Newspapers / Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.) / Oct. 27, 1983, edition 1 / Page 4
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Page A4-The Chronicle, Thursday, October 27, 1983 Wiriston-Salem Ctir'oiiicle Founded 1974 ERNEST H. PITT, pM,r NDUBISI EGEMONYE Co-f (tuntler ALLEN JOHNSON Executive Editor ELAINE L. PITT O/Ju e Murwxer JOHN SLADE Asfist^nt Editor The Package You have heard at this point - and are likely to hear a good deal more in the next 12 days - of the pros and cons concerning the Nov. 8 city-county bond referendum. Proponents of the package say it is essential to the growth of the city, the savior of an economy that threatens to stagnate right along with the tobacco industry that has been its staple for far too long. A vote for the bond package, they say, is a vote for jobs and education, as well as an exciting new era in the city’s progress. The signposts are impressive enough. The new Winston Plaza hotel has sprouted like a concrete and mortar plant in the heart of downtown and the Stevens Center adds new vibrance and elegance to Fourth Street. What’s to follow, we are told, is even more breathtaking: an industrial park near Winston-Salem State University, development of the so-called Superblock across from City Hall, an expanded Benton Convention Center, an expanded Forsyth Tech, and a new, improved city-county school system. Opponents of the bonds, whose numbers appear to grow as November nears, say those visions are through rose- colored glasses. Beneath the glittering facade of progress for some - especially the business community — they say, is much of the same old song for the black and poor: a lack of jobs, a lack of housing and an educational system that con tinues to look the other way when their needs are discussed. The pro-bond forces’ assurances that what’s good for the city will be good for everyone just don’t wash with them. In fact, some opponents say, those assurances sound suspiciously like a local version of Ronald Reagan’s trickle- down economics. A number of respected leaders in the black community have indicated that they support the bonds. A number of respected leaders in the black community have indicated that they don’t. While Louise Wilson, Mutter Evans, Thomas Elijah, Jerry Drayton and Virginia Newell say they endorse the bonds, Larry Little, Larry Womble, Mel White, Clifton Graves and Pat Hairston say they plan to defeat the entire package. What air this rneans is that we as citizens need to study the issues carefully and know our stuff before casting our votes Nov. 8. Next issue, the Chronicle will publish its position on the referendum. Already, we have expressed grave reservations about the bonds that would fund the reorganization of the schools. The school board’s treatment of the black community in its four-year high school plan is callous and disrepectful at best. But the school bond is only one part of the whole. We’ll examine it in detail next issue. Martin’s Day No thanks to Sen. Jesse Helms, whose foolish and misguided attempts to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.’s character years after James Earl Ray’s bullet ended his life, the United States will celebrate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the third Monday in January, beginning in 1986. Helms, who, we are ashamed to say, represents our state in the Senate, once again used ignorance and fear as his prin cipal tools, groping blindly and desperately into Dr. King’s alleged association with communists to find a reason not to honor the civil rights giant. Martin will have his day, though, and his memory, we hope, will keep his dreams of brotherhood and peace alive. Ironically, while Helms and his woefully confused black campaign press secretary, Claude Allen, expressed concern that King had communist leanings. Dr. King’s dreams were, in reality, as American as dreams come. America’s ideals were fine. Dr. King said more than once, if only Americans would practice them. “1 have a dream,” Dr. King said, “that one day this na tion will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal....” That doesn’t sound un-American to us. What does, however, is the consistent use of fear, pre judice and negativism to meet one’s personal ends. As does Mr. Helms, whose FBI files we think ought to be checked posthaste. About Letters... The Chronicle welcomes letters to the editor as well as guest columns. Letters should be typed or neatly printed and concise in length. They should also include the full name, address and phone number of the writer. Letters should be addressed to Chronicle Letters, Winston-Salem Chronicle, P.O. Box 3154, Winston-Salem, N.C. 27102. TH£ tAAiRTlW LUTHeR KlUe HOL-IDW IS m (i IT REPRESEHTS ^ NWlOWM RELDNCILIMIOW Q(^ KND TWM l£ \MHV I tUbom To Sl&W UK... Do You HKve ^ Pettai? Genuine Heroes Against Busing By TONY BROIVN Syndicated Columnist This column will introduce you to three new genuine folk heroes of to day’s American scene. It will anger you, or should, if you have an ounce of humanity or charity for those in oUr midst who have not developed enough wealth and power to defend themselves. Norfolk, Va., a peaceful city of 290,000, is about 67 percent white with a school enrollment that is 70 percent black. The debate over busing is split into three factions: the school board which has voted for a reduced busing plan among the elementary school children only; two mainly middle-class black pro-busing groups who want no reduction in busing at all; and a group of low-income black parents who agree with the school board. They are bearing the brunt of busing and getting little in return for it. Power is also what some of. the middle-class established black leaders in Norfolk want. Busing for integra tion seems to be a smoke screen for getting it. By creating a furor for more race mixing in the schools and demanding continued busing of black children from black neighborhoods across town to white neighborhoods, and by demanding that white children also be tormented in the same process, the pro-busing integrationist deny the ac tual parents, mostly black and poor, any role in deciding whether they want continued busing. While the debate boils, the whites run — “white flight’’ they call it. When the majority of the city is black, the promoters of hypocrisy plan to be elected and appointed to the city’s highest offices. The poor black families, of course, bear the burden of this busing scam. In Norfolk, it almost worked, but the real “whites” stopped the bus. Earlean and Nelson White may be poor, black and grassroots, but they are not stupid - nor anywhere near it. And that was the big miscalculation that the would-be black power brokers overlooked. At first, Earlean and Nelson weren’t too smart. They believed their children were riierely the inno cent victims of insensitive middle- class blacks with no children in the schools who were naively exploiting their children for busing for integration, believing, a- gain, innocent ly, that white people were su perior and it would rub off. They got over that illusion soon. The whites Tony Brown found out that innocence and naivete are not a part of busing in Norfolk. It was a clear-cut case of blacks exploit ing blacks. The pro-busing bunch make no secret about its lack of regard for quality education; it just wants more busing. But Earlean, her husband Nelson and Hortense Wells, the only one of three school board members to side with the poor and black parents, stopped the bus - or “train” as some would call it. Later this month on public television (PBS), I will present this story of ex ploitation, greed, power and innocent bravery in a program called “Their Feet Hurt.” These grassroots blacks stoppec the bus. This is one of the most in tense and bitter revolts of poor inner- city black parents in the nation. With all of the earmarks of social-class warfare, the Parental Involvemeni Network (PIN) (516 W. 36th Street, Norfolk, Va. 23508 (804) 627-1875), E maverick grassroots group, is con fronting the city’s established blacl- leadership over the controversial issut of busing for racial mixture. Th( dissident black voices are led by PIb Chairman Earlean White, i housewife, and her husband Nelson a 44-year-old house painter. Th( whites have five children in the public schools and believe the children arc “victims of racial politics” in which an insensitive black middle class is us ing the busing issue for political gain at the expense of the poor. Mrs. White went from door to door in the lower-income housing projects to collect 1,200 signatures on petitions from black parents. She said of these dissident black voices: “We feel like we have sacrificed 11 years of children, because black children have regressed badly. We’re not willing to sacrifice any more black children, be they mine or anybody else’s.” While the Whites bear the burden of busing, they are abused by the local black leadership and vilified on the black-owned radio station with such personal attacks as “dancing to the white man’s music,” “not being in their right mind,” and “being us ed.” But these slurs have not stopped PIN or broken its spirit. The Two Voices In Our Community By WALTER MARSHALL Guest Columnist There exist within the black com munity both black voices for real change and black voices to maintain the status quo. These forces make it difficult to achieve economic, political or social parity, and create a situation in which the black com munity is more of a cage than a co coon. Nothing has magnified this more than the upcoming bond issue. Many blacks who are being adver tised as black leaders are proving themselves to be nothing more than robots for the power structure, which is not seeking so much to change the old way of distributing power and wealth as it is to maintain the status quo. In this case, as it has been in the past, black citizens will not be given the key to the cages of their economic oppression. They will only receive a few crumbs of the economic scraps that may trickle down. Though the purpose of this column is to clarify the NAACP’s position on the school reorganization, it is necessary and important that blacks be made aware of the low esteem in which the policy-makers and bond sellers view the black majority. The NAACP did not seek any special treatment for blacks in the school reorganization plan. It sought only to be treated fairly and with human dignity, knowing that if the school board could not treat all segments of the community fairly by utilizing facilities within the black community unbiasly to achieve the ultimate goal of quality education for when the issue does not address or recognize the rights of a minority to exist under the same standards as the majority, the minority must submit to the double indignity of dehumaniza tion and exploitation. In 1978, the NAACP supported in principle the Adams plan for four- year high schools. It did not support a plan for reorganizing the elementary schools or the junior high schools because all of the plans discussed in volved the closing of most black ‘'The most pressing factor in the NAACP’s opposition to the school reorganization rests with the fact that the no one should be expected to support his own degradation. all students, then there would be little hope for black professionals to gain parity within the professional ranks under the leadership of the present board. The most pressing factor in the NAACP’s opposition to the school reorganization rests with the fact that no one should be expected to support his own degradation. By supporting an issue, whether for schools or jobs. schools and more busing of black students. Since the Adams plan, the NAACP’s position has been consis tent and clear. The organization has •supported a fair plan for closing and utilizing school facilities to meet the needs of the declining enrollment^ •sought to utilize school facilities within the black community at every Please see page A 5 Cuts Hurt Black Children By MARIAN EDELMAN Guest Columnist WRIGHt The majority of blacks across the country, like the grassroots blacks in Norfolk, oppose busing for integra tion. Dr. Constance E. Clayton, Philadelphia’s first black school Please see page A 5 In black America today, the chances are that almost one in two of our children is poor. The fact is that our nation has more poor peo- pie now than it did in 1965 when the war on poverty was just begin ning. In the first two years of this decade, children at the rate of over one million a year were pushed below the poverty level. And for blacks, it’s even more grim: The poverty rate for black youngsters isi 47.6 percent, three times that of whites, and, in our female-headed, families, over two-thirds of the children are poor. Consider the children: In New York, a teen-age boy drops out of| school to help support his family;! in Philadelphia, a 3-year-old child; is abandoned in an elevaior| because his desperate mother can offer him no home; in Detroit, an infant born underweight faces a lifetime of physical and mental problems because his mother never received proper prenatal care. Yet Ronald Reagan assures us that his policies are not hurting truly needy poor families and children. That simply is not true. The Reagan administration’s un fair budget decisions have assaulted our young. Some $10 billion in real cuts have been made in remedial education, school lun ches, daycare and other vital pro grams, even as the administration gave $750 billion in tax breaks to the rich and increased military spending by $55 billion. We are losing millions of our children to the streets, poverty, drugs, alcohol, crime, welfare dependency, joblessness, poor health, inadequate education and hopeless lives. All the while. Presi dent Reagan proceeds to spend billions on new weapons of death, while slashing the programs thai can improve the quality of the lives of our children and the poor. Guns instead of bread, missiles before mothers, bombs before babies. If President Reagan suc ceeds with his plans, it will mean that the poorest and mosl vulnerable children in America will have lost $1 out of $6 spent on them before he took office. The future is even bleaker, Massive unemployment, a falter ing economy and thousands of black families are feeling the brunt. Recovery may be on the way, but black America’s been critically wounded, and, without specific care, could well be suffer ing irreversible losses. The only way black Americans benefit is when we all become ac tively involved fighting for ourselves. Sitting on the sidelines didn’t make the civil rights legisla tion pass — our actions did Segregation didn’t die a natural death. Black folk rising up in pro- Please see page AS Chronicle Letters Who Are The Real Leaders? To The Editor: (The following letter was written to the Winston-Salem Journal.) This letter is written in response to your staff reporter’s article titl ed “Black Ministers’ Group Will! Take No Stand On Bonds” ap' pearing in the Oct. 12 Journal. This is only one of several negative articles appearing in youi paper relative to the “blacl: leaders’. East Winston leaders’ etc., inability to state clearly iht community’s position regardinjj the multi-million dollar bonc| issue. Your reporters may or may- not have put forth sufficient effor| Please see page AS MORe ms&as ^v^o rAORe Sir- Poes this Y/e'Re PRActtciNer eOMBOAT DiPLOfAACY? ofcoutse cjp' THIS m NOTHlNCr To DOWTH NOT...
Winston-Salem Chronicle (Winston-Salem, N.C.)
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Oct. 27, 1983, edition 1
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