Mayor YORTY. I think that is certainly one of the factors. I am certain it is.

Mr. ICHORD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, may I pursue that line of questioning just a step further?

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. WATSON. I am aware that there are many causative factors here, but most of the causative factors have been with us throughout the years. Is that not correct? In fact, the situations with many of our minority groups have been worse in former years than they are today. Is that not a correct statement?

Mayor YORTY. Well, answering only from the standpoint of Los Angeles, I think that some of the factors are different.

I think involved in some of this, of course, is the tremendous migration to our urban centers, where you have new people coming into your city who are not even accustomed to urban living. They are not equipped for the kind of jobs that are now available in urban centers. I think this is somewhat of a new factor in being aggravated.

Mr. ICHORD. If the gentleman will yield at that point, certainly in the case of the Watts riots you could not point to economic deprivation as being a primary causative factor, because it has been pointed out that the average income of the Watts district is much higher, and was much higher at the time of the riots, than the average income of many of our own congressional districts.

Mayor YORTY. This might be, and no doubt is, true of those who are employed. But you have a great number of people there who are not employed.

Mr. ICHORD. You have a high unemployed percentage?

Mayor YORTY. Yes. It is very hard to keep an accurate count because that south central area of Los Angeles is a corridor. A lot of new people come in and only go through there. Some of them have stopped seeking employment. I am not sure that our figures are entirely accurate. We are trying now to get more accurate figures. This, of course, creates part of the atmosphere where agitation can be more effective.

Mr. ICHORD. I am very well acquainted with your problem because I do come from the St. Louis area and we do have a similar influx of new people although not to the extent that I think you have in Los Angeles.

Mr. TUCK. Mayor, did I understand you in the other part of your testimony to say that the riots ensued almost immediately following the parade?

Mayor YORTY. Well, I don't think you could say when the parade stopped and the rioting started except when they got to the hotel where the President was, I feel myself this became the manipulative type of situation where plans had been made in advance by subversives to cause a confrontation with the police, which was their main objective, and they succeeded.

Mr. TUCK. Any person in his right mind would not want to impinge on the constitutional rights of anyone to assemble in a peaceful demonstration, but when it is known in advance that these demonstrations may well serve as a catalyst to set off a riotous condition that results in murder, looting and burning, and other violations of the law, it seems

to me some steps should be taken to prevent people from having those permits.

Mayor YORTY. I agree.

Mr. Tuck. So far as I am concerned, I don't think it is right to permit those demonstrations that will cost the Government money for the people to demonstrate or that will result in bloodshed.

The CHAIRMAN. Especially when we know in advance that the demonstration is for the sake of troublemaking.

Mayor YORTY. Well, it is a sad day in our country

The CHAIRMAN. Demonstration for the sake of making trouble and demonstration for the purpose of redressing a wrong are two different things.

Mr. Tuck. That is right.

Mayor YORTY. Well, when the President of the United States can't come to your city without the most elaborate precautions and the stripping of other areas of the city to provide police to protect him, it is a pretty sad day in the country.

The same thing, I understand, happened to Secretary Rusk in New York the other day.

I think the public of the United States is ready to do something about it if we can provide the means of control that are reasonable. The CHAIRMAN. Our problem is how can we let them know. Here we are this morning. We have been at these hearings now for a long time. I don't want to take the press to task because you can't win that way. They want a raucous hearing before this committee in order to lambaste us for throwing witnesses out. But when we have a hearing with people of intelligence and dedicated public servants such as yourself, who describe these abhorrent conditions, then what? Tomorrow morning you will not see this reported, undoubtedly. Mayor YORTY. Well, we shall see.

Mr. WATSON. May I ask one further question along the same lines that we were interrogating on a moment ago?

While some of these causative factors have been in existence for many years, I will agree with you that we have some new ones, such as the migration of these minority groups into the urban areas. But do you not agree, sir, that there is more effort on the local, State, and national level today to eliminate some of the economic and sociological causative factors than there has ever been in the past 100 years of this country?

Mayor YORTY. That statement is not refutable; there is no question about that.

Mr. WATSON. So we would have to say that the rioting or we would have to conclude, I think reasonably, that the rioting and the other conditions that we have had during recent years would more nearly be the result of the Communist agitation in these particular areas, rather than just blaming it on the sociological and other factors which have been in existence for many years.

Mayor YORTY. Well, I think that the Communist factor is more effective than it has been before and partly because of the movement of people into the urban centers and the conditions with which they are confronted there. There is no question about it that when you have people who are not really part of the American economy, they have no training for a job that is available to them and they are simply

put on relief, that they are certainly more subject to subversion than a person who has training and has a job. Now, the kinds of jobs that untrained people can do in the Los Angeles area are disappearing. Mr. WATSON. They are all over the country, are they not?

Mayor YORTY. So you have an aggravation of the problem. You have tremendous want ads looking for employees.

Mr. WATSON. There is no genuine interest on the part of the Communist agitator or manipulator of this unfortunate circumstance to improve the lot of these people, but rather to cause disunity and unrest and a general breakdown in law and order.

Mayor YORTY. The purpose of the subversive is always to exploit any situation that he can find. That is not only true in our cities; that is true in the Middle East; that is true every place.

The public has no idea of the success of the international Communist Party in the world today. There is not a conflict, even in Nigeria, where they have moved in with a group at Lagos to help them against Biaffra, at the same time they tell the Biaffrans that we have refused help to them, that they have the situation confused, both sides hate us: Biaffra because we don't help them and Lagos because they are getting help by the Russian Communists. They move in every place in this world that they can create more confusion, the more opportunity for their kind of propaganda to make Communist incursions.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you again, Mayor Yorty.

Mayor YORTY. I was pleased to be here.

*

(Whereupon, at 12 noon, Tuesday, November 28, 1967, the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m., Wednesday, November 29, 1967.

SUBVERSIVE INFLUENCES IN RIOTS, LOOTING, AND

BURNING

Part 1

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1967

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE

COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES,
Washington, D.C.

PUBLIC HEARINGS

The subcommittee of the Committee on Un-American Activities met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 311, Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C., Hon. Edwin E. Willis (chairman) presiding.

(Subcommittee members: Representatives Edwin E. Willis, of Louisiana, chairman; William M. Tuck, of Virginia; Richard H. Ichord, of Missouri; John M. Ashbrook, of Ohio; and Albert W. Watson, of South Carolina; also John C. Culver, of Iowa, in absence of Mr. Willis.)

Subcommittee members present: Representatives Willis, Tuck, Ichord, Ashbrook, and Watson.

Staff members present: Francis J. McNamara, director; Chester D. Smith, general counsel; and Herbert Romerstein, investigator. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Mehaffey, please raise you right hand.1

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Mr. MEHAFFEY. I do.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, before he starts his testimony I have a few documents I would like to introduce.

The CHAIRMAN. All right.

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, in preparation for these hearings the staff has prepared a compilation of statements by foreign Communist powers and organizations on the recent riots in this country. Inasmuch as there are groups in this country which have been involved in the riots and which take orders from these powers, or openly adulate them and hold them up as models, it is believed these statements are relevant to this inquiry.

1 Testimony of other witnesses who testified prior to Mr. Mehaffey's appearance on this date is printed in part 2 of these hearings. 861