. Negroes who work at 58% of the white wage. There are farm workers, there are workers in the coal fields whose jobs have been destroyed by automation. But perhaps most tragic of all to think about at the beginning of this new year, is the fact that the recent unemployment statistics indicate that most of that new unemployment comes from young people. That today, when a young person drops out of high school, when a young person doesn't have the skill and education that a society of automation requires, he probably doesn't have a chance for the rest of his life. The thing we have to think about today is that we may be for the first time in our history in the United States on the verge of having a hereditary poor, a permanent poor, and the real tragedy is that at this very

moment where we have in our grasp with our technology, with our productivity, with our science, we have right there in our grasp the possibility of realizing men's immemorial dream, for the first time in history abolishing poverty, at this moment, perhaps we are creating a hereditary poor. Let's take a look at the idea of the affluent society and the idea that everyone is well- off. One economist who asked that question and came up with some disturbing answers this year was Dr. Herman Miller, special assistant to the director of the United States Census Bureau, and a member of the Department of Economics at American University in Washington. Dr. Miller, what about the other America, as some people call it? What about the old idea we had, that poverty in the United States was being solved by a more even distribution of income? Is this a myth?

- Yes, I would say that it is a myth. I think if you look at the figures carefully, you'll find that there has been no change in income distribution in the United States for about 20 years. For example, if you look at the share of income that the poorest fifth of the families received, it has not changed. If you compare the incomes of the Negroes and the whites, it has not changed. In fact, the higher-paid workers have made bigger gains in the past 10 years than the lower-paid workers. So any way you look at the numbers, I would say there has been no change in income distribution for nearly a generation. - When you say there has been no change in the percentage, do you mean that there has been no change in the actual average income of the lower class, or the poorer class, today is against 20 years ago? - Oh, no. I don't mean that at all. There is no question that the poor have shared in the income growth. That's a very important point. Will Rogers once said that this is the only country that ever rode to the poor house in an automobile. There's a lot of truth

to that observation. I think even the poor in the United States have levels of living that are the envy of the rest of the world. But that's no reason for complacency. Our poor live here and now, they don't live in Russia and they don't live in China. And they feel entitled to a share in the decent levels of living that we have and there are millions of people who don't get that. - Well, that leads at once to the question of what you mean by poverty and what you mean by the poor. - Well, poverty is a very difficult concept. You must realize that it's subjective. You can't define poverty objectively any more than you can define art or beauty. It exists in a given place and time. And we have some evidence that as our incomes go up, our needs go up, so that the number of people that we call poor is pretty much constant from one time to the next. Now, who are the poor now? Well, I would say that my best approximation

is that it's our lowest, a poorest fifth of the families. That is the 10 million families that have incomes under $3,000. This is a very rough figure, but I think it's a pretty good working point. And when you break the figures down that way, you'll find that our poor are farmers, they're aged, they're broken families, widows, they're Negroes, and there are many, many poor whites. - Is it true that the poor today have in addition to the low incomes that you point out, and it is a startling figure to hear 10 million families in that group, that they also get other forms of help, which they didn't get 20 years ago in the form of unemployment insurance, social security, pensions, health services, and so on. Does this somewhat change the picture? Well, this changes the picture a little, but those figures are actually included in the numbers that I have given you, so that

I'd say that full allowance has been made for that in the figures that I'm quoting. - There have been many articles in the past year on this interesting journalistic discovery at least, the rediscovery of poverty, among them an excellent piece I remember reading in the New York Times. What do you think accounts for this sudden upsurge of interest in or awareness of poverty in the midst of affluence? - Well, it's always difficult to explain why something happens. I don't know that we can do it precisely, but my own feeling is that it, to a large extent, depends on the questions that you ask yourself. I think under the Eisenhower administration, the big problem was defined as inflation, and President Eisenhower concentrated most heavily on the control of inflation, the stabilization of prices. I think with the Kennedy administration, we now

find a great focus on economic growth, and we want to know why we're not growing faster than we are. And as soon as you begin to look at that, you begin to look at purchasing power, the shortage of consumer demand, and of course, this immediately takes you into the question of income distribution. - And isn't it true that even if all incomes rise, if the percentages remain what you have suggested, and if the 10 million families have as low incomes as they have, that one must begin to concern themselves with who is on top of the pyramid and who are on bottom? - I think that's a very important question for many reasons, but let me give you just one. There is some evidence that poverty is transmitted from one generation to the next, that poor people have children who in turn grow up and become poor people. And there's a danger

that this will give us a low income caste, you might say. Now, the dream and hope of the American society is that it would be a fluid one, that the child reared in a poor family could one day move out of that class himself. And we must keep this dream alive, and that's why this is such a very important problem. - Isn't it true that a very large percentage of the middle class today, of the professions of the relatively well-off, are in fact children of parents who were poor, who were immigrants? - Yes, this is a fact, but that was a different kind of poverty. I think the poverty that the people you speak about had was a poverty that was mixed with hope, with aspiration, and education. I think today, in many places, you find a poverty of despair, a poverty of ignorance, and that would find itself very difficult to get out of. - And Dr. Miller, as an economist, what do you think is the way out?

- Well, this is a very difficult question, obviously. There are many answers. I think I can identify at least three major things we have to do. First of all, we must maintain full employment. This won't help some of the poor, like the aged and the widows, but if the lower income people have jobs, if they have regular employment, their incomes will at least be kept up. Secondly, we must put an end to discrimination in education and employment. We must equalize opportunities. If the children of the poor aren't educated, they'll never rise above the levels of their parents. Once you educate a man, and you don't give him a job, he becomes cynical. He develops despair. So we must equalize opportunities. And third, we must try to stop this transmission of poverty from one generation to the next. We must make a very strenuous effort to find the best talents among the poor and to see

that they are developed. I think this won't certainly cure the problem, but it'll alleviate it a great deal. - Well, thank you very much, Dr. Miller, for a clear, cogent statement about a problem often overlooked and for some suggestions as to what can be done about it. Throughout much of 1962, racial turmoil of the kind that Dr. Miller suggested drew worldwide attention to the South. At the University of Mississippi, violence swirled around one man, James Meredith, whose enrollment marked the first desegregation of a Mississippi public school. His arrival was followed by the arrival of 3,000 federal troops and 400 American U.S. marshals to end student rioting, rioting which took two lives and to restore order to the University and to the town of Oxford. And all across the South, there were sit-ins and kneel-ins and voter registration drives to encourage Negroes to use what rights they had without fear. There

were mass arrests and selective ones, as in the repeated jailing of the Reverend Martin Luther King, leader of the passive resistance movement. But there was progress with virtually no incidents in newly desegregated southern schools. Still, the majority of Negro children in the United States still went to all-Black schools in a segregated Dixie. And while our eyes were on the South, in the North, a new and militant note was being sounded by Negro spokesmen. One voice was that of an author and official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Mrs. Daisy Bates. - During the year 1962, we witnessed an uprising of young freedom fighters throughout the length and breadth of this land fighting for human dignity and freedom, protesting against the

practice of segregation in America. There are angry young men and women. The anger is manifested in many ways. The street corner speaker, the Freedom Riders, the sit-ins, throughout this land. The hope of these people here during this Christmas season is not one that we would like. But it's one that we hope for and we're going to fight for. America must recognize that these people wish to belong. They want to belong to America. They want to contribute their talent, their time. They want jobs. They would like to have an opportunity for their children. There are half a million Negroes live in Harlem. Many of them will live and die and never

break through this invisible barrier set up by the white men of this country. We want to see that this is done during the year 1963. - And another voice was that of the gifted young author James Baldwin. - The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line. And in this country, which comes out of Europe, the problem threatens to murder us. Two examples, very swift. I am very struck by the President's speech to Mississippi when Meredith was carried in by the Army or the National Guard. We appeal to the Mississippians, appeal to their honor,

but do not talk to Meredith. Do not talk to any Black man in the world. Speaking now, how can I put it very personally? One feels weary of having lived here so long and having the country which one has paid for, too, talked about as though he were not here. To talk about the South, as though Negroes were not there, to talk about America as though Negroes were not living in ghettos all over this country, is a very dangerous thing to do. Now, it is not because Americans are wicked that they do this. It is because the situation which they have created has really had the effect of not allowing them to know what is happening next door. I am certain that scarcely anyone in New York knows what is going on in Harlem.

I am almost certain that no one in Chicago knows what is going on on the South Side. What they do not know, what Americans do not know, white Americans do not know, is what it feels like to be a Negro boy of 15 or 16 or 12 or 10, born in the richest and freest country in the world, where you cannot get a cup of coffee and where you know no matter what you do, no matter how you play it, between you and the world, between you and everything you think you want, there is this enormous barrier imposed by the most unreal attributes of color of one's skin. A Negro can learn to live with the fact he has kinky hair and dark skin; that is not the problem. The problem is that white people can't live with that and what is involved here is not the fact that the kinky hair or the dark skin, but what white Americans

take this to be and furthermore, what white Americans do to these people who have the kinky hair, the dark skin. The fact that the Negroes are in the ghetto, or the Negroes are oppressed is not so terrifying, as is the fact that white Americans who do this every day don't want to know they are doing it. Segregation means that you can penalize a man for being born Black and then you can pretend you did not do it, because you built the walls all so high that you never see the life he lives and when he tries to report it to you, you think that he is making it up. And segregation also means this, that if you have done this to me or to my children, you've done something much worse to you. I will tell you this, there

are some things I would rather die than do, and one of them is, if I were a father and I had a four-year old child, I do not know how I could ever arrange myself to throw stones at other children, to spit on them, to victimize them, for something they did not do. Now when you have created a republic which has as many people in it as we do have, who are able to do this, it is far beyond the Negro problem, it is something you do with what you think life is, what you think human experience is all about. And in a way I think the Negro has functioned in this country for a long, long time as the wall between white Americans and tragedy, white Americans and sex, white Americans and suffering, white Americans and death,

and all the things which the Negro is accused in the minds and hearts of most white Americans are the things in most white Americans are afraid to deal with in themselves. This is a very sinister matter for a country at this stage in the world's history. It is a very sinister matter for the world. - What do these moving, eloquent, tragic voices tell us? Suppose we ask Dr. Dan W. Dodson, who is director of the Center for Human Relations and Community Studies at New York University. Dr. Dodson, how do you account for the sudden emergence of such militant new voices from Negroes like Mrs. Bates and James Baldwin? - Well they've always... there's always been the militant voice but it has a new meaning today because there's a new breeze blowing. It is the significance of people moving from the farms, the plantations,

the rural places, to the urban communities where they get involved and where their eyes are open to the disparities between races, and a new sense of power that they're acquiring as they gain political leverage in American life all across the board. It has a different significance because of the change of population and also the change in Negro status in world affairs. But it is the movement through power now rather than the movement through protests, simply are preaching, praying, hoping, persuading. - You mean that there is now a greater emphasis on speeding up social change instead of waiting for the long, slow pull and that this takes the form of asking for power, or exercising power or using violence? What? - It's a re-examination I think of power and the function of power. We thought of power as a dirty word but it means also that power is vital to life and it has many significances,

and the new dimension of it, I think, is that Negroes are finding leverages to power and are using them today, and that you have to understand that power has to be taken. It can't be given. It can't be bestowed on you and they're finding the leverages now to make themselves felt as an integral part of the American community. - Now, minorities in American life here to for have taken power, if you will, by using the vote, by getting active in politics and so on. In which way do you think that the minority of the Negro has a special problem as compared to our past minority groups who did come to political power? - I would answer this two ways. We did solve the problem of the powerless and its power and powerlessness and not minority-majority because the minority may be the power group. But we solved the problem of the powerless in the past by getting the bright ones involved,

alienating them in their sentiments and sympathies from their groups, making them ashamed of their heritage, getting them to take stock in the American dream that people will be rewarded according to their initiative and their enterprise, ultimately siphoning them off from the group itself and transmuting them into so-called ideal Americans. With the Negro group, this is not possible because of the problem of color. When he is transmuted through this process, there's no place for him to go because his color stands as a badge of identity and consequently he can't escape it. But consequently the movement is the other way through which groups moved into power and that is to find the leverages, to force the majority group to allow them to come to community decision-making as peers with them rather than as the dominant group doing the decision-making for them. - In other words... -This is the significance of it.

- In other words, you're saying that the American Negro has a problem different from the problem, say, of the Irish, Germans, the Jews, the Italians and other minority groups who came to this country and who did come into political activity through slow and voting methods. - Well, it is different only because he cannot escape and we did not become democratic as a dominant group in this process of the past because the person just escaped his identity. Now we are faced with the problem of genuinely having to face up to the lack of democracy in group relations. But it means also that the minority groups of the past, as long as they were hyphenated Americans, Irish-American or whatever, did not really come into community decision-making as equals and through shared power. It's only when we became a three-faith country where it became respectable to also be Jewish and Catholic and the three groups could come together as peers and community decision-making and through shared power that

the group overcame the prejudices that were against them. And I think this is true of the Negro group too and I think this is a significance of this movement. - Would you say that given the enormity and the complexity of the problem, that the Negroes in the United States have made considerable gains in rights as against, say, 30 years ago? - Oh yes, there's no doubt that there have been considerable gains made. But most of them have been made through concessions here and concessions there, through legalism, as it's now being said, through the forced mile in intergroup relations, relationships. And here it's not being asked now to be just better served or so on. They're saying we have the right to be respected as American citizens and have our voices heard too. - What do you think has been the effect on American Negroes of the rise of the new nations in Africa? - I think it's given a new sense of dignity

and respect because it is a symbol that the Negro race has the capacity for self-government and so on and that there is an identity with power. There's somebody outside the country to speak in your behalf now that wasn't so, as long as there were colonials. - Finally, what do you think is the responsibility or the role of the white people? - I'd say that there are several facets to this, the major one. There's always the group that will be for going a long way and giving more rights, more recognition so on. There are those who are going to resist as much as possible. The vast middle group will sit on the sidelines as long as they can before they're ultimately maneuvered to where they have to fish or cut bait and become identified. Consequently, I think we have to see in these great cities where people have moved, that service alone will not do the job that is involved here. Service can be a tranquilizer to keep people sufficiently served in Egypt that they won't

launch out to seek the promised land, and it is in this context then of recognizing these first fumbling steps toward freedom as goodness that I think the contribution of the dominant group can be best made. - Thank you very much, Dr. Dodson. On the agenda of the North, and playing its own crucial role, is the problem of the crowd of the city of urban America. There seemed to be no solution to the big crush in 1962. There seemed to be no way to tear down and build up fast enough. And with increased urbanization, those who paid a very high price were America's young people. For delinquency continued its steady troubling rise in 1962 with neither a cure nor even a sure diagnosis in sight. For schools were bursting at the seams and there was an inability of governments to prepare

for the rising tide of new students. There were attempts to face up to metropolitan problems on a federal level at least. A Department of Urban Affairs to be headed by Robert C. Weaver and proposed by President Kennedy, was defeated in the Congress. There was even talk of a domestic Peace Corps. This grew out of Peace Corps volunteers who had been sent to serve in the slums of New York City as preparation for similar service in the under-developed countries. But to some Americans there was a first glimmer of hope for the cities in a Supreme Court decision, a decision on reapportionment. And among those who saw what this decision might foreshadow was Dr. James MacGregor Burns, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Williams College, and author of a forthcoming study entitled The Deadlock

of Democracy. Dr. Burns, the word reapportionment must sound very dull to most people. Yet its importance you certainly have begun to talk about. Just what does this reapportionment decision by the Supreme Court mean? - Well, it's really very simple. Some city dwellers in Tennessee got pretty fed up with the way they were being cheated in the state legislature there. Because the state legislature heavily overrepresented the rural areas and underrepresented the cities. They couldn't appeal to the state legislature because that was already stacked against them. So they appealed to the courts. And finally the Supreme Court held that they had a right to appeal, that it was unfair, and hence the decision that the state legislature in Tennessee must be reapportioned to represent fairly the city dwellers. - Well, this would seem to be a decision of very great consequence for the future. - In one way it is, in that it

opens the floodgates. It has opened the floodgates with amazing swiftness. City dwellers in many other states have gone to the courts and said we too are underrepresented. We would like a break in the state legislatures, so that this has tremendous possibilities for the future. But in another sense, it's not a momentous decision because the trouble with the state legislatures is that they don't have the money. They do not have the taxing power to do the job that has to be done for the cities. Transportation, education, civil rights, domestic Peace Corps: all the kinds of things that the city needs can't be handled by the state legislatures because the states are poor. - In other words, the reapportionment decision wasn't really enough to help the city dwellers of the country solve their problems. - That's right. - And do you think that help will be forthcoming from Congress, which, after all, is dominated by rural elements, by agricultural pressure

groups too? - That's right. Congress is, does over-represent the rural areas just the way the state legislatures do. But there is hope there too, and this brings us back to the state legislatures. Most Americans don't realize this, but the politicians who draw the congressional lines, as well as the state legislative lines, are the state legislatures. The Constitution gives them this basic power over the districts for national Congressmen, as well as for state representatives. Naturally, being overly representative of the rural areas, they have made districts for the House of Representatives in Washington that also over-represent the rural areas. - So, if reapportionment in the decision of the Supreme Court is only a first step, there are other steps to be taken. Could you tell us something about that? - One very important step is in Congress itself.

Congress not only over-represents the rural areas, but the internal machinery of Congress is largely in the hands of rural representatives. Republicans from the Midwest and the Rockies from smaller rural areas, and Democrats mainly from the South. These are the people who really run the machinery of Congress. These are the people who run the Rules Committee, which has been a great roadblock to the bills that the city dwellers need. And these are the people who usually filibuster in the Senate against the needs of city dwellers. So, that what we need is a great second step to push this great fight on in behalf of the city dwellers, is sweeping congressional reform that will make that agency, the House of Representatives, that is, more responsive to urban needs and able to legislate in Washington on behalf of this tremendous city population explosion. - How optimistic are you about the rate at which this restructuring of Congress can be achieved?

- I'm fairly optimistic if leaders of both parties will make the decisions that have to be made. Each party has a problem. As I point out in this book you mentioned, both parties are divided into sub-parties. Each party has its own rural party that's holding up progress so that one of the fascinating questions of the future is whether the Democratic or Republican parties will be able to get control of their rural wing. - Finally, what in the presence of this kind of bind in legislatures and in Congress, what do you think that the ordinary voter, the responsible citizen, can do practically to help achieve this greater response of legislatures and Congress to the new organization of American society? - I have a very practical and urgent suggestion on this score. I think what the average city dweller should do, the city voter, is to ask his representative in the state legislature

or in Congress, not simply where he stands on matters like better housing and civil rights and a domestic Peace Corps because you know most city politicians will favor this sort of thing. He must ask a vital second question, which is, will you move to modify and improve the mechanism of Congress? That's the crucial thing. - Thank you very much, Dr. Burns. If the past is indeed prologue, what we have heard this evening will give us much to lend meaning to the unknown years which lie ahead. In science, in the world within our own global boundaries, and in the strange new worlds beyond them. And we make count ourselves fortunate, I think, if while moving through the span of one year, we can acquire a few new insights with which to understand the perplexing problems of our time. Perhaps we can even help to fashion and determine the nature of our future.

This is Leo Rosten. Thank you, and good night. [music] [music] This is NET, National Educational Television.