Newspaper Page Text
Edgefield Blacks
go before U.S.
Supreme Court
Page 1
Volume 13 Number 29
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DR. JOSEPH E. LOWERY, chairman of the National
Black Leadership Forum and president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, greets Miss America,
Vanessa Williams (left) and finalists Miss New Jersey, Suzet-
Edgefield Blacks go before U.S. Supreme Court
Forty-eight Edgefield County
Blacks, ranging from five to 79
years of age, accompanied Dr.
Thomas C. McCain to Washington
D.C. Monday to witness argumen
ts before the U.S. Supreme Court
in his nine-year discrimination suit
against Edgefield County.
McCain, a Paine College
professor and chairman of the
Edgefield County Democratic Par
ty, filed a class action suit in 1974
charging that the at-large voting
system in Edgefield County diluted
Black voting strength.
Blacks make up a majority, of
the population in Edgefield Coun
ty and 44 percent of the registred
voters, but no Black has been elec
ted to county council since Recon-
Black astronauts have the ‘right stuff’
Part I of a series
HOUSTON —Charles F.
Bolden Jr., looks like a typical
astronaut. He is trim, has the in
stinctive grace of an athlete, is
quick to smile and exhibits a
demeanor that suggests he meets
life head-on.
He is a Naval Academy
graduate, a combat veteran of
Vietnam and a qualified test pilot.
And he is Black.
Lt. Col. Bolden (he chose the
Marine Corps after graduating
from Annapolis in 1968) is one of
four Black men now among the 78
members of the National
Aeronautics and Space Ad
ministration’s “astronaut corps.”
There are also eight women in the
group.
In 1980, NASA selected Col.
Bolden as an astronaut candidate.
This was 16 years after the passage
of the landmark U.S. Civil Rights
Act of 1964. Asked his reaction to
his selection, the 36-year-old
marine replied:
“Mostly disbelief.”
His astonishment had little to
do with his color: NASA had
chosen its first Blacks and first
women two years earlier. But Col.
Bolden had met some of his 1980
competition during a pre-selection
gathering of astronaut applicants
at NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
“Those applicants were good.
Very good,” he said. They were
the finalists—the last 120 out of
©fje Augiwta News-Steutew
Dr. Thomas McCain
struction.
McCain has run three times.
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LT. COL. CHARLES F. BOLDEN JR. (right), with
fellow astronauts (from left) Lt. Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr.,
Dupree may
consider
college coaching
Page 8
te Charles, and Miss Maryland, Amy Elizabeth Keys (right)
at a reception sponsored by the National Conference of
Black Mayors.
A
Dr. Charles Gomillion
Each time he has won in his
district, by a comfortable margin,
Four Black
astronauts have
the ‘rinV "'"fr
November 5,1983
but lost because “the voters in
other districts voted for my op
ponent.’’
Joining the Edgefield delegation
at the Supreme Court was Dr. Charles
G. Gomillion, a native of
Edgefield County, and the winner
of landmark Gomillion vs. Light
foot gerrymandering case in
Tuskegee, Ala.
A Paine College graduate and a
member of its board of trustees,
Gomillion led the civil rights fight
in Tuskegee where he headed the
Social Science Department at
Tuskegee Institute. A building is
named in his honor at Tuskegee
Institute.
McCain said that Gomillion had
see Edgefield, page 6
Dr. Ronald E. McNair and Col. Frederick D. Gregory.
Less than 75 percent Advertising
House of the Lord
condemns invasion
The House of the Lord Pen
tecostcal Church “openly con
demns the invasion of Grenada,”
the Rev. Telford Pierce, pastor of
the church on 10th Street, told his
congregation and radio audience
Sunday.
Broadcast on radio station
WTHB, the Rev. Pierce said there
was no justification for the in
vasion. “If the Cubans and the
Russians are the problem, why
don’t they go ahead and fight the
Cubans and the Russians, instead
of picking on a poor Black nation
that basically has no army,” he
asked.
“If they want to shoot
somebody, they should go to
Lebanon and shoot the people who
killed those 226 innocent
marines.”
Pierce called the invasion a
“barbaric, heathen act. That act
was as barbaric as when Russia in
vaded Afghanistan,” he said.
Emphasizing that his church
—Black Tuesday
Editorial
October 25th may well
be well remembered as
Black Tuesday. On that
day, President Reagan
launched a cruel, coward
ly, clandestine invasion of
the smallest nation in the
western hemisphere, an
invasion that included the
murder of elderly mental
patients.
The media were barred
from covering and report
ing what took place. And
since the media blackout
Diana Ross,
Michael Jackson
friendship close
•age 3
does not believe in communism,
but in Kingdom building, Pierce
said, “This (U.S.) is not a God
fearing nation. This is one of the
most sinful nations under the
sun—filled with hypocrisy from
the White House on down.”
Pierce that members of his chur
ch talked with Grenada’s am
bassador to the United Nations at
the church’s 53rd Convocation in
Brooklyn, N.Y. Oct. 9.
He said that Ambassador Carswell
Taylor talked about how
Grenada was preparing to
celebrate the third anniversary of
its independence.
He said that the ambassadors
from all of the countries invited by
his church —including Israel and
the Palestine Liberation
Organization—sent a represen
tative except the United States.
Pierce said the invasion was
staged by President Reagan to
“cover up his mess in Lebanon.”
has been lifted, Reagan’s
contentions of warehouses
stocked full of am
munition to export terror
ism have turned out to be
lies. Some artillery was
found, but of in small
quantities, and of a World
War II variety.
The U.N. Security
Council voted 11-1 with
three abstentions to con
demn the invasion.
see Tuesday, page 4
3,465 who had responded to the
space agency’s nationwide call for
a new group of astronauts.
“I figured it would take a lot of
luck to be selected,” Col. Bolden
said in a recent interview.
Not so, according to Dr.
Carolyn S. Huntoon, deputy chief
of NASA’s astronaut office and a
member of the board that selects
astronauts.
Asked to what extent race was a
factor in the selection process. Dr.
Huntoon responded quickly:
“In the selection process, it was
not. In the recruitment process, it
was a different story.”
Emphasizing that color and sex
were not to be considered, NASA
had made a conscious effort to
seek out members of minority
groups and women, she said.
The first astronauts, “The
Original Seven” chosen in 1959,
were white males. Why?
Partly because the new space
agency, which had been hurriedly
organized in 1958 in response to
Soviet success in launching the first
manmade satellite, was feeling its
way and had settled on one idea that
had little to do—directly—with
race, religion or national origin.
Astronauts, NASA concluded at
that time, should be test pilots
because the characteristics that
made good test pilots* also made
good astronauts.
...continued next week*
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