at least for operating purposes, from using the money, or leasing facilities, or otherwise taking the money made available to it under the act and contracting with private resources. I would agree with you that in the present circumstances the money would not go to private agencies for construction. Mr. CAREY. Can we make it clear that these public agencies would have the power to contract or subcontract with private agencies in order to use the facilities which may already be in existence? Secretary GARDNER. There would be no objection. Mr. CAREY. That is all, Mr. Chairman. Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Secretary, I would certainly like to thank you and your associates for your appearance before the committee and for an excellent statement. You have been very frank with us. I believe you have cleared up many points of concern to us. I consider this one of the most important pieces of legislation to come before the 90th Congress. I think, indeed, if we can come up with a permanent program of assistance to local communities to deal with the tremendous problem of juvenile crime, we will have certainly made a splendid contribution. I want to thank you, Mr. Carter, Mr. Huitt, and Miss Burns for your presence here. You are kind to take time out from your busy schedule to enlighten us on your thinking with regard to this subject. Thank you. The committee will stand in recess until 9:45 tomorrow morning. (Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 9:45 a.m., Wednesday, May 3, 1967.) THE JUVENILE DELINQUENCY PREVENTION ACT OF 1967 WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 1967 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:45 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roman C. Pucinski (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. Present: Representatives Pucinski, Ford, Carey, Hawkins, Hathaway, Ashbrook, Bell, Scherle, and Dellenback. Staff present: Margaret B. Sugg, director, and Mattie L. Maynard, clerk. Mr. PUCINSKI. The committee will be in order, please. We have a number of witnesses this morning, from both public and private agencies which deal directly with youths in their various programs, with a close insight of the day-to-day problems in working with juvenile delinquency. There was considerable discussion yesterday as to the provable results of some of the programs that had been funded under the 1961 act, and a need for a broad expansion of programs that deal with the youths in their own communities. I think the committee will find the experience of these witnesses particularly interesting, and perhaps from them we can get some suggestions as to how we must strengthen the bill to meet the needs of the types of programs they are identified with. This morning our first witness will be Miss Dorothy Height, president of th National Council of Negro Women, and director of training of the YWCA in New York City. STATEMENT OF MISS DOROTHY HEIGHT, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL COUNCIL OF NEGRO WOMEN, AND DIRECTOR OF TRAINING, YWCA, NEW YORK, N.Y. Mr. PUCINSKI. Perhaps the other ladies would like to identify themselves at this time and then we will proceed. Miss JONES. I am Florence Jones of the YWCA project in Miami, Fla. Mr. PUCINSKI. I am sure, Miss Jones, before the morning is over Congressman Gibbons will be here. He is most interested in hearing your testimony. Miss ALLEN. I am Narcia Allen, with the District of Columbia Recreation Department's roving leader program. Mr. PUCINSKI. What is your position? Miss ALLEN. I am a field supervisor. Mr. GOLDBERG. I am Ned Goldberg, field consultant for the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers. Mr. PUCINSKI. We are delighted to have you here, Mr. Goldberg. We will also have joining this group, before the morning is over, Mr. Bruce Cole, director of the division for programs, YMCA in Metropolitan Chicago. He has been delayed for a few minutes. Mr. Ford, have you anything to say this morning before we proceed? Mr. FORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry that I am not going to be able to stay through the testimony this morning. We have the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission appearing before another subcommittee to testify this morning. I wanted to be here to welcome these people and to tell you, Mr. Chairman, that I am following the testimony in the formal statements and in the transcript. I hope to be able to return to spend more time before we mark up the bill. Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Hawkins? Mr. HAWKINS. No, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Hathaway? Mr. HATHAWAY. No statements, Mr. Chairman. Mr. PUCINSKI. Miss Height, you may proceed as you wish. Perhaps the witnesses would like to summarize their statements, which would give us a little more time for some give-and-take in the discussion. Miss HEIGHT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I am sorry I do not have a prepared statement because of the short notice. I have a few points I would like to make. I am speaking today as president of the National Council of Negro Women, which is a coalition of some 25 national organizations of women with an outreach to 2,850,000 women across the United States. We are women in all walks of life. Since 1935, when we were brought together, we have known that the trained and the untrained Negro women stand at the very same point outside of many of the boundaries which they need for themselves and their families. So today we want to speak especially in support of the legislation which will make it possible for us to do some of the things that we are concerned about doing and that we feel we must do in order to make life better in the sections of the communities we know best. I am going to beg the indulgence of the committee to leave immediately, because I have to appear before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but that is also a reminder that the problems of discrimination against women are equally important in the lives of the young people because in the services rendered in our country there are too few services available to girls, despite the fact that in 1965, in the teenage, nonwhite population, we found the highest rate of unemployment and the highest group out of school of any other group in the whole population. My first point is that we hail this legislation as giving us the chance to unite our forces to do something for girls as well as boys in the population. Negro women live in the impoverished sections of our communities. We know the impact of poverty and deprivation. One out of every four poor Negro families is headed by a woman. This same Negro woman is the poorest of the working poor. We can understand what it means when our girls see their mothers dragging home after long hours and still with very little pay. There is a great need to find ways of overcoming this lack of incentive for work and for achievement. The second thing that concerns us-which we were glad to see in the legislation-is that there are to be funds for planning. Nonprofit organizations simply do not have the resources to be experimental, to do the kinds of planning that are needed to deal with problems that are as deep as those that we sense. We just do not have the venture capital that would make it possible to do the quality of work and to assign staff and carry forward. So we commend the section of the bill that makes possible planning grants. The third point I want to say a word about is the several things we have learned from the work we have been fortunate to have had funded under the Office of Juvenile Delinquency for a program we call Volunteers Unlimited. What we are trying to do is to discover what it will take to get that portion of the population which, itself, is working within the labor force to find ways to give volunteer service in behalf of youth in the community. We see this is a delinquency prevention program that calls for new ways of work and new understanding. It seems very simple for many people to say to us, "If you have such deep-seated problems, why aren't you willing to give more time and to be volunteers, and to help with the youth?" Negro women and other minority group women find that they have such a heavy burden that they are inclined to say, "I work and that is about as much as I can do." We are proud to have the opportunity and the challenge to try to dig underneath this to see what we can do to get the women who live in the community-who know the youth-to give some time and special attention to their problems, if it is 2 hours a week, 3 hours a month, whatever it is. But more than that, to get such women to understand what it is that leads to delinquent behavior. So we see this as a kind of example of what can be done, and we also see that Negro women are tired of being told they are not doing services in their community when they are compared with leisure-class women of other groups. We want to be able to demonstrate that we have provided for ourselves through all these years services that the rest of the community could take for granted. The legislation as it has now existed has made it possible for us to prepare women, and we already have 103 women who are giving a large portion of their time and energy in new directions. So we see that we are quickly able to close some of the gaps in the community between those who have middle-class values and some opportunity and those who do not. We are also seeing that, as in Danville, Va., the project that has been developed in that city has reached out into rural areas. We are |