The Other 97%

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week, the late William Faulkner offered similar advice to a former butler. Since Negroes "are a minority," the novelist wrote in 1960, "they must behave better than white people. They must be more responsible, more honest, more moral, more industrious, more literate and educated. They, not the law, have got to compel the white people to say, 'Please come and be equal with us.' " This is a point of view that Roy Wilkins, for one, angrily rejects. "We condemn the propaganda that Negro citizens must 'earn' their rights through good behavior," he told the N.A.A.C.P.'s 50th convention in 1959. Young, however, urges Negroes to try to be "more than equal," and for a time his theme song was Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better.

Gilding the Ghettos. Rewarding as self-help projects may be, they cannot come close to soaking up all the available Negro manpower. King and Wilkins want massive WPA-style programs to provide public-works jobs for Negroes. In the wake of the rioting, a number of public officials moved quickly to reduce unemployment. Philadelphia Mayor James Tate sent out "job-mobiles" that recruited 504 unemployed ghetto residents for city work, then met with businessmen and got pledges of 1,200 more jobs. Maryland's Republican Governor Spiro Agnew mapped a job program for unemployed Negroes in Baltimore. Mayors of the riot-ravaged cities, of course, did not have to worry about creating jobs. In Detroit, hundreds of men can be kept busy for years at the task of reconstruction.

Urban Coalition. The most significant effort may prove to be the Urban Coalition formed in Washington last week by 22 leaders of industry, local government, churches, labor unions and civil rights groups. The goal is to persuade "every American to join in the creation of a new political, social, economic and moral climate, which will make possible the breaking up of the vicious cycle of the ghetto." Among its founding members: Whitney M. Young Jr. Another member, New York's Mayor Lindsay, liked the idea so well that he formed a New York coalition aimed at rehabilitating the slums and helping Negroes to become "their own butchers, bakers and candlestick makers."

Initially, the White House reacted coolly to the coalition. One reason for its concern was the fact that Lindsay urged the Administration to "reorder the nation's priorities." To Lyndon Johnson, that sounded like the opening gun for an attack on his Viet Nam policy and an appeal to end the war on any terms so that he could plow the money into the cities.

As for Young's view on Viet Nam, he personally regrets the size and cost of the U.S. commitment. Nonetheless, in Warsaw last fall, he outlined the U.S. position to Polish Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz with eloquence and grace.

No apologist for the Administration, Young explained that he did so because American policy was being challenged one-sidedly by Communist officials, who were plainly surprised and impressed when Young, a Negro, took the stand that he did.

Young, the only national Negro leader to visit Viet Nam besides Senator Brooke, does not make the simplistic argument—as does King—that an end to the war would instantly transfer billions of dollars to the cities. The main thrust of racial progress, as he sees it,