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The Augusta News-Review - January 16, 1975
■Walking
I ■
■ Dignity B
BLACK POLITICS IN AUGUSTA ARE STRANGE
AND AT TIMES COMICAL
Our leaders endorse and support a white candidate, without
knowing the basic facts how politics are played in America.
Monetary considerations are made at the end or during the
campaign. Political favors such as appointments and etc. are forth
coming if your side wins, but you cannot expect both. Black
politicians sometimes put up a fake show of indignation, but the
fact remains when you have received your reward, you can’t
collect both ways, going and coming.
WAS DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. WAITING FOR
GREATNESS, IN A NONDESCRIPT BAPTIST CHURCH IN
MONTGOMERY; OR WAS A SMALL GROUP OF COMMON
FOLKS DESTINED TO SEEK HIM OUT AND BESTOW THE
POTENTIALITY OF GREATNESS UPON HIM? WHAT IF MRS.
ROSA PARKS, ON THAT THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1955
HAD MOVED BACK ON THAT CLANKETY MONTGOMERY’S
BUS?
Montgomery, Alabama is in the heart of the so-called Bible
Belt. Blacks do not attend church today as well as they did when
Dr. King was a young pastor down in Dixie. The rigidity of
segregation forced the Black congregations to organize and
support the local Black community’s activities. Therefore the
social role of Black churches was of great importance, especially
the Black minister. He was the news medium of the community;
expected to gather the local news and circulate it through his
sermons on Sunday. That condition hasn’t changed much today;
most Black ministers are expected to be disseminators of
information, and the pipeline of the community leads directly to
them.
When Mrs. Rosa Parks elected to stay put and rest her weary
body in a seat designated for white folks, and to ignore the
segregated bus signs, she was arrested. It so happened that Ed
Nixon, a railroad porter, was on that bus, and followed her down
to the jail and bonded her out, he also telephoned the city's Black
ministers, informing them of the consensus to boycott the buses.
It is not commonly known by many people, that to boycott the
buses did not originate with the ministers, but they supported it.
Os the 50,000 Blacks, that were in Montgomery, 18,000
depended upon bus transportation twice a day. This fact aided
the unanimity decision of the Black leadership of this planned
boycott which was thrust upon the shoulders of the Black
ministers, particularly those of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.
WHAT MANNER OF MAN WAS THIS GREAT
HUMANITARIAN?-The good doctor was a remarkable product
of the Southland; barely tainted by his academic exposure. He
was a charming, quiet, snappy-groomed Christian gentleman. Dr.
King was a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, and this is
an important factor in his many educational honors. To lightly
explore this fact, is that Morehouse College has turned out about
90% of the subjectively active Black leaders in America.
The slain Civil Righter earned further degrees from Crozer
Theological Seminary and Boston University. Extremely well
qualified and prepared to take over the civil rights movement, he
was not an intellectual in the usual run-of-the-mill. He is a typical
Black product of the South in the sense that its history of
segregation has kept him from the give and take of an open
society, an advantage he would easily have had, if he resided in
Harlem despite its multitude of handicaps, liberal New York State
would have guaranteed.
DR. KING TURNED TO THE SOCIAL PHILOSOPHERS-In
his impressive book “Stride Toward Freedom”, he pointed out
that the term “boycott” was immediately accepted by all social
thinkers. The appeal of massive non-cooperation did not prevent
the use of coercion in the transportation boycott, the avowed
purpose of which was to gain a more just seating and hiring
policy.
Dr. King first turned to Thoreau’s essay “On the Duty of Civil
Disobedience,” where he found a precedent for non-cooperation
with the evil system of segregation as strongly evidenced in the
Montgomery bus company. King borrowed more than
nonviolence from Gandhi, he accepted his syncretic spirit and it is
as though Socrates, Thoreau, Hegel and Jesus were all dumped
together into one philosophical bowl like tossed salad. This
tendency to mix philosophical truths have many Blacks mistaking
religion for faith. Dr. King may have been tied too closely to
Gandhi; his philosophy will tell great things about Jesus, but not
make him the center. Dr. King tried hard to keep Love at the
center of the movement, but the restless militants were raising
their voices even before his untimely death. He had fought a good
fight for redemptive Love.
SAND BAR PLAZA H
200 BLOCK OF SAND BAR FERRY ROAD
THRIF-TEE SUPER MARKET
fH: GROCERIES MEATS -BEVERAGES
JOHNSON'S LAUNDERMAT
NEWLY OPENED - ALL MODERN EQUIPMENT
BLACKMON'S BARBER SHOP
■ HAIRCUTS - HAIRSTYLES - BLOW-OUTS
■ AUGUSTA, GEORGIA BB
THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY
Mallory K. MillenderEditor and Publisher
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I W 9 Speaking!
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Amerikka is on he threshold of destruction because of the evil
personnified in social institutions. The rays of hope center on a
few committed people in various institutions risking their jobs
and lives for needed social change. This country is still not ready
to move forward to implement its ideals.
Presidential leadership is at an all time low because the
majority of whites are deceived about democracy freedom and
equality. We have never had a president except perhaps John F.
Kennedy who offered his country a sound challenge to live up to
its ideals.
Political leaders are mistrusted and rightly so because of
corruption and greed ranging from local City Ca—cils to the
White House. Few political leaders could quality as statesperson
for they are busy misleading and playing upon the worse
characterics of their constituents and supporters.
Economic leaders are up to their eyeballs in greed for rip-off
profits at any cost to not only democracy but to their very
survival. They control political leaders like puppets on a string in
Punch and Judy. Each sector of the economy is competing in a
country wide rat race to see who will get the biggest slice of the
cheese.
Educational leaders are swinging from the ropes of intelligent
test and racism from the trees of inferior education for the
masses. The Boston busing situation is symptomatic of what ails
the commitment of educators to quality education for all
citizens. The miseducation of the masses with propaganda and
patriotism rather than dealing with the historical truths serves to
defend the status quo.
Religious leaders are doing weekly ballet dances on Sunday
mornings on the stage of do nothing about normal moral
commitments to dealing with social ills. They are fiddling with
religious truths like Nero fiddled while Rome burned. We do not
need fiddling but the firehoses of courage, love and commitment.
Safe sermons, giving prayers at ball games, building huge stained
glass social clubs called churches, and doing the “bump” with
Justice and equality is about as effective as a snowball in a
furnace.
White citizens in general are motivated more by their
prejudices than they are by love and justice to say nothing about
equality. The sons and daughters of former slaveholders are
themselves attempting to be psychological and economic
slaveholders. What they do not realize is that white people are
oppressed the same as Blacks but most Blacks at least recognize
they are oppressed.
The busing issue is successfully used to suppress and oppress
whites because their emotionalism in this area blinds them about
their basic lack of economic and educational progress. Whites still
have not learned that to hold Blacks down they must get down
also into the ditch of human suffering and misery.
Blacks in general do not fully recog ize that even an ethnic
minority has power and strength in unity. We go off into ego trips
of “Blackness” in religious and political idealogical camps that
blind us to the reality of the world as a neighborhood wherein no
race or ethnic group can survive without economic and political
cooperation of other groups.
Black and white leaders start out filled with commitment and
often end up filled with corruption. It is only when Blacks,
middle and lower income whites and other ethnic group realize
that the common enemy is racist and greedy ungodly white
capitalists will we ever realize a humanistic society. Cooperation
and coalitions are vital for not only for progress but our basic
survival.
Blacks must wake up and deal as a group even if their white
counterparts continue to ostrich in the sand games and sleeping
like Rip Van Winkle. Life in this country is no fairy tale for it is
daily becoming a “towering inferno” nightmare.
The continued oil and fuel shortages will eventually equalize all
of us in soup lines if we continue our present course mat heads
for destruction. The said part is that the good will suffer with the
bad and the enlightened with the ignorant and foolish.
I will conclude with my own partial list of persons of the year
and for the future. They are as follows: Mrs. Carrie J. Mays,
Oliver Pope, Judge John Sirica, Former Governor Jimmy Carter,
former Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma, Phillip Waring, Mallory
K. Millender, Verlyn C. Bell, Arthur D. Sims, Rep. Barbara
Jordan, Ralph Nader, Marion Brando, Attorney John H. Ruffin,
the Rev. N.T. Young, the Rev. F.F. Cook, Julian Bond, Senator
George McGovern, John Lewis, John W. Gardner, Ramsey Clark,
Lerone Bennett, Willie Mays, Jr. of Augusta, Henry Aaron,
Vernon Jordan of the Urban League, Hosea Wißfams, the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Louis Farratahn, Minister
Lonnie Shabazz, Jessie Jackson and Shirley Chisholm.
The list continues as I add the names of T.M. “Jim” Parham of
the Georgia Department of Human resources Charles Rangel,
Ronald Dellums, Congr man Andrew Young, Russell Means of
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WE CAN NEVER BE SATIS- ffl 1 |\i Ai W
FIEPASLONGASTHE \ V vU
NEGROS BASIC MOBILITY * W? ”2S
IS FROM A SMALLER GHETTO ‘<f 4 M
TO A LARGER ONE!' S? <
REV MARTIN LUTHER KING
POLICE SAID A NOTE VIAS LEFT
READING "NIGGERS DEWARE'/
“WE SHALL OVER COME’’
the Native Indian American Movement, Commissioner Edward
Mclntyre, Lt. H.E. Johnson of the Augusta Police Department,
Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, Attorney Bobby Hill of
Savannah, Deacon Robert Padgett of the Mt. Calvary Baptist
Church in Augusta, Mrs. Biondell Conley, the Rev. J.S. Wright,
Dr. Julius Scott, the new president of Paine College, and
Benjamin E. Mays. This list is by no means complete but consist
of the persons I can think or recall at this moment.
Haram bee!!!!!
Smoking:
The proof is in the puffing
Women are still less vul
nerable to heart attack than
men-but if they smoke heav
ily, their natural protection is
reduced. Increased cigaret
smoking by women has found
them catching up to men in
the incidence of heart attack.
Dr. Richard S. Ross, presi
dent of the American Heart
Association, points to these
facts in discussing smokers:
• A Public Health Serv
ice report to Congress says
that the risk of death in
women age 45 to 54 who
smoke 10 or more cigarets a
day is twice as high as for
non-smokers in the same age
group.
• A study of autopsy
data by a researcher at the
Brookdale Hospital Medical
Center, Brooklyn, N.Y.,
shows that of 182 cases of
women who suffered sudden
death from all causes, two
thirds of the 29 who died
from heart attack were known
to be heavy smokers over 20
cigarets a day.
• Evidence has been
found that the health of asth
matic children is adversely
affected by cigaret smoke ex
haled by their parents.
• Studies of the male
population of Framingham,
Mass, indicate that cigaret
smoking ranks with two other
factors elevated cholesterol
levels and high blood pres
sure in increasing risk of
heart attack and stroke.
• A man who smokes
more than a pack a day has
nearly twice the risk of heart
attack and nearly five times
the risk of a stroke of a non
smoker. Cigarets affect fats in
the bloodstream, cause con
striction of the blood vessels,
make the heart beat faster
and harder and tend to in
crease blood pressure.
• Teenagers who begin
smoking before they are 15
tend to smoke more cigarets,
to inhale more and to have
“especially high death rates,”
compared to those who start
smoking in their 20’s. When
these early male smokers
reach the 45 to 54 age bracket,
their death rate is more than
three times that of non
smokers.
Dr. Ross, Physician to
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bal
timore, and Director of the
Cardiovascular Division of
the Department of Medicine
there, adds that even non
smokers are affected by those
who do smoke. According to
the U.S. Surgeon General’s
office, carbon monoxide in
poorly ventilated areas is of
ten raised to the danger point
and beyond by smoke.
With all this evidence at
hand, why do cigaret sales
continue to climb? Why is it
so hard to get people to give
them up?
“Because cigaret smoking
is more psychologically than
physiologically addictive,”
says Dr. Ross, adding that
it’s a “learned habit that can
be unlearned.”
. Efforts to get smokers to
quit cold turkey have met
with only limited success, he
explains. But it’s possible to
get them to cut down—even
tually quit altogether. “Few
heavy smokers,” he contends,
“will quit all at once unless
they suffer a heart attack or
have some equally frighten
ing experience.”
Dr. Ross notes that the
American Heart Association
places a high priority on
smoking withdrawal pro
grams, and provides free edu
cational material.
“If you smoke a pack or
more a day,” he says, “one
way to motivate yourself to
stop is to save some of the
See “SMOKING” page 6
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’75! A NEW CHALLENGE
Nationally and internationally, the his
tory of the past twelve months reads like
an adventurous, sometimes comic, but fun
damentally tragic, chronicle. Governments
continue to linger in disarray. The people
must still grapple with shock, disillusion
ment and constant crises. Economies bat
tle record inflations compounded by massive
unemployment rates and deepening reces
sions. Throughout the world, political and
economic stability gave way to chaos and
uncertainty. And not even the United States
was able to escape the trends of world af
fairs.
As we projected a year ago, inflation
and unemployment were primary influences
on America’s political and economic life
this year. To be sure, 1974 found Ameri
cans fuming in block-long gas lines while
facing the worst inflation in twenty-two
years. The cost of living rose by a stag
gering 8.8 per cent in 1973.
Today, that figure has increased by more
than 12 per cent with stability no where in
sight. As the cost of goods and services
continues to rise, real spendable income
steadily declines. With today’s dollar re
duced to three-quarters 'of its 1967 pur
chasing power, sustained inflation could
financially devastate Black and poor Amer
icans.
Yet, as insidious as inflation has become,
unemployment, as a by-product of this re
cessionary economy, has also taken its toll.
In January of this year, nearly 370,000 per
sons lost their jobs, placing die total num
ber of jobless Americans at approximately
4.7 million. Today, that figure has in
creased to nearly six million as the na
tional unemployment rate has jumped to
6.5 per cent. The recessionary state of the
economy will undoubtedly push that figure
upward in the months ahead.
Thus, as we approach 1975, the state of
the economy will continue to be our pri-
THE BLACK PRESS
OUR FREEDOM DEPENDS ON IT!
TO BE
EQUAL.
L— J MSLMEy.C/
By /
Vernon E. Jordan Jr.
RACISM . RISING OR WANING?
Racism, called by some “the American disease,” has slackened
since its glory days years ago, but it is still with us and still
represents a major public health problem.
The infection of racism has been generally contained over the
past decade but signs of a resurgence are unsettling. While many
white Americans may be content to think it is a thing of the past,
the truth is that racism is still alive and well in 1975.
It struck in its sickest form around New Year’s when a home
owned by a respectable, hard working Black family was
dynamited in a previously all-white neighborhood in Queens.
It struck in its currently accepted form when Boston’s School
Committee, defying a contempt of court citation, refused to
submit a desegregation plan for the city’s troubled schools.
And it struck in its most hidden form - the accumulated hurts
and pain of a Black lifetime - when a Chicago police detective
died of a heart attack, leaving behind a letter revealing the toll
prejudice and discrimination took. “Mine is a wasted life, he
wrote, “full of degradation, muted feelings and not belonging.
This is one hell of a world for a Black man.”
It is instructive that racism’s victims in these instances - an
innocent Black family, Black school children, and a lone Black
man - all lived in the North, in cities that were vocal in their
support for Black civil rights in the South.
Doubtless, instances of racism could be drawn from the South,
perhaps even more. But that would only prove that racism, that
peculiraly national disease, is an infection that’s spread across the
length and breadth of this land.
The stupid thing about it is that the victims include hater and
hated, alike. Psychologists could probably explain the twisted
mental mechanisms that result in racism, but the social costs of
that behavior are plain for all to see.
Boston is a good example of this. White parents are tearing up
their town just to prevent busing that will integrate the schools.
They can’t even claim they want to preserve the excellence of
their school system because, if anything, the schools of Boston’s
white ghetto are even worse than those in Roxbury.
If nothing else, integration could break down the defensive
barriers of white and Black school kids alike and better prepare
them for our multi-racial world. At best, it could galvanize white
and black parents to go after the real enemy - the forces that
keep the city’s schools inferior for all.
The anti-busing hysteria has provided a convenient cover for
overt racist feelings. In Boston, the facts are very clear: the
all-white School Committee has persistently and consciously
maintained a segregated school system, they have done so in
defiance of the law of their State and their country, and they
have persisted in this in the face of court orders to remedy the
situation.
Desegregation in Boston has been made more difficult by the
failure to comply with the law and by the failure to prepare
parents and school officials for the change. Desegregation has
worked elsewhere - even in the most segregation-ridden Deep
South towns - and there is no reason why mob rule should
prevent it from working in Boston.
What’s needed in Boston and in the nation is firm leadership.
That’s why I’ve urged President Ford to take the occasion of his
State of the Union address to speak out loud and clear against
racism and for the integregated, pluralistic open society that
should be our number one national goal.
The President has been asked to assert leadership in a number
of areas, from energy to the economy, but he should realize that
true leadership in our multi-racial society must be based on an
idealistic goal that transcends the transient problems of the day.
By leading the nation in the fight for racial equality, he will be
better able to lead it in the fight against inflation, recession and
the many other problems pressing in upon us.
. . .DOWN
TO
BUSINESS
DR. BERKELEY G. BURRELL
President, National Business league
mary concern. The twin evils of infla
tion and recession have the unnerving po
tential of wiping out various sectors of our
economy.
As at no other time in history, we are
acutely aware of the need for the voice of
the excluded to be included in the critical
decisions and recommendations affecting
Black survival.
In 1974 the National Business League
proved that we, as a people, can come to
gether with one purpose in mind. We dem
onstrated that we can achieve UNITY. Our
74th Convention made it clear that Black
America is no longer divided by artificial
partitions of age, ideologies, religions, class
or caste.
Understanding the need to develop strong
recommendations which address the press
ing economic dilemma, the conference par
ticipants developed and adopted resolutions
which have been sent to all points of power
in this country which are instrumental in
effecting change. These resolutions have
found their ways to the halls of Congress
and on the desks of executives and admin
istrators who understand that they come as
a mandate of the people.
In 1975 Black and other minoritiy busi
nesses will be confronted with a stern test
of survival. Certainly while business as a
whole is affected, the weight of deteriorat
ing economic conditions falls with particu
lar oppressiveness on the small and minority
business communities which are suffering
acutely from such conditions as: sky-rock
eting interest rates, inaccessibility to equity
capital, lowered production and sales, di
minished profits, and increased rates of
business failures stemming from these and
related causes.
It is imperative, therefore, that we move
to re-establish equilibrium in U.S. econom
ic growth. That is the challenge for 1975,
and the only real hope for regaining even
a semblance of political, social and eco
nomic stability. We have ahead of us a
new year of getting down to btuinett.