Newspapers / The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, … / Dec. 18, 1975, edition 1 / Page 2
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cofUEncnU1 J. Edgar Hoover’s Undetrover Attacks Oh King Give Us A Shudder by BENJAMIN L. HOOKS FCC Commissioner Special To The Post Recent revelations in the nation’s press with respect to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s relentless ly harassing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the express orders of the late J. Edgar Hoover are making even the most conservative Americans shudder with horror. Much of what is now being reveal ed on the public record was known privately a long, long time ago by Dr. King and those of us who were close to him. Ironically, many white newsmen also knew that Dr. King was an FBI target, that his hotel rooms were bugged and telephone tapped. Some of them were sent private tapes and transcripts by the FBI of Dr. King’s alleged misconduct. But most of them, thank God, were too decent to print the scurrilous gar bage the FBI shoveled to them. They shamefully filed it in the trash can where it belonged. One or two deep south newspapers did print this filth, however. One shudders to think that the late Mr. Hoover, who headed such an awesomely powerful secret police agency, harbored such sick hatred of blacks, in general, and Dr. King in particular. The record was always there, however, for one and all to see, if we would but look. But the nation’s white press, with very few exceptions, chose not to look, or indeed, to look the other way. After all, the target was Dr. King, a black upstart minister who had the temerity to stir black folks up when it was perfectly obvious that things were getting better for them all the time, right? There was even suspicion among some movement figures that some of the nation’s press representatives were actually spies for the FBI. To his eternal credit, Dr. King never broke stride. He refused to be intim idated or blackmailed by the FBI. He continued to speak out in strong^ vigourous terms for freedom, justice and equality for the downtrodden. His was the voice stressing unity among blacks and whites; and he addressed the nation’s conscience in terms of its constituitional promise versus shameful performance in respect to its black and minority citizens. Recently, a close follower of Dr King s, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson came to Washington, D. C.t and announced the organizing of a D C Ch£P!ur °f his PUSH organization with the Rev. Jerry Moore, a pro minent Baptist minister and city councilman, as president of the local organization. A day or so later, the Rev. Jackson led a contingent of the city’s leading black ministers to a private chat with FBI chief, Clarence Kelley. It is instructive to note that neither of the Washington, D. C. white .daily news papers which circulate in a city that ts^O percent black, carried a line on either of these two momentous events. Rev. Jackson’s visit to Kelley, who seems to be a rather decent fellow, raised among other points the FBI harassment of King. Kelley said this will never happen again. (In employment, there are 20,000 FBI employees, 2,000 of them black, the latter clustered in entry-level jobs; 8,500 agents, only 103 of them black.) Jackson also discussed the removal of Hoover’s name from the huge new FBI building in Washington, D. C. Rep. Gilbert Gude (R. Md.) a white lawmaker, has expressed similar views in respect to removing the name of the late Mr. Hoover’s FBI building. I personally believe, also, that Mr. Hoover, Lord rest his soul, has despoiled the honor and the highest ideals of law enforcement with churlish and unlawful harassment of Dr. King and other citizens (using the taxpayer’s dollars in such a nefarrious way, yet!) Some of our white friends, how ever, say that “the public disclosure of (Mr. Hoover’s) ... manic pursuit of Dr. King has irreparably eroded his name. (Therefore) that is stern and sufficient retribution.” Nevertheless, we will continue to view with great interest what Con gress does about this, and more im portantly, what this lawmaking body does to establish firmer control over theTBI, CIA and other secret police agencies, in the future. These are the questions that continue to plague and perplex. (NNPA) - v / •* SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND Something on your mind is the name of a column devoted to you the young at heart readers of this newspaper-as long as it relates in some way to young people, regard less of age. It will be written by you and about whatever is on your mind! So, if you have something to say WRITE ON! Some subject that may be of special interest to you are: Drugs, Generation Gap, Welfare, Gangs, Schools, Going Steady, Police, Revo lution, Whites, Blacks, Integration, Busing Draft, God, Negro Churches, etc. Or any other subject you want to write about. Remember its your column. Yourarticle should be at least 250 words, type-written and double space preferred. Include your name, age, school, and a clear photo, and.send it to the Editor, Charlotte Post Newspaper, Post Office Box 97, Charlotte, N. C. 28201. IBST F0R6£T,„ ' WORKING FOR YOU 66 YEARS. FOUGHT LYNCHING FOR. J$0 YEARS. ABOLISHED PRIMARIES. FOUGHT RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS IN HOUSING. REMOVED THE HUMILI ATING DINING CAR CURTAIN. 1954- SUPREME COURT DECISION. ETC-ETC-ETC.* But The Job Is Not Finished REPORT FRO M 11 J^j^Washingtqa^, :The Regulators - Case 1 By Congressman Jin) Martin 9th District, North Carolina One area of government meddling you may have missed in news re ports has been brought into sharp focus by the Wall Street Journal in a recent editorial. The Journal discussed an effort by the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition, to $Ug> auto manufacturers from making spare body parts for automobiles. The Bureau of Competition contends that the auto companies have a virtual monopoly on the manufacture and sale of auto parts. The bureaucrats want it turned over to independent operations. That’s silly. People who make and sell cars have a strong incentive to assure that all parts are available. Independent operators might keep only those parts most frequently in demand. Right now, there is considerable in-house squabbling in the Federal Trade Commission over the issue. The FTC’s own Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation has been trying to end the Bureau of Competi tion effort. It’s important to remem ber that both departments are with in the same agency. In trying to halt the ridiculous waste of time and money, the Director of the Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation said the Bureau of Competition meddling would cost the consumer. The prices for auto body parts, he said, would rise 150 percent up to as much as 580 percent. Undaunted, the Bureau has not backed off. It has invested tax payers time and dollars in this absurd exercise and does not want to lose face, even though it means being laughed out of court later. The Fedeal Trade Commission should call the 2 departments toget her and bring an end to this experi ment of using business and con sumers as guinea pigs at taxpayers expense. All of this is just one example of the bureaucratic bungling that is rapidly increasing in Washington. It’s a case of over - ^ Legislation is pending m Congress to reform government rules and regulations. It is the only movement I know of which has the support of all political philosophies from the ex treme left to the extreme right. The problem with regulatory re form is Congress. A majority hasn’t yet gotten the message. Unless voters - the consumers - apply, pressure, regulatory reform is doomed. Just last week Congress voted to load on another regulatory agency. Nominally it is supposed to help the consumer, but that’s what all the regulators were supposed to do. And what about the consumer - the taxpayer? It costs him $2 billfbn in tax funds to support the 63,000 government workers who do nothing but regulate - plus $15 billion more to pay for all the nonproductive paper work the regulators require of busi nesses. ---— When yo buy consumer goods, from hot dogs to a car, government regulation costs are passed along to you. President Ford recently put the national cost of unnecessary and wasteful regulatory policies at $130 billion per year. That’s an average of $2000 a year for every family in - this country. VERNON E. JORDAN JR. FBFS Lawless Lawmen Back in the early 1960s, when civil rights workers in the South were being beaten and harrassed by racists, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appeared a good deal less than concerned. Now a Senate investigation reveals what a lot of people suspected at the time - that the FBI wasn’t merely aloof, but that is was an active participant in illegal efforts to destroy the civil rights movement. Lawmen, sworn to uphold the law, themselves performed lawless acts. Take the bombshell dropped at a recent committee hearing by Gary Rowe, an under cover agent who joined the Ku Klux Klan for the . FBI. Rowe testified that he fed the Bureau advance information about planned Klan attacks on civil rights workers and that no action was taken to prevent the attacks or to bring action against the perpetrators. He testified that the Klan planned a vicious attack with clubs and bats upon freedom riders demonstrating against segregated transporta tion facilities. The Klan, he said, had the complete cooperation of the Birmingham police department not only in this incident, but also in others, even enjoying access to official files and cars. The freedom riders were brutally beaten; the FBI, with plenty of advance notice never lefted a finger to head off the crime or to make arrests afterwards. Rowe’s testimony followed previous documen tation of the FBI’s long-term harrassment of black protest organizations and its shocking actions against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. These actions included extensive illegal wire tapping, bugging, threatening letters and even a letter that tried to induce him to commit suicide. While black people were sturggling to win elementary constitutionally-guaranteed rights the federal government's national police ami was systematically trying to sabotage their efforts and attempting to discredit and harrass the man who was the most effective black leader of the period and the moral conscience of the nation. The revelations of the FBI’s anti-King activit ies have thrown suspicion upon the assassination of Dr. King and the Bureau’s investigation of his death. Many people who would have resisted any attempt to link the FBI with Dr. King’s assassin ation are now beginning to wonder if there might be anything to it. The Senate Committee’s investigation reveals an FBI headed by people who were incompetent, lawless, and unstable. Dr. King, for example was perceived as a “subversive” and the excuse for the wiretaps against him was to discover supposed communist ties with the movement. That kind of fantasy demonstrates just how far FBI thinking was from reality. Dr. King had spoken out against communism enough in those dayf.f°r ®?yone t0 recognize his independence, but the FBI was controlled by people who defined as subversive anyone who challenged the status quo that denied minorities their full rights. Cleaning up the mess win take a long time, but a flfn i° ** done-.F,rst one the agenda should be K-ifna drfSSainqU!iry Int0 the harrassment of Dr. King, inlcuding determination of whether there was a conspiracy against his life, and whether any governmental agency may have been invoT ved H aJso should determine the adequacy of the FBI s investigation of the assassinator * '-1 *> I Joan Little Struggling To Survive Gross Injustice By Sidney Moore A promoter in Las Vega, Nevada came up with an idea that would probably make a lot of money. He wants to build a slot machine that will pay off *100,000 on a 25< play. No doubt such a machine would really grab the interest of many gamblers, adven turers and vacationers-if it were installed. But, there is one slight catch with the idea It is not likely that the machine would pay a jackpot within a spand of several hundreds of years A person would have a better chance of trying to save *100,000 from his earning than the chance he would have trying to win the jackpot Poor Joan Little! Out of the millions of suffer ing black women in this coun try struggling to survive. Miss Little chanced to become the victum of such a gross injus tice. Because of circumstan ces beyond her control, she became a “cause celebre" of civil and women's rights groups. She lucked out. Instead of a life sentence for murder, she was acquitted Yet, she has not escaped the experience of poverty and the unjust history of racial pre judice in America She must now face the chance of a prison term because of pre vious criminal charges Miss Little's case is true to form It is the same seemingly Sidney Moore Jr. endless scheme most blacks face trying to survive in the U. S In pursuit of the "American Dream," a black person will often decide that he should disregard the law and the authorities as a way to even his chances to live the good life. History records many rea sons why a black person could come to think this way. Since blacks do not control the same percent of the means of production of food, clothing and shelter as they are of the population, they are forced to work for non-blacks. Until very recently, most of these jobs were menial. Now with government regu lations and civil rights laws, there are more meaningful job opportunities for blacks. But these opportunities are still very limited. Even with new laws against discrimination, employers still get away with many vio l lations. This happens because there are so few blacks in public office or on important decision and policy making boards. Without the 10 to 15 percent control of vital production or control of 10 to 15 percent of government and business in fluence, blacks cannot consid er themselves equal to white men. If blacks cannot acquire sufficient wealth, in terms of their ability to produce vital goods, and cannot acquire political influence in business and government, they can' expect to constantly uncover cases of blatant injustice such as Joan Little’s. Her case, however, got national publicity. Other less notorius stories go unheard. And, the scheme of things remain unchanged. Until blacks can develop strategies that will lead to an ability for self-determination, American society will refuse to accept most blacks as first class citizens Like their fore fathers, generations of the future will ride a Merry-Co Round called life clutching after a Phantom brass ring called freedom * Perhaps it will be realized someday that the way to grab the brass ring is to undemiand how the Merry-Co-Mjnd works-then running it in the way it should be runned to reach the brass ring. Instead of constantly play ing the odds on a long shot perhaps blacks would do weli to spend their time, money and know-how on some valu able but less spectuacular sure things. THE CHARLOTTE POST “THE PEOPLES NEWSPAPER” Established 1918 By A. M. Houston Published Every Thursday By The Charlotte Post Publishing Co., Inc. 9139 Trinity Road - Charlotte, N. C. 28216 Telephones (704 ) 392-1306 - 392-1307 Circulation 11,000 57 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS SERVICE Bill Johnson .Editor - Publisher Gerald O. Johnson .„.Business Manager Robert L. Johnson.Circulation Manager Second Class Postage Paid at Charlotte, N. C. under the Act of March 3,1878 Member National Newspaper Publishers Association National Advertising Representative Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. 45 W 5th, Suite 1403 2400 S. Michigan Ave New York, N Y 10036 Chicago, 111. 60616 489 1220 Calumet 5-02QO
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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