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PAGE 4 THE TRIBUSIAL AID WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1975 I« KItWS OF TIE WllltH'S Mt KOI UWHS THOSE OF THE MHO'S ‘You’re A Part Of The Solution^ Or You’re A Part Of The Problem THE POINTER by Albert A. Campbell The High Point Sportsmen Club submitted to the City Council last week, a proposal recommending that the two recreational centers, presently under construction, be named for two well-known Black citizens. Though we must consider that there are some legal matters that must be resolved before an assurance can come that buildings constructed with federal funds can be named after local citizens, we still would like to make it known that THE TRIBUNAL AID NEWSPAPER supports, wholeheartedly, the efforts of the Sportsmen’s Club. As most High Pointers know, there is a recreational center being constructed in the East Central area of High Point, which is an extension of the former Leonard Street School campus. In its concept, the building, itself, is to provide year-round recreational facilities for its community. Very few cities have recreational centers of this nature. It certainly will be a credit to the community of High Point - most especially, the Black community. On the southside of town there is another recreational center being constructed. Its vast scope of activities is so large that the building will be called a “Multi-Purpose center.” Multi-purpose meaning that it will be utilized in many ways other than just recreational. It too will be a year-round facility; providing services and programs for not only the southside community but the entire city. Its magnitude will require a full-time director. There is even an indoor basketball court. But, let us look at the citizens for whom it has been suggested that these centers be named. Mr. O.E. Davis, a former principal of Fairview Street School; and incidentially, the first principal at that school, has been recornmended. Mr. Davis has made his contribution to the community of High Point by serving in many capacities. I am sure many of the middle-aged Blacks will remember him very “vividly” when he worked as a truant officer. Many of High Point’s Black adults today would probably have dropped out of school for good had it not been for persons like Mr. Oscar Davis. The person for whom it has been suggested that the other recreational center be named is Mr. S.S. Whitted. I am sure many of the people of High Point, including both races, can distinctly and very vividly remember Mr. Whitted who was principal at Leonard Street School for thirty-five (35) years. Mr. Whitted, in his way, touched many, many Black children in High Point. I have heard persons say that not only did he teach them, but he continued on to teach their children also. Mr. Whitted was a stern disciplinarian and his contribution to the Black communityof High Point certainly cannot be ignored by any. Of course, Mr. Whitted was a very forceful man; but them, one has to wonder, had he not been so during those times, there probably would have been a take-over of the school by elementary students. Mr. Whitted not only worked in the school system, but he worked in his community. He was a scout master for many years of Troop 16; of which, many High Point Black youth were under his leadership as scouts. During that time, it was the only boy scout troop available to Blacks in High Point. Mr. Whitted was the kind of man who found time for young people both during the school period, as well as, after hours. He not only made contributions to his community but there were times when he was awarded for them. An example of which is when Mr. Whitted was awarded the Silver Beaver Award, the highest honor in boy scouting. This award was presented to him by former mayor, George Covington. These two persons certainly deserve the honors that have been recommended for them. And, if this community would like to see a lasting recognition for these men, then this one, THE TRIBUNAL AID would like to suggest, could very well be “The One”. Few Black citizens have had the honor of this kind of recognition in this city; as well as, any other. But, we can certainly look at what these men contributed to the community of High Point and how much they mean or have meant to its Black young people. High Point can ill afford not to recognize these men. Most especially, since they are both still living. It is well to give flowers to the dead, but much better to give them to the living. The Four Nixon Appointed Judges Voted Against Him -OF THE 20 largest CITIES IN THE COUNTRY, 19 HAD A HIGHER rate of suspension for MINORITIES LAST year than for whites.— THESUPREhE COURT RULED THAT SCHOOL AUTHOmriES MAY NOT SUSPEND A STUDENT WlTHOUr OMNO reasons WHY ANPLETTfHO THE STUDENT HAVE A CHANCE TO EX PLAIN HIS CON DUCT. To The Point by Ronald Mock TO BE EQUAL by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. When the dark clouds of despair hung over the communities during the 1960’s-frustrating our dreams of freedom and peace. Black women worked devotingly to make equality a reality. However, even before them, they unselfishly fought the winds of racism and hatred with an undying belief that “we shall overcome,” never ceasing their faith and devotion to family, community, and most importantly, to Black people. The popular musical group, Earth, Wind and Fire, focused on the dilemma of Black women when they sang, “she is like a flower growing wild”. During the early 1970’s, in all probability, when the economy under the pressure of inflation and recession began to drastically fluctuate. Black women found themselves receiving almost equal economic, social, and political treatment with Black men. At Employment Security Offices, Black women, like Black men, received unemployment checks -and in the same line. It is now, that we, as Black men. may be confronting anotHer opportunity to have the audacity to appreciate the culture within the mind, the beauty of the figure, the their supposed new findingsrThey wrong to blame the Black History Week is an annual event, usually celebrated in schools with special discussions on black history and great black figures of the past and present. By and large, it is a positive step toward heightening the conscious ness of black and white children of the great contributions made by black Americans to our common history. What makes this year’s Black History Week somewhat different from the past is that the core experience of black history itself has come up for re-evaluation by historians. And this new re-eva luation tells us a lot more about the current climate of attitudes toward blacks than it does to enlighten us about the past. One of the most talked about studies of the past year was a book purporting to change our view of slavery by using computer-based studies. The authors, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, come up with the rather startling conclu sions that the slave experience was not as bad as previous historians had painted it. Their motives appear to be based on the feeling that portraits of docile slaves and brutal masters have to be revised in the light of love within the heart, and the freedom of the spirit which Black women have maintained for so many years. Black women have suffered through the same adversitites as Black men in their quest for dignity and respect. In the fields of economical, political, and social change. Black women, along with Black men, present plight of black people on the slave experience, that it is more clearly the discrimination of the post-slavery period right on up to our own day that best accounts for black-white disparities. On that last point most can agree, but by portraying blacks entrapped in slavery as relatively constantly seek to attain the content, their masters as benign, highest opportunities - pushing and the entire wretched system as away the sail of deprivation and relatively humane, the authors depression. Many were the winds just set up a new mythology as that battered their unabiding wrong as the openly pro-slavery courage, boycotts, sit-ins, protest historians of the early 1900s were, marches, or court trials. But with If the system was all that good, fortitude, they gained new why did so many blacks run away? strength and pride as they If they were fed as well as the contmued to grow toward the authors claim, why are plantation sunlight of everiasting peace, records so full of stories about They have weathered the years of slaves stealing food? Why are degradation and exploitation; there so many eyewitness proudly cultivating flowers of accounts of brutality and neglect? tenderness and understanding. Most important today, why was Deep dark, high yellow, or such a book written and why has it Continued on Page 5 found such wide acceptance? t g • Other historians have rioced Black Perspectives BY CARL T. ROWAN apart many of the authors assumptions. They’ve pointed out how they’ve fed statistics from one or a few plantations in one part of the country at one particular time, and come up with fancy mathematical projections that led them to generalized - and wrong -- statements about slavery. I’m willing to leave the technical discussions to their peers, who have held numerous conferences and written many learned articles largely disproving this new revision of history. My primary concern is the rush with which the media and the public adopted a revision of the past that served to soothe America’s guilt and to rob contemporary blacks of one of their moral claims against the nation. Scholarship always reflects the times. No matter how far into the past it delves, it tells us as much about the times in which it was written as about the dim past. During the years of open segregation and the institution of Jim Crow, the dominant scholars were neo-Darwinists who saw life as a battle in which only the fittest will survive - and you know who that would be. Later scholars, living in a more democratic era, reflected the stirrings of the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties and revisionist historians of that period changed the view of the past to take into account the feelings and needs of black people for the first time. Now, the wheel seems to be turning again. Not only are some historians going back to benign views of evil times, but the academic world is churning out studies purporting to show that education won’t improve, the outlook for black children, that integration doesn’t work, that blacks have lower IQs, that - well, you get the idea. What all this says to me is that the moral climate of America is changing from one charged with the seeking of justice to one seeking to cover up the need for change. And in the vanguard of this new cover-up are scholars who should be devoting their skills to helping to build a humane society, not creating false pictures prettifying an evil past. WASHINGTON -- There is something a little sad and even a trifle frightening about the confluence of headlines involving President Ford in recent days. One headline says “Ford to run (in 1976) regardless of economy.” White House Press Secretary Ron Nessen has dutifully explained that, while some Americans may have gotten the nation that “if the economy is good he will run, but if the economy is bad he won’t run,” that simply isn’t true. Gerald Ford is a presidential candidate in 1976, come hellish depression or higher prices, Nessen explained. The truly troubling thing about this is that Mr. Ford could be naive enough to make such a declaration at a time when half the world was falling in around him. Item; Ford’s proposal to save $650 million a year by increasing the price of food stamps was being demolished by a 76 to 8 vote in the Senate. This came on top of a 374 to 38 vote against the President in the House, with 105 Republicians voting against him and only 34 voting for him. Item; Even as Mr. Ford was strengthening his declaration of candidacy, the House was voting 309 to 114 to shoot down a major element of his save-the-economy-save-some- energy program. On this vote to rescind his increase in oil import fees, 98 Republicans voted with the President, but 42 still voted against him in the face of passionate cries for party loyalty. Item; While Mr. Ford was sending Nessen out to tell Sen. Howard Baker, Ronald Reagan, Nelson Rockefeller and other GOP presidential aspirants not to get their hopes up, 10,000 angry jobless automobile workers were in Washington denouncing the President as another Herbert Hoover, shouting vehemently that unless they get jobs they’ll get another president. One is hard pressed to think of less favorable circumstances under which an incumbent might announce that he wants to be reelected. It would seem that a man who talks publicly about always being in the top third of his classes at Michigan and Yale wouldn’t need anyone to tell him that this is no time for him to express political ambitions beyond what has been thrust upon him. After all, much of the public was beset by suspicions that the Democrats were playing politics with the nation’s economic despair, so Ford had to benefit from pretending to be just a country boy with no goals broader than discharging with credit those awesome responsibilities that Richard Nixon foisted off on him. It does not enhance public confidence in him (which already is at am embarrassing low according to the latest Harris Poll) for Americans to see the President fiddling around in 1976 politics while 1975 threatens to produce one of our great economic debacles. Someone around the President surely was aware that on the issues where Mr. Ford himself took a stand in 1974, he got less support from Congress than any first-term President since Congressional Quarterly began keeping score 22 years ago. Ford won only 58.2 per cent of the Congressional votes that mattered to him in 1974. Nixon fared worse in 1973, but was not a first-termer. The disturbing thing about Ford, however, is that some of his big losses occurred where he took stubborn stands, or issued vetoes, on matters where he knew he had to lose. A conservative Republican pointed out that the recent debacles over oil prices and food stamps occurred because the Congress felt Ford was insisting on “anti-people programs.” These members of Congress know you don t help a minority party and you don’t get people elected with programs that seem to disregard callously the basic needs of human beings. It all adds up to a spectacularly gauche performance on the part of President Ford. And whatever his grades may have been at Michigan and Yale, it has revived talk about whether he is intellectually equipped to pull the world s greatest nation out of perhaps its second gravest economic crisis. ti-inMWf nr TinpgDon) THE TRIBIIHU tlO 1228 Montlieu Avenue ^ Post Office Box 921 Fhone l919] 885-6519] High Point, N. C. 27261 i Published Every Wednesday i by Triad Publications, bic. I Mailed Subscription Rate I $5.00 Per Year Payable in Advance | Albert A. Campbell Managing Editor j Jean M, White Secretary I LEXINGTON | Jessie Wood 246-6521 I THOMASViLLE | Kelly Hoover 476-7472 I WINSTON-SALEM I Velma Hopkins j 725-144^ Second-Class Postage Paid at High Point, N.C. ! iOBDPOOOi I
The Tribunal Aid (High Point, N.C.)
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Feb. 12, 1975, edition 1
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