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Cross burned in front of AKA house Page 1 VOLUME 14 NUMBER 36 ‘T7ze State of Black America: 1985 In each one of 10 recent years, the National Urban League has called together a group of outstan ding scholars to assess and analyze important events in a number of specific areas. As a product of that study, John E. Jacob, president of the National Urban League, recen tly delivered his annual appraisal of the “State of Black America.” Participating scholars and the titles of the papers they con tributed to the Urban League study are as follows: “The Phenomenon of the Jesse Jackson Candidacy and the 1984 Presidential Election,” Dr. Charles V. Hamilton, Columbia University; “Modern Technology and Urban Schools,” Dr. Robert E. Fullilove, University of California at Berkeley; “Blackening in Media: The State of Blacks in the Press,” Dr. Samuel L. Adams, University of Kansas; “Aged Black Americans: Double Jeopardy Re-examined,” Dr. Jacquelyne Johnson Jackson, Duke University Medical Center; ‘‘Blacks in the U.S. Labor Movement: Working or Not?” Dr. Lenneal J. Henderson, Howard University; “The Black Family Today and Tomorrow,” Dr. James D. McGhee, NUL Director of Research; “The Poten tials and Problems of Black Finan cial Institutions,” Dr. Williams D. Bradford, University of Maryland. Following is the full text of Jacob’s appraisal: Ten years ago, the National Ur ban League began publishing this annual assessment of the status of Blacks in America. Over this period we have recorded some ad vancements and some setbacks, but what has remained constant is the continuing struggle of Black America for equity. Black America is a special place that requires special understan ding. It embraces more than 26 Bishop is Founders’ Day speaker Bishop Marshall Gilmore, presiding bishop of the fourth episcopal district, will return to his alma mater on February 8 to ad dress the annual Founder’s Day convocation. Bishop Gilmore holds the Doc tor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio and was awarded the honorary Doctor of Divinity from Texas College. In addition to chairing the buildings and grounds committee of the Paine College Board of Trustees, he is chairman of the board for Mississippi Industrial College, and a member of the board of the Phillips School of Cross burned in front of AKA house “We shall not be silent on this kind of deplorable action,” said Faye B. Bryant, national president of Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA) sorority, in reaction to the burning of a cross in front of the AKA chapter house on the campus of Georgia Tech in Atlanta Jan. 15. “Such violence in 1985 is incom prehensible and indefensible,” Bryant siad. The AKA’s move into the house on Greek Row less than a year ago gave them the distinction of being the only Black sorority at Tech to have a house. Mary Shy Scott, AKA regional director and an Augusta Neius-Sleuteui *jr Mir W J t Mr > * -<3 John E. Jacob “Black America is a special place that requires special understanding. It embraces more than 26 million men, women, and children, and is becoming increasingly younger and more concentrated in urban areas.” million men, women and children and is becoming increasingly younger and more concentrated in urban areas. While it shares many of the same concerns so common to American society as a whole—a decent education, a worthwhile job offering upward mobility, the rearing of a strong and healthy family, and retirement in comfort and dignity—it has its own special set of concerns that exert a power ful influence in determining the quality of its life. Concerns about schools that do BishopvMarshall Gilmore Atlanta resident, noted the “joy and exhilaration” the members had exhibited as they moved into the residence. “These emotions have now been replaced with anguish and fear,” Scott said. In a statement issued Jan. 16, Joseph M. Pettit, president of Georgia Tech, said that an in vestigation was underway and that the “appropriate penalty” would be imposed. Pettit labelled the ac tion as a “reversion to a less enlightened state” and said that never in his 13 years as president of Georgia Tech had such a blatant act of racism been perpetrated. AKA will wait for Georgia Tech Ray Parker Jr. buys farm in Anderson S.C. Pagel not teach but graduate functional illiterates, about horrendous unemployment rates and the tens of thousands of people who have never held a job and probably never will, about the staggering in crease in families headed by single women, about violent crimes where Blacks are both the principal victims and the perpetrators. That Black America is not worse off today than it is, is more of a testament to its traditional ability to survive under the most difficult of conditions than to anything Theology in Atlanta. His church-related activities are numerous, including his chair manship of general board of the Department, of Evangelism of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Louisiana Human Relations Council. The formal convocation is scheduled for 11 a.m. in the Gilbert-Lambuth Chapel, with faculty and administrators of the college in academic regalia. As customary, a motorcade procession to the gravesites of Dr. George Williams Walker and John to complete its investigation before taking any action, but “....the in vestigation must be comprehensive and swift; we will monitor the ad ministration’s actions to insure that this occurs,” Bryant said. “It is imperative that the ad ministration take every measure necessary to find the culprits im mediately and impose the severest penalty possible,” she said. AKA is one of America’s premier Greek-lettered organizations for Black women. Undergraduate chapters on more than 325 campuses make up 25 percent of the sorority’s member ship. Killir :f: knife v lungers must stopl Page 1 February 2,1985 else. Survival is away of life in all too much of Black America, but the word also carries with it the implication of being able to make those changes and adjustments necessary to meetthe circumstances of the moment. These adjustments occurred in creasingly in Black America in 1984 as more Blacks and more Black institutions, realizing there would be only minimal assistance coming from the outside, directed more and more of their own energies and limited resources toward addressing the pressing problems at hand. We will return to this point later. When the National Urban League started this series it was because of the need to call the nation’s attention to the special conditions of Black Americans, conditions that were being ignored by the leadership and the policy-makers in this country. Those who were in a position to do something about these conditions, proceeded as if they did not exist. And those who by raising the issues that produced the conditions might have compelled attention to be paid to them, were either p&werless or chose to be silent. We spoke in the first “State of Black America” of the slow but steady decline in racial cooperation and how the “condition of Black Americans, once the benchmark of America’s commitment to equality and justice, is now the object of malign neglect and hostile disregard.” A few days before the publication of our document, President Richard M. Nixon delivered the State of the Union Address. Commenting on that we said: “It did not include a single men tion of Black citizens and their needs. It included not one word Wesley Gilbert will follow the assembly. Walker, who is buried in the Westview Cemetery, was a mem ber of the South Carolina Con ference and second president of Paine. Although he did not par ticipate in the actual founding of the college, his administration was influential in stabilizing the in sitution. It was during his twentv seven year tenure that Paine In stitute was rechartered as Paine College, the faculty became racially integrated, and Haygood and Holsey Halls were constructed as well as the original president’s home. Gilbert, interred at Cedargrove Cemetery, was a minister of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Paine’s first student and graduate, and the first Black faculty member The second annual parent’s day at Paine College is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 9, as the culmination of a week-long series of activities celebrating Black History Week and Founder’s Day. Parents will have the oppor tunity to meet with administrative staff and faculty and visit the residence halls. Other activities will include per formances by the Paine College Jazz Ensemble, the Choirs, and the Dramatic Club. Additional information and a specific schedule of activities may be obtained from the student ser vices division on campus. fans its on ,1 slam dunk event I Page 6 Less than 75 percent Advertising about the government’s commit ment to enforce civil rights laws, about the disproportionate suf fering Black people have endured in the current depression, about mob effort to defy court orders to desegregate the schools, about the urban fiscal problems of our most urbanized minority—not one word! “Because the public has been subjected to an analysis of the State of the Union that excludes Black people, the National Urban League has prepared a document that delineates the State of Black Americans today. It is a document that does not attempt to cover up the seriousness of the situation Black people find themselves in.” And 10 years later, what is the State of Black America? Has it improved? Has it grown worse? In the best of worlds we would be reporting that the Black con dition has shown marked im provement over the past decade. But the facts argue otherwise. In virtually every area of life that counts, Black people made strong progress in the 19605, peaked in the 70s, and have been sliding back ever since. Much of this, but not all, is attributable to the shape of the American economy which has gone through some trying times, and is still not out of the woods, as far as Black Americans can discern. One measuring rod for an swering the questions we have posed is employment. In 1975, Stop the killing Before any in vestigation into the shooting death of Lawrence James of South Augusta is completed, a thorough review should be made of the psychological backgrou nd of Joseph Michael Cawley, the county police officer who shot him. Although much has been made of his having been diagnosed as a “chronic paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies,” some people who have worked with Cawley say that he is “crazier than the man he killed.” Sources say4hat when Cawley worked at Southern Bell Telephone Company where he was terminated for “safety” reasons, he had a “terribly” conduct record, was known to dislike Blacks, and that if the Richmond County Police Department had checked his record they would not have hired him to protect, the lives of others whefri he is a danger to himself. Cawley shot James Monday afternoon after a neighbor reported that he was making a distur bance. allegedly been shouting obscenities at officers and “lunged at” the officer with a Black unemployment was 14.1 percent, about double that of white unemployment (7.6 percent). At the end of 1984, Black unem ployment was 16 percent, more than double that of whites (6.5 percent). Constituting some 10 percent of the labor force, Blacks account for 20 percent of the jobless. The economy is not the only for ce that continues to operate against Blacks. The national will to take positive steps to help set the scales of justice into balance has deminished tremendously over the past 10 years, and has been replaced, in large measure, by a feeling that nothing more needs to be done and if Blacks are still on the outside looking in, it’s probably their own fault. National leadership must be held accountable because by its failure to continue to place strong em phasis on those programs and policies that were improving the lives of Blacks, other minorities and the poor, it sent a signal that such matters had been placed on the backburner. Under the Nixon-Ford Ad ministration, the problems of Blacks and the poor were never major concerns, but there was little overt hostitlity, and draconian measures against the disadvan taged were not taken. For all of its professed, and undoubtedly real concern for those at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum, See Black America, P£ge 3 Editorial knife, whereupon he was shot and killed. Upon hearing that a man had been killed for lunging at an officer with a knife, one could predict the race of the killer and the victim. We’ve heard that story so many times before. The most recent was in May of 1984 when Willie Lee Burch, also 33 years old, was killed by a coun ty policeman, Ray Myers. Burch is supposed to have lunged at Myers. While we question the truth of the lunging in both instances, that is not the point. The point is that police officers armed with guns should be able to subdue a person armed only with a knife without killing him. How many people have to lose their lives before we start to in sist on competent law en forcement? We’ve had enough of these two or three-day suspensions that result in “in vestigations” which in variably exonerate the killer. When responsible officials allow this car nage to take place, they are as guilty as the men who pull the trigger. These irresponsibile killings must stop and the community ought to in sist upon it now. 30C