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The Augusta News-Review September 25,1982
The Augusta News-Review
Mallory K. MillenderEditor Publisher
Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher
Barbara Gordon Advertising Dir/Gen. Manager
Yvonne Dayßeporter
Rev. R.E. Donaldson Religion Editor
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Charles Beale Jenkins County Correspondent
Mrs. Fannie Johnson Aiken County Correspondent
Geraldine Wilson Aiken County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara West.. McDuffie County Correspondent
Mrs. Been Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Barbara MotonColumnist
Mrs. Marian Waring Columnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Marva Stewart Columnist
Wilbert Allen Columnist
Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist
David DupreeSports Editor
Robert Caldwell Sports Editor
Olando Hamlett Photographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
Mailing Address
Box 953 (USPS 887 820)-Augusta, Ga.
Phone (404) 722-4555
Second Class Postage Paid
Augusta. Ga. 30903
AMALGAMATED Published Weekly
PUBLISHERS, INC. *
National Advertising Representative db
Civil Rights Journal
Let there be music
by Charles E. Cobb
The arrival of summer has
naturally increased the number of
people on our cities’ streets. Yet,
amid the cacophany of converstions
and the blare of horns, rises the
sound of music.
If one is perceptive enough to iden
tify the direction from which this
music is emanating and then follow
the stream of notes and voices to their
source, we will very likely come upon
a compact electronic mobile unit,
Yiew From Capitol Hill
CBC workshop studies enterprise zone bills
by Gus Savage
As noted last week, in President
Reagan’s Enterprise Zone bill sub-
mitted in
Congress by
Republicans, Sen.
John Chafee and
Rep. Barber
Conable, various
types of tax
credits to
businesses in the
designated zones
represent the main federal incentive
to the economic revitalization of
especially distressed neighborhoods.
However, tax credits mean little to
those marginal businesses, par
ticularly minority owned firms, which
earn small or no profits on which to
apply all the types of credits the bill
makes available. Yet, these are the
very businesses which could be most
easily persuaded to serve the purpose
Ginn victim of statewide racism
HOLD IT! Before Bo Ginn goes
back to his cotton gin and Marvin
Arrington goes back to Andy
Young’s “Political Plantation”, I’ve
got to get in my cell and expound some
“prison wisdom.”
Racism is still as much a part of
Georgia’s statewide politics as apple
pie and ice cream are American. How
did Rep. Joe Frank Harris defeat
Congressman Bo Ginn? He
didn’t —but Atlanta’s black City
Council Pres. Marvin Arrington,
Mational SCLC’s Pres. Joseph
Lowery; Senator Julian Bond; Rep.
William (Billy) Randall; and most of
all, Congressman Bo Ginn, defeated
Bo Ginn.
There are some things that you
must never mix in Georgia’s statewide
politics, any more than you would
mix Begin of Israel with Arafat of the
PLO. If you are running ofr a
statewide political office in Georgia
and expect to win there’s one thing
you just don’t do—admit during the
campaign that you are going to “try
to treat black citizens fairly.”
In the 1970 Democratic Primary,
then-Senator Jimmy Carter did not,
defeat Georgia’s ex-Govemor Carl
Sanders in his bid to again become
Georgia’s governor. Instead, black
State Sen. Leroy Johnson; black civil
rights leader Billy Randall of Macon,
and ex-Governor Carl Sanders
defeated Carl Sanders. Georgia’s
racist political history repeated itself
in 1980, when Atlanta’s Mayor
Maynard Jackson; Senator Julian
Bond; and Lt. Gov. Zell Miller;
defeated Lt. Gov. Zell Miller in his
bid to unseat U.S. Senator Herman
Talmadge.
When will they learn? As large and
powerful as the black vote is in the
emanating a sound previously
thought to be produced only by the
most sophisticated stereo component
system.
But the age of modern electronics
coupled with an unparalleled demand
for music has brought about the
creation of a vast variety of portable
music systems. I have seen the most
frail persons carrying music systems
see Music page 5-
of Enterprise Zone bills, if it were
made profitable for them to do so.
When Enterprise Zones are even
tually designated, if Reagan’s bill is
passes in its present form, no doubt
most businesses already located in the
zones will be found to be marginal.
Moreover, tax credits for invest
ments in plant and machinery is of lit
tle significance to the labor intensive
type of small businesses usually
located in especially distressed neigh
borhoods. Also, industrial revenue
bonds for small businesses have not
proved sufficiently attractive to in
stitutional lenders that ordinarily are
big purchasers of such bonds.
Another problem with President
Reagan’s Enterprise Zone bill is its
requirement that a business locate
within a zone to qualify for assistan
ce. This seems to focus more on
geography than on unemployment,
supposedly the main purpose of his
at!
State of Georgia and even being the
balance of statewide political power,
if not properly articulated, it is still
the “kiss of death” for any politician
running for a statewide office.
Check it out; it certainly was not
the black vote that defeated
Congressman Ginn. Oh, he got more
than his share of that, but it was the
amount of white vote that went to
Representative Harris as a result of
Congressman Ginn’s closeness to
blacks that defeated him. You see,
Mr. Ginn had made the unforgiveable
political mistake of allowing himself
to become over identified with the
“equal treatment of black citizens.”
Congressman Ginn had this
Democratic Primary won by a coun
try mile... Representative Joe Frank
Harris didn’t have as much chance to
win as a known PLO terrorist would
have had in a Israeli military
demolition unit. The first major un
forgiveable mistake Congressman
Ginn made was to publicly accuse
Representative Harris (in an all black
meeting) of being the candidate of
the KKK. If Representative Harris
. had been politically astute, instead of
getting upset, he should have paid
Congressman Ginn. You see;
everybody knew Congressman Ginn
was mainly doing that to get black
votes; and even though the average
white Georgian will not join the
i KKK.
Congressman Ginn’s second major
unforgiveable mistake during his run
-1 off election campaign was to publicly
announce that if elected he would
1 support a minority “set-a-side”
1 program, which would assure black
businesses in Georgia (33 percent of
' the population) approximately 10
■ percent of the State’s business.
Page 4
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bill.
Immigrants early in this century
were greatly helped by the relatively
high wages plus low skill and
education requirements of heavy in
dustry, but there is no way for steel
mills, for example, to move from the
banks of waterways into depressed
inner-city neighborhoods.
Yet, properly guided government
stimulation of heavy industry, such as
steel and auto, regardless of their
plant locations with a concerned
city, could mean more jobs at higher
pay for residents of that city’s enter
prise zone than would government
encouraged relocation into such
neighborhoods of retail stores and
service businesses.
Employees of heavy industry,
however, may never regain their im
portance in the American workforce
due to increasing use of robots and
the rising manufacturing skills of
Thirdly, Congressman Ginn
publicly announced that when elected
he was going to appoint more black
citizens to high state positions;
another unforgiveable mistake (hot
dang, President Arrington may never
become a State Court Judge now).
The fourth major mistake
Congressman Ginn made was just to
overly identify himself with Atlanta
and its black leadership. Why didn’t
his black supporters advise him like I
advised Senator Carter when he won
the Governorship? They should have
advised him to just stop publicly an
nouncing what he was going to do for
blacks when elected, just get elected
and do it.
And, now let’s take a look at poor
Lt. Gov. Zell Miller. If the former
Mayor Maynard Jackson and Senator
Julian Bond (his main black advisors)
didn’t kill his chance to become
Georgia’s U.S. Senator in 1980,
Judge Richard Bell is in love with me.
He would have beaten Mack Mat
tingly and made Georgia a great U.S.
Senator.
I really wanted to see ole Zell win,
but when they approached me to
campaign for Zell (particularly in
South Georgia) I refused. I informed
them that any blacks I could get to
vote for the lieutenant governor out
side the larger cities were going to
vote for him anyway; but, if I were to
go down there in South Georgia cam
paigning for the lieutenant governor
many, many whites who might vote
for him would change their minds
and vote for Senator Talmadge.
That’s exactly what happened when
Mayor Jackson and Senator Bond
paraded in the rural areas throughout
South Georgia campaigning for the
lieutenant governor’s election against
other nations. High technology and
information are the areas currently
providing greater new employee op
portunities.
Hence, any program to provide
substantial help for the unemployed
should include government en
couraged training in these areas.
Another problem with the Reagan
plan is that it could lead to firms sim
ply closing-down and reincorporating
in order to qualify for tax gains as a
new company with all “new” em
ployees.
A commendable feature of
Reagan’s plan is that, contrasting
with the liberal Model Cities program
of the 1960’5, in the President’s
Enterprise Zone Tax Act the negative
cost of lost revenues to government is
estimated to be far less than the cost
of positive federal subsidies for direct
community services projects.
Os course, there is much ground to
Senator Talmadge....
To be very honest about it, racism
in Georgia politics is not just con
fined to whites. When it comes to
politics, blacks are iust about as racist
as white tolks. However, me cause ot
that racism is entirely different,
because blacks have become racist in
response to white racism. In other
words, blacks are fighting “fire with
fire”, which is totally in opposition to
the principles the late Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. taught us.
In Atlanta’s 1981 mayoral race, ex-
United States Ambassador Andrew
Young felt more than sure he would
carry over 25 percent of the white
vote against his liberal Jewish op
ponent, Representative Sydney Mar
cus. To his surprise, Young was only
able to muster a mere 7/2 percent of
the white vote. I informed Mayor
Young’s opponent (Representative
Marcus) to please not let Represen
tatives Billy McKinney, Douglas
Dean and other black advisers fool
him into expending any large amount
of money and resources courting the
black vote, because, politically
speaking, race relations in Atlanta
had retrogressed to the point of
blacks voting for black candidates
and whites voting for white can
didates. My friend, Mr. Marcus,
ignored my counsel, and after he had
spent gobs of money and a slew of
time courting the black vote he only
received some five percent of it.
Will Julian Bond defeat white
liberal Congressman Wyche Fowler?
Just as sure as the Heavens are above,
if black folk go out and vote in the
election (which 1 doubt will happen
this go’round). It’s a crying shame
and a mockery of democracy that in
the nation’s so-called “multi-racial
question whether approaching the
problem through taxes is sufficiently
relevant to the magnitude and com
plexity of the problem: growing
unemployment and business failures,
plus reductions in public services and
deterioration of urban infrastruc
tures.
Nevertheless, Reagan’s approach
should be seriously discussed rather
than summarily dismissed, no matter
how inadequate may be its proposed
breadth and depth or questionable
may be its direction—for, in some
form, this approach well could
become law.
It should be fairly evaluated for
what it proposes to do rather than
simply rejected for what it does not
propose to do. This is basically a tax
modification plan, an economic
proposal rather than a sociological
experiment, which at least focuses on
a crucial problem.
Mecca,”; a city that’s known as “too
busy to hate,” in the great State of
Georgia; a city defined as one of the
fastest growing economic areas in our
nation that, racially and politically
speaking, we have reached our pin
nacle (which falls far short of the
Southland the late Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. visualized in his historic “I
Have A Dream” speech. In away,
it’s sickening that not only is there no
progress being made in this particular
are, but we’re actually retrogressing.
As much as I detest the injustice, I
don’t hate Judge Richard Bell in
anyway, I pity him. Judge Bell was
politically right—send Hosea
Williams to jail (justly or unjustly,
legally or illegally) and you will
guarantee yourself as Georgia’s next
Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bell
meditated and agonized over how his
court could best use my case to get
himself elected. Even the great,
liberal Atlanta newspapers, keep
talking about the judicial-astuteness
of illegal indictment and then sat on
the bench and gave me five yeafs after
his court illegally indicted me for a
felony.
Proof? Oh yes! The conviction was
overruled and thrown out by the
lowest Appellate Court in the State of
Georgia, and then Bell sent me to
prison for one year (the maximum
sentence for a mere traffic violation,
that normally carries a sentence of
from thirty to sixty days or a $250.00
fine).
Why did Judge Bell do all of this?
He, too, realizes that racism is deeply
embedded in the soul of Georgia
politics. Will it ever change? It hasn’t
up until now, and a lot of sacrifices
and suffering have been given in ex
change.
Walking With Dignity
Marva Collins
genius of hoax
by Al Irby
She’s as calm and cool as the eye of
a storm. She is dressed to the teeth in
billowry, white
linen. That’s the
way white
newsmen described
her recently at a
news conference
in Chicago.
Ms. Collins
talks a mile a
minute, and to
■--a 1 a n a
many people she is the eye of an
educational controversy swirling
up and out of Chicago and intriguing
the entire nation for nearly half of a
decade.
Marva Collins, ex-public
schoolteacher, now headmistress and
founder of Chicago’s private West
side Preparatory School,** has won
national attention with her ability to
teach supposedly unteachable
children—those students crowded in
to inner-city schools, who year after
year fall significantly below national
educational standards. These are the
ones upon whom Mrs. Collins has
etched her mark as an super educator.
Just Seven Years Ago
Seven short years ago, in the top
floor of her inner-city brownstone,
this little brown-skin lady took 18
neighborhood children who were
failing in the public schools or sup
posedly had learning disabilities and
transformed them into students of
Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Plato.
Using an unorthodox blend of no
nonsense discipline and abundant
praise—“ Good morning, I love
you,” she says to her classes —Mrs.
Collins worked the same “miracle”
each year.
She is the driver of classical
education into the ghetto children
who had failed in the public schools.
And the media just loved it. When the
national press took hold of the ‘Great
Lady’ back in 1977, they dubbed her
a “miracle teacher,” who worked
‘blackboard magic.’”
Fell From Grace
In February of this year, a group of
Chicago public schoolteachers openly
attacked the alleged super teacher. In
a two-part copyrighted article, the
teachers called Ms. Collins a “hoax”
who was “crippling public
education.”
The teachers said that Ms. Collins
misrepresented her credentials. They
charged her with plagiarizing ideas.
They also criticized her for carefully
selecting pupils rather than accepting
true public-school dropouts. And
those angry teachers charged that
Collins had taken $70,000 in federal
money, despite her repeated disdain
for public education loot.
But most significantly, the fighting
mad, teachers challenged Collins to
document her, until-then-undisputed
successes with an independent testing
group. To date, said the teachers, no
test results had ever been made public
to substantiate reports of the so
called “miracle improvements” in
student reading abilities.
Friends Support Ms. Collins
Well-known Chicago columnist
Mike Royko wrote an article
criticizing the sloppy reporting of the
super-teacher’s detractors. The
venerable Wall Street Journal ran a
supportive opinion column ap
plauding her achievements, which
had come “with little and without the
red tape bureaucracy.”
The National Education
Association has defended her as a
“master teacher” who is no sub
stitute for or a threat to the public
school system.
And institutions from the
American Academy of Achievement
to the Urban League continue tc
bestow their honors upon the talentec
Ms. Collins. From this column, to the
dynamic lady super pedagogue
“Right On.”
What A Lady
The articulate lady was far toe
busy catching up on her summei
reading(“reading books has taken m<
through some rough times”) anc
assembling half-inch-thicl
photocopies of John Milton’s
“Areopagitica” for use in he
classrooms this fall. She is not easib
deterred from her mission. This is he
working creed: The courage to thin
and act for oneself, despite pee
pressure, despite cultural, economic
and ethnic disadvantages is wha
motivates this pedagogical wonder.
Now that they know “Georgia’!
gospel political truth’’, Bo Ginn can
go back to his cotton gin and Attorl
ney Arrington can go on back to An!
dy Young’s political plantation! ’
State Representative
Hosea L. Williams.
Dekalb County Jail I