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Wiriston-Salem Clir'otiicle
Vol. V IX) 'The NEWSpaper Winston's Been Waiting For"
20’
20 Pages this week..
Saturday January 13,19/9
"an the
/Vachovia
{uilding
gnite ?
By Shaiyn Brateher
Staff Writer
Could we liave a “Towering Inferno” in Winston-
lera?
As assistant fire marshall, it is Oscar Beal’s job to see
It we don’t, by inspecting the high rise buildings in the
toin City, and seeing that they meet minimum safety
juirements, but experts concede that the Wachovia
ilding might present the most problems in case of fire,
rhe Wachovia Building has no fire alarms, no heat or
loke detectors, no sprinkler system, and no engineered
haust system. In case of fire, the occupants of the
story building would have to be notified by telephone.
Beal noted that one fire drill in the Wachovia Building
jock 27 minutes to evacuate the occupants, because of
the communications problems. He compared this to an
legon fire drill which took less than three minutes.
le Wachovia Building was built in 1966, just a year
'ore stricter fire codes were passed by the state of
irth Carolina.
ester Burnett, who manages the Wachovia Building
for its owners JMB Properties, says that a communica-
|r system is scheduled to be put into the building by
the fall of next year, as well as devices which
ioraatically send the elevators back to the first floor in
c^eofafire.
lurnett pointed out that the building already has a fire
iper in the heating and air conditioning unit. The fire
iper shuts off the floor on which a fire breaks out to
ivent it from spreading to other parts of the building.
'In the South people are more apt to get struck by
ihtningthan to die in a high-rise fire,” Burnett noted.
Intthe South has the highest death rate from fires in the
on, said Beal. “Other states are more fire conscious
lan we are,” he said. “After the movie ‘The Towering
;erno’ was shown here, we got calls for about three
s, but that was it.”
Staff photo by McCullough
Mt- and Mrs. Hilliard Sommers stands in the . c * -x
»moke charted ruins of their home on Indiana
Black Families Stress Learning
By John W. Templeton
Lv| Staff Writer
a local native home for the holidays,
l>scussed the complexities of music composi-
' a visitor in the manner of a college professor
K as worked with some of the country’s leading
‘^^®^Entials he had to his credit.
P^er a while, Emmitt Cloud, his father, entered the
1^1 clothes and visibly tired. After
^ 8 e door, he paused and looked on with pride as
j^Cloud spoke.
wIT'V*'* °***^'^ Cloud gave was not unlike that of a
•aCn. ° investment pay off. In fact, that
innk the father gave.
SielcH. nioment demonstrated a tendency that has
—. a Uiok xias
wassive change in educational opportunity for
black students. That tendency is emphasis black families
placed on education as a way of getting ahead.
Since 1954, according to U.S. Census Bureau
demographer Larry Suiter, the number of blacks in
college has risen from 159,000 to 1.1 million in 1977.,
Currently, 26 per cent of blacks between 18 and 24 attend
college.
That increase is due in large part to the black family,
says Dr. Kenneth R. Williams, chancellor emeritus of
Winston-Salem State University.
“The attitude of the black family has been and still is
now that education is the surest way for a young person
to go up in life,” he said.
“The most outstanding feature is the extent to which
families will be willing to sacrifice with fathers literally
working three jobs and the mother two and not buying
See Page 2
The Roots of Black Winston-Salem run
deep throughout the city’s history and you
can follow the path of those roots beginning
this week in the Chronicle.
A four-page section featuring profiles on
the first blacks in Forsyth County and the
first black church, plus an overall look at the
black role in area history kicks off a 12-week
series which will run up to the present day.
The Chronicle’s Sharyn Bratcher pored
through old Moravian records and nosed
around graveyards in finding such stories as
that of the local slave who was granted his
freedom by special act of the N.C. General
Assembly after an act of life-saving daring.
It’s your heritage. Don’t miss a line of it,
beginning on page five.
aoor/
OF IIIA
^^instori' Salem
King Legacy Recalled
Two high rise buildings that were given good marks by
Beal for fire safety were the Federal Building and the
Integon Building.
The Federal Building has smoke and heat detectors,
pressurized stairways, and a fire command center, at
which computers monitor the detection devices and can
immediately pinpoint the source of an alarm. The alarms
are also set to notify the fire department automatically
when they register danger.
The only problem with the Federal Building, said Beal,
a number of false alarms from the smoke detectors
picking up smoke polluted air from the tobacco company.
Ira Baity of Integon described the new devices to be
used in his company’s new building.The building will
have a fire command center, similar to thai of the
Federal Building, and a complete sprinkler systCiO, as
well as heat, smoke and ionization detectors. The
18-story structure, which will initially house 1,000
employees, will also have pressurized stairways, the
device to send elevators to the ground floor in the event
of fire, and a direct line from the alarms to the fire
department.
Winston-Salem has never had an office building fire
with a high death toll, as some cities have had. He hopes
that citizens become more fire conscious despite their
good fortune. The Department of Public Safety offers a
program on fire safety to any group who requests it.
‘ ‘We’d especially like the program to be seen by senior
citizens and children,” says Beal. “They are the ones
who die in fires.”
Rev. Dr. Martin
By Shaiyn Bratcher
Staff Writer
It has been eleven years since the
assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. A new generation who knew him only
as a figure in a history book has come of
age. But there are still people who
treasure personal memories of the man,
those fortunate enough to have met him.
Dr. King’s work in the civil rights
movement brought him to North Carolina
on several occasions. On one visit to
Winston-Salem he spoke at Galillee
Baptist Church.
Larry Womble recalls that visit:
“...He spoke at Rev. Wamie Hay’s
church...and I remember an incident that
wasn’t funny then, but it is now, looking
back on it. It was just after the bombing
of those churches in Alabama, and that’s
what he was speaking about. He had just Luth6r King
begun to describe the destruction of those
Durham Fire
Raises Doubts
By WAYNE LOTTINVILLE
Special to the Chronicle
The weekend fire in Durham that destroyed the ofices .
of The Carolina Times and E.N. Toole and Son Electric
Company may be just the climax of an ongoing dispute
that has been smoldering for years between the three
remaining businesses of the city’s once-famous Hayti
district and the Durham Redevelopment commission.
In the thirties, forties, and early fifties the Hayti
district along Pettigrew Street was the hub of
black-owned businesses in Durham-and perhaps the
Southeast-and boasted more than a hundred thriving
businesses.
Then along came urban renewal, and according to the
federal Department of Housing and Urban Development
philosophy of the time, urban renewal meant leveling
everything in sight.
Until this past Sunday morning, only three black
businesses remained in the Hayti district; all were
located in a single building on Pettigrew Street that stood
like a lonely fortress in the midst of blocks of cleared
land.
The fire that swept through the building over the
weekend destroyed two of these remaining businesses
leaving only one. Service Printing Company, which
suffered smoke and water damage.
The Durham Redevelopment Commission, until
recently the city’s urban renewal agency, was created in
the late fifties.
“Very few people opposed it,” recalls Vivian
Edmonds, current editor and publisher of the bumed-out
Carolina Times.
Initial plans, projections, and information suggested
this would be a wonderful thing for Durham, Edmonds
remembers, replacing slums with new homes, busi
nesses, and a small industrial and shopping center.
“We found out that that was a ruse,” says Edmonds
caustically. “The Redevelopment Commission has tom
down everything and nothing has been rebuilt.”
Edmonds charges that urban renewal was not for the
benefit of the black population of Durham’s Hayti
district, but for the benefit of white businesses in nearby
downtown who needed room to expand.
By 1977 Edmonds was certain HUD’s urban renewal
promises would not be lived up to because the
Redevelopment Commission was scheduled to dissolve
at the end of June, 1978, and no renewal had occured.
But the Durham city fathers supplied the funds for one
See Page 7 .
churches when there was a power failure,
and the lights went out. We all thought,
‘It’s happening here!’”
Womble found Dr. King somewhat
different from his expectations. “I
expected a great big man,” he said, ”
and when I met him, he was small,
soft-spoken man. But he took time with
people...”
Dr. Jerry Drayton, chairman of the
state Human Relations Commission, has
more personal recollections of King.
‘ ‘ 1 knew him since he was in junior high
school,” said Dr. Drayton.
Drayton attended Morehouse College
in Atlanta, and he worked in the church of
Rev. Martin Luther King. Sr.
“King studied the social gospel,”
Drayton explained. “It was taught by a
professor at Morehouse. You know, most
ministers who have studied the social
gospel belileve, as King did, that religion
See Page 15
The recent cold spell in our city prompted many
residents to run to their thermostat and turn it up.
However it didn’t take long for power officials to start
saying turn'it down, turn it down.
I’m sorry to say this but I can’t really be energy
conscious these days. I’m very suspicious of anyone who
tells me we’re running out of this and we’re running out
of that.
I can remember a couple of years ago, when I obey ed
the restricitons, I turned my thermostat back. I walked
around my house in a sweater and I drove my car
sparingly to save on gas.
I remember having to wait in long lines to get gas and
having to shop in the dim light at stores because iwere
cutting down. 1 remember all those things, and I
certainly don’t want that to happen again.
But I also remember that the price of gas, oil and
electricity went up and up and still hasn’t come back
down. 1 remember oil oflTicials telling me one month that
there was a shortage apd the next month telling me I
could get all 1 need.
I remember all the rumors or stories saying that the
gas shortage was really a hoax. However today I don’t
know what or who to believe. When it is cold 1 dress
warmly and sensibly, but 1 don’t sit around in a cold
house either.
Pneumona is not one of the most welcome sights I
want to see. Maybe I’m wrong, Maybe there is an energy
crisis. Maybe in a couple years, the long lines at the
service stations will be back. 1 don’t know. Maybe after a
certain hour all the lights will have to be out. I don’t
know, but I do care.
I think I’m like many Americans who have been misled
about the energy situation for so long that we don’t know
what to believe. I know if the power and oil companies^
give us the whole truth I would be only too happy to
cooperate. Until then. I’ll just go on day to day as I have
in the past.
-Yvette McCalloogh