Commissioner of Indian Affairs Glenn L. Emmons today expressed "extreme gratification If over the selection of Fred H. Massey, a Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma and Assistant Commissioner of the Indian Bureau, as the representative of the Department of the Interior to attend a two-week conference for career Government executives being held by the Brookings Institution at Williamsburg, Va., starting December 1.
"This latest honor given to Mr. Hassey," Commissioner Emmons added, "provides further proof of the abilities which so many of our Indian citizens have and emphasizes the progress they can make if they are only given an opportunity, His promotion to Assistant Commissioner for Administration a year ago last July was based on an outstanding record of performance in positions of steadily increasing responsibility with the Indian Bureau over a period of 20 years. I have every confidence that he will represent the Bureau and the Department at the Williamsburg Conference capably and with distinction."
Mr. Massey first joined the Bureau in 1936 as a temporary clerical employee in the warehouse at St. Louis, Mo. One year later he was appointed a junior clerk in the construction division of the Bureau’s Washington Office and in 1940 was promoted to budget clerk in the administrative division. Subsequently he was advanced to the positions of senior clerk, assistant administrative analyst, assistant to the budget officer, and budget officer. He served as chief of the branch of budget and finance. As Assistant Commissioner for Administration, he now supervises the work of that branch and also the operations of the Bureau in the fields of personnel, property and supply, credit, plant management, and plant design and construction.
Mr. Massey was born at Massey, Okla., in 1912 and graduated from the high school at Quinton, Okla. He also attended Bacone Junior College, Muskogee, Okla.; Haskell Institute, Lawrence, Kans.; and National University, Washington, D. C.
At the present time more than 50 percent of the Indian Bureau's staff of nearly 10,000 employees in the United States and Alaska are people of Indian descent. One of them, Ben Reifel, is serving as area director in charge of all the Bureau's work in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. Others are functioning as superintendents at local Indian agencies, as branch chiefs in the Washington office, and in many other positions of comparable responsibility.
