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endorsed
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VOLUME 14 NUMBER 23
Paine College:
Methodists’ ‘Holy Audacity’
by Luther P. Jackson Jr.
Back in Augusta, Ga., as
president of his alma mater after
fifteen years at Indiana university,
William H. Harris bounded across
the Paine College campus with the
confidence of a man who has been
around the world and discovered
there is no place like home. As I
huffed and puffed alongside his
six-foot, four-inch frame, I asked,
“Can Black colleges be saved?”
“The question is, should they be
saved?“ Harris responded. And
my answer to that is an emphatic
and non-apologetic “yes.”
With the 101-year-old college
between its summer and fall terms,
Harris pierced the serenity of the
tree-lined campus with these wor
ds; “Black colleges absolutely
must be saved if we’re going to
help Black people who have not
ben picked up by the mvement
toward the integration of white in
stitutions.
Dr. William H. Harris
“The mission of Paine and the
other Black colleges must be to
make sure that these young folk
many of whom are extraordinarily
intelligent are not lost to our
communities and to our country.”
It had not been too long since
Harris himself had sat with Wanda
Fillmore, his wife-to-be, out on the
200-yard campus green known by
Paineites as the “central plain.”
Aside from a left-angled row of
dormitories, campus life swings
between a dozen or so buildings
anchored by the red-bricked
Haygood-Holsey administration
building at the east and the
steepled Gilbert-Lambuth
Memorial Chapel at the west end
of the green. As a symbol of
Paine’s creation by the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, and the
Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church, each of the two buildings
bears the name of a Black and
white founder.
Former Congresswomen
nominated to head FAMU
Former Congresswoman Bar
'bara Jordan and Shirley Chisholm
are among five women on the
growing list of nominees for the
Florida A&M University
president’s job, a selection com
mittee member said.
Jordan, a Democrat from Texas
has already declined the
nomination. Chisholm, a New
York Democrat, has not. Still, she
has not sent in an application for
the position soon to be vacated by
She Augusta New T ‘ u
When Harris enrolled in 1962,
Paine gave him a fuller slice of
college life than he probably could
have gotten anywhere, including
the larger Black Georgia colleges.
His election as president of the
freshman class launched him into a
whirlwind of activities tnat in
cluded running the student gover
nment, captaining the basketball
team for three years, testing his in
tellect in bull sessions and par
ticipating in the college’s annual
post-Thanksgiving interracial con
ferences. He cited the latter as an
example of how Paine “for much
of the 20th century was one of the
few places in Georgia where men
and women of the Black and white
races could come together in
fellowship on terms of total
equality.”
As an avowed “country boy”
from Fitzgerald, Ga., Harris
found many people like himself in
a student body that was more than
80 percent Georgian. An
American history major, Harris
emerged as a scholar and a gen
tleman athlete because Paine had
no other kind.
When he suited up as a freshman
for football, the team had not won
a game in ten years. Paine stum
bled to a victory in Harris’ first
game only to go winless for the rest
of the season. Holding fast to its
policy of no athletic scholarships,
Paine dropped the sport.
No Paine athlete ever turned
professional, but many wound up
with outstanding academic and
professional careers. From one of
Harris’ basketball squards, for
example, two out of three coaches
went on to win PhDs while Harris
and four of his squad mates earned
PhDs or degrees in medicine or
dentistry with one, William Burge,
taking a PhD from Duke Univer
sity and a medical degree from the
University of Maine.
Graduating magna cum laude in
1966, Harris went from a college
of 800 to Indiana, a Big Ten
university of 40,000 for his
master’s degree, and after a year as
a history instructor at Paine, he
returned to Indiana for his PhD.
Harris would have stayed at Paine,
but Social Sciences Chairman
George King sent him back to In
diana with the advice that he had
the “right stuff” for the terminal
degree. “The people at some other
college might not have had such
high expectations of me,” Harris
said.
Accepting an Indiana teaching
position, Harris rapidly ascended
the academic heights to a full
professorship. Two books,
Keeping the Faith (1977), a history
Dr. Walter L. Smith, according to
University Presidential Search Ad
visory Committee chairperson
Lynette Padmore.
FAMU has never had a woman
president, but that will have no
bearing on the recommendation
the search committee will make to
the Board of Regents in December,
Padmore said.
“We’re just looking for the best
person” she said. “At this point,
everyone has a chance. It’s an
Barbara Jordan,
Shirley Chisholm
slated for FAMU
Page 1
of the Black Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, and The
Harder We Run: Black Workers
Since the Civil War (1982) were
partly shaped by a boyhood
memory of the railroad town of
Fitzgerald. “I remembered that
my father, who knew as much
about fixing locomotives as
anyone in town, always remained a
machinist’s helper while younger
whites, who learned their work
from him, became machinists,”
Harris wrote in the preface of The
Harder We Run.
He found Indiana an academic
equal employment, equal access
application.”
Anyone can nominate an in
dividual for the position, or an in
dividual can nominate himself or
herself, according to Padmore. In
order to be reviewed by the selec
tion committee for eventual con
sideration by the Board of Regen
ts, a person interested in the
president’s job must submit an ap
plication.
Os the 57 nominees, only three
We endorse
President
Vice President
22nd Senate District
State Representative,
86th District
90th District
Solicitor State Courl
Board of Education
District 3 Post 1
District 4 Post 1
District 4 Post 2
We urge you to vote “No” on the proposed local
amendment to reduce the size of the school board.
We also oppose the proposed amendment that would
decalre vacant the office of any state, county or mun
cicpal elected official seeking another state, county, or
municipal office or qualifying for the House of
Representatives or the U.S. Senate if the term of new
office would begin more than 30 days prior to the ex
piration of the officials present term.
We urge that you vote “Yes” on the following
proposed constitutional admendments:
1. to suspend a judge from office upon being indic
ted for a felony and to remove a judge from office if
convicted by the state of the United States.
2. that certain public officials be removed for same
reasons as a judge as stated above.
5. to prohibit the payment of retirement benefits
based on involuntary separation from employment to
any past, present or future Governor of the State of
Georgia as a result of ceasing to hold office as Governor
for any reason, except for medical disability.
8. to authorize general obligation debt to be incurred
to provide public library facilities for county and in
dependent school systems or for counties, municipalities
or boards of trustees of public libraries or public library
systems.
Black women
ambassadors
are honored
Page 1
NOVEMBER 3,1984
“paradise” with its grants and
fellowships, including. his
Fulbright and Guest Professorship
at the University of Hamburg, but
when he got a chance to return to
Paine as president, he seized it.
Whv Harris returned to Paine
could be understood by anyone
seeing him stride down the central
plain as though he owned it.
Joshingly, he told me that he
would never forgive one of his
predecessors for erecting a dor-
See ‘Holy Audacity’ Page
Walter Mondale
Geraldine Ferraro
Thomas Allgood
Mike Padgett
Travis Barnes
Michael C. Eubanks
Jerry Brigham
Julia J. Glover
Elmer Singley
have applied for the job. None of
the nine current applicants are
women.
The onlv names which can be
found on both lists are: Dr. Claude
Anderson, executive director of
Miami Capital Development,
Inc.,; Dr. Arthur Jones, a senior
program analyst with the National
Science Foundation in Washington
D.c.; and De Ulyssess V. Soiva, a
dean and professor at Old
Less than 75 percent Advertising
J *
r 7
Another Ali strides
into the public eye
She likes Michael Jackson and
Prince. Her hobbies include roller
skating and aerobics. And she’s
not wild about seventh grade.
Just another 12-year-old? Not
quite.
Miya Ali, one of retired boxer
Muhammad Ali’s eight children, is
embarking on a modeling career
with the prestigious Eileen Ford
agency. “She’s got a very cute,
natural look,” says Lacey Ford, an
agency vice president who met
Miya through a friend. “She im
mediately makes a contact with
you when you meet her.”
Miya (pronounced Me-ya) will
make contact with a lot of people
in the next few months as prospec
ts are explored with Seventeen
magazine, Bloomingdale’s and
others.
“It seems like a lot of fun,”
says Miya, who lives in Teaneck,
N.J., with her mother, Patricia
Harvell, a computer processor.
Ali and Harvell never married,
but the boxer openly acknowledges
Ex-A ugustan
to author column
Editor’s note: In this issue, Dr.
Cynthia Omololu, a clinical
psychologist, begins a series of ar
ticles on African influences on
Black thought.
I have lived in West Africa
(Lagos, Nigeria) for six years.
They have been productive and
fruitful. In part, I can say that the
experiences that I lived through
during those years have led me to a
profound understanding of myself
and Black people.
Most of my experiences were
positive. However, I learned as
much from the negative as the
positive. For example I was sur
prised when I did not hear children
praised ! The results of a survey on
why children were not praised
brought out the following an
swers:!. If you praise children,
See Praise Page 4
Ali’s daughter
embarks on
modeling career
Page 1
Miya Ali
that Miya is his daughter. And
although the agency plans to*
capitalize on the Ali connection,
Miya says it’s not something sne
discusses with just' anybody.
“Somepeople think I brag.” she
says, “but other people I don’t
tell, because I want to see who my
real friends are. And there are
only a few of those.”
Miya says her father doesn’t ob
ject to her modeling pursuits, but
“he said just watch out ... nobody
does any strange photos. Like
Brooke Shields. When she was
young, some people took advan
tage of her”. (Brooke has turned
up in some bath tub photos).
Ali said from his home in Los
Angeles, “It’s up to her. She’s old
enough to have an idea about what
she wants. Whatever makes her
happy is all right with me.”
And the 5-foot-3, hazel-eyed
Miya insists, “1 just want to be in
dependent and make my own
money for college even though
we have enough.” From USA TODAY
Dr. Cynthia Omololu
30C