Newspaper Page Text
2 black women
found dead, minus
heads and feet
Page 1
Vol. 9 No. 7
S
Black leaders elated
by Weber decision
(From Atlanta Constitution)
The Supreme Court’s
endorsement of “affirmative
action” programs as a means of
opening up new job vistas for
blacks and other minorities
took many civil rights leaders
by surprise.
Black activists and civil
rights lawyers throughout the
South were elated by the
Weber decision, which the Rev.
Joseph E. Lowery, president of
the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, said
“provides a green light nowfor
employers and labor unions to
accelerate their programs to
train and upgrade minorities.
“Frankly, 1 had lived in fear
and trembling that they might
support Weber,” Lowery said,
“because of the ambiguity in
the Bakke ruling.”
The Bakke ruling, handed
down exactly one year ago,
upheld a white man’s
complaint that he had been
barred from admission to a
California medical school
because of “reverse
discrimination,” but the ruling
left unanswered questions
about the use of racial quotas
in employment.
“I was scared because the
composition of the present
Supreme Court is frightening,”
said Benjamin Hooks,
executive director of the
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People.
Tyrone Brooks, National
vice president of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Coalition to
Save the SCLC, and Bobby
Doctor, regional director of the
U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, both said they had
been worried by what they saw
as a “conservative trend” in
recent Supreme Court rulings.
Andy Young sees black clout in Africa
By Bill Drunmond
Pacific News Service
Editor’s Note: With ethnic
politics increasingly linked to
foreign causes -- Jews to Israel,
Chicanos to Mexico, Chinese to
Taiwan or the People’s
Republic of China - U.S.
blacks are beginning to identify
k their own aspirations with U.S.
policies on Africa. Bill
Drummond, former staff
reporter for the Los Angeles
Times who now works for
National Public Radio in
Washington, D.C., looks at this
new aspect of U.S. racial
politics for PNS.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - With
the Rhodesia issue now in the
middle of domestic U.S.
politics, moves are underway
by black American groups to
form a U.S. black lobby on
Africa. Key spokesman in the
effort is UN Ambassador and
top Carter political aide,
Andrew Young. Young sees the
issue of trade sanctions against
Zimbabwe Rhodesia as a litmus
test for President Carter’s
comnitment to the aspirations
of blacks in America.
“There is now a population
that is ethnically related to
Africa,” says Young, “that is
going to be concerned about
the way those votes come
down. Even if we don’t
Attgitsla Npiua-Kwitw
They were “pleasantly
surprised” by the Weber
decision.
“It’s a bright, shining light
for all of us who believe in
equal opportunity and
affirmative action,” said
Brooks, who added that he had
“been worried that we were
headed back to (an
atmosphere) in which black
people could not expect any
justice in the job market.”
Activists and attorneys
agreed that the ruling will have
immediate and far-reaching
impact on “reverse
discrimination” cases now
planned or pending in courts
throughout the nation and
would provide valuable
assistance in their continuing
efforts to find remedies for
racial imbalance in the work
force, wherever it exists.
Lowery predicted that it
would also “strengthen the
mayor’s position” with regard
to a just-announced
controversial plan to fill half of
the available job openings in
the Atlanta police department
with white applicants and half
with black applicants.
Atlanta Mayor Maynard
Jackson said he is “not a quota
man,” calling racial quotas, “a
tricky business, a two-edged
sword,” but that he believes
they have some usefulness as a
remedy for racial imbalance.
Vernon Jordan, president of
the National Urban League,
said that he regarded the
decision as “just the beginning,
not the end of the fight for
affirmative action,” coming as
it does “against a backdrop of
a growing gap between blacks
and whites.”
“Blacks are experiencing
Depression-level
unemployment, and we are
understand all of the
implications of each and every
vote, there is no way that we
cannot be sensitive to the racial
dynamics of each and every
vote.”
Added to this growing
political awareness by
American blacks, is Nigeria’s
new clout in world affairs. “If
you are thinking about these
long gas lines, one out of every
eight gallons of gasoline sold in
this nation comes from
Nigeria,” Young pointed out
late last month -a few days
before Nigeria let it be known
that it might use its oil
weapon if the U.S. recognized
the new government in
Zimbabwe Rhodesia. “Now if
you buy Gulf, one out of every
two gallons of Gulf comes
from Nigeria. We are talking
about the kinds of realities that
I think white folk can
understand.”
Black American political and
civil rights leaders have been
quick to back Young in making
the connection. Recently,
Trans Africa, the
Washington-based lobby on
U.S.-Africa policy, brought
together a coalition of black
groups that included the
Congressional Black Caucus,
the NAACP and the National
Urban League to support
Carter’s decision to continue
the U.S. economic boycott of
Youth believed
lynched for
dating white
Page 1
P.0.80x 953
locked into low-wage marginal
jobs. There is still massive
resistance to black needs, as
seen in the support given
Weber,” Jordan said.
But the ruling “suggests a
positive obligation for private
employers to press forward
with broad, comprehensive
affirmative-action programs,”
Jordan said. “Now they have
no excuse to avoid their legal
and moral duties.”
The Weber decision may
elicit “several suits in coming
years against firms reluctant to
hire or promote minority
people,” said Nathaniel R.
Benjamin Hooks
Jones, general counsel for the
NAACP and President Carter’s
nominee for a federal appellate
court judgeship. “But this
should halt the spate of
so-called ‘reverse
discrimination’ suits,” he said.
C. Delores Tucker, president
of the Federation of
Democratic Women and former
secretary of the Common
wealth of Pennsylvania, said
she was “very gratified that the
Supreme Court upheld the
premise on which this nation
was founded, that all
Americans should have the
the Salisburg regime. These
leaders said they would take
political steps against those in
the Senate and the House who
had been pushing for an end to
the trade sanctions.
Randall Robinson, executive
director of Trans Africa, said,
“We want to make it dear that
the black leadership is
committed to respond to those
in Congress who would
embrace what is nothing more
than a racist solution to the
problems of Africa.”
No doubt the Senate
conservatives who want the
sanctions lifted are less intent
on aiding Bishop Abel
Muzorewa than they are on
dealing a setback to Carter and
particularly Andy Young.
Nevertheless, the Rhodesia
question highlights two
basically new facts of life
about racial realpolitik.
First, educated, upwardly
mobile American blacks are
increasingly looking to Africa
as a derivative of the civil rights
movement in the American
South. Salisburg has become a
latter-day Selma.
Second, America’s reliance
upon African countries for raw
materials, not necessarily
confined to petroleum, will
inevitably mean
accommodating more of their
political demands.
If you ask a reasonably well
right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. Without a
job, and without economic
parity, one cannot enjoy these
three virtues.”
“It was the proper way to
decide that case,” added
Laughlin McDonald, director
of the Southern office of the
American Civil Liberties
Union.
Had Weber won, McDonald
said, it could have been the
death knell for voluntary
affirmative-action programs
nationally, requiring the
it
Vernon Jordan
federal courts “or an expanded
bureaucracy” to deal with the
problems of discrimination in
hiring and employment.
“It removes a major obstacle
to compliance with
affirmative-action guidelines,”
Vernon Jordan said, “so there
is much to be happy about
today.”
“We applaud this decision,
though we ought not to have
to be so appreciative,” the
NAACP’s Hooks said with
somewhat greater restraint,
“for something which justice
dictates we should never have
had to ask for.”
informed person which
country is the most populous
black nation on earth, he or
she will quite likely know the
answer: Nigeria.
But try asking which
country has the second largest
black population in the world.
Not many people will know
that it is the United States.
These two geopolitical
forces mean one thing: Black
Clout. It exists and the United
States must adjust to it.
However, the question remains
whether Young and Nigeria
chose correctly in exercising
that clout over the Rhodesia
issue.
The Arab states gained few
admirers in the United States
when they exercised the oil
weapon following the October
War in the Middle East in
1973. Many Senators want to
show the Nigerians that they
cannot push the United States
around.
Some observers believe that
in identifying himself with the
Nigerian threat, and seeing
Rhodesia through the
Mississippi prism, Young may
have overstated the fact to his
own detriment. They point to
the fact that Muzorewa’s
government is multi-racial and
substantially different from the
white minority regime of lan
Smith. In Washington,
moreover, the political battle
Gov’t cuts tico
with Soul City, ends
McKissick dream
IPagel
July 7, 1979
Conservatives claim
King holiday would put
U.S. on side of Reds
WASHINGTON - Honoring
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
with a National Holiday would
put the United States “ on the
side of the Reds,” political
conservatives have told
Congress.
“His willing friendship and
collaboration with totalitarian
communists and racists, but
even more, his teaching of
contempt for law and the legal
process makes it most
unsuitable for his anniversary
to be made a national
holiday,” said Rep. Larry
McDonald (D-Ga.)
Youth believed lynched
CHESTER, S.C. - Folks
who live in this small rural
town are saying privately that
17-year-old Mickey McClinton
P >ag was lynched by five white
men and that local police are
seeking to hide the incident in
a bogus hit-and-run accident
report.
According to police reports,
Poag was killed May 10 by a
hit-and-run driver, but family
members and funeral parlor
employes say the story is
Women found beheaded
LOS ANGELES - The nude
torsos of two young black
women minus the heads, hands
and feet - were discovered in a
drainage ditch early Tuesday
by a woman motorist who
thought she found “a couple of
mannequins.”
Investigators said no trace of
lines on the sanctions do not
follow classic liberal-conserva
tive patterns. Civil rights
veteran Bayard Rustin and
liberal ex-Congressman Allard
K. Lowenstein -- both pointing
to what they see as a more
dangerous communist
alternative - have given
qualified support to
Muzorewa’s government.
On the other hand, as the
Greek-Turkish confrontation
over Cypress illustrated, a
domestic constituency (such as
the Greek lobby) can
dramatically alter the direction
of foreign policy.
As Jimmy Carter’s standing
in the polls continues to fall,
he appears less inclined to
make a move flat would
alienate Andy Young, who is
his single strongest hold on the
allegiance of black voters.
As far as Andy Young is
concerned, the Rhodesia
struggle is the successor to the
civil rights marches in the
south.
In May, Young said as much.
“This isn’t about foreign policy
at all,” the Ambassador said in
reference to the role Africa
played in domestic American
politics. “The folks that are
pushing these amendments
(favoring lifting sanctions)
don’t give a damn about
Africa. They don’t know a
damn thing about Africa.” He
Less than 75% Advertising
Alan Stang, author of “It’s
Very Simple: The True Story
of Civil Rights,” said that
honoring King with a national
holiday would indicate “the
United States Government is
now on the side of the Reds.”
They and others testified
against the King Memorial Day
proposal at a Senate judiciary
committee hearing called by
committee members who also
opposed the idea. The session
was chaired by the panel’s
ranking Republican, Strom
Thurmond of South Carolina.
A majority of the
unlikely due to the condition
of the young man’s body. They
said Poag’s body was
mutilated in such away that
the police story is a coverup
Also they said he had been
castrated and his body found
less than a mile away from the
home of Sheriff Robert Orris.
Poag’s death comes on the
heels of another suspicious
death three years ago in
Chester, when Chris Franklin
was found dead. “He was
the dismembered parts, or of
the victim’s clothes was found
after an extensive search of the
area including an open field
nearby.
Detective Gary Broda said
the cause of the deaths, and
where they occured, have not
been determined.
concluded:
“What they do know is that
one way to seriously disrupt
the Democratic Party is to
force a split in the Domestic
Party on the Africa issue. With
tensions already between -a
balanced budget and inflation
and energy policy and all of
these things, the final nail in
the coffin would be an Africa
policy that did not respect the
sensitivities of the black voters
of this nation.”
Freeman awarded M.D.
Kevin Henri Freeman
received the doctor of
medicine degree during the
recent commencement
exercises at Emory University.
He is the son of Mr. and Mrs.
Henri Freeman and the
grandson of the late Mr. and
Mrs. Namon (Elease) Freeman
and William Baxter and the late
Mrs. Catherine Baxter.
Dr. Freeman was a 1971
honor graduate of the
Academy of Richmond
County, receiving merit and
scholastic certificates from
Augusta College and the
University of Georgia. He
earned his B.S. degree in
biology from Emory University
x /lugustans
hospitalized
in shootout
Page 2
see editorial page 4
committee, including Chairman
Edward Kennedy, (D-Mass.),
who did not attend the session,
supports the proposed
legislation to make the slain
civil rights leaders birthday a
national holiday.
Thurmond maintained that
King should not be honored
because the cost of adding
another federal holiday --
about $195 million -- is “not
lynched also,” said a resident
who asked to remain
anonymous out of fear, “but
people here know the truth but
are afraid to speak up.”
Franklin, 19, was found tied to
a tree and bmtally assaulted.
Residents say the motive for
the alleged lynching is the fact
that Poag, a senior at Chester
Senior High School, was dating
a white classmate. The same
reason was attributed to the
killing of Franklin. The white
Lt. Mitchell Maricich said
authorities have no way yet of
identifying the bodies but
believe the victims were black
women between 15 and 30
years old.
Maricich said detectives
believe the women were killed
elsewhere and their torsos
Gov’t abandons Soul City
WASHINGTON - The
government said Thursday it
will cut its ties to Soul City,
putting an end to civil rights
activist Floyd McKissick’s
dream of a building a
multiracial new city of 50,000
in the red clay meadowlands of
North Carolina.
When the announcement
came, officials said that only
124 persons lived in 33 houses
in Soul City. The Department
of Housing and Urban
Development estimated its loss
in seven years at about S2B
Kevin H. Freeman
in 1975.
Pursuing his interest in
medicine, he attended an
reasonable.”
And hj questioned whether
King should be ranked with
Christopher Columbus and
George Washington - the only
individuals so far honored with
national nonreligious holidays.
The administration and a
number of civil rights leaders
applauded the idea at earlier
hearings.
girl Poag was dating has
reportedly left the area.
Mrs. Patricia Poag, the
mother, said her son’s death
was no accident, and charge
the sheriffs department with
trying to cover it up. Funeral
director Christopher King and
his assistant Issac Hill, have
sealed Poag’s coffin and
refused to give details of the
boy’s condition when his body
was found.
dumped sometime during the
night.
He said the grisly discovery
was first reported by a woman
motorist who at first thought
the torsos “were a couple of
mannequins,” but she made a
U-turn to check “and found it
was a couple of bodies.”
million, plus $65,000 for a
consultant’s study saying Soul
City would never be financially
“viable.”
Bill Wise, HUD’s assistant
secretary for public affairs, said
the government would pay off
$lO million worth of
guaranteed bonds and seek to
negotiate with McKissick the
takeover of the land owned by
the Soui City Co. It will then
sell the land for an estimated
SBOO,OOO. If a settlement can’t
be negotiated, the government
will foreclose, Wise said.
Allied Science Institute at th
Medical College of Georgia and
was the recipient of a summer
research fellowship at Harvard
University School of Medicine
and also participated in a
Health Careers summer
program at Cornell University
School of Medicine.
During his senior year of
medical school, he chose to
take several elective courses in
outpatient pediatrics at the
Baylor University School of
Medicine in Houston, Texas.
Dr. Freeman will serve his
internship and residency in
Atlanta at the Emory
University affiliated hospitals
in the area of pediatrics.
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