TJTT
VolumeV, Number 4
★ 20 cents^
"The NEWSpaper Winston's been waiting for"
18 pages this week Saturday Sept. 23, 1978
'If It Isn't Them, It Don't Matter'
By John W. Templeton
Staff Writer
The concern showed in the homeowner’s face as he
walked up to the unmarked police car. He had a lot to
gripe about. 
First, he asked if anything could be done about a man
frequenting the vacant house next door. He took classes
at night, and he was concerned that the vagrant might
harm his wife and children.
He didn’t trust his neighbors on the one-block long
unpaved street only a few hundred feet from several
blocks cleared out for redevelopment, he cited the
shooting and poisoning of two of his guard dogs.
“The folks on this street have the attitude that if it
wasn’t them, it don’t matter,’’ the homeowner said.
Inside the police car, nodding as if he had heard the
story a million times, was Frank D. Green, a walking
“crime beat” who has the responsibility for “crime
prevention” over much of the black community of
Winston-Salem.
Green took the opportunity to push Neighborhood
Watch, the program the police department is touting as
a way to reduce crime. He explained that the
cooperation of the man’s neighbors was needed to
make such a program work.
The homeowner thought for a second, looked up and
down the street and turned back to Green. “How can I
make it (Neighborhood Watch) work, when maybe my
neighbor wants to do it (break in) himself?” he asked.
“That’s the problem,” said Green as he drove away
from the conversation. He passed through neighbor
hoods of ramshackle houses, mostly populated by
renters.
Crime in Black Neighborhoods
“In neighborhoods where people don’t own any
thing, nothing happens (with regard to Neighborhood
Watch),” he said.
As he drove around, he passed houses with neatly cut
grass and flower gardens. “Now, they have Neighbor
hood Watch signs in their yards.”
He said much of the burden for reducing crime rests
with the individual communities.
“If j'ou have a neighborhood where a person
witnesses a crime and doesn’t report it, it’s going to
ahppen again,” he said.
In neighborhoods where people call us, the criminal
won’t go back there because he feels he’s being
watched,” Green emphasized.
Green is the crime prevention officer for polilce
district two, which extends from Liberty Street east to
the city limits. He is one of four such officers in the city
who organize Neighorhood Watch programs, give
lectures on crime prevention conduct security surveys
for business and keep track of crime trends.
While riding down almost any street in his district,
Green showed an uncanny ability to point out houses
where domestic problems, assualts and the like were
frequent occurrences.
The actual statistics for major crime in the black
community show that about a third of the murders,
rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries and larceny and
car theft committed in Winston-Salem during 1975,
1976 and 1977 occurred in predominately black
neighborhoods.
See Page 2
Crime prevenrion officer Frank D. Green shows the
wealmesses of hollow-core doors against borglars in a
Neighborhood Watch lecture.
=all for you
•The State NAACP will focus on strengthening ties'
with churches during its upcoming meeting. See
page 2.
•Low-cost housing for the poor. Meet a woman
whose job it is to find it on page 3.
•The war on heart disease by the Patterson Avenue
“Y.” See editorials, page 4.
•Rufus Edmisten, the former Senate aide turned
attorney general, tells about the shifts in emphasis
in law enforcement in Questions and Answers, page
5.
•Ebony Fashion Fair comes to town.
Whirl, page 6.
See Social
•They’re out to get Bill Hayes and his Rams. Find
out about the two-week showdonw that could decide
the CIA A title on page 11, where Black on
Sports also asks what’s the difference between
Muhammad Ali and Jim McKinley.
On-Street Parking
Limited nearWSSU
Bumper-to-Bumper
Dual parking on Cromartle Street, which is across the street from the campus of
Winston-Salem State University will no longer be allowed, because of a resolution
passed by the Board of Alderman, which will restrict parking to one side of the
street.
Auto Repair Protection Backed
By John W. Templeton
Staff Writer
lALEIGH-Attorney Gen-
ral Rufus L. Edmisten
plans to propose legislation
Requiring auto repair shops
to give consumers written
stimates listing in advance
lie work they will do.
Under his proposal, if the
repairman wants to do ad
ditional work not included
in the estimate, he must
call the consumer and get
approval.
Edmisten listed auto re
pairs as the major consu
mer rip-off during a Ques
tions and Answers inter
view with the Chronicle
news staff in his Raleigh
office September 14. The
Justice Department, head
ed by Edmisten, includes
the state’s consumer pro
tection division.
“We have more com
plaints on (auto repairs)
than any other one thing-
sometimes as many as one
hundred per week,” said
Edmisten. “It’s the most
perplexing problem I
know.”
“You take a car in and
you say I want something
done to fix my carburetor,”
he added. “You go back at
the end of the day and
they’ve done $300 worth on
everything you can think of
and the consumer had no
idea they were going to do
that.”
During the hour-long
session, Edmisten also
said;
•the Goldsboro trial of
“Ike” Atkinson and 16
others accused of operating
a heroin ring is the “most
critical trail today in Ameri-
SeePage 2
By Yvette McCullongh
Staff Writer
The Winston-Salem
Board of Aldermen has
voted to prohibit some of
the off campus parking at
Winston-Salem State Uni
versity. Alderman Virginia
Newell introduced the reso
lution which would prohibit
parking on portions of
Cromartie, Atkins and
Cleveland Streets.
Ellison
In Limbo
By Sharyn Bratcher
Staff Writer
ESR officials are still
awaiting word on the fate of
Harold Ellison, director of
Project SOY, now awaiting
trial in Virginia on a 1974
worthless check charge.
Michael Wright, an asso
ciate of Ellison’s at the
Experiment in Self-
Reliance, said that since
the article on Ellison’s situ
ation appeared in the Sep
tember 16th edition of the
See Page 2
Newell told the board
that residents of those
streets had complained
about the parking on both
sides the street.
“Some of the residents
have complained that they
have been hemmed in and
are unable to get in or out
of those streets.” Newell
said.
The resolution, passed
by the board, would require
that a “No Parking Any
time” zone be established
on the south side of Cro
martie Street between
Atkins Street and Clare
mont Avenue.
There is a $25 fee for
parking on campus and
according to a spokesman
for the campus police, most
students avoid paying the
fee by parking off campus.
“It costs $25 a year to
park on campus and $10 for
See page 2
Suicide Seen As Final Solution
j By Sharyn Bratcher
i StaffWriter
i I ‘‘It takes a lot of plan
ning to kill yourself, ’ ’ says
!6-year old Denise R.
She should know. She
ried it three times.
Perhaps she is still alive
Jecause subconsciously she
Jid not mean to succeed,
psychologists say that
pnany suicide attempts are
n ery for help, or an attempt
fto instill guilt in a person
f ith whom you are having
■oblems.
Denise was a newlywed
,-uidving marital problems.
! couldn’t talk to any-
|ndy about it,” she recalls.
Because I didn’t want my
nnly to know my marriage
^ 'ns in trouble. It would be
admitting failure. So I
"ecided to kill myself. ’ ’
I wrote notes to every-
[ody before 1 did it. I wrote
mother, my sisters, my
my husband. I told
them I was sorry, but I again,
thought this was the best “1 was through with
thing to do. If I died then pills,” Denise said. “Too
my husband would be rid of much time for somebody to
me, and I wouldn’t suffer
any more.”
“I took sleeping pills
while he was away at work.
1 didn’t know what would
happen. I thought you just
went peacefully to sleep
and didn’t wake up. But
you don’t. It gives you
cramps. It hurts.”
Her husband came home
in time to save her. He took
her to the hospital, and
Denise had her stomach
pumped.
“When we came home, I
just slept. It happened on a
Monday, and the next thing
I knew it was Friday.
For a few weeks things
got better between Denise find you. I decided to cut
and her husband, but soon my wrists.”
the situation worsened. One morning vhen her
About three months after husband left tor work,
the first incident she tried Denise ran a tubful of warm
water, got in, and slit her
wrists.
“It didn’t hurt,” she
recalls, in a dreamy voice.
“I just lay there in the tub,
feeling drowsy, and watch
ed the water turn red.”
On that morning, of all
days, her husband had
forgotten his lunch bag. He
came back to the apartment
and found her.
After that came hospi
talization and therapy, but
the marriage had deterio
rated past the point of
saving.
Denise found a job and
began living by herself.
“I wasn’t happy working
in the department store,”
says Denise. “The supervi
sor did not like black
people. She expected me to
be stupid and to say no
thing but ’yes, ma’am and
no ma’am.’ I wasn’t like
that. So every week when
she made up our work
schedules, she’d give me
shorter and shorter hours.
Finally she told me I was
laid off.”
“I remember getting that
letter, and it was just the
last straw. I had bills to
pay-no husband, no job. I
didn’t know what I was
going to do. So I just ran
screaming from the apart
ment. Screaming. Like a
wild woman.”
“And I. was headed
straight for the lake. 1
couldn’t swim, and 1
thought: ‘That will be the
end of it.’ ”
But her neighbors in the
apartment complex had
seen her run out scream
ing, and one man went
after her.
“...I remember shutting
my eyes and hurling myself
at the lake, but I never
touched water. He had
caught me and was holding
me by the shoulders.’’
They called Denise’s
mother, and she went home
for a while. Gradually her
depression subsided and
she found another job. and
began a different life.
“Will I try to kill myself
again?” asks Denise, 3
See Page 16
Took my son for a walk to the park the other day. As
he rode on the swinging airplane there, a young lady,
about 10 years old, walked up.
“That your son,” she said.
“Yep.”
“How old he is? she asked.
“One year,” I replied.
A few minutes later she had run off to play in another
part of the park. I began to think about the way she had
juxtapositioned the “he” and the “is.” The commonly
accepted usage would be “How old is he?” However
irregular, her usage still constitutes a sentence, a
perfectly proper sentence some English scholars would
argue.
It made me think of an old high school classmate of
mine, “Rat” Smith, and his sidekick, Foote. Foote had
a first name, but no one ever used it and it escapes my
memory now.
“Rat” had the same habit as the young lady with
regard to juxtaposing his verbs and subjects in
questions. He was famous for yelling, “Where Foote
is?”
We all had a good time laughing at “Rat”. However,
his habit is a common one. Funny as it sounds, it is also
a serious habit. For if children do not pick up the
fundamentals of grammar in their speech, they will
likely not pick it up in their writing or other use of the
language.
Language problems such as these have a way of
showing up in the form of bad test scores or English
grades, resulting in belated remedial work which might
damage the child’s ego.
Something as simple as the way a child puts together
a sentence could pyramid into problems that might
force him or her from school or inhibit them from
getting the full measure from their schooling.
And it seems the solution could be just a simple. I
notice many parents who are constantly after their
children about their language, particularly in the
pre-school years. I suspect those kids are not the ones
with the juxtaposition problerq.
The little lady in the park is probably no less
intelligent than anyone elses kid. No one has taken the
time to correct her language and that could make a lot
of difference, eventually.
“What it is?” might be hip, but “What is it?” might
take one a lot farther. By John W. 'lempleton