Remarks to a Group of Treasury Department Officials on Equal Employment Opportunity

Secretary Dillon and officials of the Treasury Department:

I apologize for detaining you, but I had some people in my office that I couldn't throw out and, besides, I asked them to have you under the roof. I didn't know you were out here in the damp weather.

It is good of you to take time out from your meeting to come over here today to talk to me about a problem that vitally concerns all of us. The equal employment opportunity program that I have been working closely with for 3 years has a very high priority in all of my thinking and my planning. I want to ask your indulgence and your help.

It is all very well for us to make lofty statements about the ideals of our democratic society, but such statements have very little meaning unless they are backed up in actual practice and unless we are able to put them into effect and to get some results that we can point to with pride.

As Vice President, I was Chairman of President Kennedy's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity for 3 years, and I can tell you earnestly and genuinely this morning that nothing in my 32 years of public service gave me greater cheer than the visible progress that we made through the work of that committee.

Today we have more than 7 million Americans who are voluntarily involved in 200 of the largest corporations in this country, and they have already put into full effect an equal opportunity program in each of those 200 giant corporations.

I am extremely proud of the forward progress that has been made by the Treasury Department under Secretary Dillon. The advances you have made and are continuing to make simply would not have come about without your energy and without the Secretary's support.

But I am like the man who appreciates what you have done that Senator Barkley used to talk about all the time. You will remember he went home and a fellow came up to him. The Senator asked him to vote for him, and he wasn't quite sure he could do it. He was still considering it. He said, "Well, John, I can't understand it. I appointed your brother postmaster, I appointed your sister in my office, I sent your son to West Point, and all through these years we have been friends. Now here, in the twilight of my career, when I need you most, you tell me you are not sure. What could have happened ?"

He said, "Well, Senator, you haven't done anything for me lately."

So that is the way I feel about equal employment opportunity over in the Treasury. What I want to know is "What have you done for me lately?" I think it is pertinent to note that the qualified Negroes that you employed when this program was getting underway are now at that point in their career where they are ready to move into higher categories, specifically, GS-12 and above.

This entire approach to equal opportunity in employment is as full of commonsense as it is of equity. We cannot afford the luxury of depriving the Nation of manpower or brainpower. That is why the federal Government must lead the way and we must lead the way by precept, by example, and by results, so that the rest of the employers in the large companies, in the other Government offices, in the bureaus throughout the land that hold up Treasury as an example, can see the evidence that equal employment opportunity is good for this Nation, and beneficial to its future.

As I said in Gettysburg several months ago,¹ it was 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was 100 years ago that Abraham Lincoln took the chains off the slaves. But he did not free the country of bigotry. Until education is unaware of race, until all employment in this country is blind to color, emancipation may be a proclamation, but it won't be a fact. We will just be kidding people.

So I appeal to you to come in here and help me do some more about it. I commend you for your cooperation. I compliment you for your achievement. I urge you to keep moving forward faster and onward and upward.

The best way I know to leave you this morning is to ask you to please practice the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Put yourself in the position of someone that may have been born in a different part of the country from where you were born, who may have been born with a different color from what you were born, who may have been born of a different race or different religion than you were born with. Ask yourself how you would like to be treated if they were in your powerful position and you were in theirs. And then do unto them as you would have them do unto you. If you do that, I have no doubt about the results.

Thank you very much.