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DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD [NIXON PROJECT]
DOCUMENT
DOCUMENT
NUMBER
TYPE
SUBJECT/TITLE OR CORRESPONDENTS
DATE
RESTRICTION
1
report
First page of report from Eric Biddle, Jr.
12/04/68
B
(Sanitized page inserted in place of original)
2
report
Copy of the above document
12/04/68
B
3
report
Inspection report by Eric Biddle, Jr. of Valley Migrant League,
02/03/67
D
Woodburn, Oregon
4
report
Inpsection report by Eric Biddle, Jr. of Central Area
04/09/67
D
Motivation Program, Seattle, Washington
FILE GROUP TITLE
BOX NUMBER
WHCF: SMOF SUBJECT FILE: CHARLES B. WILKINSON
41
FOLDER TITLE
[VISTA reports] [1967-1968]
RESTRICTION CODES
A. Release would violate a Federal statute or Agency Policy.
E. Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or
B. National security classified information.
financial information.
C. Pending or approved claim that release would violate an individual's
F. Release would disclose investigatory information compiled for law
rights.
enforcement purposes.
D. Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy
G. Withdrawn and return private and personal material.
or a libel of a living person.
H. Withdrawn and returned non-historical material.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NA FORM 1421 (4-85)
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC
POSTAGE AND FEES PA
OPPORTUNITY
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC OPPORT
XECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20506
OFFICIAL BUSINESS
THE
PRESERVATION COPY
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS PROJECT
DOCUMENT CONTROL RECORD
ITEM REMOVED FROM THIS FILE FOLDER
A RESTRICTED DOCUMENT OR CASE FILE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM
THIS FILE FOLDER. FOR A DESCRIPTION OF THE ITEM REMOVED
AND THE REASON FOR ITS REMOVAL, CONSULT DOCUMENT ENTRY
NUMBER
ON EITHER THE DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD
(GSA FORM 7279 OR NA FORM 1421) OR NARA WITHDRAWAL SHEET
(GSA FORM 7122) LOCATED IN THE FRONT OF THIS FILE FOLDER.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NLN Form 101 (revised 6-85)
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
ADMINISTRATIVELY CONFIDENTIAL
MEMORANDUM
TO: The New Administration
December 4, 1968
FROM: Eric H. Biddle, Jr.
SUBJECT: America's Number One Problem
The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe the American
racial crisis as it is and as it is likely to develop if we
persist in the present policy of drift and passivity. I shall
then discuss the only sort of approaches offering us any hope of
dealing with this, our most pressing national problem.
As an OEO Inspector of poverty programs in various parts of the
country, I have, during the past three years, observed with equal
dismay the rapidly developing social revolutionary spirit in the
younger Negro community and the pallid, passive measures urged on
the larger community as the only "solutions" by white liberals and
Negro moderates. These two groups, incidentally, talk as if only
the white community has the solution to the racial problem, as if
Negroes were only the passive witnesses to the riots and crime
that emanate from their own communities. This attitude is best
exemplified by David Ginsburg, Executive Director of the Riot
Commission, whose own massive effort spent almost no time trying
to discover which individuals actually started and spread riots,
but, instead, emphasized Negro justifications for the riots. When
the Washington Post recently put out a book on last April's riot here,
Ginsburg's review praised it but condemned the chapter describing
the interview of an enterprising young Negro reporter with three of
the black nationalist instigators of the riot. Apparently, Ginsburg
believes that discovery of the identities, methods and reasoning
of the actual perpetrators of a riot are the last thing a riot
commission report should delve into. Clarification of this lapse was
provided us at OEO by Ginsburg's Deputy on the Commission, when he
told us, "Confidentially, we decided at the beginning that our
report should serve the purposes of convincing Americans that
white racism was responsible for the riots and should lay out a
program for solving the root causes. "
So it would appear, from the beginning, that there was to be little
effort to look into the more immediate causes. The upshot is the
recommendation by the Riot Commission that white America can prevent
future riots only by spending billions of dollars in conscience
money in order to provide instant integration and assistance to the
residents of the rapidly growing urban ghettos. As for the rioters
themselves, the Commission recommends a permissive approach. To top
it all off, the Commission virtually ignores the growing number of
black revolutionaries who are recruiting Negro youth into careers
as urban guerillas.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
2.
Now, while I think each of these attitudes - funding of programs
under threats of violence, permissiveness toward rioters, and
ignoring subversives - may at times be socially useful, taken
together at this time in our history they are proving disastrous.
And they become more disastrous each day, because each day black
revolutionaries become more and more influential among Negro
youth and more outspokenly full of hate of America.
Since these men are much more capable of analyzing white America
than white Americans are of analyzing them, they turn every
conciliatory move made after a riot to their own purposes, namely
the recruiting of young Negroes as urban guerillas.
For three years Federal Poverty Program Inspectors have been
hearing West Coast Negroes complain that "we don't get enough
money here because we didn't burn the town down. They did
burn Watts and look at all the programs they got!
Last year, while inspecting the poverty program in the San Bernadino
area, a black militant showed me several burned out houses, the
handiwork, he said, of a local, unofficial "Community Action is agency
called "Better Urban Renewal Now (BURN) " The group's goal is
to burn houses owned by white landlords and rented to Negroes
whose rents are decreed too high by "BURN. " When Riot Commission-
type liberals pass off this sort of behavior as the cries of
suffering frustrated people, " they commit a libel against the
mass of peaceful, law abiding Negroes, because what they are
heard to say is that "this sort of behavior by Negroes is justifiable
and therefore to be expected. " The logical extension of this sort of
thinking was described by Los Angeles District Attorney, Evelle
Younger, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, October 25, 1967:
For example, I recently heard a self-proclaimed civil rights
leader in my community say that unless a certain number of
jobs were created immediately and given to persons without
regard to skill or qualifications, that there would certainly
be another Watts. When I accused him of inviting trouble,
he was highly incensed |and claimed he was just reporting the
"facts. " It has become standard operating procedure for a
city, state or federal legislator or administrator who
wants to dip into the pork barrel and get millions of dollars
poured to his district under some poorly planned and potent-
ially useless project, to urge passage on the basis that it
is essential to prevent a riot
Unfortunately, there has been too much of this sort of funding
in the poverty program, and the results have only started to
come to public attention in such notorious examples as the Summer
N Y.C. program in New York, the Woodlawn Organization in Chicago,
the Pacoima Street Scene Project in Los Angeles, and several
programs in San Francisco that have hired notorious Black Panthers.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.3.
Can you imagine the howl from the liberal press if the Federal
Government were found to be funding gun-toting members of the
Klu Klux Klan who were advocating shooting Negroes? Yet Federal
dollars have gone to pay Black Panther Isaiah Rowley to run the
Jersey City Anti-Recidivism project. Right here in Washington,
Federal dollars are paying the salary of Jimmy Garrett, Assistant
Professor of "Creative Writing" at the Federal City College. Yet
in 1967, while benefiting from the OEO-funded Upward Bound program
at San Francisco State College, Jimmy Garrett, a violent black
racist, started the work to move that unfortunate institution down
the road to disintegration that his fellow gun-toting Black
Panther, "Assistant Professor' of Black Studies, George Murray,
has successfully continued this year. Before becoming a "professor"
at San Francisco State, George Murray, along with two other charter
member Black Panthers, was paid OEO money to run a summer program
designed to pacify and uplift the San Francisco area's worst Negro
ghetto.
Another black racist and announced enemy of the "pig police" is
Bill Watson, who has been appointed head of police training at
the Federally funded Washington Training Institute. Since the
purpose of this program is to train and motivate young ghetto
dwellers to become professional police officers, one might well
ask why a "cop-hater" was hired to run the program.
Perhaps because it is so unprecedented in our country, many
Americans refuse to believe that thereare a growing number of
black racist revolutionaries who are determined to destroy this
country, who are unappeasable, and who are telling Negroes that
they had better get guns because Whitey is planning genocide. "
The perfect example of this liberal blindness was David Ginsburg's
attack on the remarkable reportorial job done by the unnamed Negro
reporter on the Washington riot. Ginsburg questions the report's
accuracy on the grounds that the informants names are not given.
Does he really expect felons to identify both themselves and their
crimes so they can be prosecuted?
Another first rate reportorial job was done by Robert Maynard and
a team of reporters in the September 24, 1967 "Outlook" section
of the Washington Post. After detailed surveys in five large cities,
the team concluded:
An angry and violent mood is nearing the explosive
point in the black community of America's largest
cities, with rapidly growing black nationalist
movements as a powerful catalynst
Black America has not yet become a revolutionary
cauldron, but the voices of the revolutionaries
among the nationalists are becoming dominant.
They are listened to when others are ignored or
scorned.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.4.
The black nationalists seem to be getting
through to ghetto youth, where all other
organizations and programs fail.
What looms on the horizon is more carefully
planned insurrections, sustained and skilled
internal warfare.
Perhaps the best insight into the thinking of these black
revolutionaries was provided by Sol Stern, in an article
BY America's Black Guerillas - in the September, 1967 issue
of Ramparts, hardly an unsympathetic publication from their
point of view !
Still, much nonsense was written by way of
explanation of the insurrections; a new, crude
version of economic determinism takes the place
of vaguer expressions of "heat" and "frustration".
Negroes riot, the press and the urban sociologists
now almost unanimously agree, because they lack
housing, education and jobs. Thus a new riot prevention
mystique grows, abetted even by moderate civil rights
leaders", which suggests that a little more poverty
money spent, a police review board, better schools, an
extra swimming pool, will have a direct effect on the
propensity to loot and snipe in the ghetto. It is a
dangerous liberal myth not because it is not well-
intentioned, but because it is already outdated and
ignores the real, new factor in the Black Revolution-
the black urban guerilla.
The black urban guerilla will not come down off of his
sniper's perch or stop making molotov cocktails because
of a little more welfare money in the ghetto since he
has probably already rejected a job with the Poverty
Program - or perhaps he has had a job with the Poverty
Program by day and still wants to burn down City Hall
by night. His hatred of the system will not be affected
by a better school in the ghetto, since he has probably
been through the best schools and rejected the ir values.
He takes part in insurrections in Detroit and Newark,
not because of a sudden incident that sets off a
smoldering frustration, but because he has long-range
plans to disrupt and wreak havoc on the system that he
he feels produced the ghetto in this country and oppression
all over the world -- even if those plans mean the loss of
his life. He is like Samson among the Philistines, bound
and alone among many, but hopefully strong enough to
pull the whole house down.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.5.
The fact that there is a growing number of black revolutionaries
would not matter SO much if they were not able to operate in the
fertile field of urban ghettos and against a backdrop of white
ignorance and permissiveness.
Just how dangerous these black racists can be is shown by the
Los Angeles Riot Study, an exhaustive post-Watts effort:
Perhaps as important as the proportion of persons
involved in the riot is the extent to which residents
of the community gave approval to it. 1) about 34% of
the sample were somewhat favorable, or very favorable
about what took place. 2) While the majority expressed
disapproval of the violence and destruction, this was
often coupled with an expression of empathy with the
motives of those who participated, or a sense of pride
in the Negro who has brought worldwide recognition to
their problems.
Another important measure of attitude is the assessment
of the residents of the community of the consequences
of the riot for the Negro cause and for relations with
white persons. Considerable optimism was shown over the
results of the riot. Thirty-eight % of the population
in the curfew area felt that the riot would help the Negro
cause. Only about 20% felt that it would hurt the cause.
Our study of the white population in the Los Angeles area
was in sharp contrast. 74% believed it would hurt the
cause of the Negro
There are several key issues emerging out of these findings
which warrant further exploration. The Negro community
was ambivalent itself toward the riot, but a majority saw it
as bringing positive results. The riot was viewed as a way
of bringing their plight to the attention of the white
community, with the assumption that if the whites knew the
real conditions they would act rationally and in good
American tradition take the appropriate steps to reform the
situation. For the Negro the riot might help to hasten the
creation of jobs and general improvement of the neighborhood
and its institutions dealing with education, welfare, social
control, health, recreation, housing, transportaion and con-
sumer malpractices. We must ask ourselves honestly whether
or not this happened.
The Washington Post account of last April's riot allows these
black revolutionaries (from the context they appear to be Black
Panthers) to describe how they managed to develop sporadic looting
and burning into a massive carnival of destruction. What they did
(and say they continue to do) was to radicalize that large portion
of the Negro community (34% in the Los Angeles Riot Study) likely
to be favorable to a riot when they think they will not suffer
from it.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.6.
How can we deal with this forbiding situation? Anyone who
says he has the answer is an obvious charlatan. Chapter 16
of the Riot Commission Report, entitled "The Future of the
Cities, " presents a grim picture. It estimates that while
the Negro population will continue to grow at a faster
rate than the white population and that almost all of that
increase will occur in the central cities (raising the
Negro population there from 20.6 % to more than 31% by
1985) :
The Negro age group from 15 to 25 years of age,
however, will grow much faster than either the
Negro population as a whole, or the white pop-
ulation in the same age group.
The report concludes:
This rapid increase in the young Negro population
has important implications for the country. This
group has the highest unemployment rate in the
nation, commits a relatively high proportion of
all crimes, and plays the most significant role
in civil disorders.
This grim outlook is not likely to be basically altered
by any government actions. But we must try to do better
thanour present policy of drift and weakness which has so
obviously failed. The Federal Government can take positive
steps in three directions to help us more effectively deal
with this problem.
1. Human Development Programs: These are efforts that have
been undertaken under the Poverty Program, dealing with
education and job training. Some of these programs, such as
Head Start, have been a great success and should continue
at an expanded level. Others, such as the Job Corps and the
Neighborhood Youth Corps, often dealing with bottom-of-the-
barrel people, need revamping but are worth retaining in
some form, lest we abandon all attempts to salvage the people
concerned. Other programs, such as Community Action, Upward
Bound, and Vista, have either been blatantly and partisanly
political or have funded black and white ràdicals and inflicted
neurotic adolescent agitators on unsuspecting communities, SO that
they should be completely overhauled or abandoned as hopelessly
botched jobs.
The only way to decide whether programs should be continued,
or overhauled, or abandoned is to have them surveyed by small
groups of evaluators not themselves connected with the funding
or administration of the programs.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.7.
Incidentally, there is a lot of evaluative material in government files
on existing programs which will, of course, be available to the
new Administration.
Noises are already being heard in interested government agencies
that "the poor or "the Negroes' etc., "will raise hell" if this
or that program is terminated. With the possible exception of
Head Start, with its broad national constituency, this is
nonsense, fabricated and spread by nervous job holders.
2. The Establishment and Maintenance of Public Order: There is
a library's worth of advice on this subject already in print,
particularly in the Crime Commission studies and Riot Commission
Report. I will simply stress the absolute necessity of guaranteeing
all of our citizens, including residents of the worst ghettos,
"equal protection of the law.
Over and over I have heard ghetto residents complain, not about
police brutality, but about lack of police protection. It is
the young militants who scream about "police brutality, " and
the Black Panthers have started conducting guerilla warfare
against the police in San Francisco, Cleveland, and New York.
So we must decide: Are we to heed the pleas of the peaceful
Negro majority for protection, and thus invite the wrath and
gunfire of the militants? Or, are we going to surrender to
the threats of the small, but growing numbers of black militants,
thus turning control of our central cities over to them and
inviting them to radicalize the Negro masses who would be at their
disposal?
3. Political Warfare Against Black Racist Revolutionaries: This
brings us to the third and most sensitive and as yet unexplored
area of government action to deal with our racial crisis. Speaking
bluntly, I believe the next Administration, as a vital part of
its overall strategy, must decide that these black racist
revolutionaries are at least as great a threat to our national
security as Soviet nuclear weapons. As a starter in the third
area of Government action to deal with this threat, I suggest
that the following be undertaken:
A. Clear black racist revolutionaries and their Old and
New Left allies out of the programs funded by the
Federal Government. Conduct appropriate security
clearance to assure that all people given positions
in Federally funded programs are, first of all, loyal
to this country.
B. Bring all information on the activities of black
revolutionaries into one, small, secret staff in
the Executive Office of the President, or if
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.8.
necessary to protect its security, locate
the staff in the Department of Defense but
under the direct control of the President
or Vice President.
C. Through well camouflaged channels, give
financial and non-partisan political support
to Negroes who are loyal to this country
and willing to oppose black racist revolutionaries.
D. Take whatever steps are necessary - arrest,
harassment, exile or appropriate clandestine
political measures -- to reduce the power of
black racist revolutionaries in the Negro
community.
I can hear the cries of outraged civil libertarians (with
whom I have often agreed) at these suggestions. I simply
reply that if we do not take rather defensive steps against
these destroyers now, in a very few years time we will have
moved farther down the road to an authoritarian state than
any liberal today conceives.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
NIXON PRESIDENTIAL MATERIALS PROJECT
DOCUMENT CONTROL RECORD
ITEM REMOVED FROM THIS FILE FOLDER
A RESTRICTED DOCUMENT OR CASE FILE HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM
THIS FILE FOLDER. FOR A DESCRIPTION OF THE ITEM REMOVED
AND THE REASON FOR ITS REMOVAL, CONSULT DOCUMENT ENTRY
NUMBER
2
ON EITHER THE DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD
(GSA FORM 7279 OR NA FORM 1421) OR NARA WITHDRAWAL SHEET
(GSA FORM 7122) LOCATED IN THE FRONT OF THIS FILE FOLDER.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NLN Form 101 (revised 6-85)
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
ADMINISTRATIVELY CONFIDENTIAL
MEMORANDUM
TO: The New Administration
December 4, 1968
FROM: Eric H. Biddle, Jr.
SUBJECT: America's Number One Problem
The purpose of this paper is to briefly describe the American
racial crisis as it is and as it is likely to develop if we
persist in the present policy of drift and passivity. I shall
then discuss the only sort of approaches offering us any hope of
dealing with this, our most pressing national problem.
As an OEO Inspector of poverty programs in various parts of the
country, I have, during the past three years, observed with equal
dismay the rapidly developing social revolutionary spirit in the
younger Negro community and the pallid, passive measures urged on
the larger community as the only "solutions" by white liberals and
Negro moderates. These two groups, incidentally, talk as if only
the white community has the solution to the racial problem, as if
Negroes were only the passive witnesses to the riots and crime
that emanate from their own communities. This attitude is best
exemplified by David Ginsburg, Executive Director of the Riot
Commission, whose own massive effort spent almost no time trying
to discover which individuals actually started and spread riots,
but, instead, emphasized Negro justifications for the riots. When
the Washington Post recently put out a book on last April's riot here,
Ginsburg's review praised it but condemned the chapter describing
the interview of an enterprising young Negro reporter with three of
the black nationalist instigators of the riot. Apparently, Ginsburg
believes that discovery of the identities, methods and reasoning
of the actual perpetrators of a riot are the last thing a riot
commission report should delve into. Clarification of this lapse was
provided us at OEO by Ginsburg's Deputy on the Commission, when he
told us, "Confidentially, we decided at the beginning that our
report should serve the purposes of convincing Americans that
white racism was responsible for the riots and should lay out a
program for solving the root causes. "
So it would appear, from the beginning, that there was to be little
effort to look into the more immediate causes. The upshot is the
recommendation by the Riot Commission that white America can prevent
future riots only by spending billions of dollars in conscience
money in order to provide instant integration and assistance to the
residents of the rapidly growing urban ghettos. As for the rioters
themselves, the Commission recommends a permissive approach. To top
it all off, the Commission virtually ignores the growing number of
black revolutionaries who are recruiting Negro youth into careers
as urban guerillas.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.2.
Now, while I think each of these attitudes - funding of programs
under threats of violence, permissiveness toward rioters, and
ignoring subversives - may at times be socially useful, taken
together at this time in our history they are proving disastrous.
And they become more disastrous each day, because each day black
revolutionaries become more and more influential among Negro
youth and more outspokenly full of hate of America.
Since these men are much more capable of analyzing whi te America
than white Americans are of analyzing them, they turn every
conciliatory move made after a riot to their own purposes, namely
the recruiting of young Negroes as urban guerillas.
For three years Federal Poverty Program Inspectors have been
hearing West Coast Negroes complain that "we don't get enough
money here because we didn't burn the town down. They did
burn Watts and look at all the programs they got! "
Last year, while inspecting the poverty program in the San Bernadino
area, a black militant showed me several burned out houses, the
handiwork, he said, of a local, unofficial Community Action agency
called "Better Urban Renewal Now (BURN) " The group's goal is
to burn houses owned by white landlords and rented to Negroes
whose rents are decreed too high by "BURN. " When Riot Commission-
type liberals pass off this sort of behavior as "the cries of
suffering frustrated people, " they commit a libel against the
mass of peaceful, law abiding Negroes, because what they are
heard to say is that this sort of behavior by Negroes is justifiable
and therefore to be expected. " The logical extension of this sort of
thinking was described by Los Angeles District Attorney, Evelle
Younger, in testimony before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, October 25, 1967:
For example, I recently heard a self-proclaimed civil rights
leader in my community say that unless a certain number of
jobs were created immediately and given to persons without
regard to skill or qualifications, that there would certainly
be another Watts. When I accused him of inviting trouble,
he was highly incensed jand claimed he was just reporting the
"facts. " It has become standard operating procedure for a
city, state or federal legislator or administrator who
wants to dip into the pork barrel and get millions of dollars
poured into his district under some poorly planned and potent-
ially useless project, to urge passage on the basis that it
is essential to prevent a riot
Unfortunately, there has been too much of this sort of funding
in the poverty program, and the results have only started to
come to public attention in such notorious examples as the Summer
N Y.C. program in New York, the Woodlawn Organization in Chicago,
the Pacoima Street Scene Project in Los Angeles, and several
programs in San Francisco that have hired notorious Black Panthers.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.3.
Can you imagine the howl from the liberal press if the Federal
Government were found to be funding gun-toting members of the
Klu Klux Klan who were advocating shooting Negroes? Yet Federal
dollars have gone to pay Black Panther Isaiah Rowley to run the
Jersey City Anti-Recidivism project. Right here in Washington,
Federal dollars are paying the salary of Jimmy Garrett, Assistant
Professor of "Creative Writing" at the Federal City College. Yet
in 1967, while benefiting from the OEO-funded Upward Bound program
at San Francisco State College, Jimmy Garrett, a violent black
racist, started the work to move that unfortunate institution down
the road to disintegration that his fellow gun-toting Black
Panther, "Assistant Professor" of Black Studies, George Murray,
has successfully continued this year. Before becoming a "professor"
at San Francisco State, George Murray, along with two other charter
member Black Panthers, was paid OEO money to run a summer program
designed to pacify and uplift the San Francisco area's worst Negro
ghetto.
Another black racist and announced enemy of the "pig police" is
Bill Watson, who has been appointed head of police training at
the Federally funded Washington Training Institute. Since the
purpose of this program is to train and motivate young ghetto
dwellers to become professional police officers, one might well
ask why a "cop-hater" was hired to run the program.
Perhaps because it is so unprecedented in our country, many
Americans refuse to believe that thereare a growing number of
black racist revolutionaries who are determined to destroy this
country, who are unappeasable, and who are telling Negroes that
they had "better get guns because Whitey is planning genocide.
"
The perfect example of this liberal blindness was David Ginsburg's
attack on the remarkable reportorial job done by the unnamed Negro
reporter on the Washington riot. Ginsburg questions the report's
accuracy on the grounds that the informants' names are not given.
Does he really expect felons to identify both themselves and their
crimes so they can be prosecuted?
Another first rate reportorial job was done by Robert Maynard and
a team of reporters in the September 24, 1967 "Outlook" section
of the Washington Post. After detailed surveys in five large cities,
the team concluded:
An angry and violent mood is nearing the explosive
point in the black community of America's largest
cities, with rapidly growing black nationalist
movements as a powerful catalynst
Black America has not yet become a revolutionary
cauldron, but the voices of the revolutionaries
among the nationalists are becoming dominant.
They are listened to when others are ignored or
scorned.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.4.
The black nationalists seem to be getting
through to ghetto youth, where all other
organizations and programs fail.
What looms on the horizon is more carefully
planned insurrections, sustained and skilled
internal warfare.
Perhaps the best insight into the thinking of these black
revolutionaries was provided by Sol Stern, in an article
- America's Black Guerillas - in the September, 1967 issue
of Ramparts, hardly an unsympathetic publication from their
point of vi !
Still, much nonsense was written by way of
explanation of the insurrections; a new, crude
version of economic determinism takes the place
of vaguer expressions of "heat" and "frustration".
Negroes riot, the press and the urban sociologists
now almost unanimously agree, because they lack
housing, education and jobs. Thus a new riot prevention
mystique grows, abetted even by moderate civil rights
leaders", which suggests that a little more poverty
money spent, a police review board, better schools, an
extra swimming pool, will have a direct effect on the
propensity to loot and snipe in the ghetto. It is a
dangerous liberal myth not because it is not well-
intentioned, but because it is already outdated and
ignores the real, new factor in the Black Revolution-
the black urban guerilla.
The black urban guerilla will not come down off of his
sniper's perch or stop making molotov cocktails because
of a little more welfare money in the ghetto since he
has probably already rejected a job with the Poverty
Program - or perhaps he has had a job with the Poverty
Program by day and still wants to burn down City Hall
by night. His hatred of the system will not be affected
by a better school in the ghetto, since he has probably
been through the best schools and rejected the ir values.
He takes part in insurrections in Detroit and Newark,
not because of a sudden incident that sets off a
smoldering frustration, but because he has long-range
plans to disrupt and wreak havoc on the system that he
he feels produced the ghetto in this country and oppression
all over the world -- even if those plans mean the loss of
his life. He is like Samson among the Philistines, bound
and alone among many, but hopefully strong enough to
pull the whole house down.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.5.
The fact that there is a growing number of black revolutionaries
would not matter so much if they were not able to operate in the
fertile field of urban ghettos and against a backdrop of white
ignorance and permissiveness.
Just how dangerous these black racists can be is shown by the
Los Angeles Riot Study, an exhaustive post-Watts effort:
Perhaps as important as the proportion of persons
involved in the riot is the extent to which residents
of the community gave approval to it. 1) about 34% of
the sample were somewhat favorable, or very favorable
about what took place. 2) While the majority expressed
disapproval of the violence and destruction, this was
often coupled with an expression of empathy with the
motives of those who participated, or a sense of pride
in the Negro who has brought worldwide recognition to
their problems.
Another important measure of attitude is the assessment
of the residents of the community of the consequences
of the riot for the Negro cause and for relations with
white persons. Considerable optimism was shown over the
results of the riot. Thirty-eight % of the population
in the curfew area felt that the riot would help the Negro
cause. Only about 20% felt that it would hurt the cause.
Our study of the white population in the Los Angeles area
was in sharp contrast. 74% believed it would hurt the
cause of the Negro
There are several key issues emerging out of these findings
which warrant further exploration. The Negro community
was ambiva lent itself toward the riot, but a majority saw it
as bringing positive results. The riot was viewed as a way
of bringing their plight to the attention of the white
community, with the assumption that if the whites knew the
real conditions they would act rationally and in good
American tradition take the appropriate steps to reform the
situation. For the Negro the riot might help to hasten the
creation of jobs and general improvement of the neighborhood
and its institutions dealing with education, welfare, social
control, health, recreation, housing, transportaion and con-
sumer malpractices. We must ask ourselves honestly whether
or not this happened.
The Washington Post account of last April's riot allows these
black revolutionaries (from the context they appear to be Black
Panthers) to describe how they managed to develop sporadic looting
and burning into a massive carnival of destruction. What they did
(and say they continue to do) was to radicalize that large portion
of the Negro community (34% in the Los Angeles Riot Study) likely
to be favorable to a riot when they think they will not suffer
from it.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.6.
How can we deal with this forbiding situation? Anyone who
says he has the answer is an obvious charlatan. Chapter 16
of the Riot Commission Report, entitled "The Future of the
Cities, " presents a grim picture. It estimates that while
the Negro population will continue to grow at a faster
rate than the white population and that almost all of that
increase will occur in the central cities (raising the
Negro population there from 20.6 % to more than 31% by
1985) :
The Negro age group from 15 to 25 years of age,
however, will grow much faster than either the
Negro population as a whole, or the white pop--
ulation in the same age group.
The report concludes:
This rapid increase in the young Negro population
has important implications for the country. This
group has the highest unemployment rate in the
nation, commits a relatively high proportion of
all crimes, and plays the most significant role
in civil disorders.
This grim outlook is not likely to be basically altered
by any government actions. But we must try to do better
thanour present policy of drift and weakness which has so
obviously failed. The Federal Government can take positive
steps in three directions to help us more effectively deal
with this problem.
1. Human Development Programs: These are efforts that have
been undertaken under the Poverty Program, dealing with
education and job training. Some of these programs, such as
Head Start, have been a great success and should continue
at an expanded level. Others, such as the Job Corps and the
Neighborhood Youth Corps, often dealing with bottom-of-the-
barrel people, need revamping but are worth retaining in
some form, lest we abandon all attempts to salvage the people
concerned. Other programs, such as Community Action, Upward
Bound, and Vista, have either been blatantly and partisanly
political or have funded black and white ràdicals and inflicted
neurotic adolescent agitators on unsuspecting communities, SO that
they should be completely overhauled or abandoned as hopelessly
botched jobs.
The only way to decide whether programs should be continued,
or overhauled, or abandoned is to have them surveyed by small
groups of evaluators not themselves connected with the funding
or administration of the programs.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.7.
Incidentally, there is a lot of evaluative material in government files
on existing programs which will, of course, be available to the
new Administration.
Noises are already being heard in interested government agencies
that "the poor or "the Negroes' etc., "will raise hell" if this
or that program is terminated. With the possible exception of
Head Start, with its broad national constituency, this is
nonsense, fabricated and spread by nervous job holders.
2. The Establishment and Maintenance of Public Order: There is
a library's worth of advice on this subject already in print,
particularly in the Crime Commission studies and Riot Commission
Report. I will simply stress the absolute necessity of guaranteeing
all of our citizens, including residents of the worst ghettos,
"equal protection of the law.
Over and over I have heard ghetto residents complain, not about
police brutality, but about lack of police protection. It is
the young militants who scream about "police brutality, and
the Black Panthers have started conducting guerilla warfare
against the police in San Francisco, Cleveland, and New York.
So we must decide: Are we to heed the pleas of the peaceful
Negro majority for protection, and thus invite the wrath and
gunfire of the militants? Or, are we going to surrender to
the threats of the small, but growing numbers of black militants,
thus turning control of our central cities over to them and
inviting them to radicalize the Negro masses who would be at their
disposal?
3. Political Warfare Against Black Racist Revolutionaries: This
brings us to the third and most sensitive and as yet unexplored
area of government action to deal with our racial crisis. Speaking
bluntly, I believe the next Administration, as a vital part of
its overall strategy, must decide that these black racist
revolutionaries are at least as great a threat to our national
security as Soviet nuclear weapons. As a starter in the third
area of Government action to deal with this threat, I suggest
that the following be undertaken:
A. Clear black racist revolutionaries and their Old and
New Left allies out of the programs funded by the
Federal Government. Conduct appropriate security
clearance to assure that all people given positions
in Federally funded programs are, first of all, loyal
to this country.
B. Bring all information on the activities of black
revolutionaries into one, small, secret staff in
the Executive Office of the President, or if
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
.8.
necessary to protect its security, locate
the staff in the Department of Defense but
under the direct control of the President
or Vice President.
C. Through well camouflaged channels, give
financial and non-partisan political support
to Negroes who are loyal to this country
and willing to oppose black racist revolutionaries.
D. Take whatever steps are necessary - arrest,
harassment, exile or appropriate clandestine
political measures -- to reduce the power of
black racist revolutionaries in the Negro
community.
I can hear the cries of outraged civil libertarians (with
whom I have often agreed) at these suggestions. I simply
reply that if we do not take rather defensive steps against
these destroyers now, in a very few years time we will have
moved farther down the road to an authoritarian state than
any liberal today conceives.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
America's Racial Crisis
I am frankly afraid that we are headed into a series of
worsening racial confrontations in this country that, if
allowed to develop, could, at the worse possible extreme,
lead to racial war, with all the destruction that implies.
As an American who loves his country, I do not want to
see this happen, but at this point I am pessimistic about
our chances of avoiding such a holocaust, because I
think we lack the understanding, courage, and determina-
tion to take the only two lines of action that could make
us a united country.
Let me make my own position clear. I am a white Northern
liberal, who, from the time I gave my first speech as a
16 year old in
school, has always considered justice
for the Negro our first national priority. I felt so
strongly on the subject that I picketed Senator Goldwater
with CORE at the 1964 San Francisco convention, and a year
later, while studying religion in New York, I went to
Bogalusa and lived a week in the Negro community to witness
my support during the worst part of the Klan repression.
After that, I looked for a civil rights-related job in
Washington. In November 1965, I came to work as an Inspec-
tor for OEO, Sargent Shriver's command post for the poverty
program. Since this job has involved inspections of differ-
ent sorts of poverty programs all over the country, I have
had an unprecedented opportunity to observe the changing
pattern of race relations, Here is why I am alarmed by
what I see:
1. The Negro migration from the rural South to
Northern cities and the white migration from cities to
suburbs means that most of our large cities will soon have
Negro majorities.
2. The combination of rapidly rising Negro expecta-
tions and the much lower, but real rate of Negro advance
leads to inevitable frustration.
3. Black Power demagogues are playing on this
frustration to SOW racial revolutionary propaganda among
youth. This is spreading like wildfire among the undisci-
plined, displaced children described by Daniel Moynihan.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
- 2 -
4. Black Power has two meanings. Black Power
advocates tell white people that it means votes, jobs,
and pride, but the more extreme of them preach another
brand to Negro youth. This second brand of Black Power
consists of race pride built on hatred of whites and
justifies all forms of violence against the white commun-
ity. The attitudes being developed by such Black Power
advocates among Negro youth are exemplified by Franz
Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which is being taught
all over the country, often by well educated, well dressed,
moderate looking black racists, in classes which are
closed to whites and which go under the heading of "Black
Arts, " "Black History,' "African Culture," etc. Fanon, a
Martiniquan Communist psychiatrist who fought with the
Algerians against the French, argues that a colonized
people (Negroes) can only regain its selfhood and manhood
by engaging in mass bloodletting of the colonial oppressors
(white people).
5. Every time a program is funded or a concession
made by Federal, state, or local government in response to
threats of racial violence these Black Power advocates
strengthen their hold on Negro youth at the expense of
Negro moderates, whose position has steadily deteriorated
ever since the Federal Government poured millions of dollars
into Watts in obvious response to the 1965 riot. Ever since
then, black extremists have been able to sneer at moderate
Negroes because "with their moderation they only got seats
at lunch counters, while Black Power violence has scared
millions of dollars out of Whitey." Nothing succeeds like
success!
What is the lesson of all this? The lesson, it seems to
me, comes in two parts, one appealing to liberals, the
other. to conservatives. My pessimism about the future
springs from the fact that few people at all, and almost
none in public life, seem to understand the necessity of
moving in two directions at once if we are to have any
hope of solving this national crisis.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
- 3 -
CIVIL RIGHTS-
The first of these directions is obviously the positive
programs of education, job training and placement,
legal aid, etc. that we have already initiated under
the poverty and related programs. These programs, which
must certainly be increased, are based on the belief that
the richest nation in world history can afford to solve
its problems. An important corollary is the con-
viction that Negroes have a particular call on our con-
science because of the history of slavery and discrimina-
tion we have visited upon them. If the affluent majority
of Americans do not recognize that expanded programs
enabling the poor to develop their potentialities are a
prime national necessity and duty, we cannot hope to
solve the racial crisis. Liberals already accept this;
conservatives will have to learn to.
The second direction we must move in at the same time is
far more difficult for liberals to accept. We must all
recognize that there is a growing number of militant black
racists who are doing their best to recruit young Negroes
into lives of sedition. Most of these black racists are
not Communists or New Leftists, though there are growing
signs of cooperation among the three groups. Nor do we
know how much cooperation there is among black racists in
different parts of the country. But we would be foolish
to assume such cooperation will not grow or that it will
be publicly announced when it does. We do know that black
racists in various cities have mapped out power plants,
water and sewage lines, factories, etc., and stated that
"the fire the next time will not be in the ghetto. !!
I firmly believe that if we do not see these black racists
as the subversive threat they are, we shall reap the whirl-
wind of local black revolutions, which will inevitably lead
to white repression. To prevent this we must take whatever
steps are necessary - intensive intelligence gathering, a
tighter definition of subversion, a work or prison alterna-
tive for agitators - to separate these black racists from
the mass of Negro youth. Although this line of reasoning
is difficult for liberals to accept, it is much more clearly
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
- 4 -
understood by Negro moderates, who, however, are afraid
to express their views in public. But liberals will
have to join conservatives in this line of action, just
as conservatives will have to join liberals in the other,
if our country is to survive. To do otherwise is to play
the role of a parent who lets his twelve year old child
take daily doses of LSD because he does not want to re-
press the child's self expression.
H. Biddle, Jr.
Washington, D. C.
November 7, 1967
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
OFFICE OF ECONOMIC
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20500
OPPORTUNITY
April 24, 1967
Dear Mr. Biddle:
I have just finished reading your inspection
report on the Valley Migrant League in Oregon.
I found your comments on the attitude of the
VML toward both the migrants and the VISTAs
very helpful in understanding the situation
there.
I am most grateful for your efforts on behalf
of VISTA. Your report will be of great
assistance to us.
Sincerel
William H. Crook
Director, VISTA
Mr. Eric Biddle
Office of Inspection
Office of Economic Opportunity
Washington, D.C.
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NLN Form 101 (revised 6-85)
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library
OPTIONAL FORM NO. 10
MAY 1962 EDITION
EnicBiddle Eonic
GSA FPMR (4) CFR) 101-11.8
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Memorandum
TO
:
Ed May
DATE: April 24, 1967
FROM :
Bob Levine Bol
SUBJECT: Inspection Reports on VISTA
We are impressed with the reports on VISTA projects that your inspectors
have done. They are perceptive, comprehensive and provide, for the
first time, an objective appraisal of VISTA's impact on the poor.
They are a major contribution to the evaluation of the VISTA program.
Your inspectors are to be congratulated.
CC:
Sargent Shriver
William Crook
W/W and that
Buy U.S. Savings Bonds Regularly on the Payroll Savings Plan
5010-108
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NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NLN Form 101 (revised 6-85)
Reproduced at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library