PAGE 4
TOE TRIBUNAL AID
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 1975
EDITORIALS „ .
^You're A Part Of The Solution, Or You’re A Part Of The Problem
IK vins 0f iH wmiEii’s me mi hlwhs inst «f he pupei’s
THE
POINTER
by Albert A. Campbell
Because it is constaSfy^eeRn^more^T^
beter ways to serve its circulation area, THE
TRIBUNAL AID newspaper has now taken
into its “circulation family” the City of
SALISBURY.
The City of Salisbury, like many other cities
in North Carolina, is without any kind of
black-oriented, printed media. With this fact
in mind, THE TRIBUNAL AID newspaper is
seeking to serve that community as
thoroughly as it has served and will continue
to serve other members of its “circulation
family”.
After meeting with a number of community
leaders in Salisbury and discussing the needs
of most communities regarding Black
newspapers, THE TRIBUNAL AID was
welcomed as well as accepted by the Black
Church and other leaders of the community.
Livingstone College, of course, has always
supported THE TRIBUNAL AID and will do so
even more in the future.
REVEREND THEODORE WALKER, who
incidentally was once a resident of High Point
and former Executive Secretary of the Carl
Chavis Y.M.C.A., now lives in Salisbury. He
has graciously accepted the responsibility of
coordinating, at least temporarily, the efforts
of THE TRIBUNAL AID. You will be seeing
his by-line on the articles coming out of
SALISBURY. We are grateful for his
indulgence and hospitality.
A young man named MR. EDDIE BANKS
has agreed to handle the circulation in the City
of Salisbury. That again is another plus to
THE TRIBUNAL AID newspaper.
In reaching out to THE TRIBUNAL AID’s
various communities, the purpose is,
hopefully, clear to those who are concerned
enough to observe the wide circulation area.
However, for those who find it somewhat
confusing perhaps an explanation is in order.
Very few cities in the state of North Carolina
can afford the luxury of supporting a weekly
newspaper which is isolated or circulated only
within that city’s boundaries. The Black
community, is not large enough to support it
and, of course, the merchants are not going to
support it if there is no circulation.
Because of this, THE TRIBUNAL AID feels
that is is necessary to spread its circulation
coverage to as wide an area as possible;
thereby, gaining circulation and readers
throughout. This will increase the possibility
and potential of enlarged circulation.
This is most attractive to advertisers,
especially those that operate chain
establishments. As we all know, the “Life
Blood” of newspapers, as stated time and
tjme before, is advertising. Recognizing that,
it is in the interest of THE TRIBUNAL AID to
expand its program as wide as possible which,
in turn, will command and demand the
advertising so badly needed to support this
newspaper.
SALISBURY is an exciting city -- the home
of Livingstone College and some fine, strong
Black Churches and leaders. THE TRIBUNAL
AID looks forward to its addition and
welcomes whatever news it might share with
us. Welcome aboard SALISBURY!
ALTHOUGH THE EDITORIALS WRITTEN
BY ME ARE NOT INTENDED TO BE THE
ONLY ANSWER TO THE PROBLEMS AND
CONDITIONS EXPRESSED, SOME PER
SONS .STILL MAY DISAGREE WITH MY
THOUGHTS. BECAUSE OF THIS, 1 WOULD
LIKE TO EXTEND AN INVITATION TO ANY
RESPONSIBLE PERSON WHO WISHES TO
REFUTE MY EXPRESSIONS, FREE AND
EQUAL SPACE IN THIS NEWSPAPER, IN
WHICH TO DO SO.
NO JOB CHANGES THE HARO HAT TUNE.
THE TmBUHU DID
)Bap«
1228 M ontlieu Avenue
Post Office Box 921 Phone [919] 885-6519
High Point, N. C. 27261
Published Every Wednesday
by Triad i’ublieations. Inc.
Mailed Subscription Rate
,$5.00 Per Year Payable In Advance
Albert A. Campbell Managing Editor
Jean M. White Secretary
John Williams Advertising
LEXINGTON Jessie Wood 246-6521
SALISBURY Rev. Theodore Walker 633-4349
THOMASVILLE Kelly Hoover 476-7472
WINSTON-SALEM Velma Hopkins
Second-Class Postage Paid at High
REUEF I
CHECKSl
RELIEF
CHECKS
Lingering Doubts
Abouts King's Killer
BY CARL T. ROWAN
MM3000
WASHINGTON -- I have never
been the sort of person who sees
an evil conspiracy behind every
death of every controversial
person.
Not a CIA-capitalist conspiracy.
Not a Soviet KGB--Communist
plot. Not when John F. Kennedy
was assassinated. Not when
Martin Luther King was killed.
Neither when Patrice Lumumba
was murdered in the Congo, nor
when “Papa Doc” Duvalier just
sort of “passed away” in Haiti.
I have written nary a column
supporting those who scream that
Lee Harvey Oswald was not the
sole killer of Kennedy. I have
given not a single speech
supporting James Earl Ray’s claim
that he is not responsible for
King’s murder and that he
deserves a new trial. As one who
once sat on the Forty Committee,
which approved delicate CIA
operations, and who never heard a
word about the CIA’s killing
anybody, obviously I’ve never
grabbed TV time with a claim that
the U.S. was operating a sort of
Murder, Inc. in the Carbbean -- or
anyplace else.
I believe that you don’t accuse
people - or governments - of
murder unless you’re able to prove
it.
Yet, I confess that I’m shaken
by the rash of recent stories
alleging that the CIA handed out
contracts to the Mafia for the
murder of assorted people,
presumably all foreigners. The
Watergate revelations have
thrown an aura of semi-believabi-
lity arund what used to seem to be
ridiculous claims that G. Gordon
Liddy and E. Howard Hunt (two
ex-CIA operatives) were in Dallas
the day Kennedy was killed and
were near the scene of the crime. I
listen with an eerie tingle when
someone reminds me that
Alabama Gov. George Wallace has
speculated that someone with
money, who stood to benefit
politically from ending his
third-party campaign, had to be
financing and directing Arthur
Bremer, the man now imprisoned
for almost killing Wallace.
The terrible truth is that, after
Watergate, few people doubt any
story of political madness,
however implausible it may have
seemed a year or two ago.
A top FBI official confided to me
several years ago that the late J.
Edgar Hoover was livid when Dr.
King was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize. Hoover talked with a
few ideas about the fact that King
had tried, as a teenager, to commit
suicide. Either Hoover, or one of
his minions, decided that the
“suicidal tendency” might be
reactivated if the FBI sent to
King’s wife a surreptitious
recording made of a party in
King’s suite in a Washington
hotel.
Mrs. Coretta King has now
admitted that such a tape was
received, but she is quoted as
saying that neither she nor her late
husband felt that it was damaging
to them. So King did not commit
suicide.
Meanwhile, in 1964, Hoover
told President Lyndon B. Johnson
(who then told civil rights leaders
like Roy Wilkins of the NAACP
and Whitney Young of the
National Urban League) that one
of King’s most influential advisers
was a secret Communist.
“We’ve followed him regularly
to Mexico where he meets secretly
with a top Soviet intelligence
official, but we’ve never been able
to get a photograph of King’s
friend with the Russian spy,” I
was informed by an FBI official.
Told of this, Johnson asked
certain civil rights leaders to
convince King that if he continued
to be influenced by this so-called
Soviet spy, he would wreck the
civil rights movement. King
agreed to ditch the alleged spy,
but a few weeks later Johnson, I
and other top government officials
were treated to FBI stories (maybe
valid, maybe not) that King was
now seeing the alleged Commu
nist secretly.
You sit remembering that many
people detested King for what he
was doing to break up the old Jim
Crow order. After the FBI
launched its whispering cam
paign, many Americans believed
he was a “Commie” out t'l destroy
this country. Other segments of
this society despised him for the
harsh things he was saying about
U.S. military involvement in
Indochina.
You remember those things and
are forced to wonder if King’s
assassination was merely the deed
of one man, James Earl Ray, who
acted solely out of his own
hatreds?
The more one hears these
stories of nefarious schemes and
gross abuses by the dirty tricksters
of the intelligence community, the
easier it becomes to doubt that
James Earl Ray acted alone,
without instigation, or without
help or pay from others.
How poisoned the atmosphere
becomes when normally trusting
people find themselves suspecting
the worst where political murders
are involved.
TO, BE EQUAL
by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
Executive nirector of the National Urban League
South Africa’s Crimes ^
The minority white government probably accounts tor the trantic
diplomacy and the P.R. campaign
relentlessly pursued by South
of South Africa has launched a
massive publicity barrage full of
exaggerated public relations
claints designed to show that race
relations are improving there. No
one should be fooled.
South Africa is still a country in
which a small white minority
dominates and oppresses a large
black majority.
All the public relations
gimmicks and paid advertisements
cannot erase the evidence of
degradation and racism.
The black majority continues to
work for wages lower than an
adequate minimal living standard.
It is denied educational opportuni
ties, political representation, and
decent housing and social
conditions. And it is victimized by
discriminatory laws requiring
passbooks (really, internal pass
ports), separate public facilities,
and zoned segregated living areas.
Blacks commonly are paid from
a third to a tenth for the same work
as whites. The tax system is also
rigged so that blacks, who get few
services for their taxes, pay
proportionately more taxes.
This economic exploitation is
part and parcel of a total system
designed to force the black
majority into feeble impoverish
ment, unable to influence their
own destinies. The educational
system which works superbly for
whites, is an example of this, as
illustrated by the fact that only
about half of the black population
is literate.
Keep people desperately poor,
keep them in ignorance, refuse
them basic political and social
rights, imprison potential leaders,
channel them into reservations
where they have only the
appearance of self-government,
and you create a pliant mass labor
supply that won’t threaten your
rule. At least that’s the theory the
South African government seems
to be trying.
But it won’t work. Changes
elsewhere in southern Africa
indicate that it is only a matter of
time before the racist state is
forced to change, too. This
so
Africa’s leadership.
I doubt that they are convincing
many people though. You can call
a prison a garden but the bars are
there for all to see. Enlightened
white South Africans recognize the
only a change in that nation’s
oppressive racial policies can avert
a bloody war of liberation that will
ultimately destroy their country,
along with many hundreds of
thousands of black people, as well.
A peaceful solution is in
everyone’s best interests and the
United States ought to play a
constructive role in encouraging
this. Mr. Kissinger is renowned
for his “shuttle diplomacy” and
he’s constantly travelling to the far
corners of the globe, but somehow
he never manages to get to Africa.
This is a reflection of America’s
non-policy toward the Continent,
and of its support for the status
quo in southern Africa, no matter
how much that harms the area’s
black majority.
A change in our nation’s African
policy is long overdue and a good
starting place would be for added
pressure on South Africa to
change. This is not only a
governmental responsibility: it is
one that is shared by American
corporations who have a big stake
in South Africa.
Some large corporations have
already recognized black trade
unions, improved black pay scales,
and promoted training,” employ
ment opportunities, and better
race relations. More can be done,
and will be, if U.S. corporations
refuse to abide by the racially
oppressive laws of that country
and understand that South Africa
needs them more than they need
South Africa.
Given the changes already
taking place in southern Africa,
there is every reason to believe
that new initiatives by the State
Department, by corporations, and
by citizen’s groups will help to
encourage further change, even in
the prison state of South Africa.
ftngs Ton Should Know
BAMBAATA
1865-1906
■ • .Chief of the lowly zondi tribe of
ZULULAND^HE was HEAVIty TAXED BY FOREIGN
WHITE exploiters...REFUSING TO PAY,HE LEO
HIS PEOPLE IN A VALIANT FIGHT AGAINST
THE BRITISH (MATCHING SPEARS AND CLUBS
AGAINST RIFLES AND CANNON HE FARED SO
W^|jTHATT\^ENTY other CHIEFS JOINED
HIM! against WER WHELMNG ODDS HE WAG
ED A NINE MONTH WAR THAT COSTTHEBRIT
ISH ^5^000000 I SOON AFTER BAMBAATA
HIMSELF WAS KILLED THE REBELLION
collapsed!