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Pcdne College: The Methodists'
"Holy Audacity ’
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mitory that blocked several
buildings from his view. He once
demanded that the students “stop
shucking and jiving” and get to
but his students are
especially full of nice surprises,
such w* voter registration cam
paign nhotogranhed and reported
ip a (bne 1983 article by Paul
Delaney on Blacks and voting in
The New York Times Magazine.
Unlike the students of
yesteryear, Paineites are now more
susceptible to the sports craze.
The basketball team has defeated
Augusta College, its crosstown
rival, eight times in a row and
Harris has set aside SIO,OOO for
four scholarships, far less than the
tull support routinely offered
athletes at other colleges.
Academically, Paine is more
determined to keep up with the
times. Business administration
and pre-professional sciences are
one-two in the order of curriculum
preferences. In respect for the
school’s liberal arts tradition,
Harris said that the college will
probably put a “ceiling” on
business offerings and, in deferen
ce to the new technology, continue
its expansion of the sciences. He
said that future Paineites will all be
required to “read” basic computer
languages.
Harris relaxes with former
schoolmates who are now teachers,
including Mallory K. Millender,
professor of French and jour
nalism, Millender and his wife, the
former Jacqueline Stripling, go
back to double-courting days with
the Harrises on the central plain.
I was with Harris and Millender
lunching on steak sandwiches at a
restaurant in downtown Augusta,
three miles from the Paine campus
in a Savannah River metropolitan
area of 300,000. I had known
Millender as my graduate student
at Columbia University and as the
editor and publisher of the weekly
Augusta News-Review, so I had
called him from New York to
arrange an appointment with
......
Mallory K. Millender
Millender took two courses un
der me, and I had seen him in a
variety of social situations, but I
had never heard him talk about
teaching and when he began
talking I knew he world be a part
of my story. He speaks with the
clarity and precision of a person
disciplined to think bi-lingually
who salts his classical French or
English with a dash of Harlem.
The Legendary Ruth
Bartholomew
The subject was teachers and
Harris and Millender were agreed
that Paine’s finest teacher had
been the late English Professor
Ruth Bartholomew, a latter-day
white “schoolmarm” with a
Western Reserve PhD. Millender
said that Bartholomew, a John
Milton scholar, could have
“taught at any school in the
world,” only he repeatedly
prolonged “w-o-o-r-r-ld” to un
derscore the enormity of his point.
“Her whole life was teaching. It
was reading, it was research, it was
preparing for the next day’s lesson.
If you were reading something in a
textbook she would say, ‘Cross
that out. He’s confused with his
facts.’
“She gave a quiz every day, and
if you missed any one of her three
questions, it was a *D’ and if you
made just one ‘D’ it was hard to
get an ‘A’ out of her course.
Students who made ‘A’s’ in her
classes would make ‘A’s’ anywhere
in the wo-o-o-o-ld.”
As Millender spoke of what
Paine and Bartholomew had done
for him, it occurred to me that he
and Harris could well be used as
opposite prototypes of Black
students who owe their careers to
protestations of equality, they tend
to treat Black students differently
from white students.
Black colleges. Harris was an out
standing student in a small high
school who needed a small liberal
arts college where teachers from
highly reputable colleges and
universities could accurately assess
his abilities, not as a Black scholar
but as a scholar. Why is this
necessary? The strongest rap
against the historically white
colleges is that for all of their
Swallowed Up By New York
Millender was swallowed up by
New York City. Though spending
a part of his childhood in rural
Alabama, Millender grew up in
Harlem and attended the factory
like George Washington High
School, where he finished with a
“D” average. Millendersaid there
“wasn’t a college in the country
that would touch me” until a New
York alumna, Sarah Skinner, in
terceded for him at Paine.
The Millender story of making
“D’s” in high school and making
“A’s” under everybody at Paine,
except Batholomew. then going on
to be an outstanding citizen, i s not
news as far as Black colleges go.
Stories of students being “saved”
abound and many have gone on to
national leadership. Martin
Luther King Jr., from Morehouse
College was one, and Presidental
candidate Jesse Jackson left the
University of Illinois for North
Carolina A&T State University,
where Economics Professor
Juanity Tate was his Bar
tholomew,
My alma mater, Virginia State
University, graduated Mary Hat
wood Futrell, the president of the
National Education Association,
vhile A&T’s alumni have been on
a roll, In addition to Jackson’s
Presidential run, Edolphus Towns
was elected a Brooklyn, New
York, Congressman and
Astronaut Ron McNair was the
second Black to blast off into
following Guy Bluford, not an
A&T alumnus but a second cousin
of the late a&T President F. D.
Bluford.
Any Paine list of famous alumni
would include the late Channing
H. Tobias, director of the Phelps-
Stokes Fund and alternate delegate
to the United Nations Charter
Conference; Frank Yerby(l937),
best-selling novelist since the 1946
publication of The Foxes of
Harrow; Charles G. Gomillion
(1928), a Paine trustee and
professor emeritus in political
science at Tuskegee Institute and
plaintiff in Gomillion vs. Light
foot, the U.S. Supreme Court’s
decision against racial gerryman-
I. <
Dr. Julius S. Scott Jr.
dering; and the late Lucius Holsey
Pitts, the college’s first Black
president whose name
memorializes Lucius Henry
Holsey, the Black CME who co
founded Paine.
Pitts was eulogized as a “miracle
worker” by The New York Times
for his work as president of Paine
and Miles College in Birmingham.
Following a 1970 Augusta race
riot, Paine may well have closed
down if. Pitts, had not successfully
negotiated with influential white
Augustans. The college was set on
its present upward course by Pitts
and his successor, Julius S. Scott
Jr., associate general secretrary for
the General Board of Higher
Education and Ministry of The
United Methodist Church.
Far less spectacular than Pitts’
“miracles” but vital to Augusta’%
whites and Blacks are the year-in
and year-out contributions of
Paine’s faculty, staff, students and
alumni to the area’s economy and
all other walks of its urban life.
For example, Harris reports that
32 percent of the metropolitan
area’s teachers are Paine
graduates.
The Paine experience suggests
that black colleges and universities
may well make a crucial difference
in the survival of urban com
munities, including some major
cities in the North and Middle
West, where there are no
historically black schools. Daniel
Aldridge, assistant to Detroit
Mayor Coleman Young, was
quoted by Cassandra Spratling in
The Detroit Free Press as saying
that the city could not function if
Black college and university
graduates were removed from the
city. Aldridge went on to rattle off
a list of Detroit leaders whose oc
cupations ran the gamut of the
city’s business and industry,
government courts, media and
communications, health and social
services.
Thus Blacks have broken the
barriers that once made them a
New bishop carries
Paine College tradition
(Bishop Woodie W. White was the General Secretary of the
Commission on Religion and Race before his recent election to the
episcopacy by the North Central Jurisdiction. Bishop White, who
has been assigned to the Illinois Area, is the first Paine graduate to
be elected a bishop by the United Methodist Church or any of its
predecessors. He proudly carries on the tradition of excellence
Paine is known for, and spoke to NWO of his experience there.)
How did you happen to select Paine, a predominantly Black
college?
A Paine graduate, Dr. Captolia Dent Newbern, a remarkable
woman working in Harlem, nurtured me and pointed me to Paine
College.
What was the most valuable part of your experience there?
Paine College proved to be the place where I learned some very
fundamental lessons about life and people.
Can you give us an example?
Paine taught me how to take a little and make a lot. It was a school
grounded in the Christian faith, which permeated the campus
through dedicated faculty and administrators. These were persons
who cared so much about the students that they were not at all
reluctant to critcize you, or to send someone to the dormitory to get
you out of bed and come to class.
What did you learn about race relation?
The most lasting lessons in race relations I learned were on the
campus of this little college in the heartland of Georgia. I learned
that people of different races and cultural backgrounds could live
together in mutual respect and love.
Do you have an ongoing relationship now with Paine College?
Yes...and some years ago, I co-authored a book, published by
Abingdon Press. Without hesitation I provided that every cent of
royalty from its sale should go to Paine College. How could I do
less, when I considered what Paine did for me, and continues to do
for Black youth from across the United States?
ADVERTISEMENT FORBIDS
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT BLOCK GRANT
FOR
THE CITY COUNCIL OF AUGUSTA. GEORGIA
Sealed bids for “CHAFFEE AVENUE-DRUID PARK AVENUE STORM SEWER
PHASE TWO AND PHASE THREE; PROJECT: CDBG M4-MC-ISOOO3/84-12”,
will be received by the Mayor and Clerk of Council of the City of Augusta,
Georgia until 12 O’CLOCK NOON on NOVEMBER 14,1984, in room 806 of the
City-County Municipal Building.
At that time and place the sealed bids shall be publicly opened and read aloud
for furnishing all materials, labor, machinery, tools, etc., necessary for all
work involved in the construction of Storm Sewers, Sanitary Sewers, Water
mains, Street Paving and Appurtenances thereto along portions of Druid Park
Ave., Emmett St., Fenwick St., Laney-Walker Blvd., Moore Ave., Parnell St.
and Walton Way.
The project shall be preformed all in accordance with the plans and
specifications prepared by James G. Swift & Associates, Consulting
Engineers, 2801 Wilco Avenue, Augusta, Georgia.
Bids must be accompanied bv a Certified Check or Bid Bond in an
amount of five percent (5 percent) of the total bid price. No bid may
be withdrawn for a period of sixty (60) days after closing.time
scheduled for receipt of bids.
Plans and specifications for bidding purposes may be obtained at the office of
James G. Swift & Associates, Consulting Engineers, 2801 Wilco Avenue,
Augusta, Georgia, upon payment of One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) for each
set of documents issues, (non-refundable).
Plans and specifications are open to public inspection at the following
locations:
City Engrs. Dept., 7th floor, City-County Municipal Bldg.
Community Development Dept., 624 Greene St., Augusta, GA
C.S.R.A. Business League, 1208 Laney-Walker Blvd., Augusta, GA
Augusta Builders Exchange, Augusta, GA
F.W. Dodae Div. Plan Room. Auausta. GA
Bidders must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Clean Air
Act as amended, regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency as
amended, Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 as
amended, the Federal Labor Standards Provision and Executive Order 11246
as amended.
The City reserves all rights to reject any or all bids and to waive any or all
formalities.
CHARLES A. DeVANEY
Mayor, Pro lem
“race of teachers,” but their
leaders know that education made
the difference for them and that
black colleges can only be saved if
the teaching legacy thrives. In his
inaugural address Harris cited the
dictum of the celebrated Benjamin
E. Mays, a Paine trustee and
President Emeritus of Morehouse
College, that the students should
always “aim high” in the
classroom as in life. And his
friend and colleague, Mallory
Millender, attests to the legacy in
his French classroom:
Xyi’ve had students who flunked
my course twice, then came back:
and made an‘A’. They could have
had a grade easily if they had
studied. I kept their feet to fire
and they gocburned again* and
againr-but when they learned it,
they learned it all.” ’'“ A \
Luther P. Jacksons Jr., is professor of
journalism at the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism.
This article is taken from the October
issue of New World Outlook magazine.
The Augusta News-Review NOVEMBER 3,1984
OUR ANCHORS
DO MORE THAN SIT
BEHIND A DESK!
JMgak Beverly Rodrigues, the newest
the News Watch
anchor already a
W face around Greater Augusta.
Beverly isn’t content to simply
stay in the studio, she likes to get
out and meet the newsmakers
face-to-face.
A us to
Beverly Rodrigues
7:00 DIFF'RENT STROKES
Brand-new for early evening!
7:30 SANFORD & SON
More fun from the junkyard!
TOGETHER AGAIN FOR THE
FIRST TIME!
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GO MISTING
TONIGHT
At home, or at your favorite bar,
when you go Misting, you make any night special.
So experience the smooth mellow lightness of Canadian Mist.
An imported Canadian Whisky.
iMPOetfD BY B F SPIRITS ITO N V CANADIAN WHISKY A BLEND 80 PROOF
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