NAACP Labor Secretary Attacks JFK's Compromise Civil Rights Bill

Herbert Hill, national labor secretary of the NAACP, yesterday evaluated the civil rights bill now before Congress as "not worth the paper it's printed on. The Kennedy administration has compromised its integrity by cutting out the heart, the guts, of the bill," he said.

In an interview yesterday afternoon, Hill attacked the Kennedy administration for deciding on "a policy of compromise and retreat in the matter of Negro rights."

"This was made all too clear," he said, "by the action of the Attorney General before the House Judiciary Committee, which resulted in a compromise civil rights bill that is seriously inadequate and which will bring little real gain to Negro citizens."

The result of the "Kennedys' compromise" will be felt strongly in the next election, Hill maintained. "If Rockefeller becomes the Republican nominee," Hill said, "there is no question that there would be a large Negro defection in the South. The Republican party is beginning to make large gains throughout the South, and even if Goldwater ran, he added, there would be a significant Negro Republican vote."

Placating the Racists

"The Kennedy administration is retreating and trying to placate the racists," Hill stated. "This will have the effect of an increasing radicalization of the Negro protest movement throughout the United States--increasing militancy and increased action."

Hill predicted that as the present high levels of Negro unemployment continue, the Negro protest may be transformed from a reform movement into one that may "question the fundamental assumptions of the entire social order."

He noted that unemployment among Negroes since 1953 has been two to three times as great as among whites, varying between 14 and 18 per cent. At present there is no hope for a change in this pattern, or for the permanent group of unemployable Negro workers "who continue to live a marginal economic life," Hill said.

"The only hope for these people is a radical change in the structure of the labor movement," Hill declared. "What is needed now is the decisive intervention of the Federal government to enforce constitutional rights on the behalf of the Negroes.