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Vol. 5
Emancipation Speaker Warns Os Genocide
And Extermination Os Biack People
Dr. Wyatt T. Walker
By Mallory K. Millender
“The extermination of Black
folk is a real possibility. Don’t
laugh, honey, ‘cause it ain’t
funny,” the Rev. Wyatt T.
Walker warned the hundreds
gathered at Tabernacle Baptist
Church to hear him give the
address for the 74th annual
Emancipation Day Program
last Thursday.
Dr. Walker expressed
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Paine College Senior To Intern
For Senator Talmadge
Miss Shirley Jean Andrews,
senior at Paine College, was
selected by the office of
Senator Herman Talmadge to
CSRA Arts Calendar
January -13 „ „
7:15 p.m. Movie - “The General” Augusta College
Augusta College Performing Arts Center
Film Arts
January 16
7:00 p.m. “Jacques Brel Alive & Thunderbird Inn
Living in Paris”
T-Bird Dinner Theater
January 17
7:00 p.m. “Jacques Brel” - Musical Thunderbird Inn
T-Bird Dinner Theater
8:30 p.m. Allan Lokos and Co. Augusta College
“Musical America” Performing Arts Center
Augusta Symphony
January 23
6 p.m. & Movie - “Cinderella Liberty” Augusta College
8:15 p.m. Augusta College Performing Arts Center
Film Arts
? 7:00 p.m. “Jacques Brel Alive & Thunderbird Inn
Living in Paris”
T-Bird Dinner Theater
January 24
7:00 p.m. “Jacques Brel” Thunderbird Inn
T-Bird Dinner Theater
January 29
6 p.m. “Movie-“ Sundays and Cybele” Aug. College
8:15 p.m. Augusta College Performing Arts Center
Film Arts
8:30 p.m. Fred Waring Bell Auditorium
Famous Artist Series
January 30
7:00 p.m. “Jacques Brel” - Musical Thunderbird Inn
, T-Bird Dinner Theater
January 31
8:30 p.m. Atlanta Ballet Augusta College
Performing Arts Center
Please send all program announcements to Mrs. J.M.
Hinton, 1318 Wallace St., Augusta, Ga. 30901.
Pv O. Box 953
particular concern that donors
of vital organs cannot be
identified. “They can
exterminate us and we don’t
even know its happening. They
will kill Blacks to get their
hearts for transplants.”
The prisons are a major
source for such killings, he
said.
•‘Check the prison
population. They are mainly
Black folk, Puerto Ricans and
poor whites.”
The drug traffic also could
be stopped, he said. Drugs in
the Black community is part of
the plan “calculated and
premeditated to destroy us,”
and the FBI and the CIA are
assisting in the plan.
“I wish I had good news for
you today, but I am a man of
the cloth. And I have to tell
you the truth.”
The former chief of staff for
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and
the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference said he
is saddened over the fact that
America was built on the
“blood, sweat and toil” of
participate in a six week
internship program in the
senator’s Washington, D.C.
office. Miss Andrews, who
Black folk who have shared so
narrowly in the riches of this
country.
“The Bicentennial is not yet
a day old, and I’m sick of it
already.
“I cannot salute the flag and
something catches up in my
throat when I hear the national
anthem and think of the plight
of the Black man. The
American flag is a symbol of
such deep and long lasting
hypocriscy.
“If my words seem harsh
and uspend judgment
for mt and let me
revie * ord,” he said.
Th itorical accuracies
of pt t importance to
Black , he said, are
slav emancipation,
recc ,tion, post
recon a, and the case of
Plessy ason.
Bk ... . acans started the
century in slavery and were
freed of slavery by Lincoln’s
Emancipation Proclamation.
The reconstruction period
followed the civil war, as
Blacks “began working our
reigned as “Miss Paine during
the 1974-75 academic year,is a
history major with certification
in secondary education.
Through this' program of
internship, Miss Andrews will
be exposed to the political
process. Her experiences will
include attendance at House
meetings, viewing of
congressional records, office
duties, and tours of the
nation’s governmental agencies.
She is the daughter of Mr.
and Mrs. Clinton Andrews of
Tignall, Ga. Pictured with Miss
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Social activist-comedian Dick Gregory is pictured with SCLC
President Dr. Ralph Abernathy prior to Atlanta news conference
wherein Gregory called on President Ford to create a new cabinet
post of Secretary of Nutrition to fight hunger.
Photo by Frank Bowman
Augusta, Georgia
way into society” and reached
the highest level of
participation in American
society during the 19th
century.
Then came post
reconstruction under
Rutherford Hayes and the
flourishing of the White
Knights of Camelia and the Ku
Klux Klan. And segregation
laws were made to strike down
all the gains that Blacks had
made, Dr. Walker said.
With the U.S. Supreme
Court’s ruling in the Plessy vs.
Ferguson case that said “it’s all
right to discriminate against
people on the basis of color
alone.” This, Walker said,
created “psychological slavery”
to compound the wounds of
physical slavery. At the end of
the 19th century Blacks were
worse off than at the beginning
of the century.
The turn of the 19th
century found Blacks shackled
by segreation. “Segregation
was not a phenomenon of the
South,” he said. “It was the
order of the day across the
Mclntyre
Named Citizen
of The Year
During the Lincoln League’s
annual celebration of Abraham
Lincoln’s Enancipation
Proclamation Thursday, the
organization named Willie
Johnson, a taxi cab and service
station operator, businessman
of the year.
Edward M. Mclntyre, who
was earlier in the day re-elected
chairman of the Richmond
County Board of
Commissioners, was named
citizen of the year by the
Lincoln League.
Mrs. Queenie Cooke, a
retired teacher; S.M. Jenkins, a
retired Pilgrim executive; and
William H. Lamback, retired
principal of Peter H. Graig
Elementary School, were
honored with certificates for
50 years of service by each to
the League.
Several hundred attended
the three-hour ceremony at
Tabernacle Baptist Church and
contributed $940 to the
League’s scholarship fund.
Andrews is Curtis Atkinson,
aide for the Atlanta office of
Senator Talmadge who was on
hand for her departure.
nation.”
The Supreme Court decision
of 1954 striking down legal
segregation paralleled the
Emancipation Proclamation of
the 19 th century.
“But the Supreme Court sat
on its bands until the successes
of the Martin Luther King era.
Martin Luther King
Survival Coalition Finds
City Affirmative Action
Program Unacceptable
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REV. MICHAEL McCOY
1 Photo by Bowman
, The president of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Survival
Coalition (MLKSC) said Friday
• the “proposed affirmative
action plan does not coincide
with our demands.”
In a prepared statement at
the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference i
headquarters, the Rev. Michael
L. McCoy said the plan “rules
out the possibility of
preferential hiring of Blacks,
women and other minorities.”
, The Rev. Mr. McCoy said
the MLKSC rejected the
proposal as a “hoax which
would say that Augusta has an
I
Why U.S. Must Stay
Out Os Angolan Civil War
by Rep. Charles C. Diggs, Jr.
(Editor’s Note: As chairman of the House Subcommittee on
Africa, Rep. Diggs for many years has been this country’s leading
expert and spokesman for the independent nations of Africa. In
this article written especially for the Black Press, Mr. Diggs
explains his opposition, and that of the Congressional Black
Caucus, to U.S. intervention in the Angolan civil war, which
remains a hotly debated issue before the U.S. Congress.)
I am strongly opposed to further U.S. intervention, direct or
indirect, in the Angolan civil war for the following reasons:
1) In aligning itself on the same side as South Africa, the U.S.
risks even greater harm to its relations with independent ,
majority-ruled Africa.
2) It places the U.S., along with other external interveners, in
opposition to the policy of the Organization of African Unity
(OAU) that there should be no foreign intervention in Angola.
3) It is based on the same, false cold-war assumptions which
led us into an escalating Vietnam involvement, that the Soviet
Union, in supporting one of the movements, Popular Movement
for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), presents a “challenge"
which the U.S. must counter. And
4) The covert nature of the U.S. Involvement has made it very
difficult for the American public and for most members of
Congress to be informed as to the extent of U.S. intervention.
The most disturbing element is the escalating intervention of
South Africa in Angola, and the United States’ alignment on the
same side as this White, minority regime. By assisting the same
two movements, National Front for the Liberation of Angola
See “ANGOLA” Page 2
January 8, 1976 No. 40
Then, damn it all, came
Richard Nixon, the Rutherford
Hayes of the 20th century,
who took crime out of the
streets and put it in the White
House. And proceeded to nullify
See “EMANCIPATION”
on Page 6
affirmative action plan.”
The coalition has
demanded that three Blacks be
hired for every white until
Blacks comprise at least 50 per
cent of all jobs in all
departments.
The affirmative action plan
is aimed at hiring more Blacks
and placing women in better
jobs. The plan was drawn up
by Charles Walker, Human
Relations Commission director,
S. Miller Meyer, merit system
director, Michael Taylor,
Augusta city personnel
director, and the Central
Savannah River Area Planning
and Development Commission.
City’s
Affirmative Action Plan:
A Sinister Joke
EDITORIAL
The News-Review joins the Martin Luther King Jr.
Survival Coalition in its rejection of the proposed
affirmative action plan for the City of Augusta.
The proposal is just another good sounding scheme to
insure that Blacks do not get equality in the economic
market place. When such a scheme is passed off as
“affirmative action”, it then becomes a sinister joke.
The affirmative action plan rules out “preferential
treatment, quota systems toward arbitrary proportional
representation, or reduction in job-related qualifications
solely to increase minority or female employment.” It
also says that “all aspects of the Personnel Program shall
be based solely on individual merit.”
We reject the “merit” basis, first, because Black
people have not had an equal opportunity to become
equally qualified. Secondly, we reject it because we
know that historically and up to this moment, where
race is concerned, jobs are not given based on merit, but
on the basis of color.
A current case in point is that of Black school teacher
Mrs. Ann Johnson who was replaced at Lucy Laney
High School by a less qualified white teacher.
Mrs. Johnson has a bachelor’s degree in her teaching
area and a master’s degree from Georgia State University
and three years of teaching experience.
The white teacher who replaced her reportedly has
not taught since 1963 and has only a provisional
teaching certificate.
Now is that hiring based on merit? No way. And how
did the board of education explain this? The school
board said, “The school system looks only to the
‘minimum’ state qualifications in filling positions. Both
teachers meet the mir.imuru qualifications of the stale.
Therefore one is no more qualified than the other. ”
So it is clear, blatantly clear, that when Blacks try to
catch up, we have to be MORE qualified, when whites
are being hired they have to meet only the minimum
standards.
We could say a whole lot about this kind of attitude
and its inevitable consequence of educational
mediocrity in the area which, perhaps more than any
other, should strive for excellence. But the point here is
how merit and qualifications are used as obstacles to
Black progress. Does anyone stop to ask why Blacks are
generally less qualified in a town that has had a public
high school for Blacks for only 25 years, while whites in
this same town have had public high schools for almost
200 years?
Does anyone remember that up until the last decade
Blacks could not go to Augusta College, the Medica 1
College of Georgia or the University of Georgia - all
public supported schools? These and other institutions
saw to it that Blacks did not become equally qualified.
And they did it with our tax money. Blacks did not get
equal education not because we didn’t want it, not
because we couldn’t do the work, but because white
people refused to let us attend those institutions that we
helped to finance so their children could get the
education that they wouldn’t let our children have.
Now they tell us that we can’t have jobs which we are
capable of performing because we are not more
qualified than they are. And when we are more
qualified, as in the case of Mrs. Ann Johnson, then
qualifications don’t matter. Only minimum
qualifications are necessary. That kind of “merit”
system is a joke.
Preferential hiring has always been with us. And it
was white folk who got the preference. And the only
way that Black folk can catch up is that we be given
equal preference. The problem is not [preferential
hiring. The problem is that where affirmative action is
concerned, Black people become the preferred.
The question for the Human Relations Commission.
Augusta and the United States then becomes, “Are
we committed to equality or not?” And equality’ is not
just equal OPPORTUNITY for Blacks, after whites have
had it for almost four hundred years. Equality is
equality in the quality of life for all citizens including
Blacks. And to obtain equality for those who have been
historically and deliberately denied there must be
EQUITY. Equity means that the same people who have
been denied must be deliberately advanced to the point
they become equal in all aspects of American life. Call it
advantages, quotas, preference or affirmative action, we
believe that it is the only way that equality and justice
can be achieved.
We hope that all citizens who believe in equality will
urge City Council to reject this affirmative action
proposal.
Deadline Mondays
No Exceptions!
2(K
