The Politics Behind Georgia’s Fair Employment Practices Law

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 1, No. 1, 1978, pp. 21-23

In an election year, bill-signing ceremonies become as fine an occasion to judge the issues of an incumbent governor’s campaign as a speech at a barbecue picnic in Southwest Georgia. When Governor George Busbee signed the 1978 Georgia Fair Employment Practices Act into law in March, he spoke highly of the new law which could not have existed anywhere in the South 15 years ago. He called the bill “one of the most significant pieces of legislation to pass the general assembly in many years.”

Busbee made it clear to the press and other observers, however, that equal opportunity in employment would be brought to Georgia “through the type of working relationship already established and because our people want to do what is right.” Echoing the strident words shouted in the past to resist such changes, the New South governor employed the old rhetoric about the way change effectively occurs. He said that fairness in state jobs won’t come through threats, coercion, unruly demonstrations or nuisance court actions.”

The mixed symbols of the old and new politics of Georgia with which Busbee enacted the new legislation and campaigned for reelection explain much of the background behind the new law. The governor was campaigning for votes when he said that equal opportunity for a state job will now be afforded all applicants because officials want to do right.” Honorable intentions did not cause any appreciable difference in Black employment after Busbee issued an executive order in July 1976, encouraging state agencies to hire and promote more Blacks and women. Eighteen months later he was admitting privately that the executive order had failed.

It was not goodwill, but the methods Busbee dismissed as ineffective that led the general assembly to pass a law this year prohibiting discrimination in state employment. The threats of expensive lawsuits and the possible resulting coercion of a federal court order on state hiring convinced legislators to adopt a bill attempting to correct a problem rather than wait for a judge to impose an unwanted solution.

An expanded version of the Fair Employment Practices Act had originally been introduced 10 years ago. Two Black Georgia state legislators offered the bill again in 1976 and 1977. It was assigned to the Human Relations Committee where it remained until Busbee became directly involved by introducing similar legislation last February.

No magic caused the bill to pass, says a special assistant to the governor, Chuck Pierce. He attributes its enactment to the culmination of three years of work. This year the focus of the bill was narrowed to discrimination in public employment, and groups advocating equal opportunity for the handicapped, women, and Blacks were encouraged to lobby their legislators, he said.

Members of the Black legislative caucus emphasize different reasons for the support of the governor and the general assembly. ‘The pressure from complaints that might have resulted in class action suits which would have cost thousands of dollars to defend” was a major impetus, says Rep. Clint Deveaux. The two-term Atlanta legislator and lawyer said Busbee decided to support the bill as soon as it became apparent that the federal government was seriously investigating complaints which state employees had filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Some political pressure exerted by Black leaders probably encouraged Busbee to support the bill. Busbee received a large percentage of the Black vote in his election as governor and the support of the Black caucus for his legislative programs during the past four years. Therefore, when the caucus near the beginning of the 1978 legislative session publicly criticized Busbee and demanded to know how he planned to increase the numbers and salaries of Blacks in state government, the governor was willing to meet with caucus members to discuss their grievances. Agreeing that a racial imbalance among employees’ salaries existed, Busbee told the caucus he would introduce legislation to handle employment discrimination in state government.

The Black caucus exerted direct pressure on Busbee and the general assembly members in other ways. Rep. Mildred Glover of Atlanta, chairperson of the state merit system overview committee within the caucus, introduced a resolution seeking the support of House members for a petition of Black caucus to EEOC “to proceed with dispatch in its review and investigation of the charges of employment discrimination in Georgia state government.”

“We were in the process of creating turmoil within the general assembly,” says Rep. J.E. (Billy) McKinney, who filed complaints with EEOC against 11 departments in 1974 for their small percentage of Black employees. A roll-call vote on the resolution was to be requested to create particular pressure on White legislators representing predominantly Black districts. Five members of the caucus also traveled to Washington to ask the Department of Justice to review McKinney’s complaint about job discrimination and consider filing suit against the state. After Busbee’s bill was introduced, Black legislators canceled the House vote on the resolution and requested a further delay in EEOC investigations.

Most persuasive with fellow legislators, Rep. J.C. Daugherty said, was the cost of defending the state during investigations. Work production was lowered when staff had to respond to requests for information from EEOC, the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Revenue Sharing, said Pierce, the governor’s assistant. We pointed out that we can either develop within the state the mechanism to address the charges or face answering those charges in investigations or court.”

The bill’s supporters cited cases against Alabama and Mississippi which had resulted in federal judges governing the process of hiring state troopers and other state employees. Daugherty reflected, ‘We dian’t think Georgia, being an enlightened state, that we needed to have a federal judge controlling our hiring.”

On March 9, 1978, the signature of George Busbee rflade the bill law. Unlike their counterparts to the west, Georgia elected officials, with their “enlightened” self-image, decided not to fight in the courts. Fearing what the “feds” might do, the state finally took affirmative action. It was politics as usual in the South.

During noon-time ceremonies on “Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials Day,” the day the Fair Employment Practices Act passed the House of Representatives, the governor called the legislation “a landmark declaration that affirmative

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action is the official policy of state government.” While unprecedented in the state of Georgia, the anti-discrimination bill is neither bold nor landmark legislation. It is not even unusual in the South, just late. Every state once belonging to the Confederacy, with the exceptions of Alabama and Mississippi, has some version of an equal employment opportunity office. A couple are more expansive in both their coverage and enforcement powers.

The Georgia law prohibits discrimination in state employment on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, handicap, or aoe (between 45 and 65 years). It provides for an administrator and a nine-member advisory board selected by the governor. Attorneys appointed to hear charges not settled through conciliation may order the hiring, reinstatement, or :ronotion of employees who are victims of discrimination. The Lw’s enforcement sections allow the imposition of $1000 fines if the Office of Fair Employment Practices (OFEP) makes public, v,thout permission, information obtained during investigations; 1 an employer retaliates against a person filing a charge; or if an ridividual files a frivolous charge against the state.

The law is limited because it deals only with state agencies, departments, and commissions. We cannot touch the private sector” or local governments, says G. Duke Beasley, the deputy regional director of EEOC who Busbee appointed in June to direct the OFEP. Beasley plans to push for amendments in the general assembly which would give the new office enforcement powers over private employers. “If I represented the state, why would I want the federal government to look at anything that happens in this state without my having an opportunity to correct it myself?” he asks to illustrate why he thinks the general assembly members will approve expanded authority for his office.

Other Southern states, like Florida and Tennessee, have state agencies which enforce antidiscririunation laws in public and private employment. North Carolina’s commission has authority only for voliJnta)i activity. The South Carolina Human Affairs Commission, created in 1972, has enforcement powers only in public employment but has handled disputes in private employment when employers request the state agency to consider a case. Reports that EEOC was planning to open an office in South Carolina to deal with employment practices in the textile industry led state legislators to introduce a bill giving the Human Affairs Commission power of enforcement in private industry.

In the Georgia law the compromises made to gain its passage may further reduce its effectiveness. In the House provisions for private attorneys designated to represent complainants during administrative hearings were deleted, although the law does allow the attorney general to represent the complaining party. The Senate reduced the life of the agency to two years unless the legislature votes to extend it.

More fundamentally, senators changed the tone of the bill by adding a provision fining persons $1 000 for frivolous charges,” an ominous sign to potential complainants, and expanding the sections disallowing “preferential treatment.” The law reads,”Quotas because of imbalances in employee ratios shall not be permitted” nor can employers hire or promote someone on the basis of their race, sex, age or handicap.

While the laws covers the handicapped, the state senate attempted to exclude them. Senators were moved by “confusion and fear–fear that they would have to hire every wino off the street,” says Tobiane Schwartz, an EEO specialist with the Army who lobbied to keep handicapped persons covered under the law. Their concern remains evident in the act’s definition of the “mentally handicapped” person. While the physically handicapped must prove their handicap does not interfere with job performance, the mentally handicapped must prove with medical evidence that their impairment has been “removed.” As Schwartz points out, “What does mental impairment mean? Does that include epilepsy or mental retardation? You will never be able to show that a mental impairment has been removed.”

For several weeks this spring, applicants for the job of director were submitting resumes to the governor’s office. More than 100 were received. Members of the Black legislative caucus, other legislators supporting the bill, women’s groups, and Black groups were asked to submit recommendations. Gov. Busbee interviewed six people for the job, including Tobiane Schwartz, former state Sen. Leroy Johnson and Sharon Adams, the head of the state Commission on the Status of Women. The person chosen, Duke Beasley, had not applied for the job.

There is some irony in the process by which the director was hired and he, in turn, hired people for the five staff positions. The agency charged with making certain that state goverment hires on the basis of merit rather than patronage did not widely publicize its job openings. While the selections were legally made, they clearly did not follow the spirit of the law. No written notices announcing the search for staff were circulated. Chuck Pierce, the governor’s aide who coordinated the hiring process, said solicitationsfor a director and staff were unnecessary because qualified applicants across the country were seeking the jobs.

Duke Beasley was selected as director because of his experience, says Pierce. “We could not afford to orient someone. Ve needed someone who could move in day one.” As deputy

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regional director of EEOC since 1972, Beasley had both administrative and compliance responsibilities for eight states in the Southeast. During 1975 and 1976, he served as regional acting director. He is on loan to the state for one year, which can be extended, during which time the federal government will continue to pay his salary.

The experience which impressed Busbee enough to hire Beasley had an opposite effect on some members of the Black caucus. The chairman of the caucus, Rep. Bobby hill of Savannah, called Beasley a “tired bureaucrat” shortly after his appointment, explaining, “I’m not interested in paperwork and memos.” Rep. McKinney said he was “not overly impressed because the director came from EEOC, and EEOC has a record of total, absolute failure.”

The lawmakers’ criticism illustrates the challenge of the director’s job. EEOC has a backlog of 400 to 500 complaints against the state which will be deferred to OFEP. Since EEOC has been unable to eliminate the backlog, it will be a difficult task for Beasley’s new staff to achieve in two years.

Such difficulties do not daunt Beasley. He is proud of the staff of EEOC specialists he inherited from the state merit system, which has been under contract with EEOC to investigate charges of state employees ‘I predict within 60 days that we will be the most viable agency in the state because of my own personality and how I manage,’ he said in an interview at the end of his first week as director.

Sitting in his partitioned corner office, no larger than an elevator, the 56 year-old administrator was separated from his stiff by a glass wall which allowed him to survey the room. He w scheduled to use a spacious executive’s office, he said, but requested instead to work in the same crowded, temporary offices as his 14-member staff. Since he feels a manager is only as good as his staff, Beasley hopes to guide them by example and discipline to be hardworking, fair, and beneficial. The father of seven frequently refers to his philosophy of child-rearing to explain his management style. On a first-name bris with his employees he hopes each will treat every complaining party walking through the door “the same as they would the governor.”

Beasley and his staff began working on July 3, a day when many workers chose to take a holiday. One of their firt jobs has been the clearing of 131 EEOC complaints assigned to the state By disposing of those cases this summer the staff will be ready to begin work on the complaints which EEOC will release to OFEP when it gains “deferral” status. Deferral status means that EEOC defers investigatory powers to the local or state agency which by law has authority to investigate and enforce antidiscrimination laws.

Although enthusiastic and confident about the potential impact of his office, Beasley did express concern about getting state employees to know their rights and to view his agency as the place to exercise those rights. At the same time, his emphasis focuses on settling complaints through conciliation. “Much can be done depending on the attitude of department heads. If one thing is necessary to bring about job opportunity, it is that the head of a department must be receptive to change. If thuy don’t change, there will be an unnecessary expenditure of money to respond to lawsuits.”

Along with his staff, Beasley has a difficult job ahead. He has a year to end a backlog of complaints which the federal agency he helped run has been unable to eliminate. He must inspire a staff with a reputation for slowness in investigating complaints already contracted to the state. He must try to gain the respect of employees dissatisfied with their treatment at work and employees mistrustful of any interference in the administration of their department while trying to alter the views of both groups. Finally, he must deal with the political pressure from legislators who want state employment to reflect the percentage of Blacks in the state’s population.

The Black caucus plans to monitor his work. “We will want a quantitative accounting of complaints of discrimination settled and in whose favor,” says Rep. Glover. “We want Duke Beasley to be accountable so we will be looking closely.” Rep Deveaux predicts the 1978 act will turn state government upside down, but not without time and controversy. “It will take a long time.”

It is too early to tell if OFEP will be able to bring equal opportunity to Georgia state government. Like the executive order before it, the Fair Employment Practices Act has forestalled any federal intervention for at least two more years. Hopefully, it will be more effective in transforming attitudes of employees, employers and elected officials about what is “right” in state government. Gov. Busbee may then claim that “working relationships alreadyestabIished- were responsible for bringing equal opportunity to state government. Most likely, the law’s effect will grow slowly following the same circuitous evolution that has moved Southern politics unwillingly in the past fifteen years from the talk of diehard, vehement hatred to the language–if not the deeds–of self-serving enlightenment.

Segregation Order at Reidsville Prison

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 1, No. 6, 1979, pp.19-21

In southeast Georgia last summer, the day before Independence Day, a decade of legal precedent was overturned at Georgia State Prison in Reidsville when U.S. District Judge Anthony Aliamo ordered the segregation of dormitories for a 60-day period. The segregation order, issued to cool tempers and ease the tension, came after one prisoner was killed and five others were wounded during a racial fight, one of a series of revengeful attacks since November 1976 that killed five inmates and injured 47. The court told prison officials to assign Black and White inmates to alternating dormitories in checkerboard fashion; the cell blocks, dining hall, recreation and work areas remained integrated.

The court-ordered segregation marked the first time in modern history that a federal judge had directed a state to separate prisoners by race. Although prison officials said they opposed the order as a misguided and potentially troublesome attempt to end racial attacks, the state complied with the order without a legal challenge and later asked for an extension of it. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, representing the prisoners, also did not appeal the judge’s decision, preferring to publicly remain silent on segregation while privately negotiating for better conditions at the prison.

The 60 days of segregation grew to eight months finally ending in mid-February. The state vacillated and LDF acquiesced to the judge’s decision, thereby accepting the premise that separating the races was the only way to restore peace at Reidsville. Their illusion was dispelled in only a few weeks after the order was issued when racial violence again erupted in July and August.

Aliamo ordered the segregation as part of the Guthrie case, a class action lawsuit filed in 1973 to seek reform at the state prison. In 1974 one of case’s earlier orders, Aliamo required the state to integrate Reidsville and rejected requests to have segregated dormitories.

On at least four occasions since the state law requiring segregated prisons was found unlawful in 1968, integration at Georgia State Prison had been attempted but violence caused the experiments in integration to be short-lived. Therefore, Aliamo’s order continued a ten-year tradition at Reidsville of reverting to segregation to resolve racial violence.

The segregation of 1978, like its predecessors, was justified by arguments of security. Marvin Pipkin, a Brunswick attorney Aliamo appointed as special master in the Guthrie case, says he recommended the temporary separation of White and Black prisoners to the judge to return order to the prison and save innocent lives. “There were so many rumors and so much tension in the prison. I felt that if we separated the prisoners for an intervening period of time and let things cool off, it would help the situation. We were trying to stop the senseless assault of Whites and Blacks on each other,” he said.

“I felt the need for the life and health of inmates was more important on a temporary basis than saying to the prisoners, ‘Well, you’re going to have to live together’,” because there’s a Supreme Court decision which says that prisons have to be integrated.

The arguments favoring segregation in prisons may not have been modified over the past ten years, but in this case the party responsible for initiating the decision to segregate was unique. While prison officials acting alone have segregated prisoners by race for a few days and judges have permitted such racial separation, no judge has been known to use the power of the federal court to affirmatively order segregation, even for a short period of time.

“In Washington v. Lee (the Alabama case which first declared unconstitutional state laws mandating racial segregation in prisons), the court left open the possibility of segregating prisoners if race could be shown to be a specific problem. It’s my understanding that the judge took this case one step further by issuing an affirmative order to

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resegregate,” says Ralph I. Knowles Jr., associate director of the National Prison Project, which is affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Aliamo not only required the racial separation, but he also issued the order without the plaintiffs or defendants formally requesting it. “I don’t think either side particularly approved the action,” said Pipkin. “At the time they were saying they wanted to try something else.”

However, the only people publicly disapproving the court-ordered segregation were civil rights and prison reform groups. “It’s the worst sort of cop-out – to lay the problems at Reidsville on integration,” said Gene Guerrero, director of the ACLU of Georgia. “The conditions at Reidsville, which concern overcrowding and the way inmates are treated, go back 40 years.” After Aliamo extended the segregation of October for an indefinite time period, Tyrone Brooks of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said, “I don’t believe this is the answer. It just makes people believe the only reason the problem of killings and violence is there is because of integration.”

In contrast, the prisoners’ attorney expressed only resignation when he said the order demonstrated how bad the situation had become at Reidsville. Although the LDF lawyers did not support the judge’s decision to segregate, they also did not initially oppose it and allowed it to continue unchallenged for eight months. Instead of seeking a reversal of the decision, the lawyers chose to continue discussions with the state’s attorneys on the unresolved issues in the Guthrie case, including the process of reintegration.

No challenge was made, says Steve Winter, an LDF staff attorney, because no one thought the original 60-day order would be prolonged for several months. In addition, “(t)here’s the problem of whether we could have won on appeal to the Fifth Circuit,” says Winter, who inherited the case in September. “We hoped that negotiations with the judge and the defendants would be more successful than litigation.”

The state’s position on the court order was even more muddled. Prison spokeswoman Sara Passmore says, “We particularly felt it wasn’t the solution because the major conflicts haven’t occurred in the living areas.” Her boss, Prison Commissioner David Evans criticized the “checker-hoarding” order when it was issued, particularly the time requirements. “When you pull inmates out to live in their own races for 60 days and then reintegrate them, I cannot see anything viable that will come of this,” he said. Two months later after two more racial fights at Reidsville, E vans wanted an extension to the 60-day deadline.

Gov. George Busbee supported Evans in his request for a delay in the reintegration of the dorms. The governor said to reporters, “I assume that the commissioner felt that the commissioner felt that we would be anticipating more violence if they were to be integrated at this time, before we were able to come up with the changes that we’re making down there in order to make this a maximum security facility.” At the same time the newly appointed warden of Georgia State Prison, Charles Balkcom, was suggesting that the cell blocks follow the segregation pattern of the dormitories. The confusion resulting from the contradictory statements – opposing segregation but wanting it continued and even expanded finally caused Evans to deny that the state had requested segregation and prompted the state Board of Offender Rehabilitation to reaffirm its commitment to integrated prisons.

The uncertainty surrounding the state’s position on segregated facilities was partially produced by statements prison officials and the governor made last spring before segregation occurred. While Busbee and then Reidsville Warden Joe Hopper said they countenanced integrated prisons because it’s “the law of the land,” they also made clear they thought that integration had caused much of the violence at the state prison. Following four racial fights one night in mid-March which killed one prisoner and injured 16 more, Hopper said, “I really don’t think they (federal judges) understand the problem. It’s not because they haven’t been made aware, because they know what the problem is. It is just that the law of the land of this particular philosophy (of civil rights) has to be enforced at all costs,” which he estimated as the lives of at least five inmates and many sleepless nights for him. Two weeks later Busbee told reporters, “I don’t think it’s humanly possible to totally prevent murder in prisons. The problem is coming because of integrated sleeping quarters.”

A critic of the state’s handling of problems at Reidsville disagreed with the governor’s explanation of the violence. After a fight in the prison gymnasium in June which injured nine men, Atlanta Voice columnist Charles King Jr. wrote, “Last week’s violence served the state well. It reinforced the official position taken by Reidsville officials and Gov. Busbee that Reidsville problems stem from forced integration. It is a thin alibi that pretends, ‘If the courts had not ordered us to integrate, we would have no conflicts.'”

Paradoxically, the most violent riot of the year and the first murder of a guard by inmates inside the prison in the history of Reidsville occurred three weeks after segregation was ordered to prevent more killings. On July 23rd a group of Black inmates being escorted to dinner overpowered their guards and took the keys. The inmates rampaged through two dormitories for nearly an hour, burning mattresses, killing the guard and two prisoners and injuring another guard. All the victims were White. In a racial attack on Black inmates less than a month later, White inmates in an integrated cell block killed one Black man and wounded three more while they were preparing for work.

The incidents show that segregation clearly doesn’t work to hold down violence, says Winter of the LDF. “If anything,” says Passmore, “it created greater power struggles.” Knowles of the National Prison Project says, “Once you segregate, you’re only asking for suspicion, paranoia, hostility and accusations that one group is given privileges

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that the other isn’t.” Warden Balkcom insists, however, that the segregation had a quietening effect.

Regardless of Balkcom’s observation, the state’s assignment to provide protection for every inmate may well prove as difficult to fulfill after the interlude of segregation as it was last summer. The obvious improvements have been made: the population has been reduced from 2,800 inmates to 2,100, and 125 additional guards have been hired. The state is under court order to maintain a 55 percent Black and 45 percent White population in the dormitories until single cells are constructed. But the problems of providing adequate facilities, meaningful activities and humane treatment at Georgia State Prison remain. The more immediate concern of dealing with people who may not want to sleep next to members of another race lingers. It is not clear that the state can fulfill its obligation.

One reason for the state’s difficulty may lie with its crew of predominantly rural, White guards who are paid to protect a predominantly urban, Black population. Suspicion and hostility exists between the two groups. Black prisoners have complained that the guards encourage tension and mistrust by allowing White inmates to keep weapons; the guards protest that they are wrongly blamed for the violence of the prisoners.

After repeated accusations that guards were passing weapons to prisoners, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation conducted an inquiry at Reidsville. Two guards were fired and 16 more resigned, primarily for smuggling drugs to prisoners, says Passmore. During the investigation Busbee said at a press conference, “There is, in my opinion, some evidence that a very limited number of these crudely fashioned weapons made in the prison, that their presence was condoned by a limited number of correctional officers.”

Winter cites the state’s lack of vision as another problem. When attorneys filed the state’s plan for reintegration last fall, it essentially said, ” ‘Trust us. We’ll do it by July 1979,’ ” says Winter. “Our experience is that the state hasn’t come up with a sophisticated response to the problem.” Expenditures support Winter’s contention that the state’s primary thrust has been the improvement of security for guards at the prison. The state appropriated $1.2 million after the guard’s death, primarily for equipment to protect the employees.

The guards won priority in another decision concerning inmates – their role in the process of reintegration. During the 1974 integration of the prison, community relations specialists worked with inmates to prepare them for the change. “The idea was to work from within and give inmates the feeling that they have a role in their destiny,” said Winter.

Such an active role for prisoners in February’s integration did not happen because of the abortive life last spring of the Inmates Unity Council, an integrated group of prisoners who wanted to reduce the violence and also negotiate for improvements in living conditions. The guards opposed the warden’s recognition of the IUC and threatened to sue the state. In August, Hopper, the warden who recognized the inmate council, was replaced by Balkcom, who stated he would never negotiate with inmate representatives. With Balkcom directing the reintegration process, it is doubtful prisoners will be given much responsibility for maintaining harmonious race relations. Yet, without seeking the help of prisoners in eliminating racial antagonism, it is difficult to foresee a reign of peace.

The ironies abound in this case of court-ordered segregation. A federal judge, the symbol in the 1960s of the federal government’s efforts to ensure equality, returned in the 1970s to the Southern way of segregating the races by law; indeed, the very judge who ended segregation at Reidsville in 1974 was responsible in 1978 for its resurrection. A civil rights group responsible for many landmark desegregation cases accepted the order to segregate without protest. A “New South” governor elected with the support of a majority of Black voters relied on an old refrain for explaining the cause of the violence. Finally, the racial violence, which segregation was expected to end, viciously reoccurred.

The judge’s decision to segregate the dormitories at Reidsville becomes one more example of the public retreat from a national commitment for racial equality. As one observer noted, “It’s interesting that a federal judge has recognized that at least in one institution a remedy against an old injustice is now itself a source of danger … (and) it’s very, very sad.”

The court’s experiment in partial segregation has proved as ineffective as wiring a fat person’s jaws to vary regular eating habits. With the artificial barrier removed, the prisoners must still try to live with members of the other race without fighting them, and prison officials must proceed with their attempts to contain violence. Segregation could not eliminate racial attacks at Reidsville unless it was expanded to include complete separation of the races at all times. No one, not even the White prisoners who want the checkerboard dormitories to continue, has suggested total segregation.

Unfortunately, the absence of moral leadership in this situation provides little encouragement that the state will be ready to adopt more costly and politically unpopular alternatives to preventing violence. Segregation has only succeeded in stimulating that dark racist side of humanity to manifest itself. For once segregated conditions are created, especially in a place where men react to problems through violence, it becomes more difficult to return to integration.

The one possibly hopeful result is that the state will finally abandon its unhealthy reliance on separation of the races as a means for overcoming racial antagonism. Surely the events of the past eight months have discredited such simplistic reasoning as integration causes racial violence, or segregation prevents it. If not, our public officials will be conceding that they lack control over the prisons and fostering inevitable triumph of racism.

Ginny Looney is a researcher studying the effects of rape on women and the ways they resolve problems caused by the assault.

Update: Aftermath of G. Duke Beasley’s Appointment

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, pp. 20-21

The appointment of G. Duke Beasley last summer as the first administrator of the Georgia Office of Fair Employment Practices had appeared a safe choice for Gov. George Busbee. Yet, with surprising swiftness the director fell into disfavor and has now endangered the future of the state fair employment office.

Beasley’s experience as deputy director of the Atlanta office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, touted as the main reason for his selection, had shown that conciliation rather than litigation would be his way of settling discrimination complaints. In an interview last July, Beasley portrayed himself as a hardworking, God-fearing family man who possessed a moralistic fervor for his mission of providing equal job opportunities for minorities and women in state government. He did not lack confidence. “I predict that within 60 days we will be the most viable staff that the state has because of my own personality and how I manage,” he said. A few people did criticize him as simply a tired bureaucrat,” but most were pleased with his selection.

The praises of Duke Beasley, however, have ended. Widespread dissatisfaction with his work has caused supporters of the fair employment office to look forward to his return in July to the federal government, which had given him a year’s leave of absence with pay to set up the state organization. Beasley had offended state department heads, for example, with his cavalier attitude. In sending a questionnaire to them requesting information on minority employment, Beasley had ordered the material returned by a certain date, a deadline which the governor’s office postponed because not enough time was allowed for collection of the statistics.

Busbee has privately been critical of Beasley’s efforts to expand the scope of the fair employment office beyond its legal responsibilities. While the agency is empowered to prevent discrimination in employment in state government, Beasley has attempted to exert authority over employment discrimination by local governments, state licensing boards, state contractors and private business.

State legislators were incensed over the annual report the agency issued in February. Several Black legislators were upset because the report did not adequately deal with discrimination in state government. One White legislator introduced a resolution reprimanding Beasley for publishing the report because it was a “complete and utter waste of taxpayers’ money.” The resolution was withdrawn only upon the request of the governor’s office.

Legislators objected to the report’s many photographs unrelated to the work of the office; had they read the document closely, they might have been more angered by the sermonic messages aimed at them. “The General Assembly, it would appear, is obligated to put an end to this intentional procrastination,” the report says about the delayed response of state agencies charged with discrimination, “by giving the GOFEP perpetual life.”

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The report’s poor format, garbled language and preachy tone lend credence to the complaints about the administrator’s style and performance. Rather than presenting persuasive arguments for a prolonged and expanded Georgia Office of Fair Employment Practices, as was intended, the report obscures the problem of discrimination and diverts attention from the issue of equal opportunity. If, as one legislator said, the 72-page report (plus a 16-page preface) “looks like a high school annual,” its writing reflects the style of the senior voted

“Most School Spirit.” Under the heading “Something To Think About . . .” inspirational quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Vince Lombardi were dispersed throughout the agency’s 18-page affirmative action plan, which was presented “in a ‘can do’ spirit and format.”

The lack of modesty is equaled only by the absence of information in a readable form about the office’s work. Personal histories and the families of staff have more space in the document than the charges processed through the office. In a section entitled “Behind the Scene: Youth in Limbo Reaching Out,” there are nine pages of photographs of the staff’s children, including one page devoted to a photograph and description of Beasley’s daughter. “Like her Texas born mother, Kristy is a very proud, highly intelligent and beautiful lady,” says the report. Also scattered through it are seven pages of pictures and biographies of staff members.

In contrast, only five pages of charts list the 153 complaints filed with the office and the disposition of 130 of those. The charts are not explained in the text, although several pages describing the compliance process do disclose that only one case has not been resolved through conciliation.

More attention is given to the plans and recommendations of the agency for the future than in detailing its past accomplishments. The report attempts to justify the expansion of the agency into nine additional cities, a move which would cost more than twice the present budget. This “appropriation package” has apparently gone unheeded since no additional funds were allocated.

Essays, letters and photographs from activists for the handicapped, aged and Hispanics about the need for the fair employment office fill II pages; full-page photographs with adjoining congratulatory letters from state officials were found on eight pages; six pages of letters are reproduced to illustrate that the state office attempted to establish cooperative agreements with federal agencies. Still unclear is the purpose of a three-page letter from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission which analyzes the Georgia law.

A self-serving image presented in the document (“With the innate ability of foresight and vision, the Administrator has outlined an improvement package…”)is matched by the report’s high-handed tone. “The exemption of certain public employees (of elected officials) from the benefit of the Law, appears on its facade to be arbitrary and capricious, therefore, should be invalidated.” On another subject, the report said, “Undoubtedly this grave conflict must not be tolerated by the General Assembly.”

Such commandments tend to lessen the credibility of legitimate recommendations for amending and enforcing the law. The fair employment office requests that it be a!lowed to hire outside counsel or establish its own legal department to eliminate the conflict of interest created when the attorney general represents both an individual filing a complaint and the agency being challenged in a hearing. The conflict arose when Artis Heard and the Human Resources Department could not agree on a negotiated settlement to Heard’s complaint. During the administrative hearing on the case, “(t)he attorney general’s office immediately began to attack the position that the Administrator had taken” in its defense of the state agency, the report says, pointing out that state attorneys would have to adopt “a Solomon-like posture” in violation of their code of ethics in representing both sides at a hearing.

While remaining silent on the subject of conflicts of interest, the attorney general issued an opinion in March stating that the fair employment office could not conduct a study on discrimination in hiring and promotions in state government and must limit itself to responding only to individual complaints filed with the office. The opinion effectively restricts any affirmative work on overall problems of discrimination. As a result, the Black legislative caucus has announced that it will challenge the opinion in court.

Although the law calls for a nine-member advisory board, Busbee has not yet appointed anyone to the position. The legislation creating the Office of Fair Employment Practices expires in 1980, and at this point it will take more than mere advice to restore the agency’s credibility. Moving quickly to expand its authority even before proving its competency, the agency may have told too much about itself when the report concluded that “Until equal employment opportunity becomes a shared reality in this state … Blacks, other minorities, and females must maintain their unyielding faith in God!”

Ginny Looney, a former newspaper reporter, is now a researcher in Atlanta.

Biting the Budget At Legal Services

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 4, No. 4, 1982, pp. 19-22

In the first budget that Ronald Reagan proposed as President, he recommended the elimination of the Legal Services Corporation. Reagan wanted legal aid for the poor provided through block grants and voluntary efforts of private attorneys. Michael Horowitz, counsel for policy analysis and law at the Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview with the New York Times, “The bar has a fundamental responsibility to undertake that which its own set of ethics imposes. And we think it somewhat troublesome that a bar whose members’ total gross income now substantially exceeds $20 billion year needs to lobby for a wholly federally funded program in order to exercise its own admitted responsibility to represent the poor.”

While unsuccessful in abolishing Legal Services, the Reagan Administration has struck devastating blows. Funding cutbacks, proposed restrictions on program activities and appointment of some members to the board of directors who are hostile to the program’s purpose have left the Corporation suffering.

That Reagan was unable to end Legal Services was due to strong support for the program in Congress. In rejecting the view of Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah that Legal Services attorneys spend “millions of dollars in what we call lawyer activism for liberal social programs instead of working for the common needs of the poor,” Congress voted to appropriate $241 million to the Corporation in 1982. Defenders argued that the program was needed to provide a basic right to those unable to afford it and to prevent more violent resolution of disagreements. “True constitutional conservatives support legal services for the poor because they believe that where government is based on laws rather than the edict of a few men, there must be access for all to the applications of those laws to resolve conflicts,” said Representative Neal Smith of Iowa. Representative M. Caldwell Butler, a key Republican supporter from Virginia, said, “I think the question is if you believe in the rule of law, in reasonable access to the legal system.”

The 1982 appropriation represented a twenty-five percent cut for Legal Services from the previous year, while opponents had proposed appropriations from zero to one hundred million dollars. For 1983, the House Appropriations Committee has recommended that the Corporation’s budget remain the same.

Local programs have responded variously to the cutbacks. Some have closed offices; others have limited the types of cases they handle. Staff have been laid off, positions left unfilled, eligibility requirements changed and efforts increased to involve private attorneys in the representation of poor people. In Georgia, two offices were closed and the staff statewide was reduced by seventy-five people, says John Cromartie, executive director of Georgia Legal Services. Now two hundred and fifty persons are on the payroll, which includes every office in the state except the Atlanta Legal Aid Society.

Since some state’s programs had surpluses from previous years to enable them to complete cases if funding ended, their financial problems will become more acute next year. In Mississippi, Michael Raff, director of that state’s Legal Services Coalition, says “there has been so much expansion of Legal Services with four new programs just getting built up that the cutbacks haven’t had as drastic effect as they will. In 1983 I see more staff going and more selection in the types of cases to be handled.”

Because of the reduction in funding and the stiffening of eligibility requirements in other social programs, the limitations forced upon legal aid have come at a time when the need is greatest. As Laurence M. Lavin, director of a South Carolina program, said in January, “When you have people who are going to have their food stamps or their Aid to Families with Dependent Children reduced, then the number eligible for our services is going to increase. At the same time, our resources are being cut back.” Cromartie cites the elimination of people with mental health disabilities from Social Security benefits as one example of increased need. “For this year and next we have set public assistance benefits as a major priority. This has been a confusing year for clients and there is a lot of fear,” he says. “We have generally viewed our role as helping clients find out what their rights are.”

Not only federal budget cuts and program changes have increased the demand for legal aid, but high unemployment has brought more clients seeking help. These clients–what one attorney called the “new poor”–present problems like unpaid hospital bills and house foreclosures which are different because “the established poor never had enough money to buy a house,” says Imogene Walker, a staff attorney in Georgia. “We also have more calls on how to get disability, not because the person can’t work, but because they can’t get the kind of work they need.”

Except for divorce, Walker’s office is still handling the same types of cases it did a year ago: health care, housing, social security, consumer complaints, public assistance benefits, unemployment compensation and civil rights cases. “We have tried to figure out what kinds of cases clients can’t handle for themselves,” she says.

But Walker points out that many besides the poor look to Legal Services for help. “The program has been so simplified in people’s minds to mean free legal advice,”‘ she says. In talking with potential clients on the telephone, she quickly finds out whether they are financially eligible for the program–income for a family of four must be below the federal poverty level of $9,300 a year. When the caller’s income is too high, she does not hang up, but tries to respond to their problem.

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Congressional Restrictions

Budget cuts have presented the most immediate problem for Legal Services programs. Next year, however, the Corporation may have to cope with further prohibitions placed on representing the poor. Although bipartisan support in Congress has prevented the complete dismantling of the program, even the strongest defenders concede that many of the restrictions proposed in House Resolution 3480 must be passed for funding to continue. While a bill reauthorizing the Legal Services Corporation is not likely to pass this session because Senate backers Lowell Weicker of Connecticut and Thomas Eagleton of Missouri are busy with reelection campaigns, the limitations proposed are expected to become effective in the next year, probably by being attached to a resolution for continuing funding.

The most damaging provisions of HR 3480 curtail lobbying, class action lawsuits against government, and representation of known illegal aliens, such as Haitians and Cubans. Legal Services attorneys are already prohibited from handling criminal or fee-producing cases and from seeking desegregation or “nontherapeutic” abortions on behalf of clients.

“At the moment that state legislatures are enacting new regulations to enforce block grants and decide how to appropriate the money under them, that is the moment Legal Services is no longer being able to represent clients before the state legislatures,” Bernard Veney, executive director of the National Clients Council, said at the July convention of the National Bar Association in Atlanta. The proposed restriction on lobbying allows Legal Services staff to give information only when specifically requested by a lawmaker. “Anyone familiar with the legislative process knows that just doesn’t happen,” says Jim Martin, former legislative advocate for Georgia Legal Services. “Legislators want and expect to hear from the affected parties and if they don’t, they asume there is no problem with the bill.”

In anticipation of the policy prohibiting lobbying, Legal Services in Georgia stopped its legislative program in January. As a result, says Martin, legislative representation of the poor has suffered. During the regular session of the Georgia General Assembly, for example, a bill passed which reduced in half, to seven days, the time a landlord must wait between serving an eviction notice and putting a tenant’s belongings on the street. “After the bill was introduced,” Martin explains, “there were not sufficient legislative requests for information that would have allowed us to explain all the reasons the bill was bad. What we would have done in the past is contact the author and committee members and members of the House and explained the consequences of the bill. All we could do this time is respond to the author of the bill and members at the committee meeting.”

Equally onerous is the proposed provision in HR 3480 which prohibits class action lawsuits against government. agencies. Class action suits, less than one percent of the cases filed by Legal Services, are important because they allow relief at once to large numbers of people rather than forcing attorneys to return to court again and again to enforce the same right for each individual. Class action suits in California blocking the importation of Mexican workers and $210 million cuts in Medicaid led then Governor Reagan in 1970 to attempt to block federal funding for legal representation of the poor. Similarly, class action suits against the state of Georgia in the mid-seventies caused the General Assembly to end funding for Legal Services. The program had just won a case establishing that a self-employed painter who broke both legs while working and a diabetic woman who was not able to work were both entitled to benefits under the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. Georgia Legal Services had also sued the state to end co-payments required of Medicaid recipients.

In an interview with the New York Times, a former president of the Corporation explained the necessity of suing the government. “Legal Services lawyers don’t sue to increase benefits,” said Thomas Ehrlich. “They bring suit to insure that poor people get what they are entitled to under the law. When a legal aid lawyer is successful in such cases, it means that a public official has not been doing his or her job the way he or she should.”

The Reagan Board

When the Congressional restrictions are passed, they will be enforced by a Reagan-appointed board of directors. Because they were appointed while Congress was in recess–a move questioned as illegal by 133 House members in a letter to the President–the nominees do not have to be confirmed for a year. However, the White House agreed to submit their names to the Senate. Eight have been approved by committee and await only a vote of

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the full Senate. The ninth, George Paras, a former California judge, has not been considered because of an Administration request. Once, in a letter to the former director of the California Rural Legal Assistance Program, Paras wrote, “You must ever champion the ‘oppressed,’ meaning those who so designate themselves, such as criminals, handicapped, welfare recipients, demonstrators, minorities and miscellaneous other have- lots . . . Your problem is that you feel it is your obligation to be a professional Mexican rather than a lawyer.” Only one Carter appointee remains on the board, a client representitive.

As in many of Reagan’s nominations in other departments of government, he has named people to the Legal Services board who in the past have opposed the program. William Olson, who received an eight-to-seven committee confirmation vote, was head of the Reagan transition team on Legal Services which reportedly advocated the abolition of the Corporation. Such appointments violate the legislative mandate that nominees should be “fully committed to the role of legal assistance attorneys and support the underlying principle of this legislation that it is in the national interest that the poor have full access under law to comprehensive and effective legal services.”

Not only the philosophy of a few new board members but the timing of their appointments has caused ill will. Seven were appointed on the last day of 1981, in time for a board meeting and a vote to stop 1982 grants until they could be reviewed. Their vote came too late, however, since the funds to local programs had been awarded and the contracts already mailed.

In deciding how to implement Congressional restric-

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tions. the Reagan board w ill no doubt take a more narrow view of what Legal Services programs can do. It may also seek to provide legal aid to the poor in ways other than the present predominant use of staff attorneys. During the 1981 funding battle, Reagan aide Edward Meese suggested that law school clinical programs should be used to counsel the poor while public funds served as seed money to encourage innovative programs.

In fact, a shift to more involvement of private attorneys in representing the poor has already begun. Last year the board mandated that ten percent of each program’s funds were to be used to provide opportunities for private attorneys to assist the poor through such means as organized pro bono programs, contracts with specific attorneys, partial compensation through a judicare system or lawyer referral services. The amount of the set-aside could be raised.

Local programs already work with private attorneys in some communities. In the Douglasville. Georgia. regional office just west of Atlanta. persons seeking help who are not eligible for services are referred to three attorneys in private practice. A questionnaire was mailed last year to lawyers in the ten counties served by the office to determine who would take referrals and what kinds. “Now that they are getting inundated with calls from poor people. some have asked to be taken off our list.” Walker says. “Basically we’re talking about pro bono work because our clients are so poor that they can only pay $10 or $16 a month. If they can pay the filing fee and court cost. then the lawyer is doing the work for free.”

“This is a period of slow change for Legal Services.” says state director Cromartie of Georgia. “It is obvious that the new board is not of the same philosophic bent as the old but it also is not yet clear that the extreme right wing hold the balance. Several new members are moderates: there’s a school of thought that they are fair-minded people. If so. we won’t see shocking changes.” Mississippi’s Raff agrees: “There are members who are sincere and sensitive and looking to be educated about Legal Services.”

The shifting political climate is having a restraining effect on Legal Services as the program accommodates itself to limited resources and anticipated guidelines. Legal Services’ staff speak cautiously about changes which have taken place in the past twenty months and are reluctant to predict actions of the new national board–no need to provide further ammunition for damaging the program. The deputy director of the Atlanta office said she had to check with the public affairs office in Washington before speaking for publication because they were trying to “coordinate press relations.” A report on voting rights contracted by Georgia Legal Services was issued publicly without any information identifying it with the organization. Legal Services supporters are making compromises and concessions in order, as Representative’ Barney Frank of Massachusetts said last year, to “keep this alive for a better day.”

Both Raff and Cromartie are confident that the Legal Services Corporation will survive. “I think Congress has spoken: Legal Services is here to stay,” Raff says. Yet, as advocate Martin of Georgia points out, Congress has been making major changes in federal programs through the larger debate on the budget without allowing votes on individual programs. He says Legal Services could get eliminated in this squeeze, even though deleting its small appropriation would have little effect on balancing the overall US budget. If no bill passes this session of Congress, the fight to reauthorize Legal Services must begin again next year. A Presidential veto is also possible.

Rather than outright elimination, however, Raff is concerned about the toll on staff and clients caused by the reduction in resources and restrictions on activities. “What clients will be represented? What cases won’t be taken? Who stays on the staff and who goes? I’m more worried about that than whether we will survive.” But, he might as easily have asked, at what point do the cutbacks and prohibitions on representation ultimately disable the work of Legal Services?

Ginny Looney is a writer and researcher living in Atlanta. She is the author of Preparing Students for Work: An Evaluation of Co-op Programs in Georgia, available from the Southern Regional Council for four dollars plus handling and postage.