Newspaper Page Text
News-Review - September 23, 1971
THE NEWS-REVIEW
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY
930 Gwinnett Street - Augusta, Georgia
Mallory K. Millender Editor and Publisher
Mailing Address: Box 953 Augusta, Ga. Phone 722-4555
Application to mail at Second Class postage rates is pending at
Augusta, Ga. 30901
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
Pay able in Advance
One Year in Richmond County $2.50 tax incl.
One Year elsewhere $3.00 tax incl.
ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
Classified Advertising Deadline 12 noon On Tuesday
Display Advertising Deadline 12 noon On Tuesday
Office Hours -10.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mon, thru. Fri.
"Politics,
Power And Blacks”
THE STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL POWER
By Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm
In the 1972 elections, I expect a new generation of Black
political leaders to emerge, signalling the beginning of true
maturity and effectiveness for Black political power in the United
States.
Many struggles lie ahead of us, but many victories have been
won. The significant fact about the Black Caucus Congressional
Dinner recently was not so much the presence of 13 Black
members of the House of Representatives, although their number
was impressive and gratifying; it was the presence in the ballroom
of Washington’s leading convention hotel of hundreds of local
and state elected officials.
Meeting together as they were, truly meeting for the first time,
I observed that they gained for the first time a feeling of their
own numbers and potential strength, and a sense of the deep
identity of their needs and goals, cf the experiences and purposes
that they shared regardless of their party affiliation or the section
of thy country from which they came.
The time at last has come, for Black leaders to step forward
and take the share of political power to which the numbers of
their people, and the centuries of repression they have suffered
entitle them.
There are no obstacles in our path that cannot be overcome.
But there are some political facts of life that we have learned
along the hard road to where we now are that must not be
forgotten.
One is expressed in my favorite political maxim, which I
learned from Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing
without a struggle.” Rhetoric will not win us any elections. Black
leaders in the past, like white reformers today, have usually
substituted talk for action because all they were able to do was
talk. Action is possible now, and action is what we need.
Every candidate who steps forward to offer himself or herself
as a leader must be subjected to this test: “We don’t care what
you say. Rhetoric is easy; talk is cheap. What have you done?
What are you doing? What do you intend to do?”
Aspirants for political office will face one of two situations:
either their area will be predominantly black or it will contain a
significant proportion of other races. Whether the
challenge is to unite a divided Black community behind him, or
to build a coalition of varied racial and class interests, his
approach must be basically the same. If he shows he is a person
who knows and understands what the needs of his community
are, and if he has a program to meet them, he will deserve to win,
and he will win.
The needs of Black people today are greater, and they cry out
to be met because they have been cruelly denied for so long. But
the needs of all people are the same. In the south and in the
north, Black candidates who feel these needs and offer a plan for
meeting them have begun to appear and to prevail at the ballot
boxes.
Although the Black vote may be the base of their success, it is
not often the whole basis. They are winning elections because
they are the people who have made other people, Black, Brown,
white, Red and Yellow, feel and know that they offer hope, real
leadership, and a plan for action.
This is what I meant when I said at the outset that Black
political power is entering a period of maturity, and that 1972 is
or can be the year that will mark the beginning of this period.
Perhaps I should point out two important qualifications to
what I have said. One mark of this maturity be a realization
that racial appeals, as such, of any kind. ' usually fail at the
polls and deserve to fail. I mean on the one hand the shallow
appeal for Black support that rests on a bush hairdo, a dashiki
and a line of angry talk, and on the other hand the sellout of true
Black interests and demands through concessions and
compromises to the existing interests, those who have in the past
controlled the business and political power and the money. The
time is past for Black power charades, and the time has come to
reject leaders who deceive the people and play ball with the old
establishments. True political effectiveness is now within our
reach, we do not need to play the old games any longer.
But we must remember, finally, the second qualification to
which I referred, and that is that the acquisition of political
power always has and always will rest on organization and
unrelenting effort. By this I mean first of all that voting power
does not exist until voters are registered and actually vote.
The success of Black candidates in many southern areas is the
payoff from years of year-round work on registration drives. The
vitality of the Black electorate in the south has begun to appear
in sharp contrast to the lethargic, apathetic character of urban
Black communities in the north, like Harlem; Bedford-Stuyvesant
and South Jamaica.
Every black social, civic, religious and political organization
must grasp this fact and make it a number one, continuing
priority of their programs to support and work actively in
registration campaigns. Register and vote register and vote
this theme must be stressed night and day, everywhere and at all
times. This is the sine qua non without which we can do nothing.
Before the black vote becomes the power that it can be, there
must be a black vote.
I have not mentioned political parties, because I do not think
party labels have much meaning any longer for black Americans.
We have been deceived and betrayed equally be politicians of
both parties in the past and will be in the future if we permit
ourselves to be.
We must be independent of parties, ready to work with and for
any party, or against any party, ready also to go outside existing
parties and work alone or with any other groups with whom we
can find a genuine unity of aims and build an effective coalition.
Until we do these things, we might as well just continue to stand
around and sing, “we shall overcome.”
YOU COULD USE
THIS SPACE TO SELL
MOST
ANYTHING FOR
$2.50
Page 2
YOU COULD USE
THIS SPACE TO SELL
MOST
ANYTHING FOR
$2.50
“Nor has there been any access to any
significant statistical information by repre
sentatives of the minority community,” the
Task Force said. “Assistant Secretary of
Labor Arthur Fletcher tells us that all his
department can do is coordinate, and that
there is no information forthcoming from
the agencies. Compare this to what Mr.
Fletcher’s department does to ‘coordinate’
enforcement of the Wage and Hour Act and
the Davis-Bacon Act, which are of im
portance to white unions. Last year there
were 2,835 government employees and over
s4l million deployed in this effort.”
The task force pointed out that Project
Build, a federally-funded training effort
sponsored by the Greater Washington
Central Labor Council with Labor Depart
ment funds, had failed to get a single black
graduate accepted for membership in any
Washington-area construction union.
“This training program will be a dead end
for every black trainee since none will be
accepted into white unions and without
union membership will be unable to find
work in the construction trades until the
federal government effectively enforces the
Washington Plan,” the task force said.
If the Washington and Philadelphia Plans
have proved difficult to enforce, even more
difficult to enforce are so-called “home
town” solutions that the Labor Department
began promoting after meeting resistance to
the Philadelphia Plan. If a city’s voluntary
plan is approved by Labor, the city gets
money for job training programs and con
tinues to receive federal construction funds.
To encourage cities to develop these home
town plans, Labor has threatened to impose
plans on cities that fail to come up with
their own approaches. Washington was the
first of these.
Os 102 cities designated as target areas for
hometown plans, approximately 30 have
come up with acceptable solutions. On May
12 the Labor Department announced it was
preparing plans for Atlanta and St. Louis in
the absence of local action. A government
plan was imposed June 3 on San Francisco,
which has a hometown plan that is not
working.
On June 4 the Labor Department an
nounced that it was imposing a plan on the
city of Chicago, where the “hometown”
plan had collapsed and $94,500 was missing
from the plan account, representing a total
of 12 forged checks. Aiderman Fred D.
Hubbard, a Daley Democrat representing the
all-black Second Ward and project director,
has been charged with forging a $20,000
check drawn on the account.
The Chicago Plan began with high hopes.
The Labor Department provided $824,000
for administration and training which was
expected to give immediate union member
ship to 1,000 blacks and Puerto Ricans and
apprenticeship training to an additional
3,000 minority youths. The AFL-CIO
lauded the plan as a model that should be
used for future negotiations in other cities.
Despite the enthusiasm generated by the
plan, it never got off the ground. One
difficulty was Mayor Richard J. Daley, who
became interested in the negotiations when
he saw that his Model Cities funds might be
tied up because of street demonstrations by
black contractors and their community
allies. At stake was $35 million in Model
Cities funds, with which Daley wanted no
interference. The Chicago Plan placed im
mense power in the hands of the mayor,
giving him the swing vote on the seven
member committee that oversaw administra
tion of the plan. Each faction-labor, em
ployer and minority coalition—had two
LOOK!
What’s New In Hair Styling
Mr. Leon Austin’s Barber Shop
Divide And Rule
(This Is The Last In The Current Series)
P.I.C. NEWS
By Stephen Clapp, Staff Writer
And Manicuring
1715 Gwinnett St
(fat man's corner)
Mr. Leon Austin
David Cheatham
John Adams
members, with the seventh member being
the mayor or his representative. Since five
votes were needed to pass any matter, the
mayor could veto any action unsatisfactory
to either the contractors or the unions by
adding his vote to theirs.
There was constant bickering between
labor and the minority community over how
the numbers would be apportioned among
the 19 craft unions involved. Since the plan
became effective 17 months ago, 885
minority group members have begun ap
prenticeship training, but few have been put
to work. Last year’s construction season
ended without a single minority worker on
the job as a result of the plan.
The city of Buffalo, N.Y., has a plan
imposed by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller
against the wishes of the minority com
munity. On February 3, 1970, Rockefeller
lifted an 11-month moratorium on state
financed construction and imposed a plan on
the Buffalo area. No members of Buffalo’s
minority community were consulted on
terms of the plan.
The announcement of the plan was pre
ceded by a year of community action
directed toward unions and contractors’
associations. In April 1969 the Governor’s
office recognized a Minority Coalition as the
agent for blacks, Indians and Puerto Ricans;
this group subsequently received $275,000
in manpower funds to “identify” minority
applicants for training programs. That fall
the Minority Coalition, the industrial unions
and the contractors’ association reached
tentative agreement on a plan. Five unions
then refused to sign, and all negotiations
were ended.
Rockefeller’s response to this development
was to lift the moratorium on New Town
and State University construction projects
valued at $135 million and impose a plan
under which he claimed 4,500 minority
workers would be trained and taken in by
the unions over the next four years. The
plan is based on the percentage of non
whites in Erie County, which is only half the
percentage of non-whites in the City of
Buffalo.
The task force that came up with the
Rockefeller Plan included Peter J. Brennan,
president of the Building and Construction
Trades Council of Greater New York. Bren
nan, a powerful labor figure, was one of the
first union leaders to throw the support of
his organization behind Rockefeller’s reelec
tion last year. A possible reason for Rocke
feller’s desire to resume construction
activities in 1970 was the fact that he had
failed to carry Erie County, the most
populous area of New York State outside
New York City, in the two previous guberna
torial elections.
Rev. James T. Hemphill, leader of the
Minority Coalition, has accused Rockefeller
of treating Buffalo blacks as a “plantation,
to accept what is given.”
“The community is awaiting Governor
Rockefeller to announce and fulfill his pay
off to the minority community for adopting
his affirmative action program,” Hemphill
said recently. “The Governor was paid off
by the unions, who endorsed his reelection.
Rockefeller paid off the unions by delivering
the ‘minority community’ to embrace union
designed programs which guarantee the
unions absolute control.”
Backed by the NAACP, the Minority Coali
tion has filed suit in federal court to halt all
state and federal construction in the Buffalo
area. The Coalition has petitioned President
Nixon in hopes of getting the Labor Depart
ment to impose a plan of its own on Buffalo.
Mini-Spiritual Reflections In A
Changing World
BY
AL IRBY
Could the old Monk himself take a seat with those Black
students at the Southwest institution for an hour, with that calm
illuminated face, and with immovable complacency, knowing
how their race had suffered in America. How would he write
today with relevancy to these Afro-topped youngsters?
Or what have all the changes that have come to pass in the four
hundred and ninety years since he lived? Os course it was no dull
age, and his was not an average life. He was contemporary with
John Hus and Jerome of Prauge, Savonarola, men of very
different temper from his. It was the age of the “Maid of
Orleans” in France, of “The Wars of the Roses” in England.
The closing years of Kempis’s life saw the fateful marriage of
Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain. With none of these things did the
old Monk concern himself.
(To Be Continued)
Walking
WITH
DIGNITY
BY
Al IRBY
(AMERICAN WHITES HAVE BEEN AGONIZING WITH
GUILT-RIDDEN ANGUISH ABOUT ITS BLACK CITIZENS
SINCE 1954)
The people that are howling to the high heavens about busing
are the same persons that are saying Blacks are lawless. Now they
are barking up the same tree because the courts are attempting to
do the right thing by Black children, so they can be able to
compete in a highly technological society. Their forefathers
should have accepted a relative few Blacks into the human race in
1876, before that demon “Jim Crow” had saturated America.
The nefarious pitch-out at that time was when that Republican
President-elect Rutherford B. Hayes, who was a devil incarnate,
bargained the Blacks back into a Ku Klux Klan’s hell, far worse
than chattel slavery.
The honorable Reubin Askew, the courageous Governor of the
State of Florida,summed up busing in a manner far superior than
our President did. Mr. Askew speaking at the University of
Florida summer commencement sounded like the greatest
statesman heard to date on this labyrinth of busing emotionalism.
The governor said, “Busing certainly is an artificial and
inadequate instrument of change. Nobody really wants it - not
you, not me, even Black people nor the courts. Yet the law
demands, and rightly so, that we put an end to segregation in our
society. We must demonstrate good faith in doing just that. In
this way and in this way, only will we stop massive busing and put
the divisive and self-defeating issue of race behind us once and for
all.”
Accordingly to the assumptions on which he habitually acts,
our Governor thinks in that same manner, but he has pseudo
Christian Lt. Governor going around the State spreading
sanctimonious “Hell and Brimstone” against Washington, but
spending every dime they hand-out up there.
He would crucify Mr. Carter if he would make a
straight-forward statement on this vital and moral issue.
(IT IS THE NAACP VS THE CALIFORNIA TAX STRUCTURE)
Richmond County’s whites had better save some of their
busing venom for the above epoch case; because if the U.S.
Supreme Court upholds the California Supreme Court, which
handed down the ruling, all restricted suburbias will be doomed.
It will wreck the exclusiveness and destroy the tax mode of every
bourgeois development in America.
Then arrogant middle and upper white classes will be sorry,
that every tax dollar was not truly and equally spread over the
poor communities. Os course this case is aimed only at school
taxes, but if it is upheld, who knows what will be next, street
paving, utilities etc.
The crux of the case is that the California Supreme Court
elaborated that widely varying local communities violated the
federal constitution in their outlay for schools. The court held
that because the property tax bases of local communities varied
so widely, the amount of money available for education also
varies, particularly when translated into per-pupil expenditures.
This contravenes the equal-protection clause of the U.S.
Constitution.
This ruling could easily be a serious weakening and maybe
destructive of the principle of local government, as it is today in
America, since all local principalities discriminate against the poor
and the Blacks. The equal-protection clause has been abused over
the years by many states, chiefly in matters of race.
Since the famous U.S. Supreme Court Brown decision of 1955
which discarded “separate but equal” sanction of school
segregation, the U.S. has made significant strides toward equal
protection for minority groups. The California decision appears
to be another giant step in this direction. White America just as
well get into the mood for a truly pluralistic society, because the
American judiciary from the very top is tired of pussy-footing on
this senseless business of race. The federal courts are saying that
state laws must not arbitrarily discriminate against any person or
group not even in what they offer their citizens in municipal
services.
$$ WANTED $#
LADIES TO BE TRAINED IN IBM
KEYPUNCH. NO EXPERIENCE
NECESSARY, WE TRAIN. ONLY SINCERE
NEED APPLY.
Call 724-0249
CTI
FIVE POINT PROGRAM
★
J. W. SPENCE WILL WORK TO ACCOAAPLISH
THE FOLLOWING:
1. PRESENT A PLAN TO HELP ELIMINATE "AGE OLD" RAILROAD
PROBLEM
2. HELP PREVENT INCREASE IN YOUR CITY TAXES.
3. WORK TO LOWER OUR WATER RATES.
4. HELP PROMOTE MORE "EQUAL OPPORTUNITY" PRACTICES IN
OUR CITY GOVERNMENT.
5. HELP PROMOTE MORE "NEIGHBORHOOD P.ARKS".
PLUS: WILL ALWAYS VOTE ON ANY ISSUE FOR THE BEST INTEREST
OF ALL OUR CITIZENS.
I \
ELECT
J. W. SPENCE
7TH WARD CITY COUNCIL
"A MAN WITH A PROGRAM
FOR YOU"
YOUR VOTE AND SUPPORT
WILL BE APPRECIATED