Newspaper Page Text
Chamber letters
said to intimidate
employees
Page 1
Volume 12 Number 41
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11 TATE AND DAUGHERTY REVIEW BUDGET—State
Sen. Horace Tate of Atlanta (right) and State Rep. J.C.
■ Daugherty of Atlanta are shown reviewing proposals to
■ amend the current budget for Fiscal Year 1983 which ends
■ I June 30. Gov. Joe Frank Harris has recommended $66
11 million in net cuts from current state spending to help offset
M lower than expected state revenues. Tate is a member of the
■ a powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and Daugherty
■ r serves on the House Appropriations Committee. The two
® panels recently held three days in joint hearings at the State
Captiol.
I Cracking down
I Paine president warns students to get to work
I ■ Baine College President William
B *H. Harris last week challenged
9 Paine students to “stop shucking
II and jiving, and go to work.”
I Harris, a Paine graduate, pun-
I :tuated his strongly worded Winter
speech in the Gilbert
B , Lambuth Chapel with the refrain,
If] have been where you are and 1
B' ~>ave sat where you sit.”
B ; Harris told the students that on
B -’he campus, “I must sadly say that
B|| walk in an intellectual desert. 1
B] ee no intellectual bull
B Sessions...few students in the
■library, few students attend
■ (eminars, when do you study?”
1 1 He said that he heard one of the
B host eminent scholars in the coun-
Bi
I■
■< Visitation sparks emotions in custody case
I f
■ I Four-year-old Nicholas Black
fl jurn, the center of a custody
Ijispute that has drawn inter
fl t ational attention, was again in the
■ fiddle of a family feud Sunday
■ [hen his mother, Kathleen Black
fl balked at handing the child
fl ver to his father in the parking lot
l r f the Municipal Building.
I'i A four-hour visitation was
fl 3 -ovided for in the couple’s divor
;: settlement.
■ Mrs. Blackbum, who is white,
fl ( >st custody of the child in 1981 as-
■ :r a judge declared her an unfit
t SCLC challenges Winn-Dixie
MAILANTA —The South’s
fljrgest supermarket chain has been
■nallenged by the Atlanta based
■Suthern Christian Leadership
■ onference to upgrade black em-
■ oyment opportunities and to in
fl ease utilization of black
flisinesses.
■ According to SCLC president,
I e Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, Winn
fl.xie had $6.2 billion in net sales
I 1981 and approximately 30 per-
“‘’'Augusta Neiua-ilteuteuj
Group to ask
streets named for
King, R.A. Dent
Page 3
try (John Hope Franklin) at Paine
1982 Founder’s Day program, but
very few Paine college students
came to hear him.
“At my inauguration very few
students saw fit to come. I was
saddened because so few students
saw the importance of that
moment in history.”
During the Christmas holidays,
Harris wrote a personal letter to
each student indicating that he ex
pected to see them at the Winter
Convocation. The chapel was full.
“You are the most privileged
group in this country,” he told the
students. “You have suffered so lit
tle in comparison to those who
preceded you that you are
mother after she gave birth two
years ago to a daughter fathered by a
black man in Millen, after her
divorce from Blackburn.
She was unable to see the child
for almost a year and a half while
Blackburn’s mother, Mrs. Nancy
Blackburn, had custody of the
child.
However, the State Supreme
Court overturned the lower court
decision and returned the child to
his mother last Nov. 21.
At the moment she was to give
the child over to her ex-husband
cent is believed to be from black
consumer dollars. “Winn-Dixie
does no business with black
lawyers, black accounting firms,
advertising agencies, etc., and does
only token business with black
banks and newspapers,” Lowery
charged.
“Out of 1200 stores, they have
only approximately 70 black
managers, and as far as we can
determine, no black holds a
High SchoolAU-American
Paine student dies
of heart attack
by Lorie Wilburn
Darnell “Tyne” Arnold, a Paine
College sophomore and a former
basketball player at Baldwin High
School in Milledgeville, died Mon
day of a heart attack.
Last year she transferred to
Paine from Gulf Coast Junior
College in Florida where she
averaged 20 points a game and 19
rebounds. “She could make a
program,” said Robert Skinner,
coach of Paine’s Lady Lions.
However, she suffered from
Lupus, a degenerative disease that
kept her from playing ball at
Paine.
Skinner said the 20-year-old
sociology major practiced with the
team last year and this year, but
her joints would swell and she
couldn’t play.
“We were stunned by her death,
hurt, she was so nice,” he added.
He said that sne was last on
campus Thursday night. He in
dicated that she had sneaked out of
University Hospital where she was
being treated for Lupus Thursday
night to “come see the girls and to
priviledged. Accept the respon
sibility of your priviledged.
Harris said that on weekends the
campus is a “ghost town.” “I
don’t know where you get the
money to go out of town every
weekend. I don’t know what you
do. But if your instructors are not
giving you enough work to keep
you here, we are going to do
something about that.
“We must make you understand
that the purpose of the college is to
develop creative personalities. You
cannot do that on Greyhound
buses to Waynesboro, Fitzgerald
and Cordele.”
Harris said that hope and
for the first time, she clutched the
child and began crying, “They’re
not going to bring him back.
The child, who was also crying,
reached for his father while mem
bers of Mark Blackbum’s family
closed in shouting, “Put him down
Kathy. Can’t you see what you’re
doing to him? Don’t you care
anything about him?”
She replied, “You wouldn’t
hand him over when you had
him.”
Ozell Hudson, Mrs. Blackburn’s
attorney, who is black, asked
position higher than manager.”
Lowery pointed out that blacks
spent more than $1.5 billion with
Winn-Dixie in 1981 and called for
an “equitable re-investment” into
the black community.
“Winn-Dixie has been
challenged to name blacks to their
board of directors,” said Lowery,
“and to establish a management
training program to achieve parity
for blacks at management and
°A
SCLC challenge is
Winn-Dixie to
hire more blacks
Page 1
January 22,1983
W i
V ; |F ;■
Darnell Arnold
watch an intramural basketball
lame.”
Skinner said Miss Arnold was
doing “pretty well” when he
visited her at the hospital Satur
see Student, page 3
frustration “wells up in my soul
because I have been where you are
and I know that you possess the
ability to go well beyond my hum
ble achievements.”
He said that as a Paine College
student he experienced great dif
ficulty finding the wherewithal to
get through college. “But I found
at Paine College people who cared,
people of high-mindedness and
high spirit.
“lam heartened because I have
sat where you sit and others sat
who have gone on to make
meaningful contributions. Let’s
stop shucking and jiving and go to
work.”
Mark Blackburn to keep his family
back.
“Please don’t harass my client,”
he said as he asked Blackburn
alone to take the child.
Mark Blackburn appeared to be
the only family member to remain
calm.
When the child was finally
released, Kathleen Blackburn ran
back to her auto, where her
daughter, Jennifer, and other
black children waited calmly. Mrs.
Blackburn gripped the steering
see Custody, page 3
executive levels, Winn-Dixie
should be doing millions of dollars
of business annually with black
firms.
SCLC leadership met recently
with Winn-Dixie Board Chairman
J.E. Davis and awaits further facts
and figures on Winn-Dixie em
ployment and minority business
utilization as a requisite to com
pleting proposals for a partnership
for equitable re-investment.
910
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dope conviction
Page 2
Less than 75 percent Advertising
Blacks ungrateful
Editorial
It is amazing how hard
some people try to be fair to
black people. And they ab
solutely don’t understand
why black people don’t ap
preciate tneir efforts.
A case in point is the letter
to the editor (page 4) by
David Hudson, one of the
writers of the consolidation
plan proposed by the Joint
Government Committee. He
writes, ‘‘More than anything
else we did, we tried to for
mulate a plan that would be
favorable to black people.”
That’s a joke. But there is
nothing funny about it. In
fact, it’s an insult to the in
telligence of thinking people.
He uses as an example of
their fairness that the use of
district voting would guaran
tee at least three
predominantly black seats
out of the nine on the new
governing body. This is to be
compared with 27 percent
representation which black
citizens now have in the city
and zero percent in the coun
ty.
While we would agree that
district voting would greatly
increase the likelihood of
blacks getting elected, Hud
son conveniently ignores the
fact that the reason we have
only 27 percent represen
tation on city council and
none on the county com
mission is because of the
discriminatory at-large
voting system, used in both
the city and county, that was
designed to keep blacks out
of elective office. It is a mat-
Chamber letter allegedly
intimidates employees
Some blacks have expressed 1
concern over what they call “sub- i
tie intimidation” of citizens by the t
Chamber of Commerce to get the
local legislative delegation to con- ]
solidate Augusta and Richmond 1
County and abolish the mayor’s 1
office without a referendum. i
They also noted that the !
proposed consolidation plan ad
mits that there is no tax advantage <
under the proposed legislation. <
A letter from W. B. Paschal, in- i
dustry relations chairman for the
Augusta Chamber of Commerce
sent to the Manufacturer’s Council
members, the Chamber Board
members, and selected community
leaders reads, in part, “The One
Government Committee and the
Chamber Board feel that it is im
portant to obtain a commitment
from each member of the
delegation now. So the chamber is
requesting its most influential em
ployers to ask every employee and
community friend who lives in
ter of record that Augusta
elected by districts until
blacks started to run for
public office. Then, and only
then, was the system changed
to at-large voting.
The first four of me city’s
eight wards are 63 percent
black or more. Yet, the third
ward has only had a black
representative once and the
first ward has never yet had a
black representative.
On a district voting
system, as he suggests, half
of the city’s 16 council mem
bers should be black. And
the only reason the council
isn’t 50 percent black is
because of the racist,
discriminatory at-large
voting system that court af
ter court has ruled uncon
stitutional. It is for the same
reason that we are 38 percent
of the county population,
but have no representation
there.
Now after centuries of
denial of our just represen
tation, Hudson and the Joint
Committee ask that we settle
for just a little less
discrimination, 33 percent,
instead of the present 27 per
cent representation, and be
glad about it.
No, Mr. Hudson. Our
population calls for 50 per
cent in the city. Our 38 per
cent representation in the
county calls for two out of
the five seats on the county
commission. We have filed
suits in Federal Court to get
our just representation. We
see Blacks ungrateful, page 4
Richmond County to contact eacn
member of the delegation to urge
their support of the proposal.
“If employees in varied
positions voice support for the
plan, the delegates will realize that
they are truly acting on behalf for
all citizens and not just those in
supervisory positions.”
In spite of the much publicized
claims of tax advantages under
consolidation, the plan itself ad
mits that there will be no tax ad
vantage.
Section VIII of the plan (regar
ding taxes) reads:
A. Present Status: City and
County have license fees, beer and
wine tax, and ad valorem taxes.
City and County have special tax
districts where special services are
provided, e.g., street lights,
revitalization, etc.
B. The Plan: Taxes shall be for
services received. Tax districts
shall be used.
C. Advantages: No change.
25C