Why should we hire Negroes? You don’t hire Negroes.’” Kennedy introduced Civil Service Commission chairman John Macy for a quick summary of the numbers elsewhere: of 405 U.S. Treasury employees in Nashville, there were four Negroes, all clerks; of 249 Agriculture Department employees in Nashville, two Negro clerks; of 114 employees at Labor and Commerce, no Negroes at all. Rolling out similar statistics for other Southern cities, Macy endorsed the Attorney General’s view that it was better to address them early than “just wait until they flare up.”
