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THE TRffiUNAL AID
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31,197$
_ EDITORIALS
lou re A Part Of The Solution^ Or You^re A Part Of The Problem ’
Tur uiriifv AF Tur .... m..
The Last Black
Congressman
Tbl» Is the farewell tpeech to th« U.S. CongrMi fraa
CengreMiiian George H. White In 1901. White wm Hm
iMt Negro to serve In the Hoase antU Oscar De Pilaat
was electMl from IlUnols in 192*.
Continued From Last Week
“lam wholly at sea as to just what MR. OTEY had in
view in advancing the thoughts contained in the above
quotation, unless he wishes to extend the simile and
apply the lion as a white man and the negro as a lamb.
In that case we will gladly accept the comparison, for of
all animals known in God’s creation the lamb is the
most inoffensive, and has been in all ages held up as a
badge of innocence. But what will my good friend of
Virginia do with Bible, for God says that He created all
men of one flesh and blood? Again, we insist on having
one race - the lion clothed with great strength, vicious,
and with destructive propensities, wh;:*, the other is
weak, good natured, inoffensive, and useful - what will
he do with all the heterogeneous intermeaiate animals,
ranging all the way from the pure lion to the pure lamb,
found on the plantations of every Southern State in the
Union?
I regard his borrowed thoughts, as he admits they
are, as very inaptly applied. However, it has perhaps
served the purpose for which he intended it - the
attempt to show the inferiority of the one and the
superiority of the other. I fear 1 am giving too much
time in the consideration of these personal comments of
members of Congress, but I trust I will be pardoned for
making a passing reference to one more gentleman -
MR. WILSON of South Carolina - who, in the early part
of this month, made a speech some parts of which did
great credit to him, showing, as it did, capacity for
collating, arranging, and advancing thoughts of others
and of making a pretty strong argument out of a very
poor case.
If he had stopped there, while not agreeing with him,
many of us would have been forced to admit that he had
done well. But his purpose was incomplete until he
dragged in the reconstruction days and held up to scorn
and ridicule the few ignorant, gullible, and perhaps
purchaseable negroes who served in the State
legislature of South Carolina over thirty years ago. Not
a word did he say about the unscrupulous white men,
in the main bummers who followed in the wake of the
Federal Army and settled themselves in the Southern
States, and preyed upon the ignorant and unskilled
minds of the colored people, then hied away to their
Northern homes for ease and comfort and the balance
of their lives, or joined the Democratic party to obtain
sociaf recognition, and have greatly aided in depressing
and further degrading those whom they had used as
easy tools to accomplish a diabolical purpose.
These few ignorant men who chanced at that time to
hold office are given as a reason why the black man
should not be permitted to participate in the affairs of
the Government which he is forced to pay taxes to
support. He insists that they, the Southern whites, are
the black man’s best friend, and that they are taking
him by the hand and trying to lift him up; that they are
educating him. For all that he and all Southern people
have done in this regard, I wish in behalf of the colored
people of the South to extend our thanks. We are not
ungrateful to friends, but feel that our toil has made our
friends able to contribute the stinty pittance which we
have received at their hands.
I read in a Democratic paper a few days ago, the
Washington Times, an extract taken from a South
Carolina paper, which was intended to exhibit the
eagerness with which the negro is grasping every
opportunity to educating himself. The clipping showed
that the money for each white child in the State ranged
from three to five times as much per capita as was given
to each colored child. This is helping us some, but not
to the extent that one would infer from the gentlemen’s
speech.
If the gentleman to whom I have referred will pardon
me, I would like to advance the statement that the
musty records of 1868, filed away in the archives of
Southern capitols, as to what the negro was thirty-two
years ago, is not a proper standard by which the negro
living on the threshold of the twentieth century should
be measured. Since that time we haye reduced the
illiteracy of the race at least 45 per cent. We have
written and published nearly 500 books. We have
nearly 300 newspapers, 3 of which are dailies. We have
now in practice over 2.000 lawyers and a corresponding
number of doctors. We have accumulated over
$12,000,000 worth of school property and about
$40,000,000 worth of church property. We have about
140,000 farms and homes, valued at in the
neighborhood of $750,000,000, and personal property
valued at about $170,000,000. We have raised about
$11,000,000 for educational purposes, and the property
per capita for every colored man. woman, and child in
the United States is estimated at $75.
Caiitijiued Next Wfiek
THE VIEWS Of Tit WHTEI’S Ht MOT tlWtTS fflUSt OF HE P»PEI'S
BLACKS ■UST NOT BECOME 'JUST SPECTATORS’
TO THEIR OWN DOOy
OLACKS WHO WANT TO F10HT
CfflME BY BLACKS AGAINST
Off. CHARLES COBb
DIRECTOR. COI'IMISSION
!^0R EQUAL JUSTICE
TO BE EQUAL
by Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
Executive Director of the' Nsiional Urban League
New York City’s last-ditch struggle
against bankruptcy got a lot of national
attention a few months ago, culminating
with a hard-line stand by the
Administration that finally led to a
three-year plan to get the City back on the
road to solvency.
That plan didn’t end New York’s
problems-it just was a step on the way
toward correcting its fiscal emergency. In
fact, the imposed cuts in City spending
have worsened conditions for its poorer
citizens and may, in the long run, prevent
the City from regaining its economic
viability.
One basic remaining problem on the
fiscal scene is the dollar straitjacket the
City has been placed in by its three-year
plan that forces it to cut a deficit that took
ten years to accumulate, and builds into
the City s budget over $2 billion just in
interest charges.
Those are tough terms; private
corporations and foreign countries have
all been able to get easier terms than
that. So the very terms of rescue impede
full recovery and make the long-term
outlook bleak.
With so much of its revenues going to
creditors, the City has fewer dollars left
for essential services. That means
lay-offs of City workers.
Because the lay-offs have been on the
seniority principle, black and minority
workers have been the ones chopped
from the payroll in disproportionate
numbers. New York’s Human Rights
Commissioner, Eleanor Holmes Norton,
reports that in the past year-and-a-half
the City has lost half of its
Spanish-surnamed workers, 40 percent of
its black males and almost a third of its
women employees.
So equal employmei, opportunities
have been a bi> victim of the fiscal
belt-tightening.
Another target of budget cuts is the
City University, which has a free tuition
policy and recently instituted a successful
open admissions policy that has enabled
more youngsters to get a college
education.
Open admissions is ne of those
problems popularly labelled as being for
blacks while actually benefiting greater
numbers of white ethnics who never
before went to college in such numbers.
Now, both white and black students
have their futures endangered since the
City is trying to get the state to take over
the colleges, and that means tuition
payments beyond their means. Even if
limited scholarship money becomes
available, white middle class families that
won’t qualify for such aid will have less
reason to stay in the City, leading to
increased white migration to suburbia
and greater segregation.
It’s as if each step leads to a second
one, and then a third, each with
unfortunate results for the City and for its
residents.
Attracting more job-producing busi
nesses to the City is one goal of the City’s
planners and a good one. But several key
officials are now talking about bulldozing
slum areas to build industrial parks to
attract factories.
When it is pointed out that it’s cruel to
uproot families in this manner and that
the City has plenty of empty land zoned
for industrial use, they say yes, but we
need to give industry a symbolic gesture
to show we want them. So the solution
seems to be to kick the poorest and least
able out of their homes and
neighborhoods not for concrete results,
but for “a symbolic gesture.”
All of these real and impending
hardships, including some that border on
the cruel, are taking place in the name of
fiscal austerity and lack of City tax
revenue. But at the same time. City
residents pay some $7 billion in federal
taxes earmarked for the Pentagon.
In other words, the City shuts down
hospitals and firehouses for lack of moey
while it sends billions to Washington for
redistribution to other parts of the
country in military contracts.
It all adds up to an anti-city,
anti-minority set of priorities imposed
upon our largest city. Solution of the
fiscal crisis was bought at the cost of
increased misery for the poor and by
undermining the City’s future.
N. C. Human Resources
that setting everyday necessities such as
cooking meals and building a shelter get
done only if there is both individual
initiative and interdependence.”
Grady, for instance, is an example of a
child who had become institutionalized,
or dependent upon the system. Only 14
years old, his involvement with the law-
had already consumed about half of his
RALEIGH--When Grady left a large
western North Carolina training school
last week and headed for the eastern part
of the state, the 14-year-old had no idea
he was making history.
Grady was not a runaway. His trip
across the state had the full blessing of
the state of North Carolina, including the
governor, the General Assembly, the
North Carolina Department of^,Human
Resources, and particularly the Division
of Youth Services--not to mention
countless concerned private citizens who
for years have been behind a national
effort to reduce the number of children in
state institutions.
Grady was leaving training school and
160 school mates for a wilderness camp.
There, along with four counselors and 16
other boys who were not juvenile
delinquents, he would work, play and live
for an indefinite time.
He would clear land, help construct
camp facilities, live in camper-built
primitive cottages, plan and cook at least
two meals a day over an open fire. He wo
He would clear land, help construct
camp facilities, live in camper-built
primitive cottages, plan and cook at least
two meals a day over an open fire. He
would for the first time know simple
successes, such as sawing a piece of
wood, hammering a nail, clearing land
and building bridges. But most of all he
would learn to be responsible for his own
survival.
It was a history-making move for the
state of North Carolina. Grady and Tom
were the first of an estimated 50 children
who, in the next few months, will be
transferred out of the training schools
into smaller community type facilities.
According to North Carolina Division of
Youth Services Director Ray Shurling,
facilities such as the wilderness camp
have certain advantages over training
schools. ‘‘In the first place, camps, while
not cheap, cost less than institutions.
More important, for many young people
the wilderness type environment is more
conducive to the development of ..great
self confidence, self esteem and
encourages cooperation with others. In
life.
Since 1970, when he was eight-years-
old, he has been arrested for several
charges of breaking and entering, larceny
and shoplifting. He had been in training
school a number of times. In an attempt
to remain there, he consistently
committed offenses just before his
release time. Twice he was released and
sent back home, but an afternoon of
shoplifting would get him back into
training school. Grady's mother is
alcoholic and partially paralyzed. Grady
remembers when he was eight that she
murdered her husband in self-defense.
His record at training school showed that
he does well there...until it’s time to go
home.
At camp. Grady w'ill learn how to work
with others, to make decisions, and to
take responsibility for his own survival.
According to Dr. Elmer Davidson, a
psychologist with the Division of Youth
Services, “One of the best things about
sending a child to camp instead of
training school is they don't get into a
beat-the-system culture.” At w'ilderness
camp, they become successful at getting
things accomplished, because there are
so many things that must get done in
order for them to sleep and eat, he said.
The trend away from training schools,
the increasing number of commitments to
smaller community type facilities,
including camps and group homes, is
expected to increase in the next few years
as the North Carolina Division of Youth
Services seeks out a new alternative to
training school.
Contracts have already been signed
with three North Carolina camps and a
number of additional contracts with
,''^*'1R')s,;grpupthomes fnd other facilities
will be signed in the next few months,
Shurling said.
Things You Should Know
■ A PROFESSOR AT YALE, 8 A THFO-
LOGIAN a LINGUISXHE HELPEDTRANS-
LATE THE STORY OF THE FAMOUS SLAVE
MUTINYQNTHESPANISHSHIPAMISTAD IN
JUL-^ 1839/when JOSEPH CINQUE,THEIR LEADER, a ALL -mE
OTHER MUTINEERS WERE TRIED IN THE U^.SUPREME COURT
M QUINCY ADAMS DEFENDED THEM WITH A BRILLIANT 8 /xTOUR
AR6UMp4T./THEYWERE FREED ON MARCH 9, 1841 /
^ V'i-.v 5* —' — .
OOBC
SBBBOB'OBPOOOOOOOOOq
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ROBERT MELVIN, CIRCULATION MANAGER
amplify those efforts, not
only domestically, but
internationally to achieve
and to use all of the
instruments of knowledge,
science, technology, art
and culture to enlarge-not
to destroy-mankind. We
have demonstrated this
achievement in the fields of
medicine, athletics and
entertainment and we are
approaching it in politics
and In business; but there
are miles yet to go in
education and scholarship.
In employment, In manage
ment and ownership, and in
the final resolution of the
unconscionable American
dissonance in the matter of
basic human respect and
trustworthiness.
We know now that our
nation is not in crisis as
between competence and
incompetence, or even as
between education and lack
of education, since one of
our greatest recent national
achievements has been to
make the advantages of
Livingstone College
education more broadly
available across the spec
trum of our American
population than any other
nation or society has ever
achieved. Our crisis Is as
between the use of
competence and education
or right purposes and the
use of those gifts for
selfish, parochial and in too
many instances hypocriti
cal, corrupt, and wrong
purposes. The already
demonstrated hypocrisy
among the educated and
the competent, and the
corruption among the
affluent and able, are the
two most present threats to
the survival of constitution
ally protected liberty and
justice in our society. Those
threats are so persuasive as
to Invade the sanctuary of
the private lives of the most
honorable among us. That
is what the loss of
confidence in the integrity
of our national leaders, of
our educational leaders,
and even to an extent of oru
From Page-1.
religious leaders has sig-
nailed to us. And that is
why our first national
priority must be to restore a
climate worthy of confi-
dence. There has been a
marked increase of the
revelations of corruption in
local, state and federal
government, business, so
cial institutions and pro-
grams, and in law itself.
Our courts have had as
tedious a time dealing with
the best educated, the
affluent and the highest
placed in responsibility
among us as with those
whom we customarily
associate with poverty and
criminaltiy. This pheno
menon has so pervaded the
basic fabric of our society
as to increase the inner
tensions of almost ail
persons. It has even
brought the greatest pres
sures upon the family
institution. That in my
judgment is why there is a
sudden return to religion
Cont inued bn Page *7