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The Augusta News-Review September 27, 1980
Stye JKuguda
(USPS 887 820)
Mallory K. Millender Editor-Publisher
Paul D. Walker Special Assistant to the Publisher
Frank Bowman Director of Special Projects
Ms. Fannie FlonoNews-Editor
Rev. R.E. Donaldson. ... .Religion Editor
Ms. Marye M. James .. .*Advertising Manager
Harvey Harrison Sales Representative
Mrs. Rhonda Brown Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Mary Gordon Administrative Assistant
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Mrs. Fannie Johnson Aiken County Correspondent
Mrs. data WestMcDuffie County Correspondent
David DupreeSports Editor
Mrs. Deen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Mrs. Marian Waring Columnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Grady Abrams Editorial Cartoonist, Columnist
Roscoe Williams Photographer
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There are more black people
participating in local politics than ever
before, and yet the evidence shows that
the reailts are not exactly what one
would write home and tell “mama"
about. Why? One reason is that we have
over-emphasized registration and voting
and under-emphasized voter education
and control.
To me it makes no sense to spend
thousands of dollars to get black people
to register, and then neglect to educate
them on how to participate effectively in
the political process. This is like formally
accepting a young Christian convert into
the church and having more interest in his
exercising his new privileges by singing in
the choir or serving in some other church
function than educating him on Christian
doctrine. When left alone, without proper
training and education, he may feel that
all that is required of him is to attend
church - never learning that becoming a
good Christian is a process he learns, with
the help of the Holy Spirit, through
prayer, study and action.
For a long time many blacks were led
to believe that they were good citizens
because they voted - not how they voted
or for whom they voted. And many
times harm was done to our cause with
their votes because they served the
welfare of those who did not have our
interest at heart. Like sheep without a
shepherd, too often black people were
left unprotected and made victims to the
whims of unscrupulous white politicians.
NO
The experience of the 1970 s - erosion
of limited black gains, urban decay, and a
growing conservative national mood -- has
led to disillusionment and to questioning
civil rights strategies.
Perhaps the single most important
factor in the growing cynicism is the
rightward drift of American political
opinion. The overwhelming majority of
blacks reject the new conservative thrust,
but perceive the wall of white resistance
as higher and stronger.
So some blacks and whites question
the value of federal programs and even
the wisdom of looking to the federal
government for answers to problems
faced by the black poor.
Traditionally, black people have
equated states rights with state’s wrongs,
and have looked to Washington and to
die federal courts for protection from
local abuse. The failure of the private
sector to generate enough jobs and to give
blacks their fair share of the available jobs
has led to emphasis on federal job
programs.
There’s also been an emphasis on
federal transfer programs such as welfare,
food stamps, health assistance and others.
While some have charged such programs
breed dependence, most blacks look upon
those programs as essential survival
mechanisms in a society that refused to
encourage independence through job
opportunities.
Affirmative action is another area in
which black people traditionally look to
the government for action. Left to
Think about it
Voter Education and
Control Necessary
By Grady Abrams
But in the future, we must not only
protect, but control the black vote in
Augusta. This is the only tool we have to
combat the “new right” which is
emerging in local and national politics
today.
The real issue facing black people in
the 80s is one of group survival. And
other issues are secondary; and those
blacks who feel the contrary are only
closing their eyes and disarming
themselves against what is so evident:
white people can very well do without us
today.
1 am not surprised that many whites
feel that most of their social and
economic problems could be solved if we
weren’t around. Just the other day a
white liberal friend of mine told me that
he felt that the government had overly
emphasized equal rights and social
legislation for black people and had used
considerable resources in doing so. He felt
that it was time for the government to
start taking the interest of white people
at heart.
Under this new wave of white neurosis,
which is prevalent nationwide, how can
blacks not afford to come together under
one political banner and vote as one in all
elections? The power thereof is greater
than the hydrogen bomb, and the fallout
can have enormous effect on the political
structure in Augusta, and consequently
on the lives of all black citizens. Think
about it.
To be equal
Government’s:
rights role important
By Vernon E. Jordan
themselves, most employers would
probably be indifferent to black demands
for equal employment opportunities. The
threat of federal action has been a major
factor in private sector affirmative action
efforts.
The conservative view appears to be
that black prograss has been limited
because federal programs are ineffective,
and therefore those programs should be
abandoned.
But it would be more fair to say that
black progress has been limited in part
because federal programs’ effectiveness
has been limited, and that a massive
federal effort to bring equality to blacks
was never implemented.
Job programs, for example, serve only
a fraction of the unemployed, but that is
no reason to de-emphasize job creation.
The fact is that many black people were
helped by those programs, people who
would be much worse off today if those
programs did not exist. The answer lies
not in abolishing the programs but in
expanding the ones that work while
fixing the ones that don’t.
We should not forget that good
programs have been torpedoed by
Congressional politics and by executive
penny-pinching. Some promising
programs were underfunded to the point
where they could not make an impact
Others were broadened to the point
where they became so diffuse that they
failed to help the neediest.
For political purposes, definitions of
Page 4
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Walking with dignity
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A few weeks ago this column pointed
out the current Evangelical “bom again
syndrome’s advent into mass politics. Os
course their political shingigs are
academic; it’s their literal interpretation
of the Bible that concerns this column,
because too many blacks emulate them in
scripture comprehension. The study of
the “Holy Writ," especially the teaching
and study of the life of Jesus, must be
made in a spiritual context.
NOT LETTER BUT THE SPIRIT
The men of Jesus’ day, just as today,
were narrow, selfish, exacting only for
their own rights, he said: “Love all men,
enemy as well as friends. Pray for all men,
persecutor as well as benefactor. Lookup
and see what God does; his sun shines
upon good and evil he sends his rain upon
the just as well as the unjust. And we are
to be like that, we are to aim at nothing
less. The key is to aim at that perfection;
that’s why so many get confused at the
Master’s statement: “Ye therefore shall
be perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect.”
LITERAL OBSERVANCE
Now we shall turn to some of the
famous precepts, over whose meaning and
use men have differed so widely. Are we
to take these all literally and absolutely?
Are the Friends right in refusing to take
an oath even in courts of justice? Was
Tolstoy right in declaring that there
should never be any resistance to
violence, nor any refusal to another’s
request for goods or money? This column
heard one minister of the gospel declare
that if a man came to his door and asked
him for a quarter, it was his duty to give,
even though he knew it would land in the
saloon keepers’s till in the next few
minutes.
Fundamentalists and many black
Christians have often illustrated the error
of literalizing the words of Jesus. There is
a sect, in the Southwest, whose members
bawl from the housetops whatever
message they have to give, because Jesus
told his disciples to proclaim from the
house-tops what he spoke in their ears. It
is the same groups that hold smoking to
be the sin of sins, because Jesus declared
target populations are often broadened to
include more people and more
congressional districts, so funds are
diverted from truly needy areas to
better-off ones.
Federal programs leave much to be
desired, but they shouldn’t be replaced
by panaceas and slogans that appear to
offer even fewer prospective gains to
blacks. Just dumping on government isn’t
8/C'' 1
f keep Our \
Community I
AUGUSTA-RICHMOND COUNTY BEAUTIFICATION
. CLEAN COMMUNITY COMMISSION
‘Without a Parable
Spake He not
unto Them’
By Al Irby
that it was that which came out of a man
that defiled him. Another example of
faculty interpretation gave the Mormons
claim that Jesus supported polygamy.
The subject in question came from Luke
18:29 when Jesus injected a bit of humor
into his words to Peter. He declared that
Ihe disciples “are to receive in this life a
hundred houses for each that they had
left, and also mothers and brothers and
sisters a hundredfold; but he did not
promise the disciples each a hundred
wives.”
JESUS’S SPIRITUAL PRINCIPLE
It must be answered that in all of these
positions there is a fundamental
misunderstanding of Jesus’ principle and
method. Jesus is not giving a new set of
rules to take the place of the old. It is not
rules at all that he is giving. He is
replacing a religion of rules with a religion
of the spirit. His method in the Sermon
on the Mount is very simple. In each case
he points out how inadequate the old rule
is, showing that it is the inner spirit that
counts. Then he makes this plain by
means of concrete illustrations. These
suggestions of his, however, are not rules
but illustrations, and it is quite in his
manner to give these in striking and even
extreme forms, the way Jesus sometimes
taught.
MATTHEW 5: 3842
Jesus opposes two principles to each
other. One is that of give and take; it is
the world’s way today. The other is that
of love, ungrudging, unmeasured,
invincible, the kind of love that Paul sang
about. You may fight evil with evil or
you may show your unchanged goodwill
by die turned cheek. You may meet
injustice with retaliation or you may
answer the oppression by a deed of love;
that is, giving the cloak to him who has
taken your coat. It is the spirit of love
that Jesus is after. But it is not love to
give a quarter to the man whose
whiskey-laden breath betrays his
weakness; that is to sin against love. Let
us who confess to be Christians, not turn
the Master’s teaching unto a new legalism.
enough; we have to ensure that
government programs work the way we
want them to work.
And no one should write off the
private sector as a contributor to future
black equality. The 1980 s should be a
time of building coalitions and creating
public and private programs that result in
black advances.
Tony Brown's Journal
H
PART I »
One of America's non-renewable
resources is threatened with extinction.
A lawsuit by Jack Greenberg's Legal
Defense Fund and the implementation of
an arbitrary fixation on white quotas by
H.E.W., and most recently by the Office
of Civil Rights of the Department of
Education, has gone a long way towards
costing America a viable part of its
future.
The 107 black colleges across the
country enroll in excess of 200,000 black
students and have 800,000 living alumni.
More than 80 percent of all black college
graduates finished one of these
institutions.
Today, 90 black colleges graduate as
many blacks as 1,500 white colleges.
Overall, only 30 percent of all black
college students attend a predominantly
black college, but more than 50 percent
of today's black graduates are produced
by them. Conversely, while 70 percent go
to white colleges, less than 50 percent of
the black college graduates comes from
them. About seven out of 10 blacks at
white colleges never graduate.
An analysis of data related to the
determinants of success in America by
Daniel Yankelovich, president of the
social research firm of Yankelovich,
Skelly and White, showed that the
importance of the academic survival of
students in colleges cannot be overstated.
“The most important of those (factors
other than family background) is
educational attainment: the number of
years of schooling completed. One of the
most interesting findings shows how
important the last year of college is,
relative to other years. What counts is
finishing college and getting credentials,
rather than what one might learn in the
last year, or any year....
“If you don’t translate promising
academic ability into college credentials,
you gain precious little economic
advantage.”
And the fact that black colleges have
this special ability to graduate
disadvantaged students does not mean a
sacrifice of academic achievement. A
recent study comparing the graduate
school performances of 210 blacks with
degrees from black colleges with 140
black graduates of white colleges found
that “Black colleges turned out students
whose grades in advance-degree programs
matched those of Blacks who were grads
of white universities.”
But more importantly, 75 percent of
all blacks with advanced degrees from
white universities received their
undergraduate degrees from a black
college, dispelling the notion that black
colleges are inferior. They are simply
specialized and do the best job of
educating black students.
In the South, black colleges award 69
percent of all college degrees earned by
blacks even though black schools have
only 43 percent of the black college
enrollment. While the college age
population of whites is decreasing, the
college age population among blacks is
increasing -- especially in the Sun Belt
where blacks are losing control of some
schools.
Experience also demonstrates that
displacing black students, faculty and
Power company ends first
phase of positive load control
Cooler weather and the end of the air
conditioning season in Augusta also mean
the end of the first phase of Georgia
Power Company’s Positive Load Control
pilot program, according to B.W.
Rainwater, Augusta Division Vice
President.
“Operating the load control devices on
customers’ central air conditioners this
summer was the first step in this project,”
Rainwater said. “Now well make careful
studies of the information we’ve gathered
so we can determine whether the program
should be expanded.”
The program, designed to control
central air conditioner use during periods
of high or “peak” demand on the Georgia
Power generating system, will be analyzed
partly on the basis of information
gathered in pre-summer surveys made
among the 6,000 participants, including
approximately 1000 in Augusta. A series
of post-summer surveys among the same
people, and the data taken from special
research tape recorders on some homes,
will also be studied carefully by the
News deadline is
on Wednesdays
Please, no exceptions
Let’s support al
Black College Day*
By Tony Brown
administrators with white ones will
reduce the higher educational
opportunities for blacks for years to
come. For example, when Florida
abolished its black junior colleges, there
was a drastic decline in black student
enrollment in the junior college system -
in spite of special provisions for blade
students.
The Project ’BO Coalition for black
colleges was born out of this threat. Black
College Day ’BO, the first celebration of
the beauty and achievements of the
institutions which have graduated 75
percent of all black PhJD’s, 75 percent of
all black army officers and 80 percent of
all black doctors, will not just talk about
black culture and excellence, but will
demonstrate them also.
President Jimmy Carter issued a strong
statement of support for the realistic
retention of black schools: “The
continuing importance of historically
black colleges and universities, not only
to students but also to this nation’s
social, economic and educational life,
cannot be overestimated. This
Administration is committed to
enhancing their strength and prosperity.”
The legal system has joined the
president in his opinion. Even the Federal
Court, when striking down the dual
systems in higher education (Adams V.
Califano), noted that the process of
desegregation must not place a greater
burden on black institutions or black
student’s opportunity to receive a quality
public higher education. Desegregation is
a potential danger to blacks, the court
ruled.
“The spirit of the court in the Adams
v. Califano decision was to expand
opportunities for blacks, but many feel
that the ultimate effect will seriously
jeopardize the traditionally black
institutions,” explained a publication of
the National Center for Education
Statistics.
Corporate America has also discovered
black colleges. “The availability of
qualified minority college graduates is
one of the many problems that industry
faces today in its efforts to increase equal
employment and equal opportunity,”
said a National Alliance of Business
publication.” It said we need “to identify
and try to solve the problems and
concerns of these schools - with the
ultimate aim of producing better
prepared graduates.”
A unique group of business, labor,
education and government works as an
NAB-sponsored cluster of 1,000
companies and 24 mainstream
institutions involving some 3,000 business
and educational people actively securing
jobs and training for black college
students.
Many sectors of America have “joined
the solution.” The recognition of the
threat to black college is now a public
issue. And the corporate sector, the
academic community, political leaders,
students and the total community are
responding.
Join the solution, write The Project ’BO
Coalition For Black Colleges, 1501
Broadway, Suite 2014, N.Y., N.Y. 10036.
TONY BROWN’S JOURNAL, the
television series, is shown every Sunday,
on WRDW-TV 12 at 1:00 p.m.
analysts.
“Despite the unusually hot weather we
had this summer, the support for our
program by participants here has been
excellent,” Rainwater said. “We will
depend heavily on the feedback they give
us regarding the program in our decisions
on any future expansion.”
“Wherever possible,” he said, “the load
control devices, designed and
manufactured by Scientific Atlanta, Inc.,
will be left connected to the customer’s
central air conditioning unit through the
winter for possible activation next
summer. This summer, the
radio-controlled devices were used to
cycle off air conditioner compressors
during peak demand periods about 40
times between June 2 and September
15.”
The utility official said the analysis of
the program is scheduled to be completed
by November and the company plans to
report its findings sometime before the
end of the year.