Newspaper Page Text
Lee Brown
is appointed
despite controversy
Page 1
Volume 12, Number 5
From Alabama to Washington, D.C.
ATLANTA (UPl)—Civil rights
leaders Jesse Jackson and Dr. Joseph
Lowery are presently conducting a
marathon, five-state march from
Tuskegee, AL, to Washington to urge
extension of the 1965 Voting Rights
Act.
“This is no hullabaloo, our lives
are at stake,” Jackson, head of
Chicago - based Operation Push,
said. They predicted that the march
will draw thousands along route from
Tuskegee through Georgia, the
Carolinas and Virginia.
It began with an April 19 rally in
Tuskegee and is expected to end in
late June or early July in
Washington. Lowery, president of
Paine College selects
new president
Dr. Daniel A. Collins, chairman,
Paine College Board of Trustees an
nounced that Dr. William H.
Harris has been elected president of
Paine College by the Board of
Trustees. He will assume the office on
July!.
Dr. Harris comes to Paine from
Indiana University in Bloomington,
Indiana where he is the Associate
Dean of the Graduate School,
Professor of History and Director of
the CIC Minorities Fellowships
Program, a cooperative effort of the
Big Ten Universities & the University
of Chicago established to recruit and
support minority graduate students.
He has been at Indiana University
since 1969 when he became an
Associate Instructor of History. He
then was appointed lecturer in
History in 1972, became an assistant
professor of History the following
year and from 1977 to 1981, Dr.
Harris was an Associate Professor of
History.
Harris graduated from Paine
College with an A.B. in History in
1966. He received his M.A. from In
diana University in 1967 and earned
his PH.D. from Indiana University in
1973.
Harris is replacing Dr. Julius S.
Scott who announced in January that
he had accepted the position of
Associate General Secretary of the
Division of Higher Education of the
Board of Higher Education and
Ministry of the United Methodist
Church. Approximately 70 people
applied for the position. A search
committee comprised of ten in
dividuals affliated with Paine
narrowed the field of six candidates,
then interviewed four of them. Dr.
Harris was unanimously approved by
both the Search Committee and the
Board of Trustees.
The Booth Ferris Foundation from
New York has awarded a $50,000
grant to the Paine College Second
Century Fund. To date, Paine
College has raised 1.2 million dollars
during the Second Century Campaign
which began last February and will
run through December 1982 and has a
Augusta Nmu a-21 eu i t tu
The march for voting rights goes on
y wiwi *** -
I its
Jesse Jackson
B
■X
< yB HK i ■
■* Ik ; jfrjgg
Sb m PK-.’
JjT "
it
HF w
Paine College president-elect talks with Dr. Evelyn Berry.
His priorities for the school include
expanding the library facilities at the
college, encouraging more Black
Paine receives $50,000 grant
for Second Century Fund
goal of 2 million dollars. Funds raised
during the campaign will be used to
establish an endowment for faculty
salaries and scholarships for students
and will be used for renovation of
campus facilities.
Dr. Julius S. Scott, of Paine
College said, “we’re within the
Dr. Wm. Harris
is Paine’s
new president
Page 1
the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, said the marchers would
bus between towns along the route
before walking from the outskirts in
to each community.
Lowery said the marchers will walk
the final few miles into Washington
singing “We’ve Got One More
River to Cross” before crossing
the Potomac River.
The march will be joined along the
way, Lowery said, by Atlanta Mayor
Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King
and United Auto Workers President
Douglas Frazier, among other of
ficials.
“When we get to Washington, we
will have brought with us the hopes
students to pursue graduate studies
after leaving Paine and increasing
faculty salaries.
projections of the accomplishment of
our two million dollar goal by
December, 1982. The church and
alumni campaign are underway and
we have every expectation that by
commencement this June, we will be
able to announce that we are within
the sight of our goal.”
KKK victim
relives shooting
incident
Page 1
May 1,1982
and dreams and outrage” of the
American people, Lowery said.
“We’re going to have a revival of
consciousness, a revival of hope. ”
The two leaders said the marchers
will urge the Senate to go along with a
House - passed version of an exten
sion to the 1965 Voting Rights Act,
which expires in August.
The landmark voting bill grew out
of a Selma to Montgomery march led
by the late Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. in 1965.
Jackson said “new forms” of
voting abuses have occurred. Among
them, he said, are types of reappor
tionment which dilutes black voting
strength, at-large elections that favor
Houston's new police chief
Lee Brown is appointed
despite controversy
They conducted their negotiations
in strict secrecy, meeting in an out-of
the-way city and communicating
either face-to-face or by
telephone—-never in writing. But last
the secret finally got out. Houston
Mayor Kathy Whitmire, in a move
that stunned the city’s 3,200-member
police department, announced that
Atlanta public-safety commissioner
Lee Patrick Brown had accepted her
offered to become chief of police. If
approved by the city council, Brown,
44, who won national attention as the
leader of Atlanta’s investigation into
the murders of 28 black youths, will
become the first black to serve as
police chief of a department long
criticized as one of the most racist in
the nation.
For Houston’s first woman mayor,
the nomination was a bold political
stroke. But Whitmire’s choice of a
Klan shooting relived
John McCollum, a 29-year old for
mer bulldozer operator for a Carbon
Hills Alabama, strip mining outfit,
shot by two shotgun-wielding Klan
smen May 6, 1979, was living witness
at Atlanta meetings last week to the
conquering of justice over evil. While
there were over 100 witnesses to the
shooting, the victim was the only one
making witness last week.
A soft spoken man with the body
of a semi-pro football player, which
he was, McCollum made witness to
his ordeal at Morris Brown College
and at Georgia State University under
the sponsorship of the Southern
Student Activist Network (the
“SNICK” of the ’ 80s), and co
sponsored by Morris Brown Student
Government. Morris Brown Political
Science Club, the GSU Progressive
Student Coalition, GSU Black
Student Alliance, and the GSU
Speakers Committee.
The two sprays of shotgun pellets
inflicted injuries which required,
several operations, leaving him par
tially blind. McCollum has spent
$5,000 in attorney’s fees to prosecute
one of the three Klansmen involved in
federal court on grounds that his civil
rights had been violated. The jury in
that case awarded him $16,000 in
damages last September, but so far,
McCollum has not received any
Less than 75 percent Advertising
■
Um
Dr. Joseph Lowery
chief from outside the department in
furiated rank-and-file officers who
have been suspicious of the moderate
mayor since she took office two mon
ths ago. Just days before Brown’s
nomination was announced a war of
words between the HPD and city hall
erupted when Whitmire said in a
newspaper interview that the depar
tment was riddled with corruption.
“She did almost nothing for two
months and then she brings in an out
side chief, which hasn’t been done in
years, and a black chief, which is a
first. The weekend before, we hear
her saying there’s wide-spread
corruption in the department,” says
Bob Thomas, president of the
Houston Police Patrolmen’s Union.
“So the attitude toward her is very
hostile right now.”
Battered Image
Whitmire defended Brown’s
money.
McCollum has, to his credit, taken
a stand in the forefront of moves for
racial equality and justice in the
Jasper and Carbon Hills, Alabama,
area. In 1965, when he was 13, along
with his brother, sister and two
nephews, he integrated the local
school system by court order.
Adding insult to injury, his mother
received some harrassing phone calls
after he was shot. His father, who is
80 years old, is retired from Alabama
Power Company.
McCollum is a law biding citizen
who had never been arrested until
released from the hospital after the
shooting. He had a permit from the
county sheriff’s department because
they had a warrant for my arrest.” he
said, “for attempted murder on this
man who shot me. So they arrested
me and finger printed me for no
reason at all. McCollum wound up
at the Klan march because he wished
“to determine what they were doing
in that town at that particular time.”
At the present time the Klan is
known to be “pretty active” par
ticularly in the north Carbon Hills
area, which is about three to four
miles outside of the Carbon Hills city,
limits.
McCollum has a modest education,
12th grade in the local schools, and
Jackson, Lowery
leads march
for voting rights
Page 1
the white majority and lack of enfor
cement of the voting rights act.
“They’re still afraid to go to the
polls in Wrightsville because of all the
intimidation,” Lowery said,
referring to confrontations two years
ago in the small Georgia city.
The civil rights leaders noted that,
while there are 5,000 black elected of
ficials compared with 500 in 1965, the
total number of elected blacks
nationwide still numbers less than 2
percent.
“When you look across the South,
other than Tennessee, there is no
black congressman,” Lowery said.
Lowery and Jackson said the mar
ch also will stress opposition to
“Reaganomics.”
nomination, insisting that he was the
most qualified candidate for a job
that will require repairing the depar
tment’s badly battered image. The
Justice Department has ranked the
HPD among the three worst in the
United States in terms of race and
community relations. Although
blacks and Hispanics make up 45 per
cent of the city’s population, they
represent only 8 percent of the police
force. The department’s reputation
also has been hurt by a number of
violent attacks by officers against
minorities. Last November eleven
off-duty officers drove to a hotel in a
predominantly black neighborhood
shouting, “Niggers, niggers,” and
proceeded to beat several black
residents. The controversies have
taken their toll: morale is low and
see Lee Brown page 2
then technical college where he
studied welding. After welding for a
number of years, he went into strip
mining as a welder at first and then he
advanced to operating a “D-9
dosser.”
“All the white people in the coun
ty, almost, knew me.” McCollum
said. “They knew where I was from
and everything as I was in high school
I was very active in sports. I had all
kinds of scholarship offers. Because 1
was the best football player in the
county.
“I played semi-pro football there
in Jasper and Walker County, the
Walker County Comrades for three
years,” he said.
Even the low life element that for
ms the Klan knew him. It seemed
very difficult for him to repeat the ac
count of the shooting in detail.
“There was three of them,” Mc-
Collum said. “He said, Okay, Mc-
Collum get out of the car. We’re
going to teach you a damn lesson,”
calling him by name.
“I said, “No, I’m not getting out
of my car.” He had two more guys
there with him. One guy on the either
side. One guy aside the cab and bed
said. “Get out. We’re going to teach
you a damn lesson, McCollum.” I
see Klan page 2
25*