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The Augusta News-Review - November 25, 1978 -
Black College All Star Bowl
highlights The Big Weekend
Black College Football will
reach one of its finest hours
with the holding of file first
Black College All Star Bowl at
the New Orleans Superdome
on Sunday, Jan. 7.
The game will pit top senior
stars against one another in a
Classic East-West
confrontation.
Stars from CIAA Conference
schools and MEAC Conference
school will square off for the
East against stars from SWAC
and SIAC. Independent schools
will be assigned by region to
the respective souads.
Coaches will be selected
from the championship schools
of the respective conferences.
Two 41 men squads will be
selected from among the fifty
colleges by a select panel of
journalists, coaches and
National Football League
Scouts.
Dr. Frank Bannister, sports
director of the National Black
Network, is chairman of the
Oswald
Continued from Page 1
two blocks away.
The Rev. Saunders began,
“We have come here today to
lay away the body of Lee
Harvey Oswald. We are not
1 > judge him, but to bury
lay God have mercy on
1.”
n he turned to newsmen
ecurity men and said,
nother has informed me
.x-e was a good son to her,
a good husband to his wife,
ana a good father to his
children.’
We insisted upon remaining
until the coffin was lowered
into the grave. Then Marina
went over and picked up a
handful of dirt, making the
sign of the cross. I was
surprised, but assume this is
also the custom of Russia. 1
followed suit, and so did
Robert.
As we left the grounds, I
noticed a sightl had seen as we
came in, and one 1 shall never
forget The cemetery flag was
at naif-staff. Os course, 1 knew
it was Hying low because our
President had died. But to me,
you see, it meant also that my
son was being buried under a
flag that was a half-staff, too.
Sometimes there is joy even in
sorrow.
The three men who died in
Dallas wen- all buried on the
same day. First, President
Kennedy, then Patrolman
Tippett, then my son.
The pain and sorrow of
say
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
with a cake from
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Selection Committee.
All-time football great, Jim
Brown, is chairman of the
Black College All Star Bowl
game.
In announcing the game in
New Orleans, Brown said,
“This is the beginning of a
great tradition. This game is
destined to be a fine institution
that Black people and indeed
All Americans will find
valuable and productive.”
The Big Weekend will
feature a mighty Battle of the
Bands, the first Annual
National Kwanza Parade, the
Miss Black College All Star
Bowl Beauty Pageant, a
reception for Black College
Presidents, a battle of local
High School Cheerleaders and a
grand Disco Ball following the
game.
The game will be broadcast
over the National Black
Network.
Several television contracts
are pending.
l/ce’s burial folio wed me lor
many months. It was climaxed
in May, 1964, when 1 was
watching a television program
about President Kennedy’s
grave. As 1 watched, the scene
shifted to my son’s grave and 1
bent forward with renewed
interest. But the. announcer’s
next words cut to the bottom
of my heart.
“The assassin’s grave has on
it a dread tree,” he said. And a
picture was shown of a tree.
The leaves had fallen off and it
certainly looked dead. Not one
time in the past six months had
my composure broken, but this
time, alone in my house, I
broke down and wept
uncontrollably.
To hear my son referred to
as an assassin without the
qualified “alleged” was more
than I could take. He was only
the accused, had never stood
before a jury, never been tried
nor convicted. And then there
was the picture of the dead
tree. I knew nothing about the
tree, which was a weeping
willow.
I soon learned it had been
planted a few days earlier,
since my last visit to the
cemetery. I did not know who
put it there; but it had not
been watered, and appeared to
have died immediately.! had
taken personal interest in
keeping Lee’s grave
neat-looking, for many people
passed by to take pictures for
history.
I was determined that by the
next Sunday my son’s grave
would be the nicest looking in
that particular section of Rose
Hill Burial Park. I drove all
over Fort Worth and went to
Arlington, Dallas, and finally
back to Forth Worth before I
found what I was looking for. I
was seeking sodded grass, the
kind that comes in rolls,
already grown. Finally, I found
Page 6
ft: : jIM
WELCOME - William G. Bryant (c) recently appointed general manager of
Atlanta’s famed 73-story, Peachtree Plaza Hotel, was feted at a reception in the
Plaza Ballroom by civic, business, political and educational leaders.
Jesse Hill (R), president of the Chamber of Commerce, in introducing Bryant,
told the guests, that Atlanta was fortunate in having one of Western International
Hotels’ top executives join Atlanta’s thriving business community. Bryant, a 28-year
veteran of WIH came to Atlanta from the prestigious Los Angeles Century Plaza
Hotel, where he served as general manager.
Also greeting Bryant is Councilman Jim Maddox.
a greenhouse that had the
grass.
The greenhouse owner
brought out a roll of fresh-cut
sod and I made ready to pay
him. “No, Mrs. Oswald,” he
said. “I am a sympathizer. I
would not accept payment
from you. It wont cost you
one cent.”
My next problem was the
“dead” tree. I pruned it. I had
no shears, just an ordinary pair
of scissors. As I worked, one of
the cemetery workers
approached me and said, “Mrs.
Oswald, that tree is dead. Well
dig it up for you if you like.”
“Oh, no,” I answered. “Let
the tree alone, and let me see
what I can do.” I felt sure that
there was life left in the roots.
So I went back every day for a
week, morning and evening, to
water the tree. It was stifling
hot in Texas, but I worked
anyway.
And in five days, the “dead”
tree, in which the television
announcer found so much
ironic symbolism, started to
bloom! It was just love and
care that transformed this
“symbol of shame” into a
symbol of beauty.
Some may wonder why I
take such an interest in the
grave.
First of all, my son is buried
there. Regardless of what the
world says or thinks, he is still
my son. I keep the grave nice,
too, because of the many
Eeople who come to visit the
oy’s grave.
I, as a mother, want these
people to go back home
leno wing a mother’s love for a
son is everlasting.
Able-Disabled
to meet
Able-Disabled will meet on
Tuesday, Nov. 21 at 7:30 p.m.
at the Georgia War Veterans
Nursing Home, 1101 15th St.,
across from Talmadge Hospital.
Mr. Grady Daniel,
vocational rehabilitation
counselor and director of the
Halfway House, will be the
speaker.
Open House
to be held
at Augusta OIC
Augusta OIC will be holding
Open House on November 20,
21 and 22. The community at
large, clergy, government
officials, industry
representatives and the AOIC
Board of Directors are invited.
We would also like to invite
and thank those local
merchants who donated the art
work, carpet, draperies and
paint to AOIC
Continued from Page 1
giveth should receive,
nonviolentlv, of course.”
One of Shuttlesw orth’s
colleagues in 1963 recalled the
conditions in , Birmingham
then.
“One group of five Negroes
waited two hours outside a
restaurant before they got in,”
said the Rev. Ed Gardner,
president of the Alabama
Christian Movement for
Human Rights.
“They got a ham sandwich
and a glass of tea, and the bill
for the sandwich was $lO. One
man thought the sandwich was
so precious he took it home
and put it in the refrigerator.
We used it as an exhibit later in
the court case.”
Rabbi Milton Grafman was
one of the first white leaders in
Birmingham to oppose
segregation. In 1963 he joined
other clergymen in
condemning Gov. George
Wallace’s ‘segregation now,
segregation forever” inaugural
speech.
But later in the spring, as the
number of whites sympathetic
to the Black cause - or at least
opposed to Bull Connor - was
growing, Grafman s name was
on a statement urging Blacks to
“go slow” and see whether
something couldn’t be worked
out. Dr. Martin Luther King
eloquently refused.
‘tGng responded to our
statement in his letter from the
Birmingham jail, and all of us
signing that statement have
suffered because of it all these
years afterward. I get letters
asking if I’m still a bigot,”
Grafman said.
Birmingham’s white
leadership in 1963 took a
drubbing from Howell Raines,
an Atlanta journalist who was
born in Birmingham. His book
“My Soul is Rested”, tells the
story of the city’s civil rights
struggle in the words of the
participants.
“People who might have
been leaders abdicated the
stage to Mr. Connor and Mr.
Wallace,” Raines said. “When
one thinks of failure in
leadership at that time one
thinks of Bull Connor.
“Connor tolerated the Ku
Klux Klan within the
Birmingham police
department, and it remains an
open question in my mind
whether he was himself a
member.
“George Wallace could have
written a different history for
Birmingham had he chosen to
exert a positive influence. No
mam after how much sympathy
one feels toward Wallace
today, he was a man with a
great leadership ability, and he
used it to lead the parade into
darkness and not light.”
The SCLC came to
Birmingham in 1963 because it
needed a victory, Raines said.
Bombingham
After the movement’s failure
to desegregate Albate Albany,
some commentators were
writing the desegregation effort
off as a lost cause.
“Birmingham was picked
because it was, in the words of
Dr. King, ‘the most segregated
major city in America,’ ” he
said. “It had in Eugene “Bull”
Connor a nationally recognized
and dependably enrageable
spokesman for segregation.”
Shuttlesworth lonely efforts
in Birmingham since 1955 had
set the stage for the “creative
tension” King needed for his
efforts to succeed, but a small
group of white Kennedy
Democrats left over from the
1960 presidential campaign
had been working behind the
scenes to defuse that tension
by getting rid of Bull Connor
and his cronies on the
three-meber City Commission.
In a special election on April
2, 1963, Birmingham’s
“dependably enrageable”
segregationist lost the mayor’s
race to Albert Boutwell, a
moderate on racial issues by
the standards of the day. On
April 3, SCLC-organized
demonstrators began trying to
march from the Sixteenth
Street church to city hall for a
prayer meeting.
Bull Connor was ready with
his dogs, and Project C (for
confrontation) was on.
“The SCLC had agreed to
hold off until after the
election, but there was nothing
in the Black experience in the
SOuth to indicate a Southern
city, even with a moderate
mayor, would voluntarily
desegregate,” Raines said.
In the weeks between April
3 and May 10 the city and
county jails were filled with
demonstrators. White business
leaders, appalled at the image
their city was projecting on
network television and in the
pages of Life magazine,
negotiated furtively with King
and his lieutenants for away to
end the marches.
The city commission
complicated the matter by
refusing to leave office. For 38
days, while the courts settled
the issue, Birmingham had two
city governments sharing space
in city hall.
Birmingham’s present
mayor, David Vann, helped set
up the negotiations at the
request of the manager of the
local Sears store. Arthur
Shores, an attorney who
became Birmingham's first
Black Qty Council member,
led the Black negotiaters.
By May 7 tne negotiators
had reached an agreement to
desegregate public facilities
downtown. It was presented to
t he 125-member Senior
Citizens Committee of civic
leaders that night
“Everyone was there -
Wk
B • * man—
I iMUr
‘Guitar’ Watson to be on Soul Train
Two popular recording
artiste climbing the road to
stardom step into the limelight
on Soul Train this weekend.
Johnny “Guitar” Watson,
who successfully blends soulful
blues with disco funk, backed
up with his guitar-playing
genius, plays ‘ ivliss Frisco,
Queen of the Disco” and
“Gangster of Love”
re-recorded for his latest
album, “Giant.”
Sharing equal billing is Jean
Cam who in earlier years,
soloed with the late Duke
bankers, merchants,
sympathetic government
officials,” Vann said. “Burke
Marshall, representing the
president, sat in the chair next
to me. He told me, “David I
don’t think I’ll ever see a city
sit down with itself like I have
today.
“Dr King said he believed he
would live to see the day when
Birmingham would be an
example of some of the best
race relations in the country.”
The agreement was
accepted, and on May 10 the
demonstrations ended.
Vann was one of the
Kennedy Democrats who had
worked for the change of
government referendum. He
was Hugo Black’s law clerk in
1954 when the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled that separate is not
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Johnny “Guitar” Watson
Ellington and recorded with
Earth, Wind & Fire. She
reaches new heights of
popularity singing current hits,
! ‘Don’t Let It Go To Your
Head” and “Happy To Be With
You,” the title song of her
equal in Brown Vs. Board of
Education. His presentation
Wednesday morning at
Birmingham-Southern College
was, with Shuttlesworth s
speech, one of the high points
of the Le Grand conference.
Because of the time, there
were only about 35 who
gathered beneath the
chandeliers of Stockham Mall
to hear Vann describe his city’s
worst, and perhaps finest,
hour. The mayor is a hard
nosed politician not at all given
to high-blown oratory, but he
gave a bit of himself away.
A woman in the front row
used her knitting to dab her
eyes from time to time as Vann
traced the events that brought
Birmingham, and possibly the
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second Philadelphia
International album.
Both artiste began their
careers as youngsters in church,
Watson in Houston and later in
Los Angeles, and Cam in
Atlanta.
rest of the nation, into the
20th Century.
“This was the story of
Birmingham,” Vann concluded
after an hour and a half. “But
in a larger sense this was the
story of America.
“I feel we shouldn’t try to
put white hats and black hats
on everyone. How black a hat
can you put on someone who
grew up in that society? We all
played vital roles in bringing to
a conclusion what was
probably the most difficult and
vital dcision that has had to be
made in this city.
“In my opinion, that
sidewalk leading from the
Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church to Qty Hall is every bit
as sacred as Valley Forge or
Yorktown.”