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Spring (leaning 70 — Mercer involvement
The first Saturday of May
was hit in Macon. The side
walks were lined with newly
disearced trash A crane was
lifting junked autos onto a flat
bed and a black man’s face was
spattered with white paint. A
1948 newspaper ar ' an old log
were cleared from an empty lot
while a little kid painted his
house from the foundation up
to the window sills — as high as
he could reach Co-eds cleared
out an overgrown backyard
Someone braced up a fallen
porch. Hundreds of smali child
ren wore new tee shirts reading
"SPRING CLEANING 70,"
and gawked as the C & S heli
copter sat down al the Green
Street Elementary School
headquarters. Everyone was
caught resting one time or an
other, away from the dust, the
cleaning and the sun
Spring Cleaning, sponsored
by the C & S Bank of Macon
was a hearty success May 2,
when over 90 Mercer students
were involved in cleaning and
fixing up the section of Macon
from Forsyth Street to River
side Drive and from Madison
Street to 1-75.
I’he goals of Spring Cleaning
70 are many and varied The
program, with the aid of Mer
cer’s Chi Omega and Alpha
Delta Pi sororities, Kappa
Alpha and Phi Delta Theta fra
ternities, student volunteers
and ROTC I who acted as block
captains) was designed to help
approximately 7,000 dis
advantaged people living in the
area to help themselves The
day and the clean up were not
an end in themselves, but a
starting point for improving
the lives of the indigent people
in the area
By including all classes,
races and ages at every stage of
the program the development
of mutual understanding and
trust bet ween rich and poor,
black and while, young and old
toppled some of the traditional
social barriers of distrust and
prejudice which have acted as a
barrier of improvement for the
impoverished
Spring Cleaning is an annual
project in yh irh the entire
Macon community partici
pales Sponsored by the Citi
zen's and Southern National
Bank the program seeks to in
spire personal pride in the resi
dents of impoverished areas
The concept was first tried in
Savannah in 1968 by the C & S
Bank there That year 10,000
people got together to clean up
a 109 block area, and the re
suits were so spectacular that
11 other Georgia cities had
Spring Cleaning programs in
1969 Fhis year more than 50
cities participated in the dean
up
Dramatic changes were seen
to take place in the appearance
of the neighborhood which in
turn served as a stimulus to
make people want to keep
their property in order Em
phasis was on hauling away
junked cars and appliance.,,
cleaning up the debris which
had been allowed to accumu
late along thoroughfares and
painting and fixing houses To
compliment the clean up effort
the C & S Bank has established
and capitalized a wholly-owned
subsidiary, the Community De
velopment Corporation, which
lends money to disadvantaged
people to start' business and
buy homes.
.Spring Cleaning is not a
“hand out" or "give away”
program. Some financial ba< k
mg Is gjven and many commun
ity. volunteers, such as the stu
dents at Mercer, pitch in to
provide manpower and equip
ment, but the individual resi
dents must actively join m the
work to participate in the pro
gram At each house, almost
without exception, the owner
or tenant could be found out
in front watching the proceed
ings In many cases, the child
ren of the families pitched in
themselves with a paint brush
or a hand in cleaning out junk
and weeds The most impor
tant aspect of Spring Cleaning
is that rt is not in any way a
government implemented
"poverty program "
An elderly woman in a new-
concrete house who had placed
some old trunks on the curb
was asked if she thought Spring
Cleaning was a good thing.
“Yes ma’am,” she replied,
looking out at the activity in
the empty lot next door, "sure
is Across the street an elderly
man in a neat hpuse which did
not appear to need extensive
fixing i.p. had vestured himself
in hi, Sunday best to cut his
grass with a scythe.
The streets were lined with
stacks ol discarded junk, inter
mingled with barrels of white
wash, true':s picking up the
trash and paint spattered
people of all ages and descrip
tions. A woman whose house
was being painted commented.
'It's a wonderful joo they're
doing I In- first tnnu it’s been
painted in hifty y'ears i appro
dale what you all are doing
Mercer sophomore Mike
Maffeo related the tale of his
involvement in Spring Clean
ing "A friend .got me up al ,'i
am and asked me to clean up a
slum. I didn't Inow I was a
sanitation engineer but I ended
up painting three houses and
rebuilding two porches today ’
In the next block a young
woman debated with herself
and passers by whether or not
she could paint a house She
watched at the distance of a
street width but, was too shy to
cross over and ask for a.paint
brush What did she think?
"This is good an' it s free!"
John Costello, a Mercer stu
dent from Hollywood, Ha dis
cussed some of the minor pro ’
blems he experienced as block
captain “Some of the volun
teers weren t strong enough for
heavier clean up but were a
great help doing such things as
raking and crawling under
houses."
From an efficiency stand
point Costello saw the program
this wav "We were pretty suc
cessful but some of the people
weren't home and we couldn’t
clean out under the houses. We
didn’t know what they wanted
to throw away. At the houses
where the people told us what
to take everything went along
pretty smoothly. As far as J’m
concerned, we got a great deal
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