Newspapers / The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, … / Sept. 10, 1981, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
t Editorials & Comments Roy Wilkins A Rock In A Stormy Sea n.oy wuKins, the quiet, modest and mild-mannered leader of the National Association for the Ad vancement of Colored People for over a quarter of his lifetime is dead at the age of.*80. Wilkins, true ta the traditions of the NAA6P, attacked the evils of racial segregation through the court system and other legal means. His strategy led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation decision in 1954; which was the forerunner to the legislative victories in civil rights and voting rights in the 1960’s that Wilkins’ NAACP labored long and hard for Mr. Wilkins stood like a rock in a stormy sea, during the urban unrest and college student chaos of the 1960’s and early 1970’s when the NAACP was attacked, not by racist redneck whites, but by an emerging generation of militant blacks in a host of new organizations - CORE, SNICK, the Southern Christian Leader ship Conference and others. Many of these groups charged that Wilkins and the NAACP were out of touch with late 20th century blacks and too comfort able and complacent with the white power structure. Undaunt ed by these attacks Wilkins continued on a steady course to knock down legal barriers to the rights of minorities. However, in answers to tne attacks, he said, “I understand their impatience. I share it. But they should have some idea what it has taken to get them the right to raise hell.” Again, in his modest way, Wilkins was saving that without the legaL_battlcs^wonby the —NAXCP^ blacks, or “Negroes” in • his words, “...would never have had the courage or opportunity to engage in civil disobedience.” Furthermore, many of those organizations arising and per sonified through the acts of a single individual, have faded with the subsiding storm as the NAACP continues to seek new challenges as Wilkins said, “...to establish the Negro as a legal entity with the right ^ind privi lege of a citizen.” tsorn August 30, 1901, Wilkins was the grandson of a slave and the son of a well trained min ister who worked in a brickyard to provide a decent living for his family. The United States is certainly a better, more civilized nation for having experienced the pre sence of Roy Wilkins; and it may lose in his absence, in the words of Jack Greenberg, the head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, “...a breath of vision, of ration ality and balance...”, so despe rately needed in these complex times. Black Economic Depression Revisited “People didn’t give a thought to what would be cut in (Rea gan’s budget) the beginning; they thought it would affect somebody else. The emphasis in the election was, yeah, do these things. Now we see the reality.” These, are the words of Mayor of Mount Airy, a small North Caro lina town near the Virginia state line. _ Undoubtedly, some of the Chamber of Commerce break fast agreed with this comment. However, most black Americans while sensing it, were trying not to belidve what they knew all along was the reality of Presi dent Reagan’s budget cuts. That reality, as it has been so often in the past, is that economic tight ening always means increasing ly -higher levels of unemploy ment for blacks. Evidence in the making of this reality is that as CETA and other federal job training and em ployment programs are being cut back, black youth unemploy ment has reached 50 percent and overall black joblessness has reached 15 percent, more than twice the national average. —_ Furthermore, recent reports indicate that whole federal agen cies may be eliminated leading to a possible loss of up to 80,000 jobs. Knowledgeable black federal employees argue that the cutbacks will hit a disproportion ate number of blacks and other minorities. As if that is not enough, the Reagan Administration has taken action to relax or elimin ate rules against racial and sexual discrimination t>jr federal ~ contractors, and to ease require ments to remedy past discrim ination. Ironically, discrimination in employment is more pronounced m times of economic decline as we are still experiencing while President Reagan’s economic plan is threatened to collapse before it even begins to work. Underlying these changes by the Reagan Administration’s as sumption that out of the good ness of the private corporate community, jobs and economic opportunity will be made avail able to blacks. Yet, because Jesse Jackson used the threat of an economic boycott at Coca Cola to assure some of the very opportunities that Reagan has taken from blacks, he .has been criticized by the white news ~ media. More on this next week. THE CHARLOTTE POST Second Class Postage No, 965500 “THE PEOPLE’S NEWSPAPER’’ Established 1918 Published Every Thursday by The Charlotte Post Publishing Co.. Inc Subscription Rate f 13.52 Per Year Send All 3579’s To: 1524 West Blvd., Charlotte, N.C. 28208 Telephone (704)376-0496 Circulation 7,151 104 Years of Continuous Service Bill Johnson...Editor, Publisher Bernard Reeves...General Manager Fran Farrer.Advertising Director Dannette Gaither.^Office Manager Second Class Postage No. 965500 Paid At Charlotte, N.C. under the Act of March 3, -iAtt__ __ Member National Newspaper Publishers Association North Carolina Black Publishers Association Deadline for all news copy and photos is 5 p.m. Monday. All photos and copy submitted become the property of the POST and will not be returned. National Advertising Representative Amalgamated Publishers, Inc. 2400 S. Michigan Ave. 45 W 45th St.. Suite 1493 < hk-ago. III. B06IB York, N. Y. 10036 < alumet 5-0200 ( 212) 4X9-1220 Blacks’ Destiny In Their Own Hands UNITE Tony Brown's Journal Nationally Syndicated Commercial Television Series TONY BROWN ^Lan Hack Leaders Meet Gialenge?” The white man has no TTlTrfK' Ur-faafc—frqjn any effective unity amoitg* blacks for a long, long time because he himself installs and backs most of the key leaders of the race,” wrote Chancellor Williams in his historical classic The De struction of Black Civil ization. The former Howard Uni versity history professor concluded: “And we chal lenge any student of history to point out any other peo ple who are or have been saddled with a perpetually dlS unifying and progress checking problem oT this magnitude.” 1 he words from this ma jor historical investigation, first published in 1974, have never rung more true than today. The nation's blacks face a crisis of economic povertf! 'political inepti tude and a pervasive lack of direction. And in direct proportion to this group malaise is the questionable conduct of the cartel of integrationist-inspired national h|qck leaders. And in order to mask The fact that they are more interested in integration than power, more con cerned about strategies to develop new poverty pro grams rather than ways to save blacks from poverty programs and determined to draw attention away from their failure to devel op -and .execute, a viable agenda, this group Tocusfis exclusively on Reagan’s al leged racism and "lacK oi compassion" with hyper “* 1 'HIM 11 I i Inn ;ijm But the reality that Rea gan will no longer support the sandbox of government largesse “has yet to jolt the leadership of our largest and oldest black protest organizations out of the tactics of yesterday...", said New York's presti gious black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, in an unusually tough editorial. "The recent convention of the National Urban League was as disappointing as the annual gathering of the Na tional Association for the Advancement of Colored People." iwucn oi me black lead ership is not in the busi ness of leading blacks, but of extracting what-they can from whites, and their stra tegies and_rhetoric reflect that orientation,” Dr. Thomas Sowell, the black Stanford economist, noted. Before his current failing fortunes, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter’s most ag gressive black campaign erTcird^very-well His pro grams received $5.6 million from the Carter adminis tration. But the Reagan ad ministration eventually cut the final washout grant to $825,000, the legal limit, and ordered a government audit of PUSH-EXCEL’s accounting system. But Reagan's withdraw _al_ of the federal "draft horse for- ihinor+ty -pro gress’’ has dried up the poverty program approach to riches for "the keepers — of the sandbox." Accord ingly, Jesse JacksoH li> “ shifting gears and has re verted to his prior tactic of economic boycotts, some thing he was unsuccessful in during the early 70 s. The scramble is on by the Negro leaders for a new high ground to escape ad ministration officials' charge that they offer no thing more than "the status quo" and continued de pendency in the black com munity ("Vernon Jordan and Benjamin Hooks ap parently have no response to that charge," said the Amsterdam News) and the rising chorus of criticism from other blacks. Mona Bailey, president of the 100,000-member Del ta Sigma Theta Sorority, who heads the most effect ive Maek service organ ization, said, "Remember the Richmond conference? What has happened? I’m not attempting to put down ’ the efforts. But we come back for Black Caucus weekend and we go home again." The leadership gang is run by professional ope rators with little vision, representing a dwindling, but rebellious, constituen cy and faced with a new reality it cannot grasp or cope with. “Tony Brown's Journ al," the television series, is shown every Sunday, on ' WBTV TVr ehannel 3, „ 11:30 p.m. === By Gerald C. Horne, ESQ.— - Affirmative Action Need For Sack Police With each passing day, the crying need for more black police officers in urban areas becomes more apparent. Those who witnessed on national TV news the astound ing sight of white police officers and hard-hats battling tooth and nail unem ployed black construction workers who were protesting the failure to uphold ~~ affirmative action regulations at a mid town Manhattan building suite are aware of this need. The thousands who have been rallying in Milwaukee protesting the death of an unjustly accused black suspect at the hands of white police officers are aware oi^1 this need. Those who recall the brutal slaying of, black business executive Arthur McDuffie at the hands of white police, which sparked a massive conflagration in Miami, are aware ot tms need. Those who are subjected to the crudities and indignities of the swaggering, foul-mouthed, itchy-fin gered racists that too often populate this nation’s police forces, are all too aware of this need. Black police officers have proven to be more human, more sensitive and less likely to resolve disputes by dint of armed force. As in so many other fields, the Reagan Administration’s actions will not alleviate this problem but will worsen it. Because of his “New Federalism’’ policies, which will reduce federal aid virtually 37 percent to localities, many cities will use this as an excuse to lay-off city employees in massive numbers. Black police officers who were the last to be hired, are marked to be the first fired, if traditional seniority rules are followed. When the U.S. Conference of -Mnvnm gnnt rjnnnir^ ifffl pjfjpg probably effects of the federal cuts, repre sentatives of 68 said they planned to cut essential services and representatives of 58 said they would lay off workers. Another city survey by Congress’ Joint Economic Committee alleged that more than one-half were already operating “in the red.” The committee warned: “The Federal Govern ment may have to develop a policy for dealing with municipal default on other than an hoc basis.” Of course, if the city administrations would collect uncollected taxes from big real estate owners and uncollected sales tax from big retailers, there would be no fiscal crisis but the fact is that most mayors will use the specter of Reaganomics to put black city employees on the unemployment rolls. inese lay-offs are expected to spell dooR for all those black police officers hired as a result of the affirmative action thrust, but this does not have to be the case. For just as affirmative action is needed for those entering the police force, it is needed equally for those exiting from the force. Boston has just shown the nation what this and police officers and [Lr8/*uhterS filed a c,ass action suit alleging that they were bearing the brunt of lay-offs ^®ca“8® they were disproportionately among those recently hired; lay-offs ac affirmL, se"!ority would have made ffirmative action a hallow deception. Judge A. A. Caffrey agreed and ruled that blacks and Latinos must continue to make up 14.7 percent of the city’s Fire Deoart g&S* ILL P?«em ofy the PoK. From Capitol Hill Administration Says “Jail Them Don’t Train Them*” Special To The Post The Reagan Administra tion's task force on violent criminals has published its report The members of this task force were as follows: Governor James Thompson of Illinois, form er Attorney General Griffin Bell, David Armstrong,, Commonwealth Attorney of Louisville, Kentucky, Fran Carrington, Crime Victims Legal Advocacy Institute. Virginia Beach, Virginia, Robert Edwards, Florida Department of l^w Enforcement, William Hart, Chief of Police, De troit, Wilbur Littlefield, Public Defender, Los An geles, and Ira Wilson, Pro fessor of Government, Harvard University. in me ousel, tms task force was stacked with those whose jobs have been chiefly apprehenders and punishers of crime, rather than having some mem bers, who could also deal with the causes of crimin ality and who possess some expertise in determining criminals who can be re habilitated from those who are impossible, and those who could offer some sug gestions for turning some of these criminals into pro fi table citizens along wtth preventive criminal mea --tXifr«**lit I,. Madison sures If the Administra tion is truly serious about the welfare of all citizens, certainly some psychia trists, psychologists, socio logists, people who have worked with rehabilitating criminals and even ex offenders should have been included on the task force. « iiv rciommenaea spending S2 billion for helping states build more prisons An assistant in the Department of Justice stated mat Attorney ' General Smith's first prior ity in law enforcement He feels that building more prisons will alleviate the already over crowded pri sons, and he is recommend ing that states use some of their funds that are desig nated" for vocational edu cation, be given t<T penaf institutions to train the prir soners. However, even, this of course will not lessen the already insufficient monies for training those who have not yet become criminals. The Attorney General said. "We intend to ensure that more criminals go to jail." He seemed to have ignored the fact that we've locked up more people for longer periods of time in the past six years and crime has increased by more than 60 percent Evi dently. the task force mem bers failed to consider those facts uood aspects of the re commendation were stronger gun control mea sures and a crackdown on illegal drug IrafTtcking The Congressional Black Caucus and Civil Liberties Union took strong ex ceptions to the more limit ed access to bail, restricted right to appeal, and allows ing prosecutors to use tainted evidence if they had a "good faith belief" it was obtained, legally, and limiting attacks on state convictions by those rais ing constitutional claims in federal courts. Kepresentative Fauntroy in speaking for the Con gressional Black Caucus besides praising the task lorce for gun control and drug trafficking actions and condemning its bail limits, appeal restrictions and obtaining evidence il legally, stated “That the basic approach of the task force for dealing with con victed persons is disap pointing and the idea that the way to effectively solve our violent crime problem is to build bigger jails, misinterprets the root causes of much ot our na tion's crimes — high un employment. massive under education and illegal drug trafficking Dr Alvin Poussaint, one of the country's top most psychiatrists stated that many violent crimes are related to unemployment, ill housing arfd poor edu cation. He said a way to deter violent crime is to provide ways in which peo ple can live better He stated that the short-sight ed deterrent is building more jails which will soon become over crowded and will serve as a crime breeder. Dr. Poussaint said that the get tough" crime policy is a political mea sure It is aimed more at street crime rather than organized crime which often links itself with im portant people He said everyone knows police don't stop crime they only apprehend criminals. Mrs. Yetta Caliber, who has been widely recognized tor her work with Lorton inmates who helped her with the handicapped, feels very strongly that many who are labelled as violent criminals can be rehabili tated She stated that she has had many of these in mates who have been given from 5 years to life and even some who have been given life plus years, have greatly helped in her pro grams for the handi capped Some of these in mates, even tough they had to return to prison every night - along with helping in her school - have ob tained college degrees One has finished law school and is still on probation. One prisoner who has been working with Mrs. Caliber for 10 years was instigated in a robbery group that Kiiira a person, has life plus 4:i years Mrs Galiber leels that he is completely rehabilitated and that par don has been sought for him from both Presidents Kord and Carter, but was denied She says they will ask President Reagan to pardon him Mrs Galiber leels that the majority of th*se so-called hard crim inals are victims of poor education, lack of jobs, the most inhumane living con ditions and that no one showed any concern for them. She knows her suc cess with these inmates is based on the fact that she lets them know that she believes in their capabili ties, that they are given short term accomplishable , goals, wjiich eventually grow into long-range out looks. The Administration would rather spend from *10 to $20 thousand, an nually per criminal, on punishing youth than to spend it on tramira them to become worthJftfe Citi-* zens WE WERE WRONG Beatties Ford Road Burger King will launch a 10,000 free soft drink give away Thursday, Septem her 10 (not $10,000 as was previously stated in last week's paper). The owner of the Beatties Ford Road Burger King sponsoring the give-away is Nasif Majeed.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Sept. 10, 1981, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75