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EDITORIALS & COMMENTS Some Lessons Blacks Must Learn Clarence “Bighouse” Gaines, the winningest active coach in college basketball, deserves high praise for the message he delivered last week at the 13th annual Athletic Banquet for Lenoir Community College in Kinston. The famed Winston-Salem State coach reminded the young athletes that “opportunity abounds but it never picks a lock.” He challenged each to make the most of his or her opportunities. He also reminded the students that success does not come via handouts and that “we have to look more to indi vidual imtiatTve and utilization of our talents to succeed in a changing society now and in the future.” His remarks were well re ceived. Deservedly so! Mr. Gaines could have directed his remarks to the entire black community. .; There are some lessons blacks must quickly learn. The first and . most important lesson to be learned is the lesson of economy. ==; Blacks— spend too much time complaining about their short comings and far too little time • considering their potential for -achieving in a free society. ;: As a group, blacks earned $150 : billion last year, constituting the ;. ninth largest nation in the world .economically. The problem ; blacks face is the fact that only five percent of that $150 billion 7: was spent in the black commun ; -ity, with black businesses. ; “We’re making people rich and ; getting nothing in return.” *\Jc Principles 7 Our continuing plight and • frustration indicates a great ma jority of our people have yet to familiarize themselves with the ;basic principles of American life, free enterprise, capital,— business, consuming and pur -iehasing power, profits, invest ment, ownership, etc. 7' Thus, in our’ opinion, blacks should immediately make every effort to become more know ledgeable of how the American system works. And they must ; immediately depart from the • wishful thinking that somebody owes them something. Black leaders would do well to teach these principles as they make black Americans more aware of the shameful fact that all of this money passes through their hands each year, yet they remain pitifully helpless. Black leaders should make Americans aware that they are fooling themselves if they believe anyone, including federal, state or city govern ment, is going to give them anything, or that the government pwes them what they can get for themselves. t—-I' Blacks must also develop pro grams that will create a greater sense of awareness for their youth. They must strive to strengthen family ties to fashion better men and stronger women with the commitment, charac ter, and capacity to sustain a brighter future. If blacks do not rise to the challenge of developing pro grams to assure a better future, they will surely succumb to the complaining that they know too well. No Easy Street There is no easy street. Nor any flowered beds of ease. Con sequently, sacrifice is neces sary. Sacrifice of time, ease, pleasures, comfort, money and anything else necessary to reach the level of independence, self sufficiency, and self-riptormln 'ation that’s necessary. The spirit of involvement leads to the^dlscovery -that blacks must assume the respons ibilities of builders. They must build a capitalistic structure which is stronger than racism, prejudice, bias and the competi tion which will probably increase. CAF In Troufale_ Recent reports indicate that the Charlotte Area Fund, the 19-year-old anti-poverty agency, is in serious trouble because of poor management resulting in nearly total disorder in nearly all of its component parts. • w * i Federal officials have advised that in the Head Start program “progress has not been accept able.” Delays in the Food-Bank program have created frustra tion and- bitterness among staffers and supporters. . In January, 17 staff members were laid-off because the new* grant application was three months late being completed and last weekend staffers had to wait two hours before being paid. Ironically, nobody in the agency appears to assume the responsibility for the chaos in volved. Neither CAF Director Tom Sanders nor board chair ' man Herbert Hitch appears to know what is going on or how to end the mis-management problem. It would appear also that if some drastic action Is not taken quickly the agency will be lost to the community. More important the needs of the poor will go lacking. Let’s hope that some change begins to occur now. THE CHARLOTTE FOOT •* Second Class Postage No. 965500 “THE PEOPLE’S NEWSPAPER” Established 1918 Published Every Thursday by The Charlotte Post Publishing Co., Inc. Subscription Rate $15.60 Per Year Send All 3579’s To: 1524 West Blvd., Charlotte, N.C.28208 Telephone (704^3760496 - -— Uftjllfltiftn. 7.1^1_ il__ 104 Years of Continuous Service Bill Johnson Bernard Reeves ■ Fran Farrar Dannette Gaither_ Editor, Fubusnei General Managei Advertising Directoi _Office Manaaei Second Class Postage No. 965509 Paid At Charlotte, North Carolina ..._... Under the Act of March 3,1878 Member, National Newspaper ^^^^ublishers^ssoclatloii^^^^ ^NortJj^orolin^BIacl^ublishersAssoclation Deadline for all news copy and photos is S p.m. Monday. All photos and copy submitted become the property of The Post and willnotbcreturned. National Advertising Representative Amalgamated Publishers. Inc. MM S. Michigan Ave. Chicago. III. MCU Coiumet 5 0200 45 W. 45th ST.. Suite 1493 New York. New York 10034 (212) 409-1220 From Capitol Hill Reagan Administration Narrows Civil Rights9 Remedies By Alfreds L. Madison Special To The Poat The Leadership Confer ence on Civil Rights es tablished a committee of lawyers from: NAACP, AFL-CIO, Civil Liberties Union, women’s groups ffrtd several oilier organ izations. The chairman is William Taylor. After broad and intensive study, it published a asport nihil li found that the Reagan Ad ministration’s Justice De partment narrows the available remedies when the rights of minorities have been denied. It states ; that the Reagan Admin istration is seeking to close the doors in school dese gregation, voting rights, af firmative action, private school discrimination and other1 matters of social justice. The Constitution charges the President with the duty of executing constitutional mandates, gnd the Attorn ey General is the instru ment for carrying out this responsibility. The report found that Reagan’s At torney General has made a radical depature from the past 25 years in enforcing civil rights laws enacted by Alfreds L. Madison Congrsaa.' The report* accuses At torney General William French Smith and Assist ant Attorney General William Bradford Rey nolds of repudiating the Supreme Court’s definitive interpretation of the Con stitution and laws and an nounced that It would re fuse to enforce the law of the land, abruptly switch ing sides in impending Supreme Court cases, seek ing to undermine confi dence in the judiciary sys tem by its sweeping at tack on the federal courts for constitutionally protect ing minority rights estab lishing itself as the focus of anti-civil rights activity of the federal government, r and by cooperating in the corruption of the legal pro cess through being influ enced in its decisions by politician^. The report gives exam ples of the Justice Depart ment’s repudiation of Su preme Court decisions, which states that as a remedy to school segrega ' tion, busing may be used. Mr. Reynolds very strong ly slated, "Wf IfT HOt going to compel children who don’t choose to have an integrated education to have one.” There has been overwhelming testimony that the Charlotte, N.C. school desegregation sys tem is working marvelous ly. However, as always when issues arise concern ing rights of blacks, Jesse Helms begins frothing at the mouth and spitting out trumped-up evidence to re verse all black civil righto gains to the old blatant racism days, it is quite likely that William Brad ford Reynolds was influ enced by Jesse Helms when he said that involun tary busing has failed to advance educational op portunity goals. . The Justice Department switched it* position in the Chicago school desegrega tion. In September, 1961 the Department and Chicago School Board entered a consent degree to end school segregation. In Au gust, 1961 the Department retreated from the posi tion. The Department changed its position of sup port in the Jones Univers ity and Goldsboro Christian College suits, where the fe deral court denied these colleges tax exemption on the grounds they dlecriih inated against blacks. The plaintiffs appealed the ac tion to the Supreme Court. The Justice Department switched to the President’s position for allowing tax exemption to schools that discriminate. Another switch by the Justice De partment was in Texas when the state denied free public education to illegal alien children. It changed from support of the aliens to one of abandonment. The report supports its accusation of political in fluence on the Reagan Ad ministration by citing several cases. Hie Uni versity of Tennessee <■««* which required the merger of all-white University of Tennessee (Nashville) and all-black University of Tennessee. The Justice De partment has ignored the Court’s higher education decision in the Tennessee case in the North Carolina and Louisiana higher edu cation suits. Instead it has • opted for improvements in the black colleges, allow for higher duplication and perpstuatloo.g segregated universities. The report says the North Carolina decision was the influence of Jesse Helms. Hie report states that the department changed its position in the Mobile at-large election case from support of the efforts test to requiring intent of proof, after a conversation be tween the Department and Senator Jeremiah Denton of Alabama. The Justice Department issued a 55-page denial of all the accusations made by the Leadership Confer ence However, it stated absolutely no cases to sup port its report. In a conference with Mr.' Reynolds, he emphasized that all of these accusa tions were untrue. He stated that the Reagan Ad ministration had settled more civil rights cases than any other previom Administration. This was done largely through coo sent decree rather than litigation. Many of the con sent degree cases are seen by blacks ss accommoda tion to anti-black justice. Mr. Reynolds continued to talk about the Fairfax case where 2,600 employees were awarded back pay for discrimination. He mentioned three other similar cases without spe cific facts. Mr. Reynokk pointed to rejection of Nor folk’s redistricting by the Department. The Assistant Attorne, General disagreea with the Weber decision became It was based on race. He stressed the Department’s recruitment program which requires businesses to go into communities and recruit minorities. ?Uid-lNU TK^IR HOPilS AND DREAKS...? ANGER, FRUSTRATION, HOPELESSNESS, IS THE . PICTURE THAT EMERGES Tony Brown’s Comments 1 - ■ Will The Real NAACP Stand Up? ine naacp s law suit against the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. will either make the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organ ... izatioQ. or it w^ilL jjcecipi^ tate its gradual demise into oblivion. And, ultimately, only the support of the black com munity can save her. Iron ically, many blacks have already read the white li beral slant and are blaming the NAACP for being the victim. The situation is so grave that, along with this column, I am sending a $1,000 check to the Pitts burgh branch to start a WUhelmlna Byrd Brown Fund for scholarships for black students to go to black colleges and $100 to the Lynchburg, Va. branch to help pay its share of prosecuting this law suit - . not for any busing law suits - but for the courageous action it has taken to halt its own exploitation. mere is also a hidden agenda. At stake is the NAACP’s ability to set its own course and control fundraising and legal stra tegies. If it loses this case, it will forever be at the whim of a succession of white leaders - who pass for friends by exploiting black political and econo mic power. When I saw “white li beral,” I don’t use it as the opposite of “white conserv ative,” I use it in the context of exploitation: those who posture as friends while instituting a racist plantation with black overseers. And predictably, the wrath of the white liberal establishment descended on the NAACP last week simply because it went to court to stop the white dominated LDF from using its initials and representing black people by fiat. The white liberal press . first. An q.ser/es cranked up their awesome propaganda machine to de nigrate the actions of the NAACP and stop this break from white dominance. The capstone of white liberal journalism deliver ed the occasion’s most vicious - and racist - assault. In an editorial, the New York Times called the lawsuit “petty and mean spirited.” A columnist in the Washington Post re? ferred to it as Amos ’n Andy. It was racist in the sense that the white li bcrals arc aoying, as the— Times did .that their blacks were wrong because they were upset with their white man -Jack Greenberg who runs the NAACP LDF. The Times, instead, tried to divert attention to Presi dent Reagan as the real enemy. “The NAACP would do better to drop the suit” ahd focus on Reagan. certainly, Keagan will not qualify for a civil rights fanatic, but neither does he qualify as the source of the NAACP’s problems with Jack Greenberg’s organ ization. Both issues can and should be addressed sepa rately and equally. Therefore, in Its own wis dom, the NAACP is doing just that by ending a long simmering dispute by taking the case to court. Both the Washington Post and the Times reported that Vernon Jordan would represent the LDF when, in effect, a white lawyer, Jay Topkis of a prestigious white New York firm will lead the defense. Jordan, now a formal black mem ber of the white establish ment, will obviously lead the window dressing. But the LDF will have no problems with legal fees; it has a fat $6 million-a-year budget, almost equal to the entire NAACP’s $7 million budget. “We see nothing to be gained by merging. We have developed our own constituency- clients, non- .-. tributors and cooperating lawyers," Greenberg boasted. He’s right. The LDF has raised ffmds, the NAACFs-Suit charges, and pursued legal strategies that confused the public and harmed the NAACP. Fuel was added to that argument in the Wash ington Post on the day be fore the court action. A one-sided article by Charles Babcock explained how the heroic LDF was back in court to ensure "desegregation” in higher education in Virginia. LDF ^«rr«r^Uai!* “NAACP* lawyers” and no distinction was made beetween the two organizations. One was clearly left with the im pression that Jean Fairfax, Greenberg's black liaison to black groups, was speak ing for Margaret Bush Wilson and Benjamin Hooks’ NAACP. In state after state where the LDF has been involved, very questionable “dese gregation” of black col leges has taken place. In my opinion, black colleges were under the gun to be come white and white col lege made whiter. The LDF's concern for black colleges is very question able. And the NAACP has been blamed for what many per ceive as the legal destruc tion of the black college as an institution. In turn, the two —NAACPs” have dis agreed over this dubious legal strategy. Hooks notified his lead ership in a letter of May 14 that position taken by the LDF “do not appear to be in accord” with the NAACP’s long record of support for the 111 black colleges which have trained over 80 percent of the black professionals and continue to graduate over See WILL on Page 18 5By Rev. John Perkins! WALK TALK Rev. Perkins Stoning The Prophets? Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientist who led the Manhattan Project which developed the atom bomb, made atele vision statement just before he died in 1967. I remember his face as he spoke. He talked about the things that frightened and disturbed him most, about “civilized man's inhumanity to his fellow man,” about the lack of reason in light of knowledge, and about how it seemed that rational, civilized people would not be able to negotiate peace and, therefore, would not be able to live on this planet together. In the last few years, I’ve had op portunity toapeak4ovariousgrQup6^jnosUy Christian, around America and in Europe. I too have become disturbed with “rational, civilized man,” especially “evangelical man” and those who profess to know the gospel of Jesus Christ. What disturbs me most is that civilized, evangelical leaders hold much of the power and control in our nation and in our world. Yet our evangelical leadership is not creative or compassionate enough to deal with the truths that burst in upon us every day-the economic-social truths of race hatred, energy crisis, crime, Tiunger. and poverty-in light of the’healing mandate of the Scriptures. Why is this so? In Luke 11:52 Jesus says, “Woe to you lawyers! for you have^taken away the key of knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering” and that the “blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this • generation” (11:50). Today I believe we have an evangelical leadership that is not allowing the prophetic message of the gospel or those who preach it to penetrate the rank and file Christian community. Yet this is a time when I see what appears to be a genuine revival especiallylnwhiteAmerica-whlchmay be second to none in our history. The revival is producing people who are less divided denominationally and theologically and are more open to the radical implications of the gospel than ever before. I am finding paste re and young men and women who desire the truth and are ripe for innovative ways to make that truth-even the tough truth of justice—real in their everyday lives. Yet, as I move into the institutions where these leaders are trained, I find-with notable exceptions-a frightening situation. I find men who are presidents and semin ary professors and board members of these institutions who are so tied to this present economic order that they cannot afford to do anything but to depower the gospel. I stress economic order, because as long as I criticize the political system, the welfare system or even the church I am OK. But as soon as I question the economic order that has made America unfairly rich and is creating massive poverty-maybe worse than the world has ever known-at the very height of its massive productivity, I find myself in very, very hot water. You must be a communist if you criticize the economic system, if you’re white, you’re called red; if you’re black, you’re called militant. And so we bomb and kill communists, and we have lots of militant niggers in Jail. Or you are simply barred from the AiinnAaIInnl __11
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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June 3, 1982, edition 1
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