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The Augusta News-Review April 30,1983
THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW (usps 887
Mallory K. MillenderEditor Publisher
Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher
Wanda Johnson Advertising Dir/Gen. Manager
Georgene Seabrook. Sales Representative
Yvonne Dayßeporter
Rev. R.E. Donaldsonßeligion Editor
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Charles Beale Jenkins County Correspondent
Mrs. Fannie Johnson Aiken County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara WestMcDuffie County Correspondent
Mrs. lleen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Wilbert Allen Columnist
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Marva Stewart Columnist
Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist
Olando HamlettPhotographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
Mailing Address
Box 2123
Augusta, Ga. 30903-2123 JQk
AMALGAMATED CJass p ostage Paid g
FUBUSBers.inc. Published Weekly
Nation! Adrerttflaf Repreaeatative
Going Places
Honors deserving
by Philip Waring
Local citizens recently saluted
three valuable and useful per-
K■, ♦ Jr fL
sons—Mrs. Ruth
Crawford, the
Rev. Robert
Anthony Lark
and Master
Sergeant Joe
Scott Jr. All
three could
well serve as
role models for the future.
The year 1983 has been kind to
Mrs. Ruth Crawford because she’s
won the Jefferson Award presen
ted by WRDW-TV for voluntary
service. Last week the University
Health Care Foundation presented
her its “Humanitarian of the
Year” award.
While she has an excellent 35-
year public school career behind
her, she has been singled out
because of her leadership as a
volunteer in the formation and
leadership of the Shiloh Com
prehensive Comminity Center.
Thanks to Mrs. Crawford our
town now has a valuable com
munity service center in an area of
very great need.
The United Way should start its
financial support of this agency.
Well done, Ruth Crawford!
In their finest hour the C.M.E.
Ministers Fellowship recently
sponsored an appreciation
program for the Rev. Robert An
thony Lark.
During his 54 years of service to
the people of Georgia, he accom
plished much. Mayor Edward
Mclntyre once called him “A Man
For All Seasons.” And how true.
During his 54 years of active ser
vice in seven different C.M.E.
assignments throughout Georgia,
he achieved a reputation as a
master builder. Do you recall the
major improvements at both
Williams Memorial and Miles
Memorial?
Then the Rev. Lark was a
courageous Augusta NAACP
president during a period of great
Child’s identity sought
Letter To The Editor
Dear Editor:
The St. Louis Metropolitan
Police Department, Homicide
Division, is investigating the death
of a young Black female, whose
decapitated body was found in a
vacant house in the City of St.
Louis on February 28,1983.
As of this date, this child has not
been identified, and all of our ef
forts to identify her have been
futile.
We are requesting your assistan
ce in publishing this information in
your newspaper in the hope that a
reader will help us identify this
child. There is the possibility that
she was from out of town md
somewhere a relative, a neighbor,
a parent, a friend, a church mem
ber, or a school teacher has not
seen this child since her death.
The description of our un
identified child is as follows:
racial unrest. He was forthright
and solid in moving foward many
civic projects when he was a
pastor. He enhanced the C.M.E.
church on many fronts.
Persons who wish to contribute
to the Rev. R.A. Lark Retirement
Fund should contact the Rev. J.E.
Robinson, pastor, Rock of Ages
C.M.E. church.
Last week leaders of the Signal
Corps at Fort Gordon presented a
warm and well attended retirement
luncheon for Master Sergeant Joe
Scott Jr. This gentleman gave 41
years of exception leadership and
service to the military.
He volunteered in 1941, rose
rapidly up the ranks and was even
tually promoted to first sergeant.
Scott helped build the new army
and train its recruits for overseas
combat.
He gave excellent leadership
during an important logistic and
combat operation which involved
getting huge amounts of
munitions, supplies and personnel
over the mountains known as the
“Hump” in the China-Burma-
India theatre, and is thus a real
combat veteran.
This contributed to victory for
the Allied cause in Southeast Asia.
He remained in service until
retirement in 1964. He was then
invited to remain at Fort Gordon
as a civilian employee. Key
military officials were warm in
their praise of his character,
professional achievements and ac
complishments as an instructor
and supervisor. Scott has also
counselled many young persons,
several of whom have entered the
military as a career.
Many of us remember that when
the News-Review was up against a
legal wall some two years ago, it
was Mrs. Crawford and Rev. Lark
who made personal appearances of
support at the hearings.
Let’s all support the forth
coming bond issue to renovate the
Bell Auditorium. It is a valuable
cultural resource for the Augusta
community.
Negro female, medium brown
skin, eight to 12 years of age, 70 to
75 pounds, 58 inches tall without
the head, wearing two coats of
fingernail polish, maroon and red.
As you will notice, the child is
extremely tall for her age and
could possibly be 13 or 14 years of
age. She had not yet reached
puberty.
Your assistance will be deeply
appreciated. If you have any
questions relative to the above,
please contact the St. Louis
Homicide Division at 1-314-444-
5371.
There is a SIO,OOO reward being
offered.
Captain Leroy J. Adkins,
Commander, Homicide-Arson Div.
Metropolitan Police Department
1200 Clark Ave.
St. LouL, Mo.
Support the
Black Press
Page 4
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To Be Equal
Race and politics
by John E. Jacob
Harold Washington’s election as
mayor of Chicago was a stunning
I
Em
victory, bring
ing an,
exhilarating feel
ing of pride
and power to
Black people.
It also says a
lot about the
volatile mix
ture of race
and politics in this America of
1983.
As the designated candidate of
the Democratic Party and the win
ner of its primary, Washington
should have won easily; the
Democratic nomination has meant
landslide victory on Election Day
for the past 50 years.
Yet the election was a close one,
with most whites defecting to the
Republican candidate. Apologists
can offer lots of reasons but none
of them hold water. If Washington
had been white he would have had
the general election locked up on
Primary Day.
There is no getting around the
fact that race was the only real
issue in the campaign. And that
resulted in one of the ugliest elec
tion campaigns in memory, even
for Chicago, a city where politics is
almost a blood sport.
It is tragic that so large a
majority of white voters could not
bring themselves to vote for a
Black candidate of their own par
ty. Some didn’t even know the
name of the candidate they did
vote for, telling reporters they in
tended to “vote for the white
guy.”
Even more deeply tragic was the
way their racist poison infected
Walking With Dignity
Chicago’s Gethsemane
by Al Irby
The mayor-elect and the
Democratic Party in Chicago must
’IB
unite a badly
divided city.
He pledges to
fill his ad
ministration with
top-flight de
dicated profes
sionals.
Much will be
expected of
Harold Washington as Chicago’s
first Black mayor. But on the heels
of a bitter, racially divisive cam
paign, he also faces some un
paralleled opportunities to live up
to those high expectations.
A liveral, maverick Democrat,
Mr. Washington vows to rebuild
the city, and its neighborhoods and
to end the political patronage
system that has so long dominated
Chicago’s shady Democratic Party
politics. That pledge of reform was
one reason many local Democratic
machine leaders defected to GOP
candidate Bernard Epton.
Many Chicagoans have long
been hungry for more stable, open
city government that would in
volve a broader mix of residents on
even small children. I saw
schoolkids interviewed by
television reporters saying they
were for Washington’s opponent
“because he’s white.”
The most ridiculous explanation
of this phenomenon that I have
heard is that there’a nothing wrong
with voting for a white candidate
since Blacks were almost
unanimous in their support for
Washington.
But there’s a big difference.
When Blacks vote for a Black can
didate it is a positive act of pride; a
positive step toward affirming
their group’s inclusion in the
decision-making that affects their
lives. We saw a very similar effect
back in 1960 when Irish Americans
turned out to vote for John F.
Kennedy for the same reasons of
r de and at last getting one of
1 heir own into the power structure.
But wnen whites vote against a
Black candidate because of his
race, it is a negative act; a refusal
to acknowledge Black competence
and the Black right to share power.
Chicago’s Blacks were the main
stay of the Party machine. Year af
ter year they faithfully turned out
to vote for their Party’s candidate,
although they never shared equally
in the rewards of office. Was it so
unreasonable that Blacks should
now expect white Democrats to
vote for the Party’s Black can
didate just this one time?
Obviously, merely voting again
st a Black does not denote racism.
There are all sorts of reasons to
vote against a candidate, Black or
white. But when that vote is con
ditioned on the color of the can
didate’s skin, or on specious
arguments that would not be ap-
a fairer basis. Many Blacks, in par
ticular, who have long supported
the Democratic Party in the ‘Win
dy City’ without sharing much in
the spoils of power, view Mr.
Washington’s victory as a sort of
communal Academy Award for
years of paying political dues.
Attorney Washington, who has
an inter racial transition team of
top civic and business leaders, has
pledged to assemble the best
professional talent he can find for
his administration.
He is sure to be watched closely
to see how well he succeeds.
The articulate mayor-elect’s
more immediate task is to calm the
heightened emotions, and convince
his residents that they have a
universal stake in working as a
team, helping one another, to
make Chicago a better and caring
city.
Mr. Washington is in a much
better position than his opponent
would have been to forge a biracial
coalition in the city’s 50-member,
all-Democratic city council. Since
his victory, Mr. Washington has
promised “a new beginning.” And
Chicagoans’ increased awareness
during the campaign of the need
plied to an equivalent white can
didate, then it earns the label of
racism.
Perhaps the most relevant fact
about Washington’s victory was
that he got a fifth of the white
vote. Even in a city known for its
racial animosities and even in a
campaign focused on' race, more
than twenty percent of white voters
went for the Black candidate.
That says a lot about their racial
maturity and it offers hopes that
after the novelty of a Black can
didate wears off color will
ultimately become no more impor
tant than religion once was in
choosing a candidate.
A word is necessary about the
dismal coverage of the campaign
by the media, which was so ob
sessed by the racial issue that it
ignored some of the real issues
Washington was raising. He was
constantly described as appealing
only to Black voters, despite his
real effort to reach out to white
neighborhoods. His opponent
never once campaigned in Black
neighborhoods, but that was not
highlighted the way the myth of
Washington’s total focus on the
Black vote was.
Nationally, the big lesson of this
campaign is the latent power of the
Black vote. Any candidate for
national office who ignores the
potential voting power of Blacks,
other minorities, and the basic core
of 20-25 percent of white voters
that regularly support minority
candidates, does so at his peril.
The needs of Black voters can no
longer either be ignored or taken
for granted, and that is the real
message the Chicago vote sends the
national parties.
for healing the city’s racial
divisions could help him get a head
starton his job.
Who, really, is Chicago’s new
mayor? Short and stocky, Harold
Washington has been described as
a 24-hour-a-day politician who
thrives on work and needs little
sleep. He is an ominivorous reader,
particularly fond of biographies.
He is from a large family of 11
children and claims that his
father —a lawyer, Methodist
Minister, and Democratic precinct
captain—was his only role model.
Once divorced, he is currently
engaged to a Chicago school
teacher, Mary Ella Smith.
Eloquent and witty, he is a
graduate of the Chicago public
schools and of Northwestern
University Law School. He has
had experience in all three major
levels of government, most recen
tly serving as an Illinois legislator
and since 1980 as a United States
Congressman.
Mr. Washington was extra
flamboyant in his politics, as all
Chicagoans are. That’s what caused
him to run a foul of the law. The
new mayor can conceivably now
demonstrate to the satisfaction of
View From Capitol Hill
Upside-down
priorities in
Social Security
by Gus Savage
I voted against the major
revisions of the social security and
federal em
ployes retirement
plans which
the U.S. House
of Represen
tatives passed
last week.
I am against
changing federal
employees to
iio|
social security because their
existing retirement plans were
superior. Instead, social security
should have been brought up to
federal retirement standards, and
the deficit should have been made
up by revising the federal budget
priorities.
I am against any increase in
taxes on working people, against
raising retirement ages, and again
st postponing or tampering with
the cost of living increases of
retirement pay.
As I elaborated in the six-hour
debate of this issue on the floor of
the House, I opposed this bill
because:
“...just as we seek to balance the
federal budget on the backs of the
needy to give to the greedy—we are
seeking to balance our social
security system on the backs of its
poor beneficiaries and future
beneficiaries.
“If we want to find the money to
heal social security, take it from
bombs, not from bread. Pass a real
jobs bill and put people back to
work, and then the unemployed
can pay into social security.
“Take away our millions of
dollars from the tyrannical El
Salvadoran dictatorship with
which it is murdering its citizens.
Disengage the United States from
its support of the racist and facist
South African dictatorship. Don’t
cut taxes any further for the big
corporations and those who earn
more than $50,000 per year.
Divert funds from the MX
missile to retirement benefits.
Switch our appropriations from
nuclear weapons escalation to the
health, hospitalization and
educational needs of the American
people—and there will be no need
to force federal civil servants’
retirement plans down into social
security, but rather the oppor
tunity to lift social security up to
the level of those retirement plans.
“The hodge-podge of political
compromise before us did not
require any courage of convic
tions, but putting the people first
would.
“The problem with this bill is
not a matter of adding or subtrac
ting a dollar here or there, or swit
ching categories from here to
there. We need to send the whole
mess back to committee where the
entire priorities of the ingredients
of our federal budgetary recipe
need to be turned rightside-up.
“We must restart by totally
rejecting the upside-down
priorities of that Robin Hood in
reverse in the White House, rather
than merely seeking to reconcile
the differences within Reagan’s
priorities between Democrats and
Republicans.
“We must consider the people
above power!”
all that past personal troubles will
not affect his performance as a
public official.
In his new City Hall post, Mr.
Washington moves to the helm of
a city 40 percent Black and heavily
ethnic in its white composition.
Top ethnic groups in order of
numerical strength in a city of 3
million people, Mexicans, Poles,
Germans, and Puerto Ricans.
Together they account for about
675,000 residents. From the ad
ministration of outgoing Mayor
Jane Byrne, Mr. Washington
inherits some immediate and
significant fiscal problems. The
city’s budget and those of
Chicago’s school and transit
systems need major infusions.
Mayor-elect Washington has
pledged to cut at least SIOO million
from city spending to make up for
the city’s shortfall. He has said one
of his first tasks will be to appoint
deputy mayors for both
management and policy.
Long responsive to the Black
community’s charges of police
brutality, he has vowed to draw a
new commander from the ranks of
the police force and to set up a
civilian review board.