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The Augusta News-Review - (USPS 887 820) - May 12, 1979 -
Augusta ■Nefoe-jßeUisfo
Mallory K. Millender • • Editor-Publisher
J Philip Waring Vice President for Research and Development
Paul D Walker Special Assistant to the Publisher
Frank Bowman " ” ""Acting Advertising Manager
Mrs. Brenda Hamilton Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Mary Gordon Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson• •....-Church Coordinator
Ms. Barbara Gordon• Burke County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara West McDuffie County Correspondent
David Dupree• • • • • • • • • •Sports Editor
Mrs. Ileen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al Columnist
Mrs. Marian Waring •• • ■ ■■■• •• • • -Columnist
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Sterling Wimberly Photographer
Roscoe Williams ■ Photographer
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TX-xi
While all of us read the recent
announcement from the Justice
Department of “many minorities” and
women to be investigated for possible
appointment to the federal judiciary, etc.,
my 35 years in the field of race relations
has taught me caution and disbelief until
“the act is done.”
We are now talking about
approximately 600 federal judges -
Supreme Court (we have one), die circuit
courts of appeal (we have two), district
courts (less than 20), U.S. Customs
Courts (there are two), and we are proud
that Judge Matthew Perry of Columbia,
S.C. sits on the U.S. Court of Military
Appeals. There is another small handful
in the District of Columbia federal courts.
President Carter has been in office for
almost two and one half years, yet there
is only one black now sitting on a federal
bench in the South. He is Judge Robert
Collins in New Orleans. No other black
has ever held a similar position in the
South although we have a federal district
attorney in North Carolina, also long,
long overdue.
We hear that Senator Bensen of Texas
will choose an able black female lawyer
and also a Mexican-American. Friends
from Columbia, S.C. tell me that Judge
Matthew Perry, long-time NAACP
attorney, will get the nod from that
state’s senior Democratic senator. All the
rest, my friends, is up in the air. The
panels in both Virginia and North
Walking with dignity
U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young has
proposed a plan to aid world’s hungry,
but it faces a tough test in Congress, as
specialists study it. The former Georgia
Congressman has an eye on development
in Congress and also on Bellagio, Italy.
Each locale should soon yield clues as to
whether the fledging “Food Corps” plan
proposed by Young will get off the
ground. The plan calls for the formation
of numerous corps of volunteers around
the world to attack the hunger that
afflicts a half billion of the rural poor.
FOOD EXPERTS MEETING IN ITALY
As Congress decides in the next few
weeks what kind of support to give the
food corps, an elite group global food
planners has decided to meet in the small
Italian town in July to come up with a
formula to make the idea work. Directors
of two African pilot projects, Vincent
Mrisho of Tanzania and Samou Sangare
of the Sahel region, will pool efforts with
directors of two highly successful
third-world developnent plans, A.T.
Ariyaraine of Sri lanki and Leonardo
Jimenez of Mexico. Together with such
international development specialists as
Antony de Wilde of the Netherlands and
Ambassador Young’s aide Ruth
Morgenthau, food corps hopes to launch
its first trial runs in Africa.
CONCEPT ENDORSED
The corps was first proposed by
Ambassador Young at the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) in 1977. Since then the idea has
been scrutinized and developed by FAO
and other international development
officials. Although the food corps would
have no direct connection with the
United States Peace Corps, it also draws
Going places
Few blacks in
Federal Judiciary
Bv Phil Waring
Carolina named no blacks or women, and
hence the senators of those states chose
none. We hear, however, that Judge
Joseph Hatchett of Florida Supreme
Court, will be nominated for the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals.
RUFFIN TOP LAWYER
Here in Georgia we have a tough state
of affairs which has been outlined in your
News-Review and other media. We say
again (as stated in our December 1976
Going Places column) that “Attorney
John Ruffin would enrich the federal
judiciary any place at any time and in any
position.”
Again, this points up to the need to
increase our voting strength and
participation. Political leaders listen to
votes. In Texas, as an example, blacks
vote. They have a Congressperson and
will soon get a federal judge. There are
1.2 million blacks in Georgia. We have the
potential and must use it very soon.
In conclusion, out of the 600 members
of the federal judiciary we have less than
30. Let no one tell you we are moving
too fast. 1 am especially worried about
the judgeships for the 11 Southern states.
Let’s keep the fires burning with letters
to President Carter, Senator Edward
Kennedy, chairman of the U.S. Senate
Judiciary Committee, Georgia senators
and others.
“Andy” Young,
global statesman
By Al Irby
heavily on the concept of the trained
volunteer. Unlike the Peace Corps,
however, food corps volunteers would
come from within developing countries
themselves and be directed by local or
regional authorities. The volunteers,
including some technical experts, would
lend ongoing support for local farmers
trying to increase food production at the
village level.
EVEN THE CRITICS ARE JOINING IN
“The next decade’s big development
challenge is in inspiring local villagers’
part in their own development-if the 500
million rural poor are not to become 600
million by the end of the century,” says
Dr. Morgenthau, an international expert
on global hunger. Already the food corps
planners have received grants from the
Rockefeller Foundation, the United
States Agency for International
Development, and the Dutch Government
to plan pilot projects in Tanzania and the
Sabel. Last December delegates from 32
third-world countries at a Food and
Agriculture Organization conference in
Rome expressed their support for the
food corps concept.
COMMITTEES COMING AROUND
New Directions, the Washington-based
citizens lobby promoting world security,
has been urging Congress to contribute
financial support for the planning of a
food corps. The House Foreign Affairs
Committee also supported the food corps
in its report on the new foreign aid bill,
although monetary support was not
specified in the bill itself. The Senate
Foreign Relations Committee will
consider the plan during its own
deliberations on foreign aid in coming
Page 4
Every time I see an analysis of the state
of black Americans there is always one
supposed bright spot in an otherwise
gloomy picture. More blacks are going to
college, and the proportion of blacks in
college is about equal to the number of
college-age blacks, and to the whites rate
of college attendance.
The only trouble with that bright spot
is that it isn’t true.
That’s because all post-secondary
education is lumped under the label
“college.” Surveys show more black high
school seniors aspire to a college
education than do whites. But they don’t
get it.
Blacks in post-secondary education are
far more likely than whites to be in
vocational schools or in two-year
community colleges. Proportionately
fewer wind up in four-year colleges, and
still fewer in universities. The opposite is
true for white students.
Os special concern is the fact that the
two-year community colleges are playing
a steadily larger role in educating black
youth. Almost half of all black students
attending colleges are going to those
institutions.
And yet there has been no national
strategy devised concerning just what the
proper role of those schools should be.
Too often they are restricted to providing
terminal occupational training.
That may be fine for many of their
students, who receive the skills and
knowledge required or specific
occupations. But many others are drawn
to the two-year colleges because they are
cheaper, because they think they can
eventually transfer to four-year schools,
or because they wrongly assume they
can’t do academic college-level work.
Black educators have expressed dismay
that bright youngsters who should be
getting university training are moving
instead into community colleges and
foregoing the career mobility and higher
status occupations open to those holding
higher degrees.
There are also fears that the nation
may be creating an underfunded,
understaffed and underachieving sector of
higher education, designed to drain off
minority and disadvantaged students
weeks. And African subcommittees of
both houses have expressed support for
the plan.
Development programs aimed to
increase farmer participation at the village
level have already been attempted by
many international agencies, but with
only marginal success. What makes food
corps planners think their plan will work
is its combination in a single program of
key elements that have already proved
highly successful in development projects.
One suck element is the “educational
model” for development. The model
diverges from plans that rely heavily on
centralized bureaucratic decision making
by governments or international agencies.
It would bring technical experts from
regional research centers to live with
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To be equal
Black college
gains an illusion
By Vernon Jordan
whom the college and universities want to
ignore.
Thus, critics say, there is a danger that
the two-year colleges may become the
ghetto of the college community,
reservations for the disadvantaged.
Meanwhile the higher track colleges and
universities would be free to cater to the
neends of white and middle class
students.
Such a development would be a cruel
blow to black educational aspirations.
The two-year community colleges have a
tremendous potential to develop into
important institutions integrated into the
structure of higher education.
Properly funded and organized
community colleges can fulfill the basic
needs of their students and also serve as
bridges to continued education. But so
long as many four-year colleges refuse to
accept transfers with full credit and so
long as they are viewed as centers for
remedial work and for job training, that
won’t happen.
Too many black students who want to
attend four-year colleges and universities
don’t do so because they can’t afford
them. Financial aid to students is drying
up, and what’s left is being spread more
widely instead of being targeted to those
most in need.
Federal grants are limited to half the
tuition costs. This works against many
blacks students in two ways. First, more
attend public colleges that charge lower
tuitions. So they get minimum grants
while those attending high-cost
universities get several times as much in
aid. Second, since most black students
come from poor and low income families,
they need more help just to stay in
school, regardless of tuition costs.
They’re not getting it.
So the raw numbers purporting to
show that blacks are holding on to college
enrollment gains are illusory. The
numbers of enrolled blacks are slipping,
they are concentrated in the least-favored
sectors of higher education, and the gap
between whites and blacks is growing in
education, as in other fields. Those who
are searching for bright spots will have to
look elsewhere.
villagers and instruct local farmers. But
the approach also requires the experts to
leam from the farmers themselves who
most often have extensive knowledge
about local farming conditions.
The concept is also designed to foster
closer, long-term cooperation and
self-reliance at the local level rather than
increasing dependency on industrialized
countries. The assistance of development
experts from Sri Lanka and Mexico,
which have experienced success in
upgrading rural development, it is hoped
will add to the whole process. Despite the
hatred of southern politicians, and some
Dixie newspapers, AMbassador Andrew
Young may just emerge the stellar
statesman of the Carter Administration.
Our new day begun
If J
Having lost his reelection bid last fall,
Edward Brooke is no longer in the U.S.
Senate. So the Senate Ethics Comnittee
conclusion in March after a 10-month
investigation that the Massachusetts
Republican had committed no violation
of Congressional conduct rules worthy of
punishment was really moot.
Nevertheless, the effect that the
investigation had on ending the career of
the nation’s only black senator since
Reconstruction a century ago does cast a
gloomy light on the timing and nature of
the investigation.
Given the background of the vendetta
and the facts that led to the charges being
brought against Sen. Brooke in the first
place, it should come as no surprise that
many blacks felt that the hapless
lawmaker had been treated unfairly by
hrs colleagues and the national press.
It matters little that the Ethics
Committee in the end exonerated him.
The only questionable act that the Ethics
Committee could find after so much
effort was that he had misstated his
personal finances. And the Senator
himself had previously stated publicly
that he had not given the proper details
on all of his finances.
Thus, most of Mr. Brooke’s problems,
the committee found, were due to “the
careless fashion in which the reports were
prepared.”
Thus, in effect, the committee cleared
him of charges of wrongdoing. The
conclusion in March, however, mattered
little. Ed Brooke, who was considered a
shoo-in before the scandal over his
divorce from his long estranged wife
The blackside of Washington
**
SnL
The Washington D.C., government has
just released some population estimates.
They show 502,300 blacks and 173,800
whites, or almost 75 percent black. And
although blacks are down slightly, this is
the largest percentage of blacks in any
major U.S. city.
The discouraging thought is that we
blacks buy practically no clothes, no
automobiles, no groceries, or anything
else, except caskets from black business
people. And although we hold scores and
scores of banquets, the one hotel we have
here - beautiful new Harambee House -
is in deep financial trouble.
It leads us to ask, “WHAT IS WRONG
WITH BLACK FOLKS?” Are we really
inferior, or just disadvantaged? Or is the
hate for ourselves so deep that we refuse
to do business with each other?
It’s general knowledge here that a
black clerk in a department store is 10
times as likely to insult a black customer
as a white clerk. A Vietnamese, a Chinese,
and Hispanic, an Arab who arrived here
yesterday seems to know more about
courtesy and business than some of us
who have been here all our lives.
This is the blackest side of D.C. as it is
of many other cities, we suspect. Have
the long years of brutalization,
discrimination, and hopelessness of blacks
in America killed something deep inside
us? Are we now doubting all
opportunities? Are we afraid to believe
that dreams come true? Has the American
experience left us numb?
THURGOOD ON SPOT?
Some 55 black residents of a housing
project here in Washington had been
Affirmative action officer
harrassed, quits job
EUGENE, Ore. - A class action suit
against the University of Oregon, in
which its affirmative action officer asserts
that the university and the state
intentionally failed to carry out programs
that she developed and the university
adopted, has received the support of the
NAACP.
Myra Willard, who resigned her six-year
job as affirmative action officer effective
in June, also accused the university of
consistently denying tenure to women
and minorities, including herself. She also
said university officials harrassed and
intimidated her to get her to quit her job.
She has asked 4 million in damages in the
Federal court suit she filed last July.
Punishment
without a crime
By Benjamin Hook*
Remigia erupted in the Boston papers,
had lost his most-prized seat.
Some of Mr. Brooke’s former
colleagues who sat in judgment might
argue that they had nothing to do with
the bitterness of his divorce proceedings.
But they certainly did not have to stoke
the negative passions of Massachusetts
voters. Furthermore, as mortals, it is a
sure assumption that several of those who
sat in judgement of the Senator were no
less guilty of some of the sins for which
he had been wrongfully charged.
As the biblical admonition goes,
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For
with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be
judged; and with what measure ye mete,
it shall be measured to you again. And
why beholdest thou the mote that is in
thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the
beam that is in thine own eye? Or how
wilt thou say to thy brother, let me pull
out the mote out of thine eyes; and
behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou
hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of
thine own eye; and then shalt thous see
clearly to cast out the mote out of thy
brother’s eye.” (Luke 6:37-38,41-42)
Certainly President Carter, who had
been squeezed into office two years
earlier with a lopsided black voter
support did not help Mr. Brooke’s
desperate fight by going to Massachusetts
to campaign for the Democratic rival.
Given the sensitivities in the situation, he
very well could have found many good
reasons to stay out of the contest. That
would have been one fitting way of
displaying a measure of political realism.
Blackest side
of D.C.
»y snerman Briscoe - NAACP
assured by the Circuit Court of Appeals
that they were entitled to federal
relocation benefits after being evicted by
HUD.
But the U.S. Supreme Court came
along recently and reversed the ruling of
the lower court, denying the relocation
benefits. The opinion was written by
Thurgood Marshall, following the letter
of the law as he sees it.
Twenty years ago, Thurgood would
have been saying to the court, “I’ve got
news for you.” And the blacks would
have felt secure.
NEXT 4-STAR GENERAL
Lt. Gen. Arthur J. Gregg, chief of
logistics for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is
likely to be named the next 4-star
general, according to sources in the
Pentagon. The 51-year-old general, who
was bom and reared in Florence, S.C.,
and educated at Benedict College in
Columbia, has received many awards and
citations. Next in line to General Gregg is
Lt. General Julius W. Becton Jr., who did
his undergraduate work at Prairie View.
He now commands an army of 70,000
men in Germany.
YOUNG HALEY TO EUROPE
Sgt. William A. Haley, son of the
author of “Roots,” passed through
Washington recently en route from a
training session in Orlando to Germany
where he will serve as an Equal
Opportunity Specialist. Young Haley has
been in the Army 15 years. His father
served 20 years in the Coast Guard before
turning full-time to writing.
Donald Haley, president of the
Northwest Area Conference of the
NAACP, said the controversy surrounding
affirmative action has prompted
universities across the country to openly
re-evaluate their need for such programs.
As a result, he went on, women and
minorities are losing the ground they
gained in the early 1960’5.
William Boyd, the university
presidents, declined to discuss the Willard
case but in a letter to Benjamin Hdoks,
the executive director of the NAACP, Mr.
Boyd called the local chapter of the civil
rights organization “a lynching party”
after it publicly supported Miss Willard’s
case against the university.