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NFL Augusta, (
youth away
from football
Page 1
Vol. 9 No. 39
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PHILADELPHIA EAGLES defensive end Claude Humprey relaxes in hotel room. photos by Jacob crawford
NFL star urges youth
away from pro football
By Mallory K. Millender
Philadelphia Eagles football
star Claude Humphrey has
some sobering advice for
youngsters: “I don’t think that
any kid -- black, white or
whatever -- should aspire to be
a professional athlete.”
Humphrey admits that he
aspired to be a professional
football player. But he adds,
“There was nothing I did
personally to become a
professional football player. I
was just lucky. I was in the
right place at the right time.
“As I go down every team
roster, it’s that way. I know
guys who are walking the
streets of Memphis, Tennessee
who were better ballplayers
than me in high school and
college. What happened to
them was they were not in the
right place at the right time.”
The hard reality, Humphrey
continued, is that there is only
one professional football
league, only 28 teams, and 45
players on a team. “That’s for
the whole United States and
Mexico.
“And every kid that comes
up watches football on TV,
and watches guys running
touchdowns and catching long
passes, and they aspire to be a
professional athlete. But all of
Thomson NAACP
Lights would reduce killings
By Billy W. Hobbs
THOMSON, Ga. - Stop
lights and warning signals in
McDuffie County have been
requested by the local NAACP.
Robert Bowdry Jr., the local
NAACP President, told the
Augusta Nms-®pu|rtn
them can’t play no matter how
great they are. There are just a
handful of jobs.
“You’ve got guys that go to
college for the purpose of
becoming professional athletes
and never get anywhere near a
professional football field. And
then they’ve got to fall back on
something else. I am just saying
that I don’t think it’s good for
a kid in high school now to say
I want to be a professional
athlete and not have any other
goal in mind. Had I not
become a professional athlete I
don’t know what I’d be doing
today.”
Humphrey obviously values
education, particularly the
education provided by black
colleges. “I am as proud of
Tennessee State as I am of
anything that I have done in
my life,” said Humphrey, who
was the NFL defensive rookie
of the year in 1968, and played
in the Pro Bowlin 1970,1971,
1973 and 1977.
“I gained something at
Tennessee State that has
helped me to survive all these
years in pro football -- that it’s
important that black kids have
something of their own. It’s
something that they own, and
not something they share.”
Black colleges, he said, make
talent. They take mediocre ball
McDuffie County Board of
Commissioners drat at least
four fatalities had occured in
recent years citing Culpepper’s
Supermarket as being the
location of the most recent
case.
“We feel that losing lives is a
uanpie copy itive action
shunned in rural
Black Belt
Page 1
players and make professional
athletes out of them. Notre
Dame and Alabama are going
to take the cream of the crop
of the blacks, and some of
them don’t even make
professional football.”
Humphrey said that during
his senior year at Tennessee
State, 13 players from his team
were drafted by professional
teams. Three went in the first
round and two in the second.
Humphrey was a teammate of
Paine College athletic director
Robert Eskew at Tennessee
State University, and they later
played together on the Atlanta
Falcons in the National
Football League.
In spite of the apparent
success of black athletes in the
professional ranks, there is still
a lot of racism. Take coaching
for instance: “If you have 28
teams, seven don’t have any
black coaches and the rest have
just one black. And they’ve got
14 coaches on the staff. What
does that tell you? Andover
half of the players on those
rosters are black ball players.
“What is that saying? Is it
saying that the black man can’t
manage black athletes?
“But when you think about
it, those black athletes came
from black schools. And they
are associated with blacks.”
hard price to pay just to show
how important it is to get a
traffic light,” he said.
Bowdry suggested a
committee be appointed to
look into the matter, but
Commissioner Herbert Widener
recommended that the
February 16,1980
Humphrey said he feels the
racism, but ignores it. “I might
call a guy a honky and he
might call me a nigger and I
just go ’head on. Unless he
get’s down, like he’s going to
start talking about my momma
or something like that... then
niggers don’t play that.”
But he is quick to point out
that he sometimes causes the
racial incidents with something
he has said, like: “If that was a
nigger, they would have been
done cut him. They keep him
because he’s a white boy. They
wouldn’t keep no nigger (who)
can’t run no faster than that,
can’t catch no better than
that.’
“So when I speak of racism,
I speak from both ends -- from
their end and from my end.”
Humphrey was in town at
Eskew’s request to serve as the
Grand Marshal in Paine
College’s Homecoming parade
Saturday. But when he woke
up Saturday morning, it was
pouring down rain which lasted
all day. Asked what were his
feelings when he saw it was
raining,he laughed,‘Oh, oh, I’m
going to get my cowboy hat
wet.’ My only reaciton was,
‘What am I going to do with
my cowboy hat?... Get my
feathers wet.’”
commission table the matter
until next month, noting that
would give them time to talk
with officials of the State
See “NAACP”
Page 2
Dr. C.T. Vivian
to speak for
minority businesses
Page 3
Ex-HEW official
Students key to black gains
Dr. Mary Frances Berry,
assistant secretary for
Education in the Department
of Health, Education, and
Welfare, said the retention of
the gains of the civil rights
struggle depends on the
commitment of today’s
students.
She told students at tire
Paine College Founders’ Day
Convocation Friday: “The
ability of our people to retain
the gains depend on you. You
incur a special responsibility to
struggle with faculty to learn
and not against faculty not the
learn.”
Her speech here was her first
since leaving HEW where she
also held the title of acting
commissioner of education
from April 1977 to January
1980.
Dr. Berry left no doubt
about her feelings on the
importance of black colleges.
Black colleges, she said, have
been “crucibles for protest to
challenge the world.” She
noted that black colleges enroll
only five percent of the
students in this country, but
account for 50 percent of
black college graduates.
She said the potency of the
black college has been due to
“the compelling desire of
faculty to teach and the
compelling desire of students
to learn.
In introducing Dr. Berry,
Affirmative action shunned
ATLANTA - The Southern
Regional Council charged
recently that the statistics it
analyzed show that most
governments in the rural Black
Belt have shunned programs of
Affirmative Action, and have
taken an anti-Affirmative
Action posture which, in light
of their historical background
as symbols and centers of the
cause of racial segregation,
appears to be an act of
deliberate and continued
defiance of national policy.
As proof of its charge, the
Council cited “New Hire” rates
for the 14 governments for the
year 1978, which showed that
existing under-representation
of blacks in n on-menial jobs
was increased, not reduced,
over the year. Os a total of 225
New Hires in non-service/main
tenance jobs, 33 (one in seven)
were of black males and 22
(one in ten) were of black
females. Five blacks and 36
whites were hired to jobs in the
high status Administrative,
Professional, and Technician
classifications.
“Few rural Black Belt
governments have recognized
that public employers have a
basic Affirmative Action
responsibility: “They must
provide training and experience
to the victims of historical
exclusion from the job
market,” said Southern
Regional Council Executive
Director Steve Suitts. “The
need for immediate action to
create training opportunities
Paine College President Julius
S. Scott Jr. called her the “E.F.
Hutton of Educational Policy,”
noting that she fought for and
received a 60 percent increase
in the government’s education
budget.
As assistant secretary for
education, she headed the
Education Division of HEW
and administered an annual
budget of nearly sl4 billion.
She had high praise for
President Carter. “Our
Institutions have had the
wholehearted support of
President Carter,” she said,
pointing to a directive the
president issued in January
1979 stating that all federal
agencies must do more to help
black colleges. “That’s the first
time a President has made a
similar statement,” she said.
She said, however, that there
has not been tire kind of
sensitivity needed in some
agencies, and that
implementation is still not as
fast as it should be.
She urged that people
interested in black colleges
“keep the Administration’s
feet to the fire.”
Half of the students
attending black colleges, she
noted, come from families
earning less than $5,000 a year.
A black college graduate
herself, she received the
bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in rural Black Belt
and jobs in rural public
employment is especially
compelling in the rural South,
where grinding poverty is a
day-to-day fact of life among
blacks, and where joblessness is
especially high among black
women.” Die Council urged
local governments to institute
on-the-job training programs
and other opportunities for
rural blacks and women to gain
skills and experience to
increase their employ ability,
and to initiate programs of
recruitment of qualified rural
blacks to public jobs.
Blacks, especially black
women, continue to be shut
out of public jobs in the
Southern rural Black Belt, the
Southern Regional Council said
recently. As a result, although
black women are nearly one in
’four of the region’s rural
population, it is not unusual to
find a rural Black Belt county
or city government in which
there are no permanent,
full-time black female
employes. Even among large
rural Black Beit governments,
as recently as early 1979 the
employment of a total of only
three or four black women was
c o mifionplace, the
Atlanta-based research and
action agency reported in a
study of employment patterns
in 14 rural governments in
Alabama, Georgia, and South
Carolina.
The rate of public
job-holding is somewhat higher
for black men than for black
Less Than 75% Advertising
Thomson NAACP
tries to reduce
traffic fatalities
Page 1
I
A
Dr. Mary Frances Berry
from Howard University, and
the Ph.D. and the doctor of
jurisprudence degrees from the
University of Michigan.
Prior to taking the position
women in the heavily black old
plantation country that has
been called the Black Belt, but
even so, in county
governments, the black male
share of public jobs falls below
their representation in the
population and the labor force.
Their relatively high rate of
employment is a result of the
acceptance of black males in
sanitation and roadworking
departments, said the Council.
In both city and county
governments they are
concentrated in menial
Service/Maintenance and
low-skilled jobs and rarely hold
jobs of status and
responsibility.
Since the fall of racial
segregation in the rural South,
few changes have occurred in
public employment, the
Council reported. Token
numbers of black males have
entered some kinds of
traditionally white male blue
collar jobs. They are now
sheriffs deputies, jailers, fire
fighters, security guards, and
low-skilled roadwork and
sanitation equipment
operators. But the Council
study, which analyzed data
reported as of Dec. 31, 1978,
found that black males hold
small numbers of these jobs.
Seventeen percent of
Protective Service workers and
25 percent of “Skilled Crafts”
workers (all in low-skilled
functions) were black males.
Non-black males were 79
percent of all Protective
at HEW, Dr. Berry served as
chancellor of the University of
Colorado where she also held
the position of professor of
Histoiy and Law.
Service workers and 74 percent
of all Skilled Crafts workers.
The only public
employment breakthrough
among rural Black Belt black
women was in the
Office/Clerical job category,
reported the Council. In the 14
governments studied, one in
five of Office/Clerical jobs (58
of a total of 315) was held by a
blaek female, while under the
system of segregation black
women were never found in
local government office jobs in
the rural South. Three of ever
four Office/Clerical jobs went
to a white woman. Few black
woman are to be found in
other kinds of traditionally
white jobs: only one in 73 of
all non-menial, non-clerical
jobs was held by a black
woman.
Six of the 14 governments
each employed fewer than six
permanent, full-time black
women. Black females were 21
percent and black males 19
percent of the relevant
population.
The Southern Regional
Council study, entitled
“Affirmative Inaction: Public
Employment in the Rural
Black Belt,” found that in
eight county and six small city
governments, five of a total of
136 (or one in 27) employes in
the top level job category of
Official/Administrator were
See “BLACK BELT”
Page 8