Newspaper Page Text
Vol. 7, No. 23
Blacks Killing Blacks
Intentional killing is no. 1
killer of young Blacks
How poverty,
unemployment and social
disadvantages are related to
crime have been topics of
concern for social scientists
over the years. However, it
comes as a hard bit of news to
digest to learn that violent,
intentional killing is the
number one cause of death
among young Blacks.
According to tlie report of a
research carried out in
Cleveland, Ohio, between 1958
and 1974, for every homicide
among whites, the average was
about 20 for non-whites.
HRC educates area
employers on laws
By Kwame Karikari
In its efforts to support
minority progress in the
Augusta-Richmond
community, the County’s
Human Relations Commission
(HRC) is going beyond
ordinary defense of the
minority complaint to an
educator of one of the major
•sources of minority--
■dissatisfaction.
At an employer’s training
seminar held at the Executive'
House Convention Center,
Tuesday, and attejided by. over
70 employers or their
•representatives, the HRC
executive director, Charles E.
Walker, explained that the new
thrust was meant to
“familiarize employers about
the laws and regulations in the
implementation of affirmative,
action policies.”
Describing thje.. employers’
and. participation as
Mr. Walker, said -
the program was also meant to
infawp employers about the
processes. of .inyestrg«*og and
finding dilutions to employe
complaints, and to seek.the
errtployers’ understanding and
;cMperation.
Addressing the seminar,
Thomas McPherson, the
Atlanta District Director of the
Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission
(EEOC) announced new
changes in the EEOC's
structure being introduced by
its new federal head,
Chairwoman Eleanor Holmes
Norton.
According to Mr.
McPherson, regional offices of
the Commission would be
abolished, district offices will
be entrusted with “all
functions of field work,” and
most of the bureaucratic
bottlenecks slowing down the
EEOCs work would thus be
eliminated.
Migration south triples
Over-all migration to the
South in the 1970-’75 period
tripled as compared with the
previous five years, according
to an analysis of 1970-75
census data by a National
Academy of Sciences group.
The analysis also found that
the numbers of Blacks moving
to the South in that period
Ivere about the same as those
leaving the South earlier.
For the first time, according
to the Academy of Sciences’
analysts, more people move
from the West to tiie South
than in the other way around.
In 1965-70, there were
713,000 migrants to the South
from the North, while 56,000
left the south for the West.
I'.ihlit Y ~ ~
Al <<J<ista, GA 30901 *
Augusta iMfiits-arttjeui
=7 . . . ffy
The researchers, mostly
doctors were studying causes
of death in Cleveland, but used
a government public health
report entitled “Homicide
Trends in the United States” to
draw nationwide conclusions.
“The homicide trends in this
study shock us,” wrote the
researchers. “What happened in
Cleveland reflects, in a
magnified way, national trends
during the same period.”
In Washington, D. C., Alice
Haywood a spokeswoman for
the National Center for Health
“This will eliminate clogging
in the procedures of work and
the district offices will be able
to serve more rapidly and
resolve problems before they
have to reach higher levels,” he
said.
Praising the HRC executive
director as a “dynamic leader,”
Mr. McPherson said the HRC’s
“quality of work was
standards,” and the
county’s officials.,.to- help
promote it as an ‘"agency
capable of dealing
issues in its
Presently, the **'**;»»’s
relation to the * FEOctS is
contractual, “■ said Mr.
McPherson ■, whose •(Atlanta
office serves Georgia aiiffeSQUth
Carolina. -i'QK •
Executive Director
said that many
officials have already
the plan to make the WK a
706 agency. ?&&£*'•
~jisuch
HRC
Leonard, would be’ ben<fisSß
and make the JiiL■crinc*
complainants and the accused.
Many employers expressed
satisfaction about the all-day
program and some felt a few
more in the future would be
helpful.
Grady Belger, representing
the Borden, Inc.,
manufacturers of dairy
products, said he had “learned
a lot of new things” from the
“interesting and involving”
program.
Catherine A. Brown and
Larry Fenwick, personnel
officers at the Doctor’s
Hospital, expressed satisfaction
with the seminar and felt that
similar programs and concern
would be needed for another
group of minorities - the
physically or physiologically
handicapped.
However, in the five-year
period after that, of the
1,829,000 Southward
migrants,7s.ooo were from tne
West.
The reverse migration trend
may have benefitted Arkansas.
Larry Long, a Census Bureau
Specialist in internal migration
said there was evidence of the
“Arkies” and the “Okies” who
fled the Arkansas and
Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the
1930‘s were probably returning
from Southern California.
Mr. Long suspected that the
“Arkies” or their descendants
were among those migrants
from the West. He noted that
while the Los Angeles county
suffered a population loss of
P.O. Box 953
Statistics, an agency for the
Department of Health,
Education and Welfare, said
that homicides among
non-whites aged 25 to 34 were
the leading cause of death.
In 1975, for example, she
said, of the 8,114 young
non-white deaths,2,s96 (about
a third) represented homicides.
There were 1,913 accidentals,
439 suicides and 3,256
disease-caused deaths.
Os the latter case, 525 were
caused by heart diseases, and
263 by cancer.
Lawyers honor Ruffin
■f iis
'...
HF'S
, John H. Ruffin Jr.
7
New Fed. benefit plans
hurt jobless more
Hundreds of jobless
Americans- are being forced to
take a step down the economic
ladder under new eligibility
’ requirements for Federal
Supplemental Employment
'“Benefits (FSB), the program
that extends state- financed
benefits to cover a year or
more.
Behind the new regulations
is the belief of many
Washington economists that
the unemployment system was
not designed for the long-term
unemployed. For people out of
work for nine months or a
year, “the likelihood of their
returning to their previous
employment is not great,”
explains Pierce Quinlan, whose
Office of Comprehensive
Employment Development 2
runs many of the federal public
service job programs. •>
“The rationale underlying'
the whole concept is that it’s
better to have people,
employed than unemployed,**
362,000 in F970-’75, Arkansas
gained 106.000. These were
mostly concentrated in a
quarter of that state's 75
counties, some of them in the
Ozark mountains.
According to the migration
specialist. tne growth in
South-bound migration may be
attributed to the construction
of highways in tum
encouraging industry to move
South where cheaper labor was
a major attraction
“Most interesting,” Long
said, “I think, is that job
opportunities in South are
attracting Blacks from the
North, changing tne historic
pattern for the first time.”
September 29, 1977
The research doctors, mostly
from the Case Western Reserve
University, published their
findings in the authoritative
New England Journal of
Medicine over a week ago.
Dr. Amasa B. Ford, one
researcher, held that the report
should convince doctors to join
the push for gun control as a
medical issue.
Dr. Ford thought that the
death’s resulting from the
“casual use and ready
availability of guns hi this
country” ought to urge doctors
Augusta Attorney John H.
Ruffin Jr. was one of four
award recipients at the second
annual Awards Banquet of the
Georgia Conference of Black
Lawyers, Inc. "field at the
Peachtree Plaza Hotel Saturday
night.
Ruffin, who has served as
president of the lawyers
association for the past two
_ ywu?,as “an
inspiration Co the rest of the
Black legal community.”
Mrs. Ruby Hurley, Southern
Director of the NAACP and
called the “mother of modem
civil rights in Georgia,”
says Roger Rossi, research
chief for the Unemployment
Insurance Service in
Washington. And, the
argument continues,
unemployment payments
perpetuate unemployment by
subsidizing people to look for
jobs that don't exist.
The traditional role of
unemployment insurance has
been to enable workers to
survive while looking for jobs
like the ones they held before.
The new attitude in
Washington, however, will
force many people to take a
step down on the job ladder
after 39 weeks instead of
continuing to try for work at
the same socio- economic level.
„,lir practice, this means lower
!t pi< '(or ‘FSB recipients --
irfainly the young, the old,
pon-whites. and unskilled
‘workers -Vho have the most
irbuble finding work and are
wke .first laid off in a recession.
? .For Blacks, this may mean
abandoning modest status gains
achieved in the civil rights
movement of the sixties for a
return to subsistence level
Employment. Prominent
economists are frank in their
recommendation of lowered
expectations and more hand
.w,prk ai a solution to the 14.5
pier cent minority
unemployment rate.
Many recipients believe the
new regulations unfairly force
them to give up any chance at
a decent job. And since they
must continually be looking
for work, recipients can’t go to
school to be trained for
another good job.
“Its a legal trap.” complains
a 28-y ear-old San Francisco
unemployed father of two.
The FSB program first
expanded the unemployment
compensation system as a
reaction to the 1974-75
recession. Since unemployment
figures have been declining
again, benefits have been cut.
On May 1, the maximum
to strongly oppose “the
handgun in particular.”
* * *
T wo Columbus, Ohio
brothers, 14 and eleven, ended
a game playing good guys and
bad guys in tragedy.
Their innocent little game
after watching “Dirty Harry”
on television resulted in the
older brother fatally slfooting
the younger twice in the chest.
The death of the 11-year-old
Columbus boy adds another
point to the reasons why crime
on TV needs severe censorship.
received the lawyer’s Citizen of
the Year Award.
Others receiving awards were
Atlanta Mayor Maynard
Jackson and Albany Attorney
C.B. King.
Damon J. Keith, U.S.
District Judge for the Eastern
District of Michigan, was the
banquet speaker.
He called on the lawyers to
maintain their integrity, and to
“protest vigorously against
discrimination, corruption,
police brutality, drug abuse
and Black leaders who turn
their backs on the Black
community.”
(See related photos page 6)
number of weeks of benefits a
person can collect was reduced
from 65 to 52. The May
reduction immediately cut
about 100,000 people off
unemployment compensation.
In each state, as
employment rises above a
certain level, supplemental
benefits from the federal
government are no longer
given. And the whole
supplemental benefits program
will expire in February unless
Congress renews it, which is
not expected to happen.
With t ii e i g L
unemployment of recentyears,
benefit payments have far;,
exceeded receipts from the';
employer payroll taxes that
financed them. Because of this,
23 states are now 54.6 billion
in debt to the federal
unemployment tax funds. In
tum these funds have
borrowed 512.7 billion from
the treasury.
The belief that any work,
even low-paying menial work,
is preferable to government
supported job hunting is
consistent with the Carter
Administration’s welfare
program, which emphasizes
temporary public service jobs.
Such jobs could take the place
of long-term unemployment
compensation programs.
’ But they may tum out to be
ho better solution to the
problem of hard-core
unemployment among
unskilled workers than
insurance has been. When the
government jobs end. workers
will be in the same
predicament without
additional training: no job, no
new skills and no demand for
the skills they have.
Nevertheless, the goal of
requiring unemployed people
to take low-pay jobs takes on
almost religious overtones in
the words of some government
See “BENEFIT PLANS”
Page 7
Shot twice by ex-wife,
he won 9 t press charges
An Augusta man was shot
twice Sunday night by Iris
ex-wife. He declined to press
charges against her.
James Edward
Laughinghouse, 44, of 3511
Milledgeville Road said his
former wife of 18 years shot
him without provocation.
But Mrs. Lydia
Laughinghouse, 51, of 3515
Milledgeville Road told
Augustan is author
Book treats racism between
light & dark Blacks
A new book, to be published
early next month by New
York’s Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, Inc., is an
autobiographical novel written
by an Augustan.
The title of the “faction”
(fact and fiction, as the author
calls it) is “With My Face to
the Rising Sun.”
The author is Dr. Robert M.
Screen, born and reared in
Augusta, and presently
chairman of the Department of
Communications Disorders and
tennis coach, at the Hampton
Augusta H.S. students
are Merit semifinalists
Eight Augustans are among
over 1,500 Black students who
have qualified as Achievement
Program Semifinalists in the
competition for scholarships to
be awarded in the spring of
nest year, announced the
National Merit Scholarship
Corporation,(NMSC), which
administers the program.
The semifinalists were
among more than 60,000 Black
students who requested
consideration in the 1978
Achievement Program at the
time they took the 1976
Preliminary Scholastic
Aptitude Test / National Merit
Scholarship Qualifying Test
(PSAT/NMSQT).
A number of regional
selection units of several states,
are established for tne
competition. Black students
with the highest scores in each
U.S. geographic region are
named Achievement Program
Study shows
261 Black women
hold office in South
Atlanta, Ga. -- A total of
261 Black women currently
hold public office in the eleven
southern states, according to a
research study being conducted
by the , Atlanta-based Voter
Educatiori'Project, Inc., (VEP).
“Black women Lave played a
vital role in the struggle for
human rights and justice in the
South and the nation,” said
Vivian Malone Jones, the first
Black female director of the
Black life span longer
Though the expected life
span of Blacks improved by
about 1.3 per cent more than
that of whites in the last year,
the life expectancy of about
68 years is still less than the
about 73 years for whites,
according to a recent report by
the U.S. Department of
Commerce’s Bureau of the
Census.
The report, which shows a
Less Than 75% Advertising
sheriff’s deputies that
Laughinghouse came to her
home about 10 p.m. and began
calling her names and accusing
her of having affairs with other
men. The divorced couple has
not lived together since 1970.
Mrs. Laughinghouse told
authorities her ex-husband
threatened her and started
after her when she asked him
to leave.
institute in Virginia.
The setting of the book is
Augusta, in the ’4os. It is about
a lightskinned Black adolescent
who witnesses the murder of a
Black friend by three whites,
and is forbidden by his
grandfather to report the case
to the police. The traumas the
youth goes through is vividly
set out in the book.
Screen’s first novel deals
with racism, not only between
whites and Blacks, but also
between light-skinned and
darker-skinned Blacks.
Semifinalists; the number of
Semifinalists in a region is
proportional to the region’s
percentage of the total UJS.
Black population.
“Having identified these
highly motivated and talented
young people, the
Achievement Program’s efforts
is turned toward providing
scholarships for as many as
possible of the most
outstanding among them,” said
L. C. McMillan, NMSC Vice
President, responsible for the
general management of the
Achievement Program. “It is
our hope that these young men
and women will have an
opportunity to attend the
college of their choice, to
study in their chosen field, and
to pursue the career of their
choice after college.”
Achievement Program
Semifinalists must qualify as
non partisan Voter Education
Project. “We, as Black women
and men, must continue to
increase the consciousness of
all persons who have been
disenfranchised. It is fitting for
us to pay special tribute to
Black women who have been
the backbone of the civil rights
movement.”
Os the total, 28 are
Georgians of which five are
higher life expectancy for
American females (76.5) than
males (68.7) , also points out a
steady decline in the U. S.
population growth rate over
the past few years.
Since 1957, the peak year
for births in U. S. history when
over four million babies were
bom, the report says that the
drop in annual numbers of
He reportedly continued to
come after her and she picked
up a .22 Remington 550 rifle
and shot him twice, once in the
upper leg and above tlie right
hip.
A niece told deputies that
the man beats his .former
spouse frequently and that she
has taken out peace warrants
on him, but he still comes
back.
I
Dr. Robert M. Screen
Finalists by meeting additional
requirements. Semifinalists
must be fully endorsed and
recommended for scholarship
consideration by their high
school principals, supply
biographical information,
maintain high academic
standing, and confirm then
qualifying test scores with
scores from a second
examination. Over 1,200
Semifinalists are expected to
become Finalists and will
compete for some 575
Achievement Scholarships to
be awarded next spring.
The Augustans are: Rubin
Harvey and Barbara G. Powell,
Academy of Richmond
County; Eric Seabrook,
Aquinas H.S.; Clinton S.
Hartfield and Ave E. Manor,
Josey H.S.; and Julie
Thompkins and Earl H.
Thurmond of Westside H.S.
representatives, two judges and
nine commissioners
J. Stanley Alexander, VEP
Research Director, stated that
“of the total number of Black
female officials 33.7 per cent
are serving on city government
bodies and 29.5 per cent on
school boards. Black female
officials represent only 12.2
per cent of the total number of
Black elected officials in the
eleven southern states.”
births is due to a drop of over
half a million
In the last two years, the
birth-rate of about 145 per
1,000 and the numbers of
deaths of about 89 per 1,000
persons, were the lowest
recorded, said the report.
The total U. S. population,
as at the beginning of this year,
was estimated at 216 million.