HAPPY HOLIDAYS
N.C. Klan activity: The nation’s worst: A1
Big Appie-style basketbaii comes to WSSU: B1
A new biack hoiiday begins today: A6
Hoiiday thoughts from the editor: A4
Eyein* The Ice
New skater brings a
little soul to the
Thunderbirds.
Page B2
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n-Salem Chronicle
The Twin City’s Award-Winning Weekly
-OL XII NO. 18
U.S.P.S. No. 067910
Winston-Salem, N.C.
Thursday, December 26, 1985
35 cents
28 Pages This Week
You’ll still hear
from Mrs.Wilson
By ROBIN BARKSDALE
Chronicle Staff Writer
“I’ve come too far from where I started from.
Nobody told me that the way would be easy. But
I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave
me. ”
The quote above appears on one of the few re
maining signs on the walls in Room 203 of the
Experiment in Self-Reliance building.
Appropriately, it is one of the last items that
will be removed as Room 203’s long-time resi
dent packs to leave the office she has occupied
for so many years. She’s come a long way since
she joined ESR in 1965 and, as she prepares for
her retirement at month’s end, she promises that
we have not heard the last from Louise G.
Wilson.
An active civil rights organizer, ESR’s ex
ecutive director says she came into the organiza
tion with some hesitancy.
“I came into the agency of ESR under
protest,” she says. “At that time there had not
been any blacks hired in what we call the ‘top
echelon.’ At that time, CORE, the NAACP and
several of the black leaders felt they needed a
black person in the ‘top echelon.’ I had just
renewed my teaching certificate at Carver (High)
School and I had been out in the civil rights fi^ld
worrying everyone to death. A group approach
ed me to see if I would apply for the job and 1
must admit that I was a little reluctant.”
Following her initial ESR job interview two
decades ago, Mrs. Wilson remembers thinking
“they won’t want me because I’ve been out in the
street worrying people.”
Smiling, she asks, “Would you believe they
hired me anyway?”
ESR was organized in 1964 as part of the
“War on Poverty” introduced during the Lyn
don Johnson administration. Designed to help
Please see page A2
Dismissal of coordinator
concerns ‘Art-Is’ boosters
Parents say they wonder if program will continue
By L.A.A. WILLIAMS
Chronicle Staff Writer
The dismissal of an Urban Arts
employee due to budgetary constraints has
placed the popular ‘Art-ls House’ program
in jeopardy, some concerned parents feel.
Franklin O. Williams, a program assis
tant with Urban Arts and coordinator of
the Art-ls House program for the last two
years, was notified at the beginning of
December by Arts Council Executive
Director Joseph K. Walls that his position
would be terminated as of Dec. 31. The
reason given for Williams’ dismissal in a
letter from Walls was
“budget constraints
which necessitate
serious cost-cutting
measures.”
The parents, mem
bers of the Art-ls
House’s Parents Ad
visory Committee,
have written a letter to
Walls and have met
with Urban Arts
Director Lin wood
Oglesby to express
their concern over
Williams’ dismissal.
They say he has been
the key to the pro
gram’s continuity and
success.
Franklin Williams: Parents say
he is the cornerstone of the pro
gram’s success (photo by James
Parker).
St. Louise ...
as a local reporter once called her, strikes an angelic
pose as she awaits the results of a 1983 city-county bond
referendum (photo by James Parker).
“He has been such
an asset to the Art-ls House program that I
cannot understand why monies were not in
cluded for his position,” said Bernadette
E. Hairston, chairperson of the parents
committee, Friday.
“He has been there, he keeps up with
what’s going on, he takes time with the
children, and he cares about the program,”
she added. “ I’m wondering whether this is
the first step in discontinuing the program.
Mr. Oglesby has assured us that the pro
gam will not end. We’ll just have to wait
and see.”
The Art-ls House is a community
cultural arts program providing profes
sional training and classes in the visual and
performing arts to talented youth. All
Winston-Salem and Forsyth County youth
between the ages of 6 and 15 are eligible to
participate. It is one
of the programs of
Urban Aris, the first
outreach program in
America bringing art
to communities not
usually touched by
traditional arts pro
grams. Urban Arts is
a program of the Arts
Counc1ft= »
The Art-ls House
operates out of a large
building on Cleveland
Avenue. Classes are
taught in arts and
crafts, dance (ballet,
ethnic and modern),
drama, drawing,
painting,
photography and pot
tery. Two 10-week sessions are held in the
fall and spring of each year. The next ses
sion is scheduled to begin
According to Williams, 89 students par-
Please see page A3
Tisdale involved in auto accident
By L.A.A. WILLIAMS
Chronicle Staff Writer
An automobile registered to District At
torney Donald K. Tisdale, and in which
Tisdale was a passenger, was involved in an
Jccident early last Thursday morning, br
inging drunk driving charges against the
rat’s driver, according to police reports.
Vicki Matthews Oakley, 34, of 3949-D
Talley Court in Winston-Salem, the driver
JfTisdale’s 1966 Volkswagen, was charged
*1111 driving while impaired after the car
Mashed into a 1979 Honda driven by Todd
Epperson Mercy, 21, of Charlotte.
The accident occurred at 12:15 a.m.
Thursday morning at the intersection of
Teynolda Road and Coliseum Drive just
>elow Memorial Coliseum. Police
stimated damages of $3,000 to Mercy’s
'chicle and $1,200 to the vehicle owned by
Tisdale.
Tisdale, 43, was the only other passenger
in his car and was listed in the police report
as suffering “incapacitating” injuries,
meaning, according to a police document,
that his injuries were “obviously serious
enough to prevent carrying on normal ac
tivities for at least 24 hours; for example,
massive loss of blood, or broken bones.”
Calls to local hospitals revealed no
record of Tisdale being treated. Miss
Oakley, however, was treated at Forsyth
Memorial Hospital and released.
The hospital would not elaborate on the
extent of her injuries, although the police
report described them as “non
incapacitating.”
Tisdale could not be reached for com
ment and is, according to his office, out for
the rest of the week. He has not been to
work since Thursday, a secretary said.
Mercy carried two other passengers in his
Please see page All
Realtor discriminated,
rules city housing panel
District Attorney Donald K. Tisdale (photo by
James Parker)
By L.A.A. WILLIAMS
Chronicle Staff Writer
The Hearing Board of the
city’s Human Relations Commis
sion ruled Thursday that a
Winston-Salem real estate com
pany violated the city’s fair hous
ing ordinance by discriminating
against a black woman in late
1983 and early 1984. The com
mission, in turn, voted to ask the
city’s aldermen to file a lawsuit
against the company.
The hearing board said in its
ruling that Grubbs Real Estate
and Insurance Co. discriminated
against the woman “by failing to
rent an apartment to her on ac
count of her race (black) in viola
tion of Sec. 12-85 (Fair Housing
Ordinance).”
The complaint to the Human
Relations Commission was filed
by Mary Ann Williams Gray in
May of 1984 and charged racial
and sexual discrimination against
Grubbs, which served as the
management agency for the Col
onial Village Apartments on
Charleston Court. Mrs. Gray
charged that she was repeatedly
mistreated and ignored in her ef
forts to rent an apartment there,
despite meeting all of the criteria
to do so.
The board ruled that the com-
Please see page A2
Year-end report: North Carolina’s Klan activity remains worst in the nation
Special To The Chronicle
North Carolinians Against Racist and Religious Violence
(NCARRV) issued a year-end report recently that cites 30 incidents
of violence or other illegal activity motivated by bigotry in 1985.
“North Carolina continues to head up the list of states experienc
ing Klan activity,” said Bill Stanton, director of Klanwatch, based
in Montgomery, Ala. “The presence of Glenn Miller’s
pseudopolitical/military organization gives a stridency and militan
cy, a confrontation atmosphere, that makes North Carolina uni
que.”
NCARRV Coordinator Mab Segrest called on Gov. James Mar
tin to appoint a state task force on hate groups and bigoted
violence. “This is the third year in a row we have been ‘first-in-
fright,’ ” she said. “It is past time for the governor to act.”
NCARRV’s 1985 report shows the second-highest level of
recorded bigoted violence in North Carolina since 1979 - second
only to 1983, when there were 48 recorded violent/illegal incidents
motivated by bigotry. The 30 incidents this year include eight
crossburnings, five people injured in attacks, 15 threats or other il
legal acts and two cases of vandalism.
There were at least 33 Klan/White Patriot Party marches and
rallies in the state in 1985. According to NCARRV, some counties
had two and three Klan factions organizing at once.
Some Trends
Although not able to say how many of the 30 incidents were
perpetrated by active members of hate groups, the NCARRV
report pointed up these trends:
• In only one instance did a violent/illegal incident take place in a
county where there was no active hate group organizing.
• There is a rough one-to-one correlation between violent/illegal
incidents and legal incidents of hate group activity, in both 1984
and 1985, demonstrating the hostile climate that such activity
creates.
• 1985 saw active hate groups organizing in 23 of the state’s 100
counties - roughly 25 percent. Since 1979, at least one-third of the
counties in the state have experienced significant levels of racist
organizing. Dial-a-hate phone units were advertised for 23 towns
and cities.
Incidents of bigoted violence in North Carolina in 1985 include:
Statesville, Feb. 23 - In a “neigborhood dispute” that started
when a drunken white man yelled, “We’, e going to get us some nig
gers,” four white men, one with a shotgun, two with M-14 rilJes,
shot into a black family’s home, injuring three people, including a
13-year-old girl who ran back into a room to save an infant lying on
Please see page A3