Ten years ago, the city of Washington was the showpiece of integration, the model that proved that racial harmony could be achieved in a school system.

Today, the city's role has been reversed. It is the segregationists who now cite Washington as an example to back up their argument. George Wallace summed up the argument when he told his Harvard audience that "Integration just doesn't work. In Washington they integrated the schools and now they have a school system that's a disgrace. All the whites are feeing to the suburbs. The place has an awful crime rate. There was a race riot there not long ago...."

Sadly, it was the Wallace line that was emphasized when the country's newspapers and magazines suddenly discovered Washington this summer. The crime statistics for the District were quoted ad nauseam. The rickety schools and the high dropout rate were cited again and again, and attention was always called to the fact that the schools were 35 per cent Negro in enrollment. No less than six major magazines, plus the New York Times, ran lengthy articles emphasizing crime in the District and the city's racial problems.

Capitol Offense

Since Washington, with Negroes making up 55 per cent of its population, is the only major U.S. city with a Negro majority, it was inevitable that segregationists should begin citing it one day as an example of "the Negro's inability to govern." For the District of Columbia is, undeniably, a mess. Just who is responsible for the mess is another question. To begin with, the mess has very little to do with crime. Reporters find it exciting to present accounts of visitors being robbed "within sight of the Capitol dome," but it is still true that of the twelve largest American cities, Washington had only the seventh highest crime rate per capita. The crime rate is on the rise in the District; it is also going up in the other eleven cities.

But more importantly, it is a gross misstatement to say that Washington's schools are poor, or that its government is a failure, because most of its citizens are Negroes. For the most part, the city's Negroes cannot be made out to be the cause of its problems. The schools are poor because there is no money to repair them and to pay decent teachers' salaries. The city is poorly administered because its particular form of government insures that it will be so.

For the District of Columbia is governed by the Congress of the United States, a body which is disorganized enough when it is governing a nation and impossibly awkward when it it stoops to concerning itself with the affairs of a city. Perhaps 70 per cent of the Congressmen pay no attention at all to the District's problems; they are too busy with other things to consider the flood of city laws which flows through the Houses regularly. How can a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, preoccupied with the problems of Vietnam, be expected to worry over the D.C. budget, or a new welfare program or a bill to legalize the sale of ice cream cones in Washington? The matters are naturally left to the Committees on the District of Columbia. And the House District Committee is completely dominated by Southerners.

Paradox

It is an amazingly paradoxical situation; the only city is the U.S. with a Negro majority is governed by Southern whites. "It's as if the U.N. had sent the South Africans to run the Congo," District officials say when they are sure no one is listening. It is these men--John McMillan of South Carolina (the chairman), Howard Smith of Virginia (the veterau of the Rules Committee), John Dowdy of Texas, George Huddleston of Alabama, Basil Whitener of North Carolina, John Bell Williams of Mississippi, and so on through a lengthy roster of Southerners, who year after year prevent the passage of a bill to give the District self-government. During each Congress, the Senate, whose District Committee is dominated by liberals, invariably passes a bill to give the city home rule. And during each Congress the home rule bill bounces into its familiar pigeon-hole in the House District Committee, never to emerge again. McMillan never even bothers to hold hearings on the legislation.

So the Congress of the United States goes on legislating for the District of Columbia. Perhaps this is one way in which Washington's Negroes are responsible for their own misfortunes; Southern members of the House District Committee, resentful of giving money to an integrated and 85 per cent Negro school system, refuse to provide enough money for the schools. They regularly chop the District's budget far below the levels recommended by the President and the three District Commissioners, the men who theoretically run the city, but who actually are little better than ambassadors to the District Committees.

No Solution

There seems to be no solution to the District's governmental problem; home rule is out of the question as long as the Southerners command a majority on the House District Committee. Some Washingtonians have suggested, only half-jokingly, that the city secede from the Union in order to draw attention to its problems. And this in perhaps the most realistic solution proposed so far.

Congress's mode of governing the District seriously limits the action the city can take towards meeting its problems. But Washington's problems are not by any means all administrative. The city's Negro population has gained a great deal over the last ten years, but it demands a good deal more justifiably, and many of its demands are extra-governmental.

The gains have been formidable. In 1953, public accomodations were integrated by order of the commissioners, probably the most daring act they have ever performed on their own. The next year District schools were desegregated by the Supreme Court decision. Slowly but steadily Negroes picked up more and better jobs. The government began to integrate its own jobs and to encourage its contractors to do the same.

'White Noose'