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The Augusta News-Review September 3,1983 Mallory K. MillenderEditor-Publisher Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher Wanda Johnson General Manager/Advertising Dir. Diane CarswellCirculation Manager 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. Ileen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor Wilbert Allen Columnist Roosevelt Green Columnist Al IrbyColumnist Philip Waring Columnist Marva Stewart Columnist George Bailey Sports Writer Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist Olando HamlettPhotographer Roscoe Williams Photographer '"THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW (USPS 887 820) is published weekly for sll per year in the county and sl2 per year out of the county. Second-class postage paid at Augusta, Ga. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE AUGUSTA NEWS-REVIEW, P.O. Box 2123, Augusta, Ga. 30903-2123.” AMALGAMATED National Advertising Representative PUBLISHERS, INC. Walking With Dignity Mississippi Blacks by Al Irby “They don’t need a band. They dance by the clapping of their han ds.” We old timers as WF youngsters, dan- Ea H ced to that swinging tune, I 'Mississippi Mud.’ But present day Black- 91 Mississippians have more serious things on their minds. They are going to the voting polls in droves. Blacks in Mississippi are voting in increasing numbers, and many hold public office. But there is currently a missionary zeal among Black leaders and grass-roots workers to get even more Black candidates running for office at the local, state, and federal levels. During the Aug. 2 Democratic primary in Mississippi, activists worked hard to get Black voters to the polls. And though some lawsuits have been filed over alleged voting irregularities, the statewide primary results indicated that Mississippi will wind up with at least 20 more Black elected of ficials, most Black leaders predict. Around the state, organizers work in both urban and rural areas to elect Black candidates. Two brothers, Charles and Leonard Brown, work in different ways. Charles, who owns a timber products firm in Water Valley, says, “I battle for Black school superintendents and ad ministrators because I believe in education.” Leonard was shot and wounded last July 27 by an unknown assailant while he was doing community service work. Many Black people in the area suspect he was shot because of his involvement in getting Blacks to the polls. “I thought we had made progress, but I know now the bat tle is far from being over,” said Leonard. Dr. Aaron Henry, who is a state legislator and president of the NAACP in his state. He ran a losing but symbolic write-in cam paign for governor in 1963. As the good doctor sits in his Civil Rights Journal Labor Day is bleak holiday for unemployed by Dr. Charles E. Cobb The celebration of Labor Day is designed to spur our appreciation for the benefits of being a part the gAKI American labor On close ■ those benefits have not been , . ’* equally distri- // buted among the entire population. If we compare 1960 with the present and look solely at income, we continue to find huge disparities between Blacks and whites. Page 4 drug store, he talks of the times when Blacks ‘‘had no rights in Mississippi,” under such Black hating politicians as Sen. Theodore Bilbo and Gov. Ross Barnett. Dr. Henry lists what he sees as the 1984 election goals for Mississippi Blacks: •Elect a Black to Congress,” Robert Clark is the man,” says Dr. Henry. •Cark a state representative from Lexington. He ran in the Delta area in a predominantly Black district, but lost to a white Republican in the general election in 1982. ♦Encourage Blacks to run for every public office at the local level. Blacks should be willing to run as an independent or Republican as well as a Democrat. “White Democrats didn’t vote for Clark in 1982,” Henry says. “We do not owe that party any undivided loyality.” A late entry into the Mississippi gubernatorial race was Charles Ever, brother of civil rights leader Medger Evers, who was cowardly gunned-down in 1963. Charles Evers, who announced his candidacy a few weeks ago, is running as an independent on a platform agreed to by Black leaders in Mississippi. Dr. Henry and other Black leaders have ex pressed dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party primary held Aug. 2, especially the voting in Greenville. There are many of the voting machines broke down, and the election was delayed until Aug. 9. To a visitor from the North, the new election day was just a routine day in Greenville, with tem peratures pushing 106 degrees in the shade. Behind the scenes, worried Black community leaders were scurrying for voters deter mined to stay away from the polls after being frustrated a week earlier. No federal observers were assigned to Greenville on Aug. 2, although 325 were sent out to □oiling places in eight selected counties on that date. But U.S. Assistant Attorney General William Bradford Reynolds detailed 75 observers to monitor the second vote. In a study released by the Center for the Study of Social Policy en titled “A Dream Deferred: the economic status of Black Americans,” these disparities are brought to light. Although there has been an increase in the Black middle class, the income earned by Black college graduates is about the same as that earned by white high school graduates. Fifty-four percent of Black families are now at income levels below $15,000 a year compared with twenty-eight percent of white families. The study further noted that although Blacks have made some gains since the Civil Rights Movement, the economic gap bet- DOCTOR THE GOOD MEWS IS-O4AT THE FEVER OF INFLATION IS BROKEN... THE BAD NEWS IS THAT THE PATIENT IS DYING r \w/\ fe To Be Equal Blacks get raw deal at State by John E. Jacob The United States is one of the World’s few truly multi-racial nations, but you would! . ■ never know it WB from the way Blacks are rare W visible posts in our State Department. J The underre- presentation of Blacks there has been a sim mering scandal. 1 remember Henry Kissinger’s feeble attempts to ex plain the lack of Blacks in policy positions at State. And I recall the continuous affirmations of suc ceeding secretaries of state to correct the situation. But not much has changed. In some ways, it has gotten worse. Under the Carter Administration, for example, there were 14 Black ambassadors. Now there are only seven—a drop of 50 percent in just a few years. Os those seven, the single Black ambassador to a major embassy is being moved to a lesser embassy to make room for a newly displaced assistant secretary of the Depar tment. Within embassies, Blacks are found in the least highly con sidered sections. The action in the political and economic sections, for example, but Blacks are more likely to be in the consular section or in minor administrative posts. Almost half of the tenured Black Foreign Service officers are in the consular section. Opportunities ween Blacks and whites remains wide and is not diminishing. On measures of income, poverty and unemployment, wide disparities between Blacks and whites have not lessened or have even worsened since 1960. For over two decades, Blacks have constantly surpassed whites in terms of educational gains. From 1960 to 1981, Black males made a gain of 4.4 years of schooling on the average, com pared with 1.9 years for white males. However, the financial rewards for education are far dif ferent for the two groups. Forty seven percent of Blacks with four years or more of college earned there are more limited than in sec tions dealing with important diplomatic matters. A look at senior Department of ficials reveals a near-absence of Blacks. The president’s present national security adviser became the number two man in the State Department only after hearings revealed his lack of experience in foreign affairs. Meanwhile, ex perienced Black diplomats are passed over for senior spots. No Blacks serve as assistant or deputy secretary of state. None head regional bureaus. Only one—head of the equal oppor tunity office—is in a senior executive service position. The promotional route is a tough one for Blacks to crack. Ac cording to Congressman George Crockett, only 12 Blacks were among the 513 officers getting promotions in 1981. State has been wrestling with its staffing problems for a long time. Back in 1977 a report of a task for ce appointed by then Secretary Cyrus Vance said the Foreign Ser vice had an image of being “elitist, self-satisfied, a walled-in barony populated by smug white males, an old-boy system in which women and minorities cannot possibly hope to be treated with equity in such matters as promotions and senior level responsibilities.” Three years later Congress passed the Foreign Service Act to spur “implementation of policies and procedures, including affir mative action programs, which will facilitate and encourage entry into 20,000-40,000 dollars a year, while the same percentage of whites with no more than high school education earned incomes in that range. This clearly suggests that the income gap between Blacks and whites is less related to education than to available job opportunities. When we look at unemployment we find that the ratio between Blacks and whites has remained virtually unchanged, ap proximately two to one. Over 45 percent of Black men do not have jobs while for whites, this figure is approximately 30 percent. While Blacks have made significant educational and advancement in the Foreign Service by persons from all segments of the American society.” As we’ve seen, since that law was passed the number of Black ambassadors has been halved. The State Department’s policies have been criticized for years but few results are now visible. This is bad for the Department, bad for Blacks, women and minorities, and very bad for the country. If America has any hidden high card in the international diplomacy game, it is the diversity and ethnic range of the American population itself. The best answer to foreign critics of America’s policy is the breadth and ethnic depth of America’s representatives abroad. Someone in the White House ought to tell the State Department that this world is three-fourths non-white; that the non-white nations of the world stand astride strategic geographic locations, and that they harbor deep suspicions of America’s traditional racism, suspicions confirmed for them by the relative rarity of Blacks among America’s diplomats. How is the State Department supposed to represent all Americans if it is overwhelmingly made up of only some Americans? How is the elite, old-boy network that has helped enfeeble American influence among the non-white nations to be infused with fresh ideas and new people without a conscious effort to increase Black and minority representation at all levels of the Foreign Service? achievements and increased the numbers of middle class Americans, we still can conclude that in terms of economics, on the whole we are not faring significan tly better than in the 19605. This Labor Day comes at a time when the nation is suffering from staggering levels of unem ployment. Along with this we are witnessing a roll back in affir mative action policies which provided much of the impetus for Blacks to enter the labor market. So as we observe the past, let us more importantly plan for the future in order that the 25 million Black Americans on whose backs the country was literally built can truly celebrate Labor Day. Going Places 1963 march a great event by Philip Waring When this is read our readers will have seen and read all of the drama in last ’ -• < week’s 20th anniversary March. My warm salute to Mrs. Coretta Scott f ' King, the new Coalition of ’ __5S Conscience, who planned it, and all who attended and participated. The 1963 March helped bring about a better measure of Freedom: long overdue civil rights, attention to the environment, a war on poverty, women’s rights, etc. But unfortunately, it did not bring about equality as called for by Dr. King’s Dream and the U.S. Constitution. May we hope that the 1983 event will bring about this change. The 1963 demonstation was a great day of spiritual and moral renewal for America with many whites, labor, educational leaders and others present. Dr. King stole the show. His “I Have A Dream” has been accepted as one of the greatest orations ever. But it was old man Randolph, the NAACP, the Urban League, SCLC, UAW, the Jewish, Catholic and other units who threw in to help the Black community put over the greatest public event of its kind. And let’s hope the recent project will help get the M.L. King Birth day bill through the Congress. ’ It was good to note that former President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter donated one thousand dollars to last week’s march while President Reagan sulked at his West Coast mountain cattle ranch. August 1963 March Great Event May I share my memories of August 27-28, 1963 which were probably two of the most fruitful days of my life. Our plane from St. Louis was loaded with a splended interracial grouping: Catholic priests and nuns, Jewish rabbis and key members of the Jewish community, our city-wide church federation head, white and Black Protestant ministers of all denominations. (How good it would be to get this coalition back together again!) The St. Louis NAACP and other groups had dispatched several buses with over a thousand persons on Tuesday for the Thur sday Washington program. Our other white folk, that is the elected officials, did not follow the steadfast examples of those of other cities. They did not care to participate in the march. (Strangely, however, they hailed and warmly welcomed Dr. King to St. Louis after he received his Nobel Peace Award). Therefore, on August 27-28, my fellow Fron tiersman, James Hurt, vice president of the board of education, and Phil Waring, then executive of the Municipal Human Relations Council, were the two official representatives to his historic national event. Jim and I were fortunate in meeting Dr. and Mrs. King in the Washington airport and had pic tures taken with them (It along with photos with President L.B. Johnson, Alex Haley and my St. Louis Black Press Award are most cherished). The next morning in the Hilton Hotel lobby I had a warm and pleasant reunion with B.L. Dent and Rev. C.S. Hamilton. They had brought up a full railroad car from Augusta. There also were former Augustans in Washington from all over the nation. I drafted a quick news story and fowarded it to Rev. M.J. Whitaker and the Augusta Weekly Review. This was the only communication ever on this sub ject about Augustans at the march. Among the 250,000 present, I saw and reunited with former schoolmates from Haines, Paine,' West Virginia State and Columbia, as well as Urban League, NAACP, Frontiers and Black Social Worker associates. I met an old army buddy whom I had not seen since March of 1945 when we both ducked into a ditch during the Northern Italian cam- (See Page 7)