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The Augusta News-Review (USPS 887 820) - June 23, 1979 -
®lp> (Augusta
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
Harvey Harrison Sales Representative
Mrs. Kathleen Collins Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Mary Gordon Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Ms. Barbara Gordonßurke County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara West McDuffie County Correspondent
Davis Dupree Sports Editor
Mrs. Been Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Roosevelt GreenColurmist
Al Columnist
Mrs. Marian Waring Columnist
Michael Carr Chief Photographer
Sterling Wimberly Photographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
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Mailing Address
Box 953 - Augusta, Ga. - Phone 722-4555
Second Class Postage Paid Augusta Ga. 30903
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Our new day begun
Upending
II “** W the Constitution
A
— — Bv Benjamin Hooks ,
To some, Justice Thurgood Marshall’s
race but stinging public criticism of his
Supreme Court colleagues for upending
the Constitution on a number of
far-reaching questions was long overdue.
Speaking at a judicial conference in Buck
Hill Falls, Pa., on May 27, he charged the
Court with giving “insufficient protection
to constitutional rights” in two
far-reaching decisions concerning libel
claims against the news media and jailed
defendants.
The two cases that Marhsall used to
draw public attention to his concern
touch very fundamental rights of the
individual. Their scope is all
encompassing. They transcend civil rights
or racial issues and questions of equal
protection for minority citizens. Whites
and blacks, the rich and the powerful (in
one case CBS television) as well as the
poor and weak are affected. The rights of
those who historically have regarded
themselves as the specially privileged as
well as the traditional victims of
discrimination and exploitation are being
trampled in skewed judicial reasonings.
Reinforcing the credibility of Justice
Marshall’s concerns is the fact that these
were not cases with which he had been
identified during his brilliant career as
NAACP Special Counsel. Then, as he
sought to make the Constitution
meaningful and relevant to the racially
oppressed, he led in developing a whole
new segment of legal opinions that
resulted in the Brown v. Board of
Education decision outlawing “separate
but equal” facilities.
Black Americans and their white
supporters rejoiced in 1954 when the
NAACP won that landmark victory. Until
Richard Nixon appointed Chief Justice
Burger and three other Justices to the
Court, Americans of goodwill had every
reason to be confident that a new era in
American justice had been well
established. But by first sending up the
names of Clement F. Haynsworth and G.
Harrold Carswell as nominees to fill
vacancies on the Supreme Court, Mr.
Nixon made it painfully clear the extent
to which he was willing to go to alter
drastically the forward course of the
nation’s highest judicial tribunal.
Thanks to the NAACP and its allies in
Washington and across the nation, the
' k y
HE WAS PRESIDENT HE
OF THE SLEEP- PERSUNS IN ANARCH
ING CAR PORTERS OH WASHINGTON IN
l?oJ IN THE STRUGGLE
HE WAS CALLED AND
THEWSriMNGER
OUSBLACK IN
AMERICA.
HE HELPED ORGANIZE A SHAKESPEAREAN
SOCIETY IN HARLEM AND PLAYED THE ROLES
OF HAMLET, OTHELLO AND ROMEO.
HE WAS THE FATHER OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS
REVOLUTION WHICH BEGAN IN THENSOIr.
HE WAS ARRESTED PORSPEAKIH6OUT4GAINS T
WORLD WAR I.
HE SPOKE FOR ALL THE DISPOSSESSED BLACKS
POOR WHITES PUERTO RICANS, INDIANS AND
mexican-americans.
HE WAS CALLED A BOLSHEVIK.
HE ATTAINED FOR BLACK WORKERS THEIR RIGHT
FUL SEAT INTHE HOUSE OF LABOR.
HE STOOD UP AGAINST THE NAZI-SOVIE T
RUSSIA PACT.
HE JOINED THE SOCIALIST PARTY.
HE TOOK ON THE POWERFUL PULLMAN
COMPANY ANO FORCED IT TO SIT DOWNAND
BARGAIN WITH THE PORTERS.
HIS UNREMITTING PRESSURES FORCED
PRESIDENTFRANKLIND. ROOSEVELT TO SIGN
AN EXECUTIVE ORDER CALLING FOR FAIR
EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES IN WAR INDUSTRIES.
Senate rejected Messrs. Haynsworth and
Carswell. But he succeeded in a very rare
historical happening in naming four other
Justices to the Court.
Last September, in addressing the
Associated Press Managing Editors
Conference in Portland, Ore., I called
attention to the irony of the Court’s
backward slide on issues affecting the
rights of the press as well as minorities.
The U.S. news media then was
rightfully angry over the Supreme Court’s
decision giving police license to
rummange and rifle newspaper offices. I
said then: “In some real way you can
now understand first-hand the kind of
anxiety civil rights groups felt when the
Burger Court was delicately balancing the
rights to which blacks were entitled under
the 14th Amendment and the 1964 Civil
Rights Act against Alan Bakke’s claims of
‘reverse discrimination.’”
Speeding along its reactionary course,
the Court ruled that the University of
California at Davis Medical School had
unconstitutionally barred Bakke from its
special admissions program even though it
said that race can be considered in certain
circumstances.
It was then clear, I told the AP editors,
that, “A conservative court that will
compromise on the clear mandates” on
civil rights “will just as easily strike out at
the press if a significant enough public
clamor arises in this land to curb your
freedom.”
By ruling in Herbert V. Lando that a
plaintiff can examine the “state of mind”
of newsmen and editors even in editorial
conferences, the Court now leaves no
doubt about tlie extent to which it will
go in curbing First Amendment Rights.
The other troubling opinion involved
giving constitutional sanction to
over-crowded jails. Heavens help the
poor, who so often cannot afford bail.
Or, to use Justice Marshall’s words, “For
a prisoner in jail, that ain’t funny.”
The NAACP therefore joins Mr.
Marshall in his view that, “111-conceived
reversals (of lower courts’ opinions)
should be considered as no more than
temporary interruptions.”
Presently before the Court is another
affirmative action challenge, Brian Weber
v. Kaiser Aluminum. Black Americans
await that judgment with well-considered
trepidation.
"HE WAS ALWAYS THERE"
/Mil
■
' F 'W wFzak
HE WON AN EXECUTIVE ORDERIN M 8 FROM
PRESIDENT HARRYS. TRUMAN TO BAN OISCRIHIMIION
IN THE ARHED FORCES AND IN FEDER AL EMPLOYMENT.
HE BELIEVED THATINABREAD-AND-BUTTERWORLD
JOBS WERE THE PASSPORT TO DIGNITY.
HE ORGANIZED THE l<&7 PRAYER PILGRIMAGE FOR
THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL.
HEINSPIREDTHEI9SBANDIPSPMARCHES FOR
SCHOOL INTEGRATION.
HE HELPED WIN FOR NEU YORK CITYSCHOOL
PARAPROFESSIONALS THEIR PLACE IN THE SUH.
HF. WAS ASA PHILIP RAHDOLPH.BORN APRIL 15,
1889, (MEOIWIv, 19T9, PRESIDENT-EMERITUS
OF THE BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR
PORTERS, THE UNION HE BUILT.
NEU YORK TEACHER MAGAZINE
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Page 4
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©1979 ftIACX. P€SO<J(2C£S IMG. •JtlAfiDOtA «JR
DRACULA IN INNER CITY
American colleges are feeling student
wrath over South African investments.
An increasing number of United States
college campuses, from mighty Harvard
to the University of California, are ringing
with cries of student protests, marches,
and sit-ins. These actions were somewhat
reminiscent of the hey-day of the Civil
Rights Movement.
The issue this time, however, is not
integration, nor Vietnam, but South
African investments. In what was only
one of a series of recent campus
demonstrations across the country,
hundreds of students rallied at Harvard
University last April demanding that the
university divest all of its stock in
American corporations doing business
with South Africa.
COLLEGES FORCED TO DIVEST
To hold stock in companies that make 5
profits doing business in South Africa or
to hold money in banks which make
loans to the South African government is*
the moral equivalent of endorsing and
reenforcing South Africa’s segregation
policy, say students. At least 14
universities and colleges already have
divested all or part of their stocks in such
companies, many of which are among the
largest in the United States.
According to the Washington-based
investory, Responsibility Research Center
(IRRC), those divestments add up to an
estimated S3O million and include sales
by Columbia University, Michigan State
University, and the University of
Wisconsin.
HARVARD REFUSED TO DIVEST
But many universities include “Fair
Harvard” which has invested an estimated
S3OO million in such companies, refuse to
divest In an open letter to the
community, which received international
attention in the press, Harvard’s
president, Derk Bok, argued that the
university can be a greater influence for
change through wielding its pressure as a
stockholder, rather than selling out. If a
university takes on official stance on a
political issue, says supporters of “moral
neutrality,” it may jeopardize its
academic freedom as well as its financial
well-being.
STUDENTS DISAGREE WITH DR. BOK
Students and growing numbers of
By Rev. Elliot S. Norman
Mr. Hank Ponds, social worker at
Pleasant Home Nursing Facilities, says
that many of the patients residing there
have been threatened with suit by some
of the local ambulance services.
Pleasant Home is primarily a nursing
home that provides medical care for
elderly people. When the elderly are
transferred to an extended care facility or
a hospital, they are transferred by
ambulance. The patients being
transported are not informed of the fact
that they will have to pay for the
ambulance service. Mr. Ponds further
Walking with dignify
a 1 WB -Jb
mm
U.S. ‘filthy Lucre’
condemned
Bv Al Irbv
faculty members disagree. In addition to
the Harvard demonstration which was
also held to bolster support for the
university’s Afro-American Studies
Department, there were other student
protests and actions across the United
States. More than two dozen University
of Illinois students stormed a trustees
meeting April 20, demanding that a
hearing be scheduled on the school’s $5
million investment in companies doing
business in South Africa. At Brandeis
University in Waltham, Massachusetts,
students held a strike and weekend
takeover of two administration buildings,
in April for an entire week, demanding
total divestment of the university’s
approximately $8 million in stock in
companies doing business with the
Pretoria government.
SUPPORTED BY ENGLISH AND UJS. $ $
The student government at the
University of California at Berkeley,
voted in February to remove
approximately $200,000 in student funds
from banks making loans to South Africa.
According to an IRRC survey taken last
summer of the country’s academic
institutions with the largest educational
endowments, two-thirds of the 66
universities that responded reported
pressures to divest stock in companies
doing business with the anti-black
government. In addition to the dozen
colleges which have divested, another 20
have adopted a so-called “selective
divestment” policy which means they will
consider divesting stock in companies
which are not responsive.
SIN DYNASTY BREAKING UP?
Lots of controversy and some low
comedy lie behind the important election
campaign that ended June 6 in a dusty,
cold Transvaal Province mining town
Randfontein. This town is about 20 miles
from Johannesburg, South Africa’s
commercial center. All four of the
country’s most important white political
parties are going at one another with their
hammer and tongs. At stake is the seat in
the South African Parliament previously
occupied by the disgraced former
minister of information, Cornelius
Mulder. All of the top crooks are falling
one by one.
Notice of Suit
stated that even if they were informed
many of them would not understand.
When asked whether Medicare or
Medicaid would pay for the ambulance
service, Mr. Ponds responded: “Medicare
and Medicaid returned the claims for
services rendered by the ambulance
services, saying that the use of the
ambulance was not medically necessary.
Since the people do not have the money
to pay for the services, they are being
threatened with suit by the collections
agencies representing the ambulance
service.
Many of the people who live in the
’lall
(Ok
Going Places has frequently advocated
wider use of our great resource, the
Savannah River, in helping expand and
restore Augusta’s downtown areas.
Recently I spent a Saturday afternoon
there. Over 4,000 persons came down to
participate in the Savannah River Days
Festival on Broad Street. Later in the
afternoon most of them went over to the
Fifth Street dock area and into the
beautiful Oglethorpe Park. Scores of
small boats and rafts sailed in the Great
Savannah River Raft Race.
CAPTAIN SAM TOP RIVER MAN
Thank goodness there is now a move to
use the river, our greatest natural
resource. Thanks to the local
Augusta-based Morris Travel Service and
Cap’n Sam’s Cruises, Inc., Savannah, Ga.,
the first regularly scheduled cruise
between Savannah and Augusta in 50
years is starting. There will also be
shorter cruises around the Augusta area.
More on Captain Sam Stevens, the
nation’s premier black riverboat owner
and licensed captain. He has a fleet of
three riverboats.
ST. MARY’S SAILS THE RIVER
On Sunday, July 8 at 6 p.m. the St.
Mary’s Episcopal Church will sponsor a
unique riverboat cruise and supper
returning at 9:30 p.m. Cap’n Sam’s
Harbor Queen will be docked adjacent to
the Fifth Street Bridge. Parking is
available. This is the church’s
contribution towards reopening of the
Great Savannah River upon which
Augusta was settled in 1735.
DREAMERS VS. SLUMLORDS
The remainder of this column features
a May 9 article by the Atlanta
Constitution’s crack writer, Lee May. Mr.
May visits and writes about the
restoration and rebuilding of historic
downtown Savannah. Note the credit line
given the financial leadership of the
Carver State Bank its president, Robert
James. Now let’s join Lee May:
SAVANNAH - Jesse Wiles’ office is in
an unlikely building, as official city offices
go. Set back from the street, next to city
hall, rising from cobblestone walks, the
old multi-story structure looks out over
the Savannah River. Wiles can see
ocean-going vessels pass his window. It is
not like most city offices I have seen, but
it is in a city not like most. Savannah is
afire with restoration, and Wiles, the
city’s housing director, has his hand in
the middle of it all.
HOUSING CHIEF IS BLACK
He began his job when Savannah began
its housing department in 1977. The city
had already been through Model Cities, a
failure, and a community development
operation. Renovation of the Historic
District was blooming. Enter the housing
department, charged with administering a
homeowners rehabilitation assistance
program for additional properties, the
fine old homes, once beautiful, now gone
to seed, located in the Victorian District.
Wiles, a thin, quietly intense man who
came here from Cincinnati, says the
61-square block Victorian District has a
big plus: It’s adjacent to the Historic
District. That makes it a “natural
extension for the types of things you see
already happening in the Historic
District: restoration of property,
landscaping and the beautification of the
area, and the potential for tourist
attraction.”
RENT SUBSIDIES FOR 500
Only a few days before our
conversation, Savannah announced
another plus in its quest to extend
restoration. Says Wiles, “We have been
funded for rent subsidies for 500
individuals over a 20-year period in the
Victorian District.” It works like this: A
property owner can borrow rehabilitation
money at 3 percent interest and “then,”
says Wiles, “rent the property out for
market rate and have the rent subsidized.
That’s a very attractive arrangement.”
Indeed. Also, however, it is a very
idealistic arrangement. Part of the
backbone of the program, of the entire
Victorian restoration move, is the
attempt to provide low-income housing
nursing home were once doctors, lawyers,
school teachers, and probably not much
different from yourself. They have the
same desires as you have, they breathe,
they eat, they sleep, and they want
respect just as you do.
The elderly have made a great
contribution to America. It is a shame
that the country which they helped to
build has turned its back upon them
giving them NOTICES OF SUIT as their
reward. In the words of an elderly poet: I
call cloth, it is mute. I call gold, it is
mute. I call mankind for it is the only
thing that matters!
Going places
Sailing down the
Savannah River
By Phil Waring
that does not look like low-income
housing. Usually when a restored
neighborhood is sociologically and
economically mixed, it is easy to
distinguish the well-off residents from the
not-so-well-off. Savannah is trying to go
the other way. Wiles feels that “with the
existing Victorian architectural character
of the Victorian District, you won’t be
able to point to a house and say, ‘that’s
where poor people live.’”
The city can’t reach this dream alone.
It needs help from property owners and
developers willing to participate, since
three private dollars are required to be
invested for every one dollar granted by
the federal government. Savannah
Landmark Rehabilitation Projec, Inc., is
one of the willing participants. In fact,
Wiles says that group “is potentially the
major developer for rental properties.”
BUSINESSMAN BACKS PROJECT
Lee Adler II is the man behind
Savannah Landmark, a private non-profit
corporation that plans to buy half of the
district’s 1,200 housing units and
rehabilitate them without displacing the
low-income residents now living there,
(Savannah Landmark’s financing is led by
Carver State BanM- a minority owned
institution that saw »he restoration light
while others only saw red.) Adler, a
prominent stockbroker from old
Savannah stock, is a one-man restoration
gang. He founded Savannah Landmark
after having been president of Historic
Savannah Foundation. Like Wiles, he lives
in a renovated house, practicing what he
preaches.
One thing Adler preaches against is
displacement of poor people. He says,
“We’re buying out the slumlords,
transferring the property through
Savannah Landmark into rehabilitated,
safe housing.”
Again, the dream of proving housing
for poor people that looks just as good as
housing for non-poor people. Impossible?
What about resistance from people who
just don’t want to live around poor
people?
“The ordinary cocktail conversation is
that low-income people don’t take care of
houses,” says Adler. “But that’s not true.
As we found, the residents were valiantly
trying to keep up the apartments, but the
major things like roofs, wiring, plumbing
were let go to hell by slumlords.”
DELAY HOUSING MAINTENANCE
That’s part of what makes the housing
dream so hard to believe. Not only do
greedy slumlords have to be dealt with,
not only do bureaucratic delays have to
be fought, but the pervasive cocktail
snobbery afflicting aristocratic
Savannahians also must be overcome.
Still Adler believes. We visited a
Savannah Landmark project on East
Bolton Street, one that uses CETA
workers in the restoration work. The
demonstration project, SNAP (Savannah
Neighborhood Action Project) is
impressive. We entered what once was a
run-all-the-way-down apartment. Nowits
old wood gleams, new coats of paint
cover its never-more woodwork, and its
resident pays SSO a month. The rest of
the rent is subsidized.
Savannah Landmark wants to complete
600 units in 10 years, an ambitious goal,
given the reliance on federal money that
could vanish, the pressure to open up
more property to affluent Savannahians
who will increasingly find city life
attractive.
Adler, however, is banking on his belief
that “if a citizenry doesn’t care about its
most unfortunate, then there can’t be any
depth to it.”
NEW VICTORIAN DISTRICT
That is much like something Housing
Director Jesse Wiles had said of his own
department the day before: “We don’t
need this program to restore the
Victorian District. We need this program
to make sure the people who live there
are part of the new Victorian District,
that they can take advantage of the
niceties that this area is eventually going
to have.”
Two ideafists, one (Wiles) black, the
other white, trying to promote residential
harmony that not only includes racial but
social and economic factors as well. If it
works, the dreamers will have won, and
the rest of the nation will have learned
something. If it fails, the nation,
unfortunately, will not be surprised.
jlgg
Katherine Hepburn is the
only actress to have won
the Academy Award for
best actress three times: in
1933 for "Morning Glory,”
1967 for "Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner," and
1968 for "Lion in Winter."