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THE NEWS-REVIEW
PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY
930 Gwirinett Street - Augusta, Georgia
Mallory K. Millender ...... Editor and Publisher
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"GOING /
PLACES” £
Philip Waring
(Guest Columnist today is Dr. John A. Morsell, Asst. Exec.
Director of the NAACP)
HOW TO FOSTER DIVISION IN BLACK RANKS
As conveyed in N.Y. TIMES reporter G. Gerald Frasier s
October 8 news story on Roy Innis and the CORE convention,
Mr. Innis’ ideas and concepts in the field of race relations are a
briar patch of confusion. One has to assume that his observations,
diagnoses and prescriptions are put forth seriously, although in
this era of the persavise “put-on”, one can never be sure.
Comment on them is an inescapable duty, since failure to do so
might enlarge the ranks of the gullible who reason that, if a
statement is not publicly refuted, it must be true.
There are a few items in the mangy mythology of black racism
that have been dragged out more consistently over the past
couple of generations than the one about the “house nigger-field
nigger” dichotomy in the slave past. One of these few is the
corollary myth that the lineal descendants of the house slaves
provides succeeding generations of Toms, while the sons and
daughters of the field slaves were uniformly heroic and
determined in their quest for freedom. Genuine history, of course
furnishes no support whatsoever for this notion; the heroes and
the villains seem to have been pretty evenly distributed in the
house and in the field.
No Biological Basis
Biology, moreover, affords no basis for the assumption that the
presence of “white” genes in the heredity of contemporary black
people can be inferred from their skin color. Almost any Negro of
whom one may inquire (including Roy Innis) knows of
innumerable instances of light-skinned children of dark-skinned
parents, of a parents light complexion whose children are dark.
More significantly, the notion that ideology, commitment to
racial justice and the capacity to sacrifice even life for them are
correlated in any way with skin color is a contemptible insult to
the memories of thousands of martyred Negroes of all shades and
hues. It is equally an affront to to those memories to suggest that
the integration goal for which most of these people made their
sacrifices is a concoction derived from compromise with the
oppressor.
Characterized NAACP Members
That divisions have existed among Negroes on the basis of
skin-color graduations is not news, although most knowledgeable
observers would agree that they were sharply diminished
importance until recently. To seek to revive and magnify them
now, to enshrine them as a rallying cry, makes Mr. Innis’
deploring of racial disunity the sheerest hypocrisy. It is of a piece
with this vision of the imaginary barricades across which he calls
for “armistices” and “non-aggression pacts” between presumably
embattled forces of the black nationalist and the integrationists.
The capacity to think in fantasy terms such as these is
consistent only with the irresponsibility with which Mr. Innis
chose to characterize the 400,000 members of the NAACP, who,
he said, “are house niggers”. He manifestly did not intend it, but
he c,"rld not have thought of a more effective way to make
“house nigger” a term of honor.
During our 21-year stint of writing “GOING PLACES” it has
been open to various points of view and today it is Dr. Morsell’s
turn via his October 16 letter-to-the editor of the N.Y. TIMES. As
Mr. Innis’s characterization of NAACP members as “house
niggers” will for a long time be a frequent source of dialogue
within the American Black Community, I naturally wanted
readers of my column in Stamford and Augusta, Georgia to get
background information on it.
A BLACK VIEW OF THE NEW ECONOMIC PROGRAM
by Harold R. Sims
Acting Executive Director National Urban League
In a perfect America, President Nixon’s new economic program
would apply with equal weight to all segments of the polygot
mixture that make up this country. This being less than a perfect
nation, the policy does not apply equally at all economic levels,
and for blacks there is a special degree of inequality.
That new directions were needed to shore up a sagging
economy was painfully obvious. The economic “game plan” ofthe
President was plainly not working and he acted boldly in devising
a new eight-point program that holds out the very real possibility
of stimulating the economy and stemming the mounting overseas
attack on the dollar.
However, in ordering a freeze on wages, while failing at the
same time to request legislation permitting a freeze on dividends
and profits, the President seemed to be adopting different
approaches to different economic interests. The wage freeze will
not be felt in a negative sense by employers, but by their
employees, with the greatest impact being felt by those at the
lowest end of the wage seal? - where the bulk of blacks are
concentrated.
Despite the present high cost of living, which cannot be
expected to drop appreciably within the next few months, poorly
paid workers are being told they must continue to exist on
inadequate salaries for at least the next 90 days, while their
employers are free to increase their profits as much as they can.
The efforts being made all ever the country to raise to at least
the minimum wage level, the salaries of hospital workers,
sanitation people, and domestics and others will have to be
deferred.
Such a situation, where the rich are favored over the poor, will
not be tolerated too long by the general public, which has to
support the program if it is to work. Already labor is beginning to
growl and the chorus of discontent will become louder and louder
as more workers experience wage denials while no such structures
are placed on those much more able to bear the burden of
sacrifice.
The program also fails the jobless, particularly the black jobless
\ T c ..s-Review October 21, 1971
Walking
WITH XJr?’
DIGNITY
Al IRBY
(AMERICA WAS UNKIND TO BLACK INTELLECTUALS IN
THE EARLY PART OF THE 20TH CENTURY)
Dr. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the most cruelly
malignant black intellectual in America’s history. Basically he was
a strict constructive integrationist, but was so rebuffed so
ignominiously by the establishment; until he ran the entire gamut
of the ideological scale. He ended up a member of the
Community Party, a political exile from the country of his birth.
Unlike Paul Robeson and Marcus Garvey, the other two black
giants of dissent, Mr. Du Bois was treated as a common criminal.
At one time he was shamefully handcuffed, this ordeal
completely damaged his sensitive soul. Robeson elected to leave
the country; Garvey was framed and betrayed by the Federal
Government and conniving blacks and was deported to his native
Jamaica.
In one of Du Bois’s many books, the “Dusk Os Dawn” he says:
“The Negro is a sort of seventh son born with a veil and gifted
with second sight in this American World -a world which yields
him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself
through the revelation of the other world. One ever feels Iris
twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one black body,
whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Mass. On his
mother’s side (the Burghardts) he was descended from a slave
brought from Africa in colonial days and manumitted after the
American Revolution. His father’s ancestry was partly French
Huguenot. He later described himself as: “Born with a flood of
Negroic blood, a strain of French, a bit of Dutch, but thank God
no Anglo-Saxon.”
In the Housatonic Valley town, Du Bois grew up feeling no
sense of difference or separation from the main mass- of
townspeople. His consciousness of blackness began when he went
off to college at Fisk University in Tennessee.
At Fisk he studied the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Greek
Testament, conic section, calculus, rhetoric, French grammar and
literature, botony, more Greek and Latin classics, German
grammar, astronomy, the beginnings of “mental sciences”, ethics,
political economy, English literature and chemistry. Later, at
Harvard, he was a student held in esteem by such as William
James, George Santayana and Albert Bushnell Hart. He was
graduated in 1890, cum laude, as a philosophy major, the first
black to achieve such distinction at Harvard.
For two years he studied political economy and history at the
University of Berlin where, still a young man, he began to see the
race problem in America, and the problems of the peoples of
Africa and Asia. His education cast ironic light on the clamor in
schools and colleges for “Black Studies”. To Du Bois being black
was his primary contribution to the clamor for black studies.
At Fisk he asserted: “I am a Negro; and I glory in the fact.” “I
am proud of my black blood.” To him, the first task was to
master the learning of the dominant society, to demonstrate the
falseness of slurs that the black man was inferior, as he felt that
he would always be considered until he was conversant with, and
could appreciate, Western culture.
That done, Du Bois literally launched “Black Studies”, in the
sense in which that concept is sound. His “The Philadelphia
Negro” (1888) is a classic of sociology. His doctoral theses,
published in the Harvard Historical Series, was “Suppression of
the African Slave Trade to the United States.”
His career is too full for adequate summary. He was a founder
of the NAACP and for years edited the monthly magazine “The
Crisis” which was its organ while also being uniquely the voice of
Dr. Du Bois. His major books include “The Soul Os Black Folk”
(1903), containing a famous essay on Booker T. Washington,
“Darkwater” (1920) and “The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du
Bois.” In his book “The Seventh Son” he said, “I would have
been hailed with approval if I had died at 50. At 75 my death was
practically requested.” He was treated shamefully by the U.S.
government in his 80’s. He was indicted and handcuffed
humiliatingly as an alleged agent of a foreign power, was
vindicated in the courts, was afterward denied a passport to be
present at the independence ceremonies of Ghana, where, as in all
other emergent African nations he was regarded as the
spiritual-intellectual father of Pan-Africanism. Du Bois died in
1963 at the age of 95, in Ghana, where he had taken citizenship
and was at work on his project for an Encyclopedia Africana.
Honored almost everywhere but at home.
He was given a state funeral and lies buried less than a hundred
yards from the shore from which millions of Africans were
carried away in slavery. Dr. Du Bois was one of the great sons of
America, total implications of his life and experience should be
studied by every Black-American.
whose unemployment rate in May of this year stood at 10.5
percent - the highest since November, 1963. If the new program
works and the total unemployment level drops, still untouched
will be the mass of the black unemployed who need nothing less
than an all-out manpower effort on the part of the Federal
government to bring them into the laboring force.
The President made it clear that this is not in the offing when
he expressed his primary concern as being for the “two million
workers (who) have been released from the Armed Forces and
defense plants because of success in winding down the war in
Vietnam.”
These are basically white workers who were temporarily
affected by the nation’s economic slowdown. Black and poor
people who make up the majority of the long-term unemployed
and underemployed were never beneficiaries of the war machine,
and so their plight remains the same.
Another concern to blacks over the new program is in what
areas the proposed $4.7 billion reduction in Federal budget will
be made. Given the tendency of any administration to make the
initial and heaviest reductions in those programs that provide
social services to people, rather than in arms and subsidy
appropriations, there is reason to be disturbed over the possibility
of further cuts in already under-financed people-orientated
programs.
The President’s decision to postpone the fight for welfare
reforms must also be counted as a negative factor in his program.
It comes at a time when reform - although far from what is
desirable - was a real possibility and it has to be hoped that the
temporary moratorium is not a burial ceremony. In the
meantime, attention should be given to improving the
unsatisfactory administration approach to reform.
For what it can do to revitalize the economy, the President’s
program is well-intentioned but it falls far short on answering the
needs of those furtherest down the economic ladder for which
nothing less than a Domestic Marshall Plan for America will
suffice.
Page 2
[ LETTERS TO EpTtOß* j
Dear Sir:
I read with great interest
your article on Sickle Cell
Anemia, which appeared in the
News-Review on September
30. However, I feel that the
article is somewhat misleading,
and I would like to give you a
few facts.
I have been employed at the
Medical College of Georgia for
over nine years as secretary to
Dr. Titus H.J. Huisman. Doctor
Huisman is a world-renown
authority on sickle cell anemia
and sickle cell disease, coming
from his home country (The
Netherlands) to the Medical
College of Georgia in 1959 to
carry on his research in sickle
cell hemoglobin. His list of
publications contain more than
20 articles on sickle cell
hemoglobin. His work is
supported almost completely
by the National Institutes of
Health.
In connection with his work
he has identified more than 15
abnormal hemoglobin types,
most being in the Negro race.
We have also opened our
laboratories to anyone caring
to have a sickle cell test - this
at no charge to the patient or
any public agency. I also
understand that plans are being
made to open a sickle cell
clinic for treatment and study
of both children and adults and
I hope the formal
announcement of its opening
will come soon.
Now that President Nixon
has announced he has set up a
large sum of money for the
study of sickle cell anemia and
monies for research are tight in
other areas, many researchers
are “jumping on the band
wagon”. The public has been
made aware of some few
people who are working on the
disease. Please don’t mislead
the public about research
aimed at sickle cell
hemoglobin. Research of this
type has been going on right
here in Augusta at the Medical
College of Georgia for over 12
years. To date there is no “sure
cure”, the main problem is to
educate the public to just what
the abnormality is.
We have booklets on sickle
cell disease which are available
to anyone who is interested;
the booklets may be had by
contacting me at my office,
(724-7111 ext. 694).
Sincerely
Mrs. Ann P. Patch
Dear Editor
I am writing this letter to
further clarify my position
with regard to your fairly
recent article on my resigning a
local pastorate to become a full
time social worker and college
teacher. It has come to my
attention that some persons
have chosen to misinterpret
our (yours and mine)
presentation. I am further
writing to express some of my
views on the organized
Christian church (or religion)
and especially the black
church.
Firstly, I have not given up
preaching but I have resigned
from the parish ministry. One
must be mindful of the
distinction between a “call” to
preach and a “call” to the
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ministry. A call to the ministry
does involve preaching but it
must include service or
ministering to human needs
and conditions. Blacks have
traditionally been the
recipients of more “preaching”
than they have to the kinds of
ministries that involves concern
for both body and soul. The
result of that unfortunate
focus on the saving of souls is
that many bodies are lost.
Black people must wake up
and demand that their
ministers be more than “suit
case preachers” who preach on
a given Sunday and run to
other churches and towns on
other Sundays. Each church
should move to the point
where it is a full time church
that pays an adequate salary to
its minister. Black churches
must cease paying starvation
wages to their ministers and
placing unrealistic demands on
them for their time and service.
An ideal church is one that
has either a fully trained
minister, or one that seeks to
constantly study and prepare
himself for his role. This
church should also have day
care, educational tutoring,
financial assistance, religious
education, and many other
programs that are of genuine
service to its members.
I have been greatly
impressed by the ministry of
the Rev. Arthur D. Sims. He is
working with and for people
and seeks to do the best he can
do. Many persons who may
disagree with his methods or
techniques should view the
tangible results of his efforts
for the basic liberation of his
people. He is honest and will
tell one to go to hell in person
rather than “behind his back”.
There is a great need for many
more Arthur Sims who practice
what they preach rather than
moaning and groaning about
heaven. One must be a part of
the solution or he is definitely
a part of the problem.
Finally, I shall always preach
but not in the traditional way
that preaching is done in many
black churches. I have never
been a “traditional” preacher
who moans in eight keys while
shifting his brain in neutral and
his emotions in drive. The need
for more teaching in black
churches is so critical that their
continued existence is in
question. What is your church
doing in the community? What
type of minister is your
“preacher”? A pablum Gospel
and a pacifying preacher is no
longer needed in black
churches. God help us to rise
to contemporary situations by
dealing contructively with the
social problems of today.
Roosevelt Green
EULOGY TO THE BLACK
SOULS LOST
To the Editor:
O Black Brothers, lying
stone cold in that cold gray
yard. For the first and last time
you had the guts to stand up as
men declaring for all the world
to see your worth as men
instead of Niggers and you
forfeited your lives. White
power was your epitaph as the
real animals fresh kill-beat their
chests with pride. The pride of
Jackals.
As I sit in the comfort of my
living room sipping a drink,
surrounded by love and
material comforts I realize-not
suddenly-like the flash of
lightening-illuminating the cold
gray skies-but slowly like the
warmth and glow of slow
burning embers suddenly
bursting into the hue of an
orange, purple, yellow flame. I
realize brothers, that we are
one, you and I. A oneness that
cannot be separated by
distance, or thick gray walls, a
oneness that brings us ever
closer by your action and yodr
death.
You see black brother, I am
a sister who believed she could
make it in this civilized world.
One who has enjoyed the
comforts and materials this
highly techni-colorized society
has brought about. Had I been
born a black man I might have
shared in your triumph.
Though they tried to smite
you by saying you were
animals without regard for
other human life. Though they
said that you slit the throats of
other humans and wondered
who created the like of
you-forgetting their own
religious philosophy-that
being-all men are created in
God’s image. My
brothers—your individual and
group courage, your
humanistic treatment of the
same tormentors who were
your hostages; the fact that
you and not State Police or
National Guard saved the lives
of many of those same
tormentors—did much to prove
to the world who the real
animals were.
Society adjudged you
animals my brothers - stole
away your rights locked you
away in cages and forgot you
existed. They charged you with
being murderers, thieves,
rapists and the like. They
soothed their consciences by
banishing you from their view.
You see you reminded them
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of what locks do to humans..
What prejudices do to humans.
What law and order
justice does to humans.
You see my brothers; they
forgot what Brother Malcolm
said after J.R.K. was murdered
- “a case of chickens coming
home to roost.”
They forgot or perhaps they
have never learned, that they
who treat or condone the
treatment of any living
creature in a sadistic manner,
themselves take over the
characteristics of sadists;
humans without feelings for
other living things and humans
who derive pleasure from the
suffering of others—are humans
who eventually turn on their
ow» kind.
Yes Black Brothers, though
they harangued you, shrilly
crying out your epitaph “white
power” and attempted to
demean your black ,maleness
with the scream NIGGER.
Though they called your
actions mutiny and anarchy.
They proved for the whole
world that it was they who had
reverted to the dehumanized
predators they had accused
you of being. It was they that
were mutineers and anarchists
and they who have committed
crimes against the entire
non-white race. I
Right-on my brothers.
you rest in peace with the
realization that you have
shown your brothers and
sisters the road to
self-realization. With inner
strength borne from the
knowledge that your only
crime was that you wanted to
be treated as men and
realization that only death will
bring lasting peace in our
continued struggle for
recogniation as men and
women in this animalistic,
civilized, society..
GOD BLESS
C.V. McCannon
Brooklyn, New York
Reprinted from the New York
Amsterdam News