NATIONAL SERVICE CORPS

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1963

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE NATIONAL SERVICE CORPS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR AND PUBLIC WELFARE,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 1318, Senate Office Building, Senator Harrison A. Williams, Jr. (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Senators Williams (presiding) and Burdick.

Also present: Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky.

Subcommittee staff member present: Frederick R. Blackwell,

counsel.

Senator WILLIAMS. Our subcommittee will come to order.

We are honored to have our friend, the distinguished Senator from Kentucky, Senator John Sherman Cooper who is cosponsor of this bill and a most valued sponsor of any measure, particularly if this measure deals with people and their problems.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHERMAN COOPER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF KENTUCKY

Senator COOPER. Thank you, Senator Williams.

I have come here today to introduce a man I have known for many years, Dr. B. F. Ayer, who is a member of the faculty of Berea College, Berea, Ky., and also the executive secretary of the Council of the Southern Mountains which this year celebrates its golden anniversary of service to the youth who live in the Appalachian Mountains.

Because Dr. Ayer has been a member of the faculty of Berea College for a number of years, I think that his experience will be very valuable to this committee. I am sure that members of the subcommittee are familiar with the record of service and the objective of Berea College.

I will not take a great deal of time in talking about Berea College but I would like to point out that it is a unique college in this country. Located in the edge of the mill country of Kentucky, it was created to provide opportunities for young men and women who lived in the Appalachian region of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina and it has been doing that throughout the years. Then he served as the member of the Council of the Southern Mountains and is now its executive secretary. This council has been dealing with the problems of the Appalachian Mountains for years, particularly with the work opportunities and the opportunities for young men and young women.

I do believe that Dr. Ayer, because of this experience, will be a very valuable witness. It is my honor to introduce him.

Senator WILLIAMS. Thank you very much, Senator Cooper.

STATEMENT OF B. F. AYER, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, COUNCIL OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS

Mr. AYER. Thank you, Senator Cooper.

I am here simply because of the terrible needs of some 8 million U.S. citizens in the Appalachian South-the mountain counties of some 9 Southern States. I served this area, as the Senator said, as an instructor at Berea College, but for many years worked in "admissions" and have visited in homes and schools and courthouse squares throughout the entire area.

Now let me spend just a half a minute on the total situation.

In this area, on the average, we are underemployed-and this means underfinanced-which means poor, largely because we are undereducated. I just want to give two statistics right quickly. Out of 257 mountain counties there are only 2 where the adult educational median level is above the national median and there are only 2 where the family income level is above the income level out of this whole

area.

Senator WILLIAMS. How many States are you talking about?

Mr. AYER. I am talking about 9 States and 257 or more counties in these 9 States from Morgantown, W. Va., to Birmingham, Ala., to each mountain on the side of the range.

For instance, in one county, the adult educational median is 6.5 years of school, and the national median is 10.6. In one county, the family income is as low as $1,324; family income, with the national median, $5,660.

Now we are talking about an area which is in need, but an area of great human potential. I am here on behalf of Federal help which will give these people a chance to develop their potential within the national situation.

Now 1 person out of every 25 in the Nation lives in this area, and this is an area of great concern.

Now I would like to make this one statement: We caught on, let us say to use the vernacular-to soil erosion almost too late. It was almost all in the Gulf of Mexico before we got sharp about this and began to rebuild our soil. We didn't catch on to timber devastation until we cut it about three times over, and our great resource was gone. We are catching on to water conservation only slowly and not fast enough.

But these three, as important as they are, are not as important as human erosion; I mean the erosion of human potential and character, and this is what I am here to talk about.

Now I really would like to indicate that this is in a period of emergency, when this many people of great potential have lost hope, and are faced with lack of challenge and lack of opportunity, and lack of vision about what to do about themselves.

Now, I believe that we tolerate here in America the underdevelopment of human resources only in unawareness of its negative potential

in the Nation. I think we are generally unaware of the quality and quantity of the need, and of what, perhaps, may be done in this region.

Now, I am personally involved in many ways in the development of these people in education, in leadership training, in health, and I have come here because I have seen the possibilities of this legislation inserting some leadership which the present county situations cannot provide within their limited budgets and limited personnel.

I believe that this legislation can arouse mass involvement of the underprivileged and underdeveloped people on their own behalf. This is an area of resistance to change, largely because of their independentsmall-farm status, largely because of the tradition of a small power group which dominates the situation in each county. By and large, this great mass of people are not involved in the current stream of life in America.

I believe that we need techniques, and this could be one, which will revive faith in themselves and hope for themselves, and in what they can do in the total national situation.

I believe that the individual approach is required.

I am hoping, I and the folks I represent, that this legislation will trigger continuing education or adult education, a new involvement in public health participation, new programs in community development and leadership training, and a new attitude in the public schools and in that great mass of young people who are dropping out of public schools.

I personally have been involved in dropout workshops in dozens of counties in the Appalachian South. We give consideration to this, but nobody knows what would happen, or what they would do, if the dropouts suddenly decided not to drop out. So, we are dreaming of some kind of new pioneering programs which will involve these dropouts in socially significant movements outside of school; not in lieu of attending school, but recognizing the fact that many of them are still going to be dropping out because of socioeconomic conditions. Now, I don't know how to put this in a nutshell, except to say that there are great numbers of people in desperate need of economic education and socioeconomic progress; to say the situation is ingrown and, in a sense-I won't say cannot change is unlikely to change rapidly without some help from the outside. I am eagerly hopeful about this legislation because it is not massive help to people but it is token help, which will inspire and arouse people to help themselves. I do not believe a nation can tolerate, for any length of time, this number of people inadequately developed and with this little hope.

I would like to suggest one or two specific suggestions about what could be done. We have submitted from this area several pilot projects in health, education, and community development.

For example, in an area where there are two public health nurses for 27,000 people, and in an area where we have thousands of undiscoverable cases of tuberculosis, we need the means by which there can develop the individual family house-to-house approach, involving people at a personal level rather than by the printed word or by the organization appeal.

I believe that, in the field of education, a carefully chosen, carefully trained, carefully supervised corps in the family-to-family approach can involve the underschooled people in continuing their education.

We need in this area some brandnew approaches in addition to the best that our regular systems can do. I think it is appropriate to say that we are spending, in this area, a larger proportion of our tax dollar on education than elsewhere in the Nation. The problem, however, is that our tax base in our economy is such that even when we have spent the largest percentage of our tax dollar on education it is still inadequate to meet the situation.

The sum total of my testimony is that we have a great mass of Americans undereducated, underdeveloped, underfinanced-meaning poor. And in the present situation there are no elements which will permit these counties to break out of this cycle unaided.

There appears to me to be the question of a mass subsidy to aid all individuals, or an experiment of this sort which would bring new ideas and new leadership into the situation, which, I hope and believe, could arouse these people to act on their own behalf within their present situation.

Now, I did not come with a typed, formal statement. I came as a citizen personally acquainted with thousands of people in the area, and with their relative lack of hope. I am personally acquainted with their need for leadership, inspiration, and evidence that we, as a nation, care about what they can become.

Senator BURDICK (presiding pro tempore). Thank you very much for your fine testimony. For the record, I wonder if you can tell me something more about the organization you represent.

Mr. AYER. Yes, sir. I am the executive secretary of the Council of the Southern Mountains, organized in Atlanta in 1913 by a group of leaders religiously motivated. They, in turn, motivated people from Berea College, in the folk school, and interested in the area, who were sponsoring schools at that time.

This is a voluntary association with interests in the area and endeavoring to coordinate by voluntary association all of the efforts, public and private, throughout the whole region.

I was a teacher for many years in Tennessee. In 1947, I moved from Tennessee to Berea College and continued my membership. I was invited to be the executive secretary at a time when they needed one. They were fresh out of a secretary.

I undertook this task simply because I have a total philosophical and practical belief in the power of united effort. The organization is composed of professional and lay leaders, it is composed of churches and schools and industries and civic clubs.

As a matter of fact, there is even a funeral home in Harlan County, Ky., which is an institutional member of the council. It is an organization which represents the diverse opinion of public and private effort, both in education and in industry. It is a true council in that it represents all extremes of opinion on integration and segregation. We endeavor to live up to the principle of a council, a meeting place of all elements of the people of the area; the well-to-do and the desperately poor; the educated and the uneducated; the industrial and the religious.

This organization publishes a magazine, works through annual conferences, regional conferences, particular sessions in health, in education, and in social welfare. We have also worked in areas of recreation.

I go to a meeting on social welfare in Owensboro tomorrow. Next week I go to Bristol to sit in on the social welfare committee group involving several States. This is purely and simply a voluntary fellowship of people and institutions devoted to a united effort in common cause on behalf of the people of this area.

Senator BURDICK. What area does that embrace?

Mr. AYER. This embraces anywhere from 190 counties to 274, between Morgantown, W. Va., and Birmingham, Ala. It is an artificially designated area called the Appalachian South, which covers Maryland to Birmingham.

This was originally carved out by people who studied this area as a remote mountain area to which the Scotch-Irish had migrated and set up independent fortresses and subsistence farms there in the mountains.

We were, of course, for many, many years an area of subsistence farms, the stronghold of the family. Then we became a mining area. We are still a mining area, but we don't use many miners. Subsistence farming is no longer an adequate way of life. We are an area of increasing population biologically, but decreasing in population by virtue of migration because our people in search of their share of American prosperity are migrating to the industrial North and elsewhere in search of opportunity which the area no longer provides in the present situation.

Senator BURDICK. In other words, your organization is a private organization.

Mr. AYER. Yes, sir.

Senator BURDICK. Dedicated and devoted to the mountain people in your area?

Mr. AYER. Yes, sir; but within the national picture. We have made this plain. We are not concerned with the preferential welfare of anybody; we are concerned with the comparable welfare of this group of people within the national scene.

We are convinced, and can document this, that intellectually their competence and their cultural contribution to the Nation is as great as any other group of people and yet we have been left behind.

You asked about the council. One of the services that the council renders is easing the problems of migration. We conduct workshops for urban leaders from the North and bring them down into the area to show them the economic and social conditions which promote migration. We give them some understanding of the cultural values and customs of urban people in order that they can be assimilated into urban culture once they get there.

I

Of course, our problem is this: Our people migrate with inadequate education and become part of the economic and social stream. would like to name one city to the north of us, a small city, relatively, but an industrially important city which has 12,000 unemployed people at this moment, 72 percent of whom never finished high school. But then you see our people migrate there in search of employment, not having finished the eighth grade.

While the urge to migrate and better their circumstances is a praiseworthy urge, nevertheless, when they go into that kind of a situation, unless we have done something about upgrading their education, they not only do not improve the situation to which they go. They do not improve their own circumstances either.