Document – Marian Wright Testifies to Congress on the War of Poverty (1967)

Miss WRIGHT: [F]or many people the poverty program held out the largest hope. I think it has also held out the largest disappointn1ent in many ways. I agree very much with most of the basic articulated goals of the poverty program and I am sure going to support the concept of community action. But in examining how these are actually functioning in Mississippi, one sees several trends.

One does not see CAP structures which are representative or democratic in any real way. One finds that the money in the CAP boards are going through the very same power structures that created or helped create the poverty problem in the first place. Too often I think there’s been an assumption by the OEO that any Negro represents poor people and this is not true. Unless the concept of democratically elected representatives is implemented in the State of Mississippi we are going to continue to see middle-class Negroes picked by white boards of supervisors, put on CAP boards, many for their effectiveness in parroting the white community. There must be democratically elected boards which are representative of the poor and OEO’s CAP boards are falling far below these standards today ….

[I]n those Delta counties which were once poor, where there is less organization, there is still a huge amount of fear, they are filled with a huge amount of economic dependence from the white power structure, the plantation owners, and are making very little inroad on the right to vote.

And again, the key to that is some kind of hope in terms of Federal programs which are going to feed people if they take the risk.

Secondly, there has to be much stronger action taken to protecting people once they exercise these rights. And in a large measure, that isn’t yet ·being done, and we are not really getting the benefits of the civil rights acts, because there is no hope economically for these people in exercising these rights.

And again, under the community action structure I think that, as it applies to Mississippi, one has seen a trend rather than interest in eradicating poverty, but one has seen the trend of CAP board development more as a response to the few independent poverty programs that have come up and more out of desire to control the poverty funds that have come into that community rather than a commitment to poverty. I think the community action concept has been based on the assumption that there are many separate groups in the community who are interested in eradicating poverty, but I think that the whole experience of Mississippi defies that. You have two very distinct communities, white and Negro, who have been at loggerheads and some kind of processes must be designed to assure the CAP structures which are formulated do represent the entire community.

…. Too often what we have seen is that the CAP structures… have already had their representatives chosen and people have had no involvement. As a result, many Negroes have refused to participate in these CAP structures because they felt they’ve not represented them and, too, they have seen those people on the CAP boards who have been their enemies traditional in past years. Let’s take Sunflower County for example, where the sheriff of the county was sort of temporary chairman of the CAP board. This is the sheriff that we have been able to document and that the Civil Rights Commission reports documented who has traditionally been hostile to Negro citizens ….

Let’s take one example, the work experience program of OEO where—unless it is assured that the mandate of the guidelines are going to be followed—I am afraid Mississippians are going to go on an continue to perpetuate the usual system …. Let us take Holmes County in Mississippi, for example. You have a work training program where we have had Negroes in the work training program who ·have come in to complain ·they have been put to work on the white private school operated or being constructed by the White Citizens Council.

I hardly think this is a valid purpose of which a Federal program is going to finance labor to build white segregated private schools ….

Senator JAVITS: Miss Wright, have you faced the issue of rather having no program than having it this way because that is the problem we constantly face here; that if you don’t want it this way you are not going to have it at all because you will have to deal through a governmental structure which is loaded against you. The OEO admits that. So the only thing you can do is deny them funds under title VI.

You cannot… install your own poverty administration in Mississippi of people from outside of Mississippi with a mixture also of those who are the poor themselves and who are being abused. Now, what is your attitude on that? Would you rather not have it at all? Let us face the stark issue that there can be no poverty program in Mississippi because it is rife with immorality and segregation.

Miss WRIGHT: ….If the poverty program is going to function with the exception of the few independent programs that come into the State, as they have functioned so far, that has been just that much more money being given to the power structure to buy off that many more people, and it strengthens those forces which we are trying to get rid of. So unless there is going to be real implementation of guidelines—and one could make a strong argument on what is hard to defend—you are going to have additional poverty money come in for the use of the very same traditional people who kept Negroes down.

However, I see and have seen from our own experience in certain independent programs that the poverty program can work if a few people are willing to take enough of the risk to finance or help independent programs, either for single-purpose programs or through helping people at least get better and more democratic CAP structures in their communities ….

I would hate to say the poverty program should stop because it’s our last hope in many ways of trying to build up the kind of community pride in the community organization that is going to get these people out of the very cycle they are in. We have got to do something for them ….

I think what one has gotten now is that the Negro community has seen they can run some few programs well. There is some hope, that if they get trained they can progress, and they do see now they can change their lives in certain fundamental ways ….They are not willing to give that up ….

Senator JAVITS: Miss Wright, is there also a poor white community in Mississippi?

Miss WRIGHT: Yes, there is.

Senator JAVITS: What happens to that?

Miss WRIGHT: In the Delta area, for instance, 75 percent of the population, white and Negro, fall into the poverty level, and I think that while I am talking about the poor Negro, the poor white has been more forgotten and while we are screaming about representation of poor Negroes on CAP boards, the poor white is almost nonrepresented anywhere and the poverty program, I feel, has almost not touched him.

Senator JAVITS: Is the poor white also a party to this hostility and resentment?

Miss WRIGHT: Well, he is the most hostile, Senator, because he is the guy who has to compete with the Negro, he thinks, for jobs. He has been taught that the only way he is going to be able to get anywhere in this society is to sort of keep the Negro down. As you find the largest amount of anti-Negro feeling among the poor whites where, traditionally one could really talk about economic issues. The need for us to build a new kind of coalition of poor whites and Negroes could be very valuable, but, unfortunately, these are the people, again, who are terribly poor but have no leadership and unfortunately have been used to perpetuate the status quo by the middle class, upper class whites. We don’t know how to break that syndrome ….