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■Walking ■
I itctE I
■Dignity ■
(A BAD SMELL OF HOSEA WILLIAMS’ HARASSMENT HAS
BLACK CONCERNS)
The Black communities over the nation may not always agree
with the many shindigs of Hosea Williams the flamboyant activist
of SCLC, and congressman-elect; but Blacks do not want him
crucified on a cross of white racism. He is engaged in two court
battles, one state and one federal. Both have all of the
ramifications of a hideous frame-up.
PRESIDENT FORD, RATED AS HAVING BEEN ON “BIG
TEN” FOOTBALL STAR, VIOLATED A BASIC AND
CARDINAL PRINCIPAL OF THE GAME BY FAILING TO
FOCUS ON THE BALL. HE EXEMPLIFIED THAT
DELINQUINCY WHEN HE GLIBLY SAID THAT HE DID NOT
AGREE WITH A FEDERAL COURT’S DECREE THAT
ORDERED BLACK CHILDREN BUSED INTO SOUTH
BOSTON’S ALL-WHITE SCHOOLS. MAYBE MR. FORD GOT
HIS SIGNALS CROSSED; BECAUSE THE BOSTON AGONY IS
NOT THAT OF BUSING PER SE, BECAUSE WHITE KIDS
HAVE BEEN BEING BUSED TO SUSTAIN SEGREGATION
SINCE THE INFAMY OF “SEPARATE BUT EQUAL MYTH”.
THE PRIME CONCERN IN BOSTON IS THE PROBLEM OF
ABIDING BY THE LAW.
In these days of high sounding rhetoric, the fact, remains that
all Americans are not equal before the law. Os course, this type of
judiciary jargon, most certainly presupposes that a federal decree
is inviolable, even to proud old Boston. These working whites in
South Boston have a plausible point, since the Supreme Court
threw its protective arms around Detroit’s affluent suburbanites
by denying the Motor City’s Black children the right to learn and
use the wealthy teaching tools of upper middle class whites. The
South Boston working class Irish citizenry, rightly says: “they
keep the Blacks out of the schools of the rich, but bus them
wholesale into the schools of poor whites.”
It is open to question whether the state and city officials liave
been honest in their efforts to protect the Black kids that were
assigned to South Boston schools. But if they have, then rather
than giving his personal opinion of the court's ruling, President
Ford should face the problem with the same responsibility that
President Eisenhower did at Little Rock and John Kennedy in
Mississippi. This is not to say that the army should be hurried
into South Boston, but this option should by no means be ruled
out.
Governor Francis Sargent and Mayor White acting with typical
sophomoric immaturity, seem hell-bent to pass the buck to
amateurish Washington where the head man did not know who
was in charge of federal marshals. The President, talking out both
sides of his mouth, may have sounded good to help him in his
crusade to mend the pieces of the morally bankrupted
Republican Party; but a President’s leadership should be a matter
of moral emphasis and tone.
President Ford badly defaulted on the kind of leadership this
country needs after the Watergate malaise. His comment surely
failed to show that he can carry a ball under pressure, when the
rule of law is at stake. A strong President would not have implied
his personal feelings concerning a court’s decree. Many Americans
do not like income taxes, but they pay them, because that's the
law of the land; especially when the central issue, like that of
Boston is the bonafied proof whether America is governed by the
rule of law or street lawlessness.
The core of the Court’s ruling on these current school cases is
based on the necessity to overcome segregationalist subterfuge.
Some of the people are not racists in the classical sense; they
reason that the judges and politicians who put this punishment
upon them, send their children to private schools, and themselves
live in protected fashionable suburbs. This maybe correct, but tl.e
point in Boston and elsewhere is that redress for any grievances
must come within the law, not in the streets. If the South
Bostonians look around, they can find plenty political support
for their anti-busing position, and believe it or not, all of them
will not be white.
If Congress does pass a constitutional amendment to minimize
this national condition, let it be hoped that the amendment will
not focus on anti-busing, but on a fair distribution of the races,
and this nation should pledge itself to give every child all of the
education that they can assimilate. But as long as whites take the
law into their hands, and random attack innocent Black kids this
nation will be the laughing stock of the world, when we talk and
sing about the “land of the free, and the home of the brave”.
What are we brave at, mobbing defenseless Black kids this
TOBE
equal /fW ►
By f k/ ►
Vemon E. Jordan, Jr. >/ k
CRIME A POLITICAL FOOTBALL
You can always tell when there is an election campaign going
on by all the rhetoric about crime, crime waves, and safety in the
streets.
This year, as in past campaigns, citizens have been subjected to
the usual barrage of misinformation, half-truths, and scare tactics
designed to frighten them into voting for the candidate who
promises to “get tough with criminals.”
With the taste of the Nixonian “law and order” regime still in
our mouths, it may not work as well this year as it has in the past,
but the hard-liners are still pushing the promises to “put more
cops on the beat,” to get muggers off the streets, and to lock
more people up in prisons.
It is almost as if this society has some kind of primitive need to
exorcise its devils by a process of artifically-induced
semi-hysterical ritual that, of course, leaves the problem of crime
untouched. . ... •
Somehow it seems easier for people to pursue the illusion of
dealing with a problem than to do the hard, gritty, often
frustrating work of actually dealing with the problem.
There is no denying the problem does exist. Crime rates are
high and getting higher, with the biggest increase coming in the
suburbs. Ghetto life is marked by physical insecurity symbolized
by triple-locked doors and widespread fear.
The question is, what to do about it? The typical answers
we’ve been given - more police and more prisons - are the old
answers that have been tried and found wanting.
There are almost as many people studying crime as there are
criminals, and we still don’t know what will work. Some studies
in recent years show that you can put more cops on the street or
less, conduct intensive patrol car surveillance, or cut it down,
Ingoing"
If PLACES” faZ IT 1
■ I
■ With Philip Waring
BLACK LEADERS SCOLD PRESIDENT ON BIAS STAND
Thank God for television! Last Thursday evening the entire
nation heard and saw Vemon Jordan, Rev. Jesse Jackson,
Clarence Mitchell and other topflight national leaders report on
their conference with President Gerald Ford. They were very
frank in telling him of the displeasure of the Black Community
and liberal whites on his very untimely remark in criticism of a
Federal judiciary ruling on Boston school busing. I just sent a
telegram to my national boss, Vemon Jordan, expressing elation
on the forthrightness of how they expressed displeasure and
concern to the President.
The Old Order has Changed. Black People will no longer take
insults but will respond just like Catholics, Big Labor, the Medical
Profession or any other organized group. Now just between Me,
You and the Gatepost, let’s hope some of this forthrightness will
filter down into the good precints of Augusta, Georgia. We love
this town too much to hope otherwise.
ARTHUR LEE SIMPKINS WIDOW REMARRIES
Many old time Augustans remember beautiful and charming
Aurora, who married Arthur Lee Simpkins many years ago before
they both left Augusta for his subsequent rise into national fame
as a singer and entertainer. Arthur Lee passed several years ago in
Los Angeles where they lived. It was good to note in a press
release that Aurora had just married a Mr. Herman N. Yarbrough,
Jr. at Las Vegas. He is a mortage broker with the Los Angeles
Helefield Mortage Company. “Going Places” will continue to
spotlight from time to time news about former Augustans.
FRANK STANLEY PASSES Frank Stanley, one of the Elder
Statesmen of the Black Press and nationally prominent leader,
passed recently in Louisville. Frank was my good friend and
brother. 1 was last with him in March at the funeral of Alpha
brother William Alexander, the man who made it possible for
Alpha Phi Alpha to build hundreds of middle-income housing
units throughout the nation before President Nixon cut the
national housing program.
Mallory Millender does not know this, but Frank Stanley was
quite fond of him. He praised Mai’s great success in organizing
and projecting a first-class weekly in such a short time. 1 am
sharing one of Frank’s recent columns from his Louisville
Defender.
CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS HONORS WIDOWS
An iterracial roster of top national leaders recently joined with
3,400 others to pay tribute to four widows of civil rights leaders
the late Dr. M.L. King, Jr., Mrs. Betty Shabazz (wife of Malcolm
X), Mrs. Medger Evers, and Mrs. Whitney M. Young, Jr. (Shown
in order on photo). Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson addressed
the banquet held for the sixth year at the Washington Hilton. It
was dedicated to Black Women. During the four day session
educational meetings on voting, registration jobs, health care and
political fund raising were held for Black elected and appointed
officials from around the nation. Title of these sessions were
“Black Political Priorities for ‘75”.
BEING FRANK ABOUT PEOPLE PLACES AND PROBLEMS
By Frank L. Stanley
WAR ON PROVERTY CONCLUDED?
Mark R. Arnold has written a definitive article in the New
York Times Magazine on the Poverty Program (Economic
Opportunity Act) created a decade ago on August 20, 1964. At
that time the act declared: “It is the policy of the United States
to eliminate the parachute of poverty in the midst of plenty.”
The program was termed the “War on Poverty” but, Arnold
now says it was “The war that might have been” and he
concludes: true Poverty is, after all a shortage of money. And
society-American society anyway - has not yet found a
politically palatable way of providing it to all who need it. Until
it does, the elimination of poverty in America will remain a
dream unfulfilled”.
Mr. Arnold supplies an interesting Poverty Program Box Score:
COMMUNITY ACTION: 937 local “self-help” agencies ...No
longer organize rent strikes or city-hall marches as some did in the
sixties, but provide a range of noncontroversial services to the
poor: provide emergency assistance to the needy, channel welfare
recipients into job training, find housing for the homeless, help
for the homebound, run interference for the poor in dealing with
local bureaucracies... Employ a work force of 180,000 half of
whom were formerly poor or on welfare. Cost: $330-million.
Effectiveness: Mixed.
HEAD START: Comprehensive health, nutrional, and
educational assistance to 380,000 preschoolers from low-income
familes. ...Politically popular program whose frequently
imaginative teaching techniques have rarely gained a foothold in
public schools into which “graduates” are fed ...Children
attending Head Start and it sequel, Follow Through, grades 1-3,
score higher on achievement tests than those who don’t
...Program is concentrating creasingly on home environment as
the key factor in educational attainment. Cost: 5430-million.
Effectiveness: High.
JOB CORPS: Schooling and job training in a new environment
for teenage school dropouts; program has undergone drastic
changes from the sixties, maintains a low profile...boasts a 93 per
cent placement rate-in jobs, school or military service. But half of
each year’s 43,000 enrollees drop out within 90 days and
expenses required for residential settling keeps costs per enrollee
at more than 56.500 a year. Cost SIBO-million. Effectiveness:
Questionable.
LEGAL SERVICES: Employs 2,500 lawyers in 900 “poverty
make penalties greater, or more lenient, and the crime rate still
climbs.
So let’s not fall into the trap of swallowing easy solutions
where there are none. And let’s not dismiss old ones as failures
when they’ve never been tried.
Rehabilitation, for example, has become a dirty word. There
was a time when people believed that offenders could be put in
prison to learn a trade and solve personal anti-social attitudes and
then take their place in society. The concept is is under a cloud
today, but it has never been tried.
Whatever their paper programs, prisons have always been places
where people have been locked up, subjected to brutalizing
institutionalization, and denied basic human needs. Onlyahandful
of prisons have ever had any programs to deal with drug
addiction, alcoholism, or job-training and placement, and most of
these have been half-hearted at best.
The typical offender is young, poor, jobless, and badly
educated. Since the numbers of young people are higher than
ever, since poverty and joblessness are rising, and since the
educational system is failing more and more youngsters, the ranks
of potential law violators is swelling, and we can expect more, not
less, crime in the coming years.
That is, unless we can develop positive programs aimed at the
young, the poor and the jobless. Jobs, training, and money will
do what more police cannot - cut crime. But as long as
youth unemployment in inner-city areas ranges from a
third to one half as long as half of inner-city youth grow up in
poverty, we’ll continue to have serious crime probelms.
Citizens really concerned about crime and not just enjoying the
luxury of public outburst against it, can work for increasing
neighborhood involvement in crime prevention, including setting
up neighborhood probation centers to help offenders stay out of
the clutches of a prison system that only reinforces criminal
behavior. The whole system of criminal justice, from inadequate
police work to inefficient and absurd court practices to inhuman
caging of offenders only works to stimulate crime rather than
prevent it.
Letters
To The
Editor
Dear Editor:
We were fortunate to have
heard Ms. Jessye Norman,
internationally known opera
star in concert Thursday, Oct.
17. This was a rewarding,
fulfilling and unique
experience for many.
The Paine College Lyceum
Committee is grateful to you
for you support and good
wishes. Be assured that we
appreciate your support in
helping us make this event
successful.
Sincerely,
Paine College Lyceum Comm.
Mrs. Ann N. Johnson, chairman
Dear Editor:
Please allow us this
opportunity to thank you for
your very fine coverage of our
banquet on October 10th.
All the ladies were thrilled
to see themselves all dressed up
and join me in thanking you
again and again.:
Sincerely,
Rev. E.M. Mclntyre, Pres.
Mrs. W. Dent, Rec. Secty.
Ladies Service Club Y.W.C.A.
Dear Editor:
On behalf of the Augusta
Chapter of the American Red
Cross, we wish to express our
appreciation of the recognition
you gave in your recent issue
of the News-Review to all
those schools who worked
through the Junior Red Cross
for the victims of Hurricane
Fif i in Honduras.
These young people worked
hard, and those who were
shown in the picture
represented many, many others
in schools throughout
Richmond County. Thanks to
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g* \ W Z Roosevelt Green. Jr.
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Surveying the political scene leads one to all kinds of
conclusions about the need for newer and better candidates for
political offices. So much is happening that merits every
registered voter going to the polls to cast ballots for better and
oftentimes lesser evil candidates and issues.
Black voters must go to the polls as never before in many
law” offices ... provides free legal advice to persons meeting
income guidelines up to a third above the poverty level... handles
domestic, housing and welfare problems, consumer grievances
concerning faulty merchandise, repossession threats and the like
... A few successful class action suits against government agencies
- lowering barriers to qualify for welfare, for example - have
enraged many officeholders, but benefited the poor. Cost
s7l-million. Effectiveness: High.
Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA): 4,2000 “domestic
Peace Corps” volunteers spend two years working in health
clinics, migrant camps, drug rehabilitation programs senior citzens
centers ... Well-established program now housed in ACTION, the
conglomerate agency formed by the 1971 merger of all Federal
volunteer efforts, VISTA has shed its earlier controversial image,
now gives its workers specific functions to perform. But
program’s inability to attract large numbers of volunteers with
needed skills (plumbers, nurses) and $4,300-a-year cost of
volunteer support has forced administrators to favor less
expensive approaches to volunteerism. VISTA’s cost: $22.8
million. Effectiveness: Mixed. M.R.A.”
Mr. Arnold, properly asks the questions: What indeed has it
accomplished: What are its lessons? What does it take to eliminate
poverty? In answering his own questions Arnold says:
Certainly it has accomplished less than it initially promised.
But it also seems clear that it achieved more than most Americans
appreciate, changing city halls, welfare offices, housing officials,
and Congress in their treatment of the poor, bringing millions of
poor into the political process and many of them into the
decision-making process. It demonstrates that the public
attention span is short, and that, as Eli Ginzburg and Robert M.
Solow put it in the Public Interest: “Social legislation needs a
constituency larger than its direct beneficiaries” if it is too
benefit the poor and the minorities, for they are, almost by
definition, weak and powerless.
There were 23 million poor in 1973, according to the
Government’s inflation-related price index. ($4,540 for a
nonfarm family of four); this is a third less than there were 10
years ago, when Johnson declared the poverty war.
Sargent Shriver the original anti-poverty program director says:
“Nothing I ever did before or since had a more beneficial effect
on so many people as the war on poverty. Millions of children
face a better future because Head Start identified their medical
problems and gave them some sense of the world’s wonders
before it was too late and the damage was done. Hundreds of
white and Black and Spanish-speaking youth and Indian
youngsters have better jobs. We gave people a stake ir. the system
who never had it before... Sure, we made mistakes. But this was
supposed to be a war. Westmoreland made mistakes in Vietnam,
and we excused them.
We were never permitted the same margin of error.”
At this stage only the Senate which has yet to act. Can save it
because the upper chamber feels reportedly, that there remains
strong sentiment for preserving some independent focus for
Federal anti-poverty activities. Os course, much depends on
President Ford, who unfortunately consistently led efforts to
reduce Federal Support. Fearfully he will lean toward revenue
sharing funds which Blacks here painfully learned are not always
spent In their behalf especially since thus far it has been shown
that only 3% has been spent for services to the poor.
Somehow and some way America must face its poverty
problem one that is growing larger and larger for as the late
President Johnson said, “...Poverty to those who endure it means
a daily struggle...hopelessness, a squalid environment, racial
injustice (and) a feeling of being trapped.”
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them, their teachers and
principals, their parents and
their neighbors, the people of
Honduras will know that
someone cares.
Sincerely,
Mary Lou Reynolds
Executive Director
elections all across Georgia. One cannot afford to “go fishing” on
election day unless the polling booths are located on the river
banks or lake banks. It is also important that each Black voter
study the issues and candidates and make up his or her mind.
Perhaps it is well to listen to some so-called “Black” leadersand
organizations but in final analysis make up your own mind.
After a certain amount of reflection I would like to see the
following persons get elected or reelected to office. My opinions
are my own and no Uncle Tom or white candidate can buy my
support. Like Congress Woman Shirley Chisholm, “I will remain
’unbought and unbossed’.” When a white candidate buys Black
support or votes he or she is not obligated to be responsive to the
Black community. It is distressing to see so many old and young
Uncle Toms and Judases in Augusta and elsewhere.
However, I hope George Busbee gets elected governor of the
State of Georgia, Verilyn Bell gets elected to the Richmond
County School Board, Ed Mclntyre gets reelected to the
Richmond County Board of Commissioners, Luther Wilson gets
elected as Mayor of Thomson, Georgia and Congressman Robert
G. Stephens gets reelected to Congress from the tenth
Congressional District.
One of the facts of life is that politics dominate everything
from the Church to the location and licensing of a liquor store.
Practically all politicians are “hog-tied” or corrupted by some
economically powerful person or group in varying degrees.
Reform in campaign financing is a must if we are to experience
politicians more responsive to the consumer. Since politicians
need money, whoever pays the bill controls the deal.
Race and ethnic relations will never improve in this country
unless the wealthy cease playing Blacks and whites against each
other while ripping off both groups. Since it takes two to tango,
the average white man and woman should find out what is
happening in this country and this old plantation and
neo-colonial “trick” will no longer be successful. Since this
awakening appears unlikely, lower and middle income whites will
continue to pay the cost to be the boss of bigotry and hatred.
Moving on to other subjects seems interesting for whatever
reasons. It is hard to become enthusiastic about “revitalizing”
downtown Augusta since uptown Augusta needs so desperately to
be “vitalized.” For example, there are still dirt roads and streets
in this city and county. Further, auto repair shops must do a
booming business in aligning the front ends of cars in this town
because of poorly cared for streets and railroad track crossings.
A much better revitalizing Project would be for business and
church groups to lead in developing jobs and social services for
the poor and needy and improving human relations. The old game
of developing property while humans remain underdeveloped is as
old as Amerikka itself. If not older. So Augusta is likely to enjoy
expensive buildings and cheap human relations. We will have
1975 buildingsand 1875 human relations. No relatively powerless
human relations organization can do what the various religious
faiths should be doing in this area.
Speaking of religion in this country, it is so tragic that religious
leaders are so silent about the unprecedented political and
economic corruption that so heavily burdens us all. White
religious leaders like Billy Graham are silent because of fear of
economic reprisals or they are strong supporters of the status
quo. It is interesting that it has for the most part been only Black
leaders speaking out and taking a stand on the issue.
A study of religious newspaper columns written by some white
preachers reveal that they only deal with safe issues such as
“peace of mind” and abstract Bibical points. They are busy
answering questions that no one is asking or are so heavenly
bound that they are earthly unsound. Their stands on certain issues
usually reflect the positions of their conservative and racist
parishoners. Some of these “apostles of Christ” are leaders in
anti-busing and anti-Black movements.
Politically and economically powerful white Christians demand
silence from their captive prophets. Large membership rolls and
huge physical plants represent shallow goals and gold of the
creature comfort sponters of all at ease in Zion. It is apparently
safer to believe in certain Bibical truths than to believe in racial
equality and brotherhood. We need some white Jeremiahs,
Isaiahs, Elijahs and Martin Luther Kings to lead white people
See SPEAKING (JUT Page 6
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