◆ SpookStack

PROFITS & UNEMPLOYMENT ARE CP/ for a retired worker today is $76 per month, or about $900 per year; for a couple it is $127 per month, or $1525 per year. If these benefits were raised so the average worker got even 50 per cent of his pre- retirement income, and a couple got 75 per cent, it would cost about $9 billion per year. Every American has an interest in seeing these and many other needs met, regardless of his race, creed, or national background, But our Negro citizens have an even greater need, because, as the result of slavery plus one hundred years of discrimination, a much higher per- centage of them are poor. They tend to be found in the less-skilled jobs because they do not have the seniority or training of other workers. They are frequently the victims of layoffs—the first fired, the last hired. While 26 per cent of white families had incomes of under $4000 in 1962, a heavy enough indictment of our “wealthy” society by itself, 60 per cent of Negro families had incomes of less than $4000! In part, this difference is because Negroes have twice the unemployment rate of whites—at present about 11 per cent as compared to the white rate of about 5 per cent. Unemployment rates for Negroes are even worse when if comes to young people and long-term unemployment, About one in four Negroes aged 16 through 24 cannot find work. Nearly one in three of America’s long-term unemployed is a Negro. This is why the August 1963 civil rights March on Washington linked Jobs to the demand for Freedom. As the U.S. News and World Report said last June, “the key to success in dealing with the race problem of this country more and more is found to center in one thing —jobs.” As the civil rights movement begins to deal with the problems confronting the Negro community (jobs, housing, schools), it will ° become part and parcel of the “war on poverty.” Indeed, it may soon take the leadership in arousing the nation to act on this problem. In the next few years, therefore, white Americans who participate in efforts ee ner eg SY ee pee ee ee ie