Mr. MOORE. That is correct, Mr. McNamara.

Mr. ICHORD. Mr. Chairman, at this point, if the director will yield, I want to take the opportunity of welcoming Mr. Moore to this committee. I think all of the committee know who Archie Moore is. As a matter of fact, he has been one of my favorite sports figures since I was just a small figure.

Mr. Moore, I have followed your work since you were light heavyweight champion of the world. I have noticed that in your work as a good samaritan you have excelled just as much as you did in the ring. It is a pleasure to have you with us today, Mr. Moore.

Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Ichord.

Mr. Tuck. Let the record show that the other members of the committee share those views and

Mr. CULVER. Mr. Chairman, could I say also at this point, Mr. Moore, that I think your fight against Yvon Durelle in Nova Scotia in 1958 was the most inspiring and courageous demonstration I have ever seen in competitive athletics. I want to commend you at this time. Mr. MOORE. Thank you, Mr. Culver.

Mr. Tuck. You may proceed.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Moore, are you appearing today in response to an invitation and request of the chairman that you testify in these hearings?

Mr. MOORE. Yes, sir.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Is it not a fact, Mr. Moore, that in addition to being the former light heavyweight boxing champion of the world you are also "Mr. San Diego"?

Mr. MOORE. A title that was given me this year for 1968, "Mr. San Diego."

Mr. ASHBROOK. Will you repeat that? The acoustics are very bad. Mr. MCNAMARA. "Mr. San Diego." It is an annual award presented to an outstanding citizen of San Diego, or the outstanding citizen, I should say.

Mr. Moore, the instances of rioting, looting, and burning which have taken place in this country during the past few years have been a matter of deep concern to all Americans, no matter what their race, religion, or national origin.

Will you tell the committee your reaction to these riots?

Mr. MOORE. My reactions to the rioting are that it does not make sense for people to riot in this sense. It does not make sense to loot and burn and destroy people's property or do any kind of things that are wrong, morally or physically wrong; to harm other people, to shoot at people whom you don't even know, and this sort of malicious disturbance.

Mr. MCNAMARA. As indicated in the chairman's opening statement, Mr. Moore, and in a committee release of August 2, there is evidence of Communist and other subversive involvement in these riots. That evidence will be presented for the record in later hearings of the committee.

Will you state for the committee your belief concerning the Communists professed interests in civil rights for Negroes and other minorities? Are they sincere in this? Can minorities accept them and work with them in their efforts to win full equality?

Mr. MOORE. This is only my opinion.

I do not believe in the Communist doctrine. I have been to an antiCommunist meeting, at which Senator Dodd was present, in San Diego to hear a speaker who was also a writer of a book on communism, Dr. Fred Schwarz.

What Dr. Fred Schwarz relayed to the public at this meeting thoroughly convinced me that the communistic area was not one I wanted to be in and that they would seek to destroy a nation the way, mostly, worms destroy fruit, from the inside.

(At this point Mr. Watson entered the hearing room.)

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Moore, a few months ago you wrote a statement about rioting which you submitted to the San Diego Union, which published it as a page-one feature. This statement has won national acclaim. It has been circulated abroad by the USIA, the United States Information Agency.

Will you be good enough at this point to read that statement for the record, please?

Mr. MOORE. I will.

The devil is at work in America, and it is up to us to drive him out. Snipers and looters, white or black, deserve no mercy. Those who would profit from their brother's misfortunes deserve no mercy, and those who would set fellow Americans upon each other deserve no mercy.

I'll fight the man who calls me an Uncle Tom. have broken bread with heads of state, chatted with presidents and traveled all over the world. I was born in a ghetto, but I refused to stay there. I am a Negro, and proud to be one. I am also an American, and am proud of that.

The young people of today think they have a hard lot. They should have been around in the '30s when I was coming up in St. Louis. We had no way to go, but a lot of us made it. I became light heavyweight champion of the world. A neighbor kid down the block, Clark Terry, became one of the most famous jazz musicians in the world. There were doctors, lawyers and chiefs who came out of that ghetto. One of the top policemen in St. Louis came from our neighborhood.

BAIT FOR SIMPLE-MINDED

We made it because we had a goal, and we were willing to work for it. Don't talk to me of your “guaranteed national income." Any fool knows that this is insanity. Do we bring those who worked to get ahead down to the level of those who never gave a damn? The world owes nobody-black or white-a living. God helps the man who helps himself!

Now then, don't get the idea that I didn't grow up hating the injustices of this world. I am a staunch advocate of the Negro revolution for the good of mankind. I've seen almost unbelievable progress made in the last handful of years. Do we want to become wild beasts bent only on revenge, looting and killing and laying America bare? Hate is bait, bait for the simple-minded.

Sure, I despised the whites who cheated me, but I used that feeling to make me push on. If you listen to the professional rabble-rousers, adhere to this idea of giving up everything you've gained in order to revenge yourself for the wrongs that were done to you in the past-then you'd better watch your neighbor, because he'll be looting your house next. Law and order is the only edge we have. No man is an island.

Granted, the Negro still has a long way to go to gain a fair shake with the white man in this country. But believe this: If we resort to lawlessness, the only thing we can hope for is civil war, untold bloodshed, and the end of our dreams. We have to have a meeting of qualified men of both races. Mind you, I said qualified men, not some punk kid, ranting the catch phrases put in his mouth by some paid hate-monger. There are forces in the world today, forces bent upon the destruction of America, your America and mine. And while we're on the subject, do you doubt for a minute that communism, world communism, isn't waiting with bated breath for the black and white Americans to turn on each other full force? Do you want a chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the land of your birth, or do you want no chance at all under the Red heel?

NOT ONE SQUARE INCH

There are members of the black community who call for a separate nation within America. Well, I do not intend to give up one square inch of America. I'm not going to be told I must live in a restricted area. Isn't that what we've all been fighting to overcome? And then there is the element that calls for a return to Africa.

For my part, Africa is a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there. If the Irishmen want to go back to the Emerald Isle, let them. If the Slavs want to return to the Iron Curtain area, OK by me. But I'm not going to go any part of Africa to live. I'm proud of ancestry, and of the country that spawned my forefathers, but I'm not giving up my country. I fought all my life to give my children what I'm able to give them today; a chance for development as citizens in the greatest country in the world.

I do not for a moment think that any truly responsible Negro wants anarchy. I don't think you'll find intelligent-no, let's rephrase that-mature Negroes running wild in the streets or sniping at total strangers. God made the white man as well as the black. True, we haven't acted as brothers in the past, but we are brothers. If we're to be so many Cains and Abels, that's our choice. We can't blame God for it.

Something must be done to reach the Negroes and the whites in the ghettos of this country, and I propose to do something.

'ANY BOY CAN'

As a matter of plain fact, I have been doing something for the past several years. I have been running a program which I call the ABC-Any Boy Can. By teaching our youth, black, white, yellow and red, what dignity is, what self respect is, what honor is, I have been able to obliterate juvenile delinquency in several areas.

I would now expand my program, change scope. If any boy can, surely any man can. I want to take teams of qualified people, top men in their fields, to the troubled areas of our cities. I know that the people who participated in the recent riots, who are participating and who will participate, are misguided rather than mad.

If some bigot can misguide, then I can guide. I've spent too much of my life building what I've got to put it to torch just to satisfy some ancient hatred of a man who beat my grandfather. Those men are long dead. Do we have to choke what could be a beautiful garden with weeds of hate? I say NO! And I stand ready to start "Operation Gardener." I invite the respected Negro leaders of our country to join me.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Moore, you referred in your statement to your youth guidance program, ABC, Any Boy Can.

Will you outline the program for the committee, telling when and why and how it was started, what its purposes are and its principles and accomplishments?

Mr. MOORE. Yes, sir. ABC is a program that I devised years ago and I wanted to work on this program. However, being champion of the world occupied most of my time.

But having a fine memory, I memorized parts of this program. I memorized very vividly many parts of this program, feeling that it would help young people step off in life with their best foot forward because this program was based on truth, honesty, respect for self and for other people, their rights and property. With this program, a youngster in 2 short months would show some signs of dignity.

We all know and feel that when a youngster is fearful of things that might happen to him his potential is down real low. So, in order to bring this potential up he must be motivated. How can I motivate this youngster who is in the neighborhood, who is going to school and is having his lunch taken away from him by the bigger boys and being

pushed around, made to get into trouble? I feel that teaching them the basics, only the outline of physical self-defense, coupled with this moral and spiritual self-defense with which to guide him, will serve as a guideline for him because, surely, when all the youngsters know that a boy has taken physical education or boxing instruction, they do not pick on him very much.

Sometimes there will be a fight in order to prove certain things, but generally the boy who has taken self-defense lessons wins out, and he can go his way down life's trail, down life's hard road, pursuing the trade or profession or career he wants to pursue in life.

So, in teaching this program, first in Vallejo, California, and now in San Diego, we have wiped away a lot of troubles and we have the youngsters interested more in their school work, in their homework, in church work, and things in the neighborhood-clean up, paint up, and be clean inside and outside.

They are not in trouble in school. Why? Youngsters are rewarded for their efforts. We may take them to a fish fry. We may take them to a father-and-son banquet. Many of these children have never been to these seemingly insignificant things such as a businessmen's luncheon in order to perform their little ritual before the men.

Doing this is a type of reward because the ABC litany is based on truth, honesty, respect and dignity. It is based on that triangle, that triangle that is the strongest form of support ever devised by men. It can hold as much as you place upon it as long as it is the truth for the rest of your life.

A good student in the ABC class does not lie, steal, cheat, smoke, gamble, refuse to go to church, play hooky from school, get into trouble, participate in riots, throw bombs, smoke dope, smoke weeds, use narcotics of any kind, use LSD-use all the drugs I don't know anything about. We do teach them this is wrong.

Also we teach them that what is right is to go to church, be a good American, be a good citizen; go to school, go to high school, get a high school education, go to college; get a degree as doctor, teacher; become a Congressman, Speaker of the House, any of these things even Vice President or the President. And I am waiting with bated breath for one of my ABC boys to be a President of the United States. This is my belief.

Mr. MCNAMARA. I think, Mr. Moore, that dream may well come true. You have stressed physical defense, based on your career in the boxing ring, in your youth program, but you have also brought out very clearly, I think, a very vital fact that this is used only as a supplement to, or instrument for, building character in the youth of America.

Mr. MOORE. That is right.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Can you tell us in how many cities the program is now in operation?

Mr. MOORE. The program is in the city of Vallejo, California, 36 miles northeast of San Francisco. It is in San Diego.

Mr. Walter E. Washington, Commissioner of this city, has asked me if I would be interested in bringing it to this city. I informed him I would be willing, well, after my commitment in San Diego, to come to Washington and show how we can curb vandalism in a hurry.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Can you state a few facts or statistics which illustrate the impact, the beneficial effect, which your ABC program has had on youth?

Mr. MOORE. Yes, sir.

In 1965 there was vandalism damage in Vallejo to a housing project where I was called upon to promote the sale of 350 homes. The vandalism damage, according to the figures set by the managers of the branches who ran the housing project, was $7,500 per month. It had been running in that area for 5 years.

The ABC program was put into this housing project, 850 homes, 350 vacant. Within 3 months' time the battle damage dropped from $7,500 to less than $70, all within the space of 3 months because the youngsters were bent on cleaning up their homes, keeping their lawns mowed, staying out of trouble.

The whole thing caught on like wildfire. In the ensuing 18 months all of the houses were sold. There are no houses vacant in this particular tract now. With this job well done, then I was out of a job. I went to another place to work. I went to San Diego to begin it there.

Now the school papers that I have must be about 8 inches thick of straight A's or B-plus averages of the youngsters who are participating in the ABC program. The principals of the schools have been writing very fine reports about the ABC program, the effect it has had upon the students of the schools.

The antisocial activities have actually been really curbed and things bettered by the presence of ABC.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Could you tell us, Mr. Moore, if there has ever been an instance in which any member of ABC has been involved in a riot or civil disturbance?

Mr. MOORE. No, there has been none because, since my boys have been in ABC, there has been very little absence from school. There has been no participation in any semblance of a riot or disturbance among the youngsters. They do not even have fights any more. The only fights they have are the fights that we provide for them with gloves on in the little intercommunity bouts.

Mr. MCNAMARA. Mr. Chairman, that completes the staff interrogation of the witness.

Mr. ICHORD. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Tuck. Mr. Ichord.

Mr. ICHORD. Mr. Moore, is your organization wholly privately supported, or do you receive any Government funds?

Mr. MOORE. I do not receive any Government funds. I would like to have funds available to me, because I feel that if a city like Washington or New York is suffering from vandalism and damage, which they all are, I can curb vandalism damage by 50 percent in the first year.

In the next 2 years we can cut it another 25 percent. Then pretty soon vandalism damage will end, be actually choked out of the juvenile delinquency factor. And the source, the main source of juvenile delinquency, is the vandal factor. Vandalism comes from a little tiny seed called disrespect.

Your little boy, my little boy 5 years old, we can take him to someone's home and if we don't tell him to be quiet he might push a glass of water off the table and break it and think it is cute. His mother might say, "Johnny is a little boy, he does not mean any harm," but