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The Augusta News - Review January 12,1985
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CHIEF —Charles Anderson (right) and Tony Brown
Charles Anderson —The
Father of Black aviation
In 1932, Charles Alfred “Chief”
Anderson became the first Black to
hold a commercial pilot’s license.
A few years later he shocked White
House officials and the nation
when he flew First Lady Eleanor
Roosevelt around an airfield in
Tuskegee, Alabama—dispelling
the racist notion that Blacks could
not fly airplanes. That simple act
of bravery eventually led to the
formation of the Army Air Cor
ps’s first all-Black fighter pilot
training center in Tuskegee.
Once again TONY BROWN’S
JOURNAL unveils a forgotten
chapter in American history when
host Tony Brown solos with the
man many call the “Father of
Black Aviation”—the man who
taught America’s first Black
fighter pilots, the Tuskegee Air
men, how to fly. For this he was
respectfully referred to as “The
Chief.”
The program will be seen in this
area on WCES-20 at 7:30 p.m. on
Lincoln County students selected
to UGA Music Festival
The following students from the
Lincoln County High School Band
nominated by band director Dr.
John D. Bradley, were selected to
participate in the University of
Georgia High School Music
Festival, which will be held Jan.
17.
The legacy of Martin Luther King
From Page 1
system swayed by an unwavering
faith in Jesus Christ, all these at
tributes and qualities united to
forge a stream of potent words
that moved men and women not
only mentally and spiritually, but
physically into the streets against
the citadels of ascriptive racism.
Love for people shaped King’s
life and values. His unequivocal
stand against anti-semitism, the
Vietnam War and colonialism in
Africa testifies to his commitment
ot the freedom of people
everywhere.
Because he was clearly aware so
the the superiority of love over
hatred, he had inner peace amid
the outer storms of life.
Materialists anchor their glory
and values in cultural heritage and
possessions. The dispossessed,
they tacitly argue, deserve their
harsh fate. But King, moved by
love (not based on reciprocity),
believed that each life, regardless
of it station in the social order,
deserves a chance to actualize. It
took a persnal repudiation of un
tempered materialism for him to
live out this ascetic philosophy.
Love for mankind, a potent
means of personal and social
changes, also showed up in his
belief in the redemmableness of
any person, gourp or race. Even
when death threats wer steaming in
and police brutalities against civil
rights marchers were mounting,
King saw his attackers as “some of
our sick white brothers.” He
neither accused all whites nor
branded them adversaries. He
believed his attackers were
redeemable. He abhorred
segregation but not the
segregationist.
Intergroup animosity was a
travesty of his beliefs and values.
What puzzled him was the silence,
the apathy and, at times, active
complicity of some highly-placed
members of the majority group.
Silence in a democratic society,
Page 6
Jan.ls.
Training Black men to fly in
racially-torn 1940’s America was a
supreme task for the patriarch of
Black aviation. Although the Ar
my Air Corps was forced to admit
Blacks into its flight training
programs, it did not want Blacks
to become pilots. “There were a
lot of beatings,” Anderson recalls.
“The police would just beat you
up anytime they wanted to. As a
matter of fact I’ve been threatened
myself by police.”
In addition to his many aviation
firsts, “Chief” Anderson was also
one of the first two Blacks to make
a transcontinental flight.
However, his proudest
achievements came as flight in
structor at Tuskegee Army Air
Field, where he overcame tremen
dous obstacles and turned civilian
trainees into some of the best
fighter pilots of WWII. “I think
they were the cream of the crop,
they were tops.”
Alfred Garnett (Trombone),
Stefanie Bowie (Trumpet), Norris
Gunby, Jr. (Bari Saxophone),
Danielle Hawes (Bass Clarinet),
Bernita Elam (Alto Saxophone)
and Anthony Johnson (Alto
Saxophone).
where affluence is for the few and
poverty is for the many, accounts
to cooperating with naked evil.
At the root of his celebrated
dream is a belief that man’s
wranglings and contentions,
however violent and bloody, were
ephemeral. Some day when men
realize the suepriority of virture
over evil, racial fraternity will
prevail. That was his dream.
Identifying self-control as one of
King’s attributes looks like making
a mountain out of a molehill. Far
from it. Civil rights marches were
reactions against a social system
whose racial values and practices
violated not only Afro-American
rights but also the letter an spirit of
the American Constitution.
The great gulf between the
idealistic promises and reprehen
sible practices of America was sui
ficient exasperation to warrent
outbursts of pent-up angry words
from a less controlled leader. But
King controlled himself and held
his lips from slurs. Remarkable
self-restraint also showed up in his
speeches especially during the
March on Washington and in the
eulogies of his anticipated funeral.
Lastly, he guarded with great
care, the opportunity to lead
others. This point is difficult to
appreciate by those unfamiliar
with the subtle temptations of
power.
He was only twenty seven when he
founded the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC)
and, for the rest of his life led the
civil rights movement. His
philosophy of nonviolence
remained unchanged throughout
though there were two critical
moments when alteration in direc
tion pressed hard.
The first was when the Black
Power movement fragmented
King’s support base. To this
organization. King’s nonviolence
and love were too nonmilitant and
passive to protest effectively and
Hall of Fame enshrines ten legends
by Glover Henderson
It was an evening of stimulating
live jazz performed by such giants
as Ramsey Lewis, Hubert Laws,
Kent Jordan and Branford Mar
salis, among others, who had come
to the New York Lincoln Center’s
Avery Fisher Hall to pay tribute to
ten of jazz music’s most original
and innovative stylists who were
being inducted—for the first
time—into the Harlem YMCA
Jazz Hall of Fame.
Among those being immor
talized for the Year 1984 were five
past masters of jazz. They in
cluded the charismatic pianist,
composer and blandleader, Duke
Ellington, who created an or-
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jaliU
Duke Ellington
chestra style that has influended
more than five decades of
American music; alto saxaphonist
Charlie Parker (also known as
“Bird”) whose stylistic in
nocations fomented an un
precedented revolution in the
music and marked the beginning of
the modern period in jazz; pianist
and arranger Mary Lou Williams
whose playing spanned the whole
history of jazz from boggie-woggie
through big-band swing to bebop,
cool and beyond to the avant
grade; pianist, composer and ban
dleader, Count Basie whose
rhythmic, Kansas city “jump”
style had perhaps the most
profound influence on the young
innovative soloists of the 40s; and
cornetist Louis Armstrong who
was one of the founding fathers of
jazz, and the music’s first great
UNCF raises slO.l million for
private Black colleges
LOS ANGELES, Calif.,—For-,
ty-two of the nation’s private,
historically Black colleges will
benefit from the success of the first
national telethon for education.
The “Lou Rawls Parade of Stars”
received over slO.l million in
pledges on Dec. 29 during the 12-
hour show. A SIOO,OOO challenge
grant by Ambassador Walter An
nenberg was met during the
telethon’s first 9 hours.
Some of Hollywood’s best
known entertainers, including
Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope, Sammy
Davis Jr., Charlton Heston, Bill
Cosby, Donna Summer and
Gregory Hines, appeared on
behalf of United Negro College
Fund member institutions.
Telethon donors who send in
redress past grievances.
The second occurred in the
golden days of the marches when
his multiracial supporters were
numerous enough to justify a con
version of the civil rights
movement into a political one had
he political ambitions. But King
was a leader with amoral
obligation and spiritual mission.
He kept his course.
As an African, King left me
three distinc legacies. First, a
richer understanding of the im
mensity of God’s love. 1 was hurt
to learn that my distant ancestors
participated in the inexcusable and
horrendous crime of slavery.
However, the triumph of King and
others revealed the ultimate
capacity of God to sublimate the
aberrations of mortal men in the
construction of His divine pur
pose.
Second, King’s shining record as
young man who successfully led
others calls to question the very
foundation and practical wisdom
of gerontocracy. In Africa, age
invariably plays a role in the selec
tion of leadership. King’s life
teaches that a well-informed per
son need not be old to lead effec
tively.
And lastly, he demonstrated
that a minority can give an ob
stinate and arrogant world a sense
of moral direction. King rose from
the seering oppression of racism in
Alabama to the lofty heights of the
Nobel Peace Prize. That leaves
every minority with a revitalized
sense of hope since in his own
words “everyone can be great.”
Count Basie
Miles Davis
Art Blakey
soloist.
The other five, selected from
among the ranks of those still prac
tising the art. were honored for
these significant contributions
their pledges before Jan. 28, 1985
will participate in a preminum
program which includes gifts of
tote bags ($24 donation), um
brellas (SSO), desk calculators
($75), disc cameras ($100),
Polaroid 600 SLM cameras ($250),
and 35mm Polaroid slide auto
processors ($500). Pledge gifts are
donated by national contributing
sponsors Polaroid Corporation
and the Southland Corporation.
Known by its motto, “A mind is
a terrible thing to waste,” the
College Fund supports 42 private,
historically Black colleges and
some 45,000 students enrolled at
these schools. UNCF institutions
have educated such outstanding
alumni as diva Leontyne Price,
singer Lionel Richie, Atlanta
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toward the enhancement of jazz.
Three of them were trumpet
players; Dizzy Gillespie who, with
“Bird”, co-led the bebop
revolution; Miles Davis who has
provided several new directions in
the music; and Roy “Little Jazz”
Eldridge who had the most
profound influence on the younger
eluding Gillespie and Davis.
Also inducted were the legen
dary Art Blakey, one of the
foremost exponents of modern
jazz drumming, and jazz singer
Ella Fritzgerald, whose range and
gymnastics have influencied several
generations of jazz singers.
Dizzy Gillespie
Hr '-oaJTMI
Ella Fitzgerald
Mayor Andrew Young, New
Orleans Mayor Ernest Morial and
Pulitzer Prize-winning authors
Alice Walker and James Allen
MacPherson.
“College Fund graduates are
succeeding in the arts and sciences,
in business and finance, in politics
and civic service. The challenges
faced by education in the last part
of this century and into the next
can only be met by the commit
ment and involvement of all
Americans,” commented
Christopher F. Edley, president of
the College Fund.
Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Cam
pbell Soup Company, Polaroid
Corporation and the Southland
Corporation are contributing
sponsors.
A collaboration between CBS
Records and the Harlem YMCA,
the first annual Jazz Hall of Fame
was established last May to give
recognition to the world's greatest
jazz artists. Dr. George Butler,
vice president of jazz and
progressive music, CBS Records,
says “the time has finally come to
honor and pay respect to some of
our most creative and legendary
musical genuises responsible for
America’s first original art form:
jazz.”
To identity those deserving in
duction, a knowledgeable array of
jazz editorialists, critics,
producers and noted jazz con
noisseurs will be assembled an
nually to evaluate suggestions
solicited from the public.
Says an announcement from the
Harlem YMCA: “Jazz fans,
everywhere should have the
privilege of submitting names of
their favorites. It is most fitting
that the Harlem YMCA be the first
to initiate such an institution, since
for decades it has been the home
for so many jazz artists.”
Leßaron Taylor, vice president
and general manager, CBS Recor
ds, believes the project has
viability. “Through the Harlem
YMCA Jazz Hall of Fame we have
an opportunity to recognize those
living and dead who have con
tributed so much to both music and
American culture. We are proud
to participate in this art in New
York City.”
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