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The Augusta News-Review - June 7, 1973,
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fHa by Al Irby ; JfJiOlljy
A PERSONAL RETROSPECTION OF MY LIFE, GOD HAS
WONDERFULLY BLESSED ME. I HAVE LIVED THROUGH
AN INTERESTING SPAN, AND I’VE LEARNED VERY MUCH.
“IF A THOUSAND OLD BELIEFS WERE RUINED IN OUR
MARCH TO TRUTH, WE MUST STILL MARCH ON.”
This week I’m in a mood of reflection as the panorama of
black history unfurled before my very eyes. The early years of
my adolescent life was spent in New York City. I knew Marcus
Garvey, the Kingston Jamaica organizer, who had America
worried with his “Back-to-Africa movement.” Paul Robeson, the
mer Xll-Ar Hcan at Rutgers University, and world famed
baritone soloist, .ve attended the same church; Mother Zion, the
anchord church of the Zion Methodist connection ot which his
brother was pastor.
I was employed by James Weldon Johnson, and listened many
days as his brother J. Rosamond Johnson, the noted composer
rehearsed such tunes that became famous: “Under the Bamboo
Tree”, “Oh, Didn’t He Ramble” and “Lazy Moon”. Duke
Ellington brought his small band from, Washington, D.C., and with
his great talent for popular composition, soon from Harlem to
Broadway. Jim Europe, Bert Williams and George Walker were
staring in Ziegfeld Follies downtown, but we young fellows
would catch them after hours in the small uptown clubs. I would
occasionally attend the church where Countee Cullen’s father
pastored, Salem Methodist Church. By the way Countee was born
in the parsonage at Salem.
1 was there when that super musical team of Sissle and Blake
had the nation tapping its feet to their great song hits, a few:
“I’m Wild About Harry”. “Love Will Find a Way”, and many
others.” I witnessed Cab Calloway’s debut to New City where he
captivated the country with his delightful “Hi! Hi! De! Ho!”. 1
was there when the late and great Jimmy Lunceford invaded the
big town, fresh out of Fisk University playing his sweet music. He
soothed the loud and raspy brass of the contemporaneous dance
bands. One of his musical hits, that still lingers on is “It ain’t
what you do, it’s a how you do it.”
Then Count Basie came rushing out of Kansas City with his
great big band that knocked the nation into a ditty. The
inimitable Ethel Waters was packing them in the prestigious
Cotton Club with her haunting hit, “Stormy Weather”.
About this time the horrible Lindburgh kidnapping drew the
attention of the world. A while later I saw Joe Louis win his first
fight in Madison Square Garden, the next day 1 left New York,
and came home to be with my ailing mother.
These were my youthful years, and what years they were,
speak-easies, gin-parties, and the annual fall meeting of the two
mightly giants of he gridiron, Army vs. Notre Dame at the famous
Yankee Stadium.
- I attended City College night school and met people of all
races, this multi-racial relation made an indelible impression upon
my early life. In my life span I’ve died several times. They were
the assassination of President John Kennedy, Senator Robert
Kennedy killed in California, the bombing of the 16th St. Bapt.
Church in Birmingham, where four young girls were killed in
Sunday School. The cowardly shooting of Dr. King; all of these
incidents were a part of Black People’s struggle.
“WALK HARD AND TALK LOUD ”, THIS IS WHAT SOME
BLACK ACTIVIST LEADERS ARE DOING. THEY ARE
USING THIS TOUGH RHETORIC AS A PREREQUISITE TO A
LONG HOT SUMMER IN THE “BLACK GHETTOES”!
Some black leaders in various cities throughout the nation are
trying in a subtle way to propagate the idea of mass street
demonstrations this summer. There were no rhyme or reason in
the 60s. Liberal administrations had given blacks the greatest
social and economic boost since emancipation, yet they went
berserk.
PERCY SUTTON' MANHATTAN’S BLACK BOROUGH
PRESIDENT-recently said that race riots will ignite in black
areas, because of cutbacks in federal funds for cities. Many blacks
have wised-up to the fact that only a small percentage of these
glamourous government programs reach the grass-roots, where the
need is. Brother Sutton added some polemic big talk, when he
added, that the disorders will be beamed into the white
communitiesand to the downtown banks; where he says the real
power is situated.
He contends that blacks are much more sophisticated than
they were in the 60s and much more bolder. This kind of super
“Mau-Mauing” jive does not do the race any good. It could lead
to other senseless Jackson and Kent States.
REV. JESSE JACKSON, THE ARTICULATE
COUNTRY-PREACHER, who many people though had the
badge of real greatness has been indicted with this summer
sophistry. He made a recent statement to this effect: “1973 is a
key year for advancement of human rights and that revenue
sharing is a key issue, because of its potential for political
corruption.
The good preacher in speaking like this was exercising his rights
as a citizen and the voice of a civil rights spokesman. In saying
that the moral authority must shift back into the streets is really
putting the nation’s hopes to the return to the violence and
disorder of he past; while many blacks are making more progress
than ever before.
There is cheap publicity in frightening the unthinking persons
of both races, especially those of the lower strata with threats.
This type of wild prophecies sound self-filling, when sugar-coated
with half-truths. Rev. Mr. Jackson indeed has a point when he
states that mayors and county officials can build political
cliques. There remains a danger when Congress and the Executive
use federal funds for any local program. The Federal Bureaucracy
rewards certain factions and deny funds to unfriendly groups.
That is the reason so little federal money gets to he central
city’s poor after salaries and overhead. This loss is estimated at
85% to 90% of the controversial anti-poverty programs. The bulk
of the hard cash is taken off the top by the briefcased
bureaucracy. If there must be public protests and demonstrations,
it should be against the top boys and girls getting the majority of
Federal lush pots and the bottom masses getting relatively
nothing.
The Wall Street Journal made this perspicuous observation:
“Most demonstrations and protests are of only limited value.
The civil rights movement dramatized the plight of blacks.
Legislation was adopted to redress the major segregation
problems. A continuing drama in the streets will produce a
backlash, in much the same way student demonstrations elicited
first sympathy, then boredom and eventually hostility.”
Footnote:
Thanks to all my friends for the cards and flowers.
Page 4
t Speaking |
- i
From
‘ Athens |
1 BMLJ /I >
X;!; • Roosevelt Green, Jr.
Athens was hit once again by tornado destruction this year.
Damage is running into the millions and one life was lost. One
area was struck for the second time and the city has been hit
twice this year. Houses have been demolished and large trees were
uprooted by the storm. Viewing the area is quite depressing and it
is a real miracle that more lives were not lost.
A number of callers on a local radio station telephone call-in
program blamed the torando destruction on God. They say this
weather phenomenon “hit” Athens as a warning from God
because of the sins of man. It is interesting to see God get
theological credit for meterological activity. A number of Bibical
Fundamentalists invariably blame God for most things like this
and that is tragic. If tornadoes come as a result of sin then
Augusta and Washington, D.C. are in trouble. It is simply unfair
to blame God for tornadoes and hurricanes. It just goes to show
the lack of sound teological teachings and understanding by
people who reject or simply have not benefited from modern
theological scholorship.
The citizens of Athens voted in a referendum last week their
approval for a public transportation system in Athens some years
ago but it ceased operation after the advent of the civil rights
movement. It will be good to see buses running again in this city
thereby providing needed transportation for low income and
other citizens. This kind of system is vital for a growing
community that has heavy auto traffic congestion.
The city and county annexation referendum was narrowly
defeated. Some local politicians and others worked hard to keep
county voters from accepting this needed annexation. County
residents were frightened by threats of placing low income
housing projects in excusive lily white suburbs. More will be
mentioned about this referendum defeat later as more facts are
uncovered.
A look at the national scene is promising when one considers
how Los Angeles, California has just elected its first Black mayor.
Black city councilman Thomas Bradley was elected mayor in
spite of the fact that this third largest city in this country is only
seventeen percent Black. Congratulations to mayor elect Bradley
who won in spite of his opponents’s efforts to appeal to the same
white prejudice that caused this rising Black politician’s narrow
defeat four years ago. While this country may not be what it
ought to be, it is certainly better than most other countries for
Blacks. It is always refreshing to see whites rising above their
prejudices in favor of a true democracy.
The Watergate conspiracy is causing more and more revelations
about the police state activity of the Nixon administration.
Recent developments with regard to the assassination of the late
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the attempted assassination of
Alabama Govenor George Wallace, the bugging of so-called Black
and white “militants” by the C.I.A. and the F. 8.1., and Army
intelligence, and the bugging of Democratic Party leaders is
shocking to the American people. The tramping of constitutional
rights by the Nixon administration zealots smacks of shades of
Hitler. All of this craziness was done in the name of law and order
with umistakeable approval from the president himself. This is
the same group of court jesters that performed in King Richard
Nixon’s name and anti-Black, anti-minorities, and anti-Welfare
ballet.
The limit of the Nixon administration democracy wrecking
crew have not yet been seen. It must be remembered that the
racist Amerikkan electorate sanctioned the behavior of this crew
because the oppression of Blacks and the poor was promised and
delivered. Perhaps this country will one day gasp the desirability
of a sound democracy that couples justice with law and order
tempered with mercy and compassion for all. Nixon should not
resign unless “Terrible” Ted Agnew resigns also. The Nixon
administration is still better than one Agnew would produce. It is
better for President Nixon to remain in office than to have the
vice president lead the country. One shudders and trembles with
chills at the very thought of one day being able to say “President
Agnew”. A back to, or forward to, Africa movement would
definitely be in order at that point. Further, some whites would
probably join us or charter flights to the moon and Mars with
that ungodly eventually. It is therefore to be hoped that the
president (Nixon) can rise above the Watergate and other scandals
to become the great president that he professed wanting to
become. The only thing wrong with falling in mud isto wallow in
it rather than “straightening up and flying right”. Now is the time
for Nixon to “pull off the doggone and put on the confound”.
In spite of all the racism and oppression now existing in this
country there is still hope for a bright tomorrow. Blacks and
many Whites are increasingly seeing the need to work together for
a better country. We must not let the present struggles cause us to
be totally cynical and negative since there are many bright spots
SEE ATHENS
page 7
ji w I ITTT-rf
Dear Editor:
I am writing in behalf of Eta
Theta Zeta Chapter of Zeta Phi
Beta Sorority, Inc., to express
our thanks and appreciation
for the excellent publicity
published in your news papers
on May 3, 1973 and May 24,
1973 toward the opening and
operation of “Stork’s Nest”.
Your copperation in this
manner helped to make the
event a successful one. Your
interest in community
activities is very obvious, and
certainly is of great benefit to
community projects.
Sixteen members of the
sorority staff the “Stork’s
Nest”, a non-profit
redistribution center for needy
expectant mothers, sponsored
by 818 (Better Infant Births)
of the Augusta Area of the
March of Dimes.
Yours truly,
Mrs. Ruby M. Wiley
Publicity Chairman
Eta Theta Zeta Chapter of
Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.
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By a/ ►
Vernon E. Jonfam, Jr. J/ ft
THE CRIME OF IMPRISONMENT
by
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
You might think that the Watergate mess might dampen the
ardor of the law and order crowd, but apparently it hasn’t.
Although official statistics indicate a down-turn in the crime
rate, public hysteria continues to grow. There is a new push for
more prisons, tougher sentences, and the restoration of the death
penalty -- none of which have deterred crime in the past.
A kitty of over half-a-billion dollars has been proposed to build
ten more federal maximum security prisons. A revision of the
federal criminal code has been proposed that would set minimum
sentences, and mandate long prison terms and even death for some
crimes. And at least 13 states ahve taken advantage of the
Supreme Court’s ruling that left the way open to reinstate the
death penalty if it is applied uniformly, to reimpose that needless
and brutal sentence.
If the goal of all these steps is to cut crime, they make no sense
at all. Their only result will be to blindly lash out at people
convicted of crimes, while leaving the causes of crime and the
inequities of the present criminal justice system intact.
With probation and counseling services starved for funds, for
example, it couldn’t be more wasteful than to build new
maximum security jails. The record ofthe prison system is an
almost unbroken tale of failure, of racism, of brutality, and of
training for future crimes.
Stiff sentences never deterred criminals in the past, even when
pick-pockets were hung and thieves drawn and quartered. To
suppose that long mandatory sentences, or even the death
penalty, will cut crime now is a form of self-deception that only
diverts attention from the real causes and cures of crime.
A lot of research and thinking has gone into the problem of
crime in recent years. A couple of Presidential commissions and
professional associations have made some sensible observations
and suggestions, but in the present climate they are going
unheeded. A brief look at some facts is enough to show that the
current proposals are taking us down a blind alley.
: Sentences are already very high. The average federal prisoner
is serving about six years, while in Europe sentences over five
years are very rare. Far less than one percent of prisoners in
Swedish jails are serving as much as four years.
: Sentencing procedures are biased against the poor and the
black. Defendants with private lawyers are sentenced half as
severely as those who can’t afford them. Blacks nearly always get
longer sentences than do whites for the same crimes.
: “White-collar” crime goes largely unpunished. A theft of a
few dollars can draw a six-month sentence, but a multi-million
dollar stock fraud criminal can get off with a suspended sentence
and go home to his house in the suburbs.
: Nearly three-fourths of those convicted of auto theft went to
jail for an average term of three years, but only fifteen percent of
those convicted in stock frauds that undermine the economic
system went to jail at all, and their average term was less than a
year.
It ought to be clear by now that prisons are only factories of
bitterness, mass-producing angry, frustrated individuals with a
grudge against society. Caging a man up, stripping him of his
freedom, his family, his self-respect, his mental and physical
needs, is not going to rehabilitate him.
The criminal justice system is a failure, not because there aren’t
enough jails, not because judges are “soft-headed”, not because
“criminals” have too many rights, but because it is shot through
with discrimination against the poor and the black, with
capriciousness that over-punishes some crimes while letting others
escape the law, with a lack of humanity, with no realistic means
of encouraging people convicted of crimes to become
contributing members of he community and because it stresses
blind vengeance at the expense of rehabilitation.
This results in great personal tragedies, but perhaps more
important, it undermines the whole structure of law and society.
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PHILIP WARING WB f ■
THE FBI TAP ON DR. MARTIN L. KING
Some years ago many of my friends cautioned me when
1 used “Going Places” to oppose J. Edgar Hoover and defend the
late Dr. M.L. King when the FBI wrongly highlighted many
matters of the slain civil rights leader’s personal life.
Now a former FBI agent gives the full truth on how Hoover
tried to “get” Dr. King, and even tried to get white leaders of
Atlanta not to attend the dinner in his honor after winning the
Nobel Award. May I share two editorials from the Amsterdam
News. The first on Dr. King and the second is on how Attorney
William H. Brown is making the Equal Opportunity Employment
Commission work despite federal cutbacks.
GUEST EDITORIAL
Our guest editorial this week is provided by Newsman Simeon
Booker, Black commentator for the Westinghouse “Big W” radio
chain, who said in a recent commentary:
“It is with a great degree of jubilance, and new self confidence,
that members of the nation’s press take credit for exposing the
Watergate bugging case with the unsavory connections reaching
into the White House. Two Washington Post reporters were
named to receive a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished service in
journalism.
“But for members of the nation’s largest minority, the Blacks,
the issue at point is why the nation’s press was not so vigilant in
the 60s in tackling the bugging case of the late Dr. Martin Luther
King.”
Here was a national spokesman, a Black man who won a Nobel
Peace Prize, a man who was not a convict or an advocate of
violence, but yet a leader, who in his country, was dogged by FBI
wiretapping and surveillance.
“Few newspaper editors considered the King bugging as
immoral or illegal. Some reporters in Washington even attended
sessions in which FBI tapes were replayed.
“No one talks about the shameful persecution of Dr. King
during the Kennedy and Johnson years.
“But if the nation’s press had been as concerned about the
invasion of Dr. King’s privacy, perhaps, there would not have
been a Watergate affair.
“Such tactics would have been long outlawed and publicly
frowned on. So the unchallenged bugging of Dr. King hangs like a
cloud over a press, which celebrates its role in exposing the
Watergate affair.”
RIGHT ON, MR. BROWN!
In recent weeks the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission and the Department of Justice have filed twice as
many legal suits charging private firms and labor unions with
discrimination than were filed in all of last year.
In the Watergate mess that is in Washington, this is oneofthe
coolest, most heart warming breezes blowing across the Potomac
River in a long time. And we would like to commend the EEOC
Chairman William H. Brown, 111 and his commission for the work
that it is doing.
Mr. Brown says that his agency’s efforts are backed by the
president himself and he points to the fact that his agency is
getting the people and the money to do its job. Whether Mr.
Noxon is backing this or not, the important point is that so far
this year 58 cases have been filed by EEOC and according to
Brown 100 or more will be in the courts by the end of July. This
compares with 16 cases filed in all of last year by the Justice
Department with its 42 lawyers working in the field of job
discrimination.
One thing is certain, Mr. Brown is going after the big ones
that is where the large numbers of jobs are and no matter who is
doing it, it argues well for he fact of minority groups.
Thus far among the EEOC defendants are such corporations
as General Motors, General Electric, the International Long
Shoreman’s Association, and the United Steel Workers of
America.
We happily say to Mr. Brown, “Right On”.