Newspaper Page Text
The Augusta News-Review January 22,1983
THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW (usps 887 820)
Mallory K. MillenderEditor Publisher
Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher
Wanda Johnson Advertising Dir/Gen. Manager
Alfredia Rodd. Sales Representative
Cal Thornton Sales Representative
Georgene SeabrooksSales Representative
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
Mrs. Clara WestMcDuffie County Correspondent
Mrs. Been Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Wilbert Allen Columnist
Roosevelt Green Columnist
i r byColumnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Marva Stewart Columnist
Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist
Olando Hamlett Photographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
Mailing Address
Box 2123
Augusta, Ga. 30903-2123
AMALGAMATED § econc j class Postage Paid
publishers, inc. Published Weekly
National Advertising Representative W
Blacks ungrateful
From page 1
are not about to help you
take away our black mayor
and consolidate us into per
manent subservience. Why
would you expect us to help
you do that to us?
Nevertheless, we really do
thank you for your efforts to
be so fair to us. We’ll never
forget it.
In talking about the chief
law enforcement official, Hud
son and the Joint Government
Committee were kind
enough to propose an ap
pointed officer because they
felt it would be “too great a
political hurdle for a black
person to be elected sheriff in
county-wide voting.’’ If they
were sincere, then why
haven’t they along time ago
urged legislation that would
have done away with the
citywide and countywide
voting systems? They
propose it in their new
government only because our
representation will be so
small that it won’t matter,
and because it helps to give
the appearance of fairness.
Hudson writes further,
“We went to a plan where
the mayor was to be selected
by the nine members of the
governing body to maximize
the opportunity for a black
person to be mayor and
chairman.’’ Anybody who
believes that also believes in
Santa Claus, the Easter Bun
ny and the Tooth Fairy.
When blacks began to run
for public office, the voting
system was changed. This
year, we have a black mayor
for the first time and Hudson
and Co. propose that the
mayor’s job be abolished.
If for instance, they were
Letter to the Editor
Says consolidation plan is fair
Dear Editor:
It was with great interest that I
read your lead article on January
8, 1983 concerning the con
solidation effort for Richmond
County and the City of Augusta.
I am very scrry that Mr. (John)
Elam feels that the black members
of our Committee had no input.
My recollection is that we constan
tly solicited suggestions and
criticisms from the black members
of the panel; and more so than
anything else we did, we tried to
formulate a plan that would be
favorable to black citizens. Let me
give you some examples: The use
of district voting that would
guarantee at least three
predominantly black seats out of
the nine of the new governing
body.
This is to be compared with
twenty-seven percent represen-
Page 4
so anxious to have input
from blacks and come up
with a good plan, why did
they try to keep it secret not
only from the citizenry, but
from mayor? Who would be
better qualified to give input as
a black than a mayor who is
black? But no, not even the
Joint Government Commit
tee was bold enough to knife
the mayor and the black
community in the back and
then ask him to help push the
blade in.
However, Hudson did
have the nerve to use the
election of A. K. Hasan to
the school board presidency
as evidence that the appoin
tive process would favor the
election of a black candidate.
He knows very well that
Hasan was elected not
because of the fairness of the
school board, but because
one side intensely wanted to
fire Oellerich and the other
wanted with equal intensity
for him to stay, and blacks,
who held the deciding votes,
bargained for the presidency.
Hudson is right in one
respect: a black would have
about the same chances of
getting elected chairman as
Hasan —next to none. We
have to concede that it could
happen. We just find the od
ds unacceptable.
Why, David, do you refer
to the type of racial politics
which “in the past was so
shamefully practiced by
white politicians and power
brokers?” Why talk about
the past? The present
shameful racial politics being
practiced by the Joint
Government Committee is.
sufficient evidence that
nothing has changed.
tation which black citizens now
have in the city and zero percent in
the county. We also proposed
having the chief law enforcement
officer appointed by the new
government because we felt that it
would be too great a political hur
dle for a black person to be elected
sheriff in county-wide voting.
We went to a plan where the
mayor was to be selected by the
nine members of the governing
body to maximize the opportunity
for a black person to be mayor and
chairman. If the chief officer of
the new government has to run city
- or county-wide, it would reduce
the opportunity for a black to be
selected.
You can make note of what
recently happened with the election
of a school board president to see
how this selection process favors a
black candidate. In addition, the
you can't take X.
AW AT THAT LADDER I |ffl|
Hfl Um
0 IwW
WATCH ME? W|l ffij
A? WUHh. -jiaM
I
ASSISTANCE 11
Tcji _ j
Black RESOURCES iMr.
Walking With Dignity
Martin Luther King’s
march toward equality
by Al Irby
Is it really almost a quarter of a
century since Dr. King’s crusade
For citizenship •’■l■
tried to double
the number of X
black Ameri- CO
can voters? 1
During the
summer of ‘B2 ■
the slain civil SHB
rights leader’s
father made '
news in another drive to get out the
black vote. He doubtlessly
remembered what his son said in
1958, that black citizens’ political
apathy was a form of moral and
political suicide“and that one of
the most decisive steps they could
take was that short walk to the
voting booth.”
This is but one of the timely
reminders in a compelling new
biography of the crusader for a
dream of freedom who won the
Nobel Prize for peace.
Today there are fewer obstacles
to that short walk for black
Americans, thanks to the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, which was
spurred by Dr. King’s voting rights
march in Selma, Ala. Yet,
thousands of lazy blacks will not
make that short walk to equality.
In fact, Congress has over
whelmingly passed a bill to extend
the Act though the White House at
first seemed reluctant to go along
with it. A new book just recently
published, “Let the Trumpet
Committee agrees with Senator
Allgood’s proposal that the ex
panded city government have as its
mayor until January of 1988, that
person who is elected mayor from
the present city limits of Augusta
in the tall of 1984.
If the encumbent mayor is elec
ted, rather than diminishing his
opportunity for service, it would
be greatly expanded.
If black citizens want more
representation in local gover
nment, if they want to reduce the
ever-increasing cost of local gover
nment which must be borne in part
by their property taxes, and want
to maximize the ability of our
community to attract industry
which will provide jobs for them
Sound” by the noted Stephen B.'
Oates, recalls just how often Dr.
King had to sound the trumpet in
the 50s and 60s before the federal
government would take a firm
stand for civil rights.
He spoke to a continuing need
when he said : “The key to
everything is federal commitment,
full, unequivocal, and unremit
ting.” The good Dr. King faced
relpctance, not only from
President Eisenhower, but from
two other presidents—Kennedy
and Johnson—who are now
regarded as champions of civil
rights.
Not many blacks are aware of
this. They think Presidents Ken
nedy and Johnson were all “lovey
dovey” toward black equality.
That’s why this column is an
avowed maverick when it comes to
politics. These two super-liberal
Presidents warned Dr. King again
st demonstrating, and then hailed
its success. President Johnson
went so far as to compare the mar
ch in Selma to Lexington and Con
cord as a turning point in “man’s
unending search for freedom.”
He saw the far-reaching goal of
“not just legal equity but human
equity—not just equality as a right
and a theory but equality as a fact
and a result.”
President Johnson rejected Dr.
King when he started criticizing the
Vietnam war before it was
fashionable to do so. From his
platform of nonviolence Dr. King
argued that it was consistent to
and their families, they should
support this plan.
It is the hope of our Committee
that the eight members of the local
delegation can make an informed
judgment about the benefits of
fered by consolidation. Past
history has shown that apathy and
misrepresentation make the
referendum route a dead end.
Lastly, I cannot close without
criticizing the language of your
editorial in December which
callously labelled this con
solidation effort as “genocidal and
annihilative.” How ironic that the
effort of this Committee should be
so characterized when throughout
its deliberations, fairness to the
black community was paramount
oppose violence both home and
abroad.
But the learned clergyman could
never - get his war views taken
seriously—like some members of
the Johnson administration them
selves, as David Halberstam notes
in his book “The Best and the
Brightest.”
In this matter, the good man of
the ‘Cloth’ proved closer to the
temper of the country than
President Johnson and his gang of
warmongers. In the new biography
by Stephen Oates it challenges
Americans as to how far his civil
rights ideals still flourish.
He may have been misunder
stood as proof that the goal was
unattainable. And his adherence to
his principles caused him to be
charged with moral cowardice by
those who stood unknowingly,
upon the shoulders of his
achievement.
Any effort to assess the raw
morality and courage of the man
or the magnitude of his con
tribution must take into account
that, as Dr. King poured his
energies into his work, against
constant, bitter resistance, he was
stepping forth into uncertainty and
often seeming failure.
This book: “Let the Trumpet
Sound,” allows us to participate in
an astonishing political and
spiritual voyage, a voyage which
called for sacrifices of a nature
which no one person can demand
of another, but which need to be
understood and honored.
with every other objective.
We even went so far as to take
the matter to Washington to be
reviewed by the Voting Rights sec
tion of the Justice Department -
perhaps the nation’s most sensitive
watchdog for the rights of black
citizens.
I am afraid that what you have
done in this editorial and in other
articles is to be guilty of that type
of racial politics which in the past
was so shamefully practiced by
white politicians and power
brokers.
As for me, my only hope is for a
better community for all of us.
David E. Hudson
Joint Government Committee
Speaking Out
Black should get
bigger share of
football's millions
by Roosevelt Green, Jr.
There are great things happening
today in college football. Blacks
have sense of
pride in the
achievements /
of members of
their race on * s -"■ W
football fields.
Several col- r** ™,,
leges and g Ik
universities T t s
have black
quarterbacks,
but it is still rare to find black cen
ters. It takes guts, in my opinion,
for white coaches to use blacks as
starting quarterbacks in
predominately white colleges.
What would college and
professional football be like
without black players? So many of
us are attracted to football where
we compete because high salaries
are available in an honest way.
It is significant that the coach at
the University of Alabama became
the winningest coach with a black
quarterback when the old record
was broken. It is significant that a
black football player at the
University of Georgia, Herschel
Walker, won the Heisman Trophy
in 1982. He could also win the
trophy again in 1983. It is hoped
that he will, for his greatness
reminds me of the greatest running
back ever in professional football,
Jim Brown.
College football is not totally a
bed of roses. Blacks heavily
populate college and pro football
because the sport is really a big
business operation. And, winning
is the name of the game as more
profits are the outcome. Very few
white businesses discriminate
against high profits.
Too many black football stars
fail to subscribe to high academic
standards. White coaches often
prop them up academically until
their playing elgibility ends. Some
well-known pro players never
bothered to graduate from college
after four years of football.
It is not amusing to see some of
these players majoring in such
useless areas as bicycling, stadium
temperatures, tobacco chewing,
and stadium polishing. Sure, this is
ridiculous, but so are some of the
ways their talents are being ex
ploited. Their parents should strive
to influence their educational
decisions.
More black football players at
all levels, including elementary and
high school, should be encouraged
to pursue academic excellence.
White colleges and universities
make millions of dollars off un
thinking black youth. Herschel
Walker is playing football at a
university where whites students
once rioted to prevent black from
attending classes. He is greatly
admired by both black and white
fans, and this good.
Herschel Walker is playing
football at a university where I on
ce sat for ten minutes in the
“Colored Section” of the stadium.
Ten minutes was all I could stand
as I viewed the sea of white faces
around the playing field, with a
handful of us blacks positioned
behind a goal post.
To his invaluable credit, Her
schel Walker is seen as a good
student and a sensible athelete. He
is articulate and has a winniqg at
titude. And, he is proof that blacks
could have made football and
other sports even better if racial
discrimination had not dominated
the sports in the past.
Grambling University cuacn,
Eddie Robinson, has sent more
players to the pros than any other
coach. He would have been hired
as a coach for some professional
team if he had been white. He is
probably the greatest coach ever as
he had to overcome tremendous
obstacles unknown to white
coaches. He is in the top bracket of
winningest coaches in history.
It is not enough to have a large
number of excellent black football
players. It is way past time for
more black coaches and television
sports announcers to be hired.
Blacks can coach as well as play,
announce as well as make touch
downs, and should receive a bigger
share of the football millions. We
also need to own some pro teams
for we love profits, too.