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The Augusta News-Review, November 20, 1975-
Walking With Dignity
by Al Irby
Lest We Forget
Did the Black “talented tenth” run and hide itself in the white
middle-class labyrinths of suburbia after the death of Dr. King,
and let the civil rights movement die a slow death? Some astute
observers think so.
Most certainly the movement has changed focus, or it may
even have removed itself from everyday concerns of the Black
masses. In other words the movement has become so fragmented
and misleading it can hardly be called a movement. Bayard
Rustin, a leading civil-rights, and labor leader made this statement
recently: “We don’t have the kind of fervor, the kind of unity
and the kinds of deep demands in this complicated period.” The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is
leading the legal fight to enforce busing as a means of giving Black
and white children equal educational opportunities. Os course the
NAACP is the grand-daddy, and most solidly established of all the
civil-rights groups. And about the only Black organization
believing totally in integration. Roy Ennis, the flamboyant leader
of the once powerful Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
belittles both busing and integration with this statement: “truly
autonomous, independent Black school systems, integration is
only one of many ways that you can desegregate.”
MANY VOICES HEARD IN THE WILDERNESS
Amiri Baraka, who heads the militant Congress of African
People, calls busing a “false issue”. “The real question, is why
there is no quality education in the communities where Blacks
and other minority groups live, and why is the quality of
education substandard in most working-class neighborhoods in
general” Economic realities have played havoc with the civil
rights movement. The fat-cats have gone into plush-paying jobs,
or been elected to political jobs. And the little people in the
Black communities are short on loot, because they and white
liberals were the ones that bank-rolled the movement in the
beginning.
The Black churches that were the citadel of the “rights”
movement need repairing, while the Black bourgeoise build new
churches or take over former white churches in the suburbs. Thus
inner-city Black houses of worship are hurting. Even Martin
Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
is slowly recovering from a financial and leadership crisis. A few
years ago, Rev. Ralph Abernathy was threatening to resign as
president, mostly because of what he considered an unwillingness
of upper-class Black citizens to support the organization. But
things are better now because the progressiveness of TyroneL.
* *
All Black Americans should be grateful for the courage and
candor of U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts
when, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on New York
City’s possible financial default, he raised the question as to
whether both the city and state of New York had done enough.
The long range financial good order and solvency of our cities
must be of major personal concern for all Black Americans and
other city dwellers. The forecasts for the past twenty years have
indicated that it will be Black and tan Americans who, in
substantial measure, will be managing - and also paying the
tremendous costs of- major center cities within the next several
decades.
For this reason alone, every Black American and other city
dwellers has an important stake in whether or not our cities are
robbed of their resources today. In San Francisco, the city was
brow-beaten with mobster tactics by a segment of municipal
employes for inequitably higher wages. Should a fireman (whose
job statistically is not anywhere as ardous ar as risky as it is
portrayed, especially in relation, for example, to miners and
riggers) or a garbage collector receive more pay than a governor of
a state?
This is the type of question from which we cannot escape, as
we look at what municipal union highjacking has done to the
center cities of some of our major metropolitan areas. It is in this
context that Senator Brooke’s question as to whether the City
and State of New York have done enough before seeking federal
government help in meeting New York City’s debts has its
meaning.
It is no incidental thing in the minds of many observers that as
it has become clear that mainly Black and tan taxpayers will be
paying the municipal debts made today, the wage and retirement
demands of suburban-bound and largely white employes of major
cities are increasing to near skyrocket proportions. None of this
income will benefit the cities.
It is unconscionable on its face that New York City’s
overwhelming white policemen, firemen and garbage collectors
make more money than most Black professionals anywhere in
America. Further(Think of this!) - after just twenty years of
“putting in time”, these same employes may retire often with
life-time pensions higher than their working wage scales.
Hospital workers, social workers, school aides, secretaries,
teachers (and a host of other employes), along with every
business person in our cities should use this opportunity
surrounding default to ask - no demand - equitable changes in
every labor contract.
When dozens of cities defaulted for 4,5, and 6 year periods
during the Great Depression of the 1930’5, contracts and pension
benefits were re-negotiated. Should honest and hard-working
Blacks in San Francisco; New York and in “You name the other
cities!” be paying for generations of idleness “negotiated” (or
rather highjacked) by powerful segments of municipal employes
today whether Black or white?
Some thoughtful Americans - both Black and white - believe
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Black Empowerment
Senator Brooke’s Courage
Page 4
Brooks, SCLC’s national communications director. Mr. Brooks
says that “99% of the bills from 1972 and 1973 are paid off. The
organization is out of debt.” The only urgent issue that the
NAACP can bring forward is leaving the masses of Blacks cool
and apathetic.
In Boston, the nation’s combat area on busing, most of the
old-line civil rights groups have closed up shops. Local chapters of
the Urban League, CORE and SCLC had all thought this haven of
Yankee liberalism was safe, and emphasis was allowed to wane.
Though the NAACP is in the thick of the “Bean-town” busing
battle, and most Black activists don’t oppose it, it’s clear that
other things have higher priorities. George J. Morrison, executive
director of a community group called Roxbury Action Program
had economics on his mind when he said: “In the ‘7os the name
of the game is land. We’re trying to put together the pieces to
create a model Black community, one based on deed rather than
rhetoric. Busing is not the issue.”
BUSING IS SECONDARY TO THE MAJORITY OF BLACKS
Many Blacks appear to favor busing only if it will offer their
children the best possible education. If the nation’s top educators
could come up with any worthwhile alternatives, most Black
parents would completely forsake busing in totality.
Mrs. Myrtle Jones, a mother of two sons who lives in Roxbury,
says she approves of busing because “there wasn’t any
alternative”, but she has done nothing to promote it. She said
that one of her sons, a student at hell raising Hyde Park high
school learned nothing last year. “I don’t even want his picture in
the yearbook,” she adds bitterly. Some militant Blacks want to
broaden their base, to include whites as well. Bayard Rustin is
one of those kind he states: “everything Blacks now demand,
whether it’s health care, housing, or jobs-there are four to six
whites with the same needs.” But other Black leaders sharply
disagree on the premise, that Black and white needs or the same.”
CORE’S Roy Ennis says: “Every decade or so they try to push us
through the same hoops. Black folks’ demands are Black folks’
demands. Where Black folks’ demands coincide with white
demands, fine.” Race, he says “is the primary problem facing
Black folks in these United States and the world.” Which proves
that the old “civil rights” movement that Dr. King tostered is all
but dead. The racial outlook is indeed bleak with the resignation
of Justice Douglas, and the news that the NAACP is in dire
financial trouble. Black leaders must reassess the group’s direction
and priorities. From now on in maybe rough sledding.
that New York perhaps ought -for its own sound financial
reconstruction or salvation - to experience financial default. This
may be the only way that ridiculous wage and pension contracts
and other unduly high expenditures may be re-negotiated. If they
want federal help, why should the federal government not ask
that pay scales and other contracts be brought within the range of
those paid by the federal government?
When Senator Brooke spoke up about New York doing
something for itself, he had before him at least three
considerations that Mayor Beame of New York would not read
into the record. These are (1) that many other cities have
defaulted and have done so even for long periods 4f time and still
survived; (2) that New York may find default one of the
“opportunities of a century” to at least get its financial house in
order; and (3) that in the long run it is Black and other
city-dwelling Americans who will be forced to pay the lion’s share
of current municipal financial folly and it is future Black city
politicians who would be presiding over no more than
financially-ravaged cities.
While we applaude Senator Brooke’s courage and candor, we
must do more. All city dwellers and business people should write
and call urging their congressmen and congresswomen to raise, as
seriously as did Senator Brooke, the crucial question as to
whether New York City itself - and its state -- have done enough
to create sound financial health. For some of our congressmen
and other elected officials to “speak up” on this matter without
clear pressure could - because of a heavy
pro-everything-unions-do-votes - be political suicide.
We need both to enlighten union members on the need to be
equitable and to support our congress likewise. By the above, we
are not implying that NYC should not have some guarantees for
many basic services. We do, however, support the positions of
Senator Brooke, Buckley and others on first getting NYC’s
terribly bad financial house in order.
It’s Our Turn
To Aid NAACP
Our National Association for .the Advancement of Colored
People, which as been working for 66 years to achieve first-class
citizenship status for us Black Americans, “is in grave financial
trouble,” according to the New York Times’ Charlayne Hunter
whom the NAACP helped to get into the then segregated
University of Goergia a decade ago.
Elaine Welles of the Philadelphia Tribune reports that the
NAACP has a deficit of nearly $250,000, and is said to be
“reaching a point where, it could imperial critical programs that
are the life-blood of the organization.”
To put it bluntly, our NAACP is in debt, bills are going unpaid,
lawyers are awaiting their fees, and the payroll for the New York
national staff is in danger. In years past, the organization turned
to the wealthy Joel and Arthur Spingam who put in their own
funds and raised additional monies from their friends. At other
times, the NAACP called on labor, especially the United Auto
Workers, for financial aid; and still later it depended heavily upon
its late millionaire President Kivie Kaplan who increased the
number of Life Memberships from a few hundred to more than
50,000, as well as contributed out of his own pocket.
Today, the NAACP is rightly turning for funds to us Black
folks whom it has aided enormously through the years. Here’s a
small sample of that aid:
It fought lynching for 30 years, shaming Americans out of the
barbarous practice; it succeeded in getting abolished white
primaries in the South which for years nullified the Black vote
there; it fought restrictive covenants in housing through the
courts until these were outlawed and we, like everyone else, are
free to live wherever our checkbooks would take us.
And the NAACP, figureatively, snatched av.’y the humiliating
railroad dining car curtain that used to segregate us as if we were
carriers of some deadly disease. Its crowning achievement was the
1954 Supreme Court decision which began removing our children
from the indignity of segregated schools. But still further, the
NAACP worked with other organizations in the 1960’s to end jim
crow public accommodations, as well as secure the passage of the
au important “Voting Rights Act” through which the number of
Black elected officials has increased to more than 3,500,
By Dr Nathaniel Wrigfa, Jr.
■HdIBL
BLACK CONVENTIONS
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Are We Too Eager For Prestige?
TO BE EQUAL By Vernon Jordan
A Set-Back For The U.N.
When the UN General Assembly passed the resolution declaring
that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” I
thought back to the historic day in 1936 that Haile Selassie went
before the old League of Nations to ask for help in saving
Ethiopia from Italian invasion.
The League of Nations refused to stand up to protect the
integrity of small countries then. It rejected Ethiopia’s plea and
thus sealed its own death warrant, for it became irrelevant, a
pawn in the hands of the Axis powers out to dominate the world.
I fear that by passing this obscene resolution the UN may be
taking the same path of weakening its own integrity and
becoming irrelevant to a world in need of international leadership
and reconciliation.
Smearing the “racist” label on Zionism is an insult to
intelligence. Black people, who recognize code words since we’ve
been victimized by code worlds like “forced busing,” “law and
order,” and others, can easily smell out the fact that “Zionism”
in this context is a code word for anti-Semitism.
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish
people, a movement that overthrew Britist colonialism and
articulates the national aspirations of the Jewish people. Its drive
for national independence was one of the models for African
independence movements. Is the General Assembly majority
saying that national self-determination is for everyone except
Jews?
Proponents of the resolution insisted on defining racism as not
only color discrimination but also ethnic and national origin
discrimination. By that standard most of the states voting to
condemn Zionism are themselves racist.
The Arab states that rammed the resolution through are among
the countries msot guilty of discrimination. Many are guilty of
persecuting their own minorities, be they Copts, Kurds, or Jews.
In fact, most Israeli Jews are dark-skinned people who fled
oppression in Arab lands and the handful that remain there are
forced into grim ghettos where they are ruled by terror.
Benjamin
Hooks
FCC
Commissioner
Can Blacks Make News?
In his September, 1975 Newsletter On the Activities of the
Media, Capital Press Club President Calvin W. Rolark asked a
thoughfully significant question: “Wonder why the National
including 140 mayors.
But the work of the NAACP is not finished. Job discrimination
is rampant in government as well as in private industry; too many
blue collar unions are keeping us out; equal opportunity is too
much of a sham; and contract compliance is a sharade. Even equal
opportunity in education is far from a reality. So, we have a long
way to go, and only the NAACP has the capacity and the
expertise to help-us travel the road.
If we appreciate* the past achievements of the NAACP, and if
we want its assistance in the future, it’s time down in our
pockets and come up with the money to keep the NAACP going
full speed ahead. And, we have the money. Dr. Andrew Brimmer
says Blacks laSt year earned nearly SSB billion or $58,000 million,
the NAACP owe? only on££ourth of a million, or $250,000, and
they are saying it Is in deepTinancial trouble. Why?
We spend billions on’high-owered cars, cigars and cigarettes,
Scotch and bourbon whiskey, rouge, lipstick and eyeshadow, but
not nearly enough toward achieving equal opportunity for
ourselves.
Their are 1,700 NAACP branches. The local branch of the
NAACP is at 1441 Gwinnett St. Go by today and take out a
membership. They startas low as $4.
There are 10 million of us Blacks who can send $5 and not feel
it; ,000,000 who can send $lO or more; and, 500,000 who can
take out SSOO Life Memberships; Let’s take our NAACP out of
the “hand-to-mouth” status and give it the financial support it
needs to finish the fight against racial discrimination in America.
If we don’t, then maybe we are phonies and don’t deserve the
In the Sudan, Blacks were victimized by northern Arabs wh
killed many in a brutal civil war. Elsewhere Black Africans sac
discrimination in Arab states, despite propoganda to the contrary
And the odd partners that made up the General Assembb
majority included the Soviet bloc led by a Russia that persistently
discriminates along ethnic lines, and countries like Brazil, a bruta
military dictatorship currently engaged in destroying Amazor in
Indian communities.
The common denominator seems to be a cynical
that is morally offensive. Perhaps the biggest reason for many
states’ vote was fear of Arab oil power and also the promise of ai<U
from the oil-rich Arabs. While many African countries stood firm
against these pressures, others succumbed.
From the African viewpoint, that was a mistake. Earlier Arab
promises of aid have been broken and I suspect new ones will be
too. More important, the struggle against racism is crucial and by
turning the definition of racism upside down and diluting it with
lies the real struggle becomes severely compromised.
It is also in the interest of smaller nations that the UN remain a
viable force in the world. To the degree that this evil resolution
harms the UN’s credibility and reduces its influence, the cause of
the smaller, less developed nations is harmed too.
Because of the General Assembly action, chances for peace in
the Middle East are slimmer for the resolution callls into question
Israel’s very existence, something that must be non-negotiable.
There is plenty of room for differing opinions about a just
solution for the Mideast crisis and for the Palestinians’ just
demands for self-determination, but no one in his right mind can
- or ought to - expect Israel’s Jews to throw away their hard-won
independence and statehood.
Nov. 10, then, is a day that will live in infamy, a day that saw
the evil of anti-Semitism raise its ugly flag in the very body most
of the world’s people look to for leadership and for righteous
pursuit of justice.
Urban Leagues’ 65th annual conference in Atlanta received not
one word in the national news magazines?”
More and more Blacks are beginning to question Black
exclusion from or treatment by the media. Continuing with
excerpts from a speech I delivered before the Fifth Annual
Congressional Black Caucus Dinner in Washington, D.C., recently,
I asked:
“If this event, representing the top echelon of Blacks in this
country, with its legislative and elected officials’ workshop;
“If tnis event, focusing on the need of this nation to mend its
ways, and advocating positive evolutionary change rather than
violent revolution;
“If this event which seeks to shed light and give hope amid the
jarring discordant noises of those apostlesof gloom ana doom who
say there is no hope in this country for Blacks to ever survive;
“If this event, which says to prophets of hate and destruction
that while there are many problems, we do give a damn and this
country is worth saving;
“If this event which seeks to say to this nation, we will work
with people of goodwill of every race and condition, to give hope
to the hopeless and hit up the spirit of the downtrodden;
“If this event which seeks to forge a program to so use the
structures of this country to the end that the have nots may share
with the haves;
“If this event which focuses the spotlight on men and women
of color in this country who have achieved greatly in spite of
great odds;
“If this event is not worth national news coverage of great
magnitude, then what in the name of heaven can Black folk do
that will be worth coverage?
“And while talking (about) this, may I pay a word of tribute to
the Black Press for its unrelenting and unremitting efforts to keep
us informed. But for this press, the story of Black people in this
country would never have been told. Hail to these organs of
communications and may their strength and power increase.
“We must. . . wrestle with two great social ills (besetting) us -
white racism and Black self-hate. These are two sides of the same
coin - pitiful legacies of slavery, and we must begin to deal with
them on a national scale. . . Black togetherness must be real It is
not enough to exercise the long-drawn out ritual of complicated
soul handshakes (or to sport an Afro that covers a processed
mind) and then rip each other off after the handshake.
“We have changed structures in these United States; we are
now moving into the era when we Blacks, minorities and the poor
will begin to use those structures. And we are already adding a
third dimension - we are creating structures.”
Chief among the latter is the challenge to force the national
white media to deal with Blacks in an even-handed, fair and
equitable way- just as it does with whites.
Nothing less will do.
■ Til