In This Issue

By Betty Norwood Chaney

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 2

We are as wrought with opinion and reflection in this our first issue of the new year as we may heve been bereft of it last time. In December we did not carry our usual “Soapbox” opinion piece. As publisher Steve Suitts explained at that time, it was “not that we lack opinions,” but rather “there are tiimes when events should be told, analyzed and then left for reflection.” This is not one of those times. This issue is plentiful in both opinion and reflection.

The Law Project states its positions explicitly in “Soapbox”: “The Georgia penitentiary system is a crime. It brutalizes people, gives graduate instruction in crime and is seriously dangerous to your health.” Responding to the possibility that the Georgia General Assembly next session may institute mandatory sentencing, the Project makes its stand clear. Mandatory sentencing is not the answer to crime

In Mississippi an event was analyzed by civil rights activists drawn from all over the country in a converence in Jackson recently. it was a symposium on “Freedom Summer 1964” and it brought many of the volunteers in that summer’s activities 15 year ago back together for an assessment of that historic time. It prompted two Mississippi writers to reflect on the significance of that summer and on the racial progress in Mississippi and the country since that time. Southern Changes runs these two articles as companion pieces this month.

Gordon D. Gibson pastor and community leader, looks at some of the “irony of change” that came about as a result of that summer. Most participants agreed that little had changed in the daily conditions of life for the poor. Still, Gibson feels the facts that a generation was radicalized, a host of movements was inspired and peopled and a political party was changed must be reckoned with when assessing that period.

Jackson State College professor Ivory Phillips uses the small town of Rosedale as a case study in racial progress in Mississippi. He points to some of the paradoxes abounding in the state today and finds that they add a sober perspective to the much lauded claimof racial progress in Mississippi

In Florida a group of community organizations known as the Florida Black Agenda Coalition has come together to try to identify the issues and the programs that will impact upoon the minorities communities in the 1980s. The coalition has adopted a complete agenda of items ranging from local police action to U.S. policy toward Haitian refugees.It plans to publish its agenda and confront candidates on all levels with proposals.

From Virginia we have a report on the Ku Klux Klan activities there. It seems that the Klan got the idea of holding a “recruiting rally” aimed at the military in Virginia Beach. A coalition was formed to counter the Klan’s activities. Phil Wilayto chronicles the evens surroundng an October 5 rally and demonstration. The most important lesson that the coalition learned from its experiences of fighting the Klan in Virginia according to one participant, is that “you can’t rely on the government to stop the Klan.”

Poor Southerners learned recently that they can’t rely on their congressmen to represent their best interests. Our department piece on Southern Politics this month shows that roughly seven out of 10 Representatives from the 11 Southern states voted against a bill to increase present welfare payments. In a similar vein, a report released by the Southern Regional Council in November revealed that depsite 1977 legislation almost 40 percent of poor Southerners do not receive food stamps.

In another department piece good new for the poor finally comes from Atlanta where a community food bank has been set up to distribute salvageable foodstuffs to feed hungry people

All in all the bad news for poor Southerners unfortunately outweighed the good in this issue. But the fact that coalitions continue to form to confront the bad is some good news in itself

Too Poor for Food Stamps

By Staff

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 3-4

Almost eight million poor Americans did not have ample food during this holiday season because of barriers and restrictions in the federal food stamp program. In a study, entitled “Too Poor for Food Stamps”, the Southern Regional Council found that despite the changes in the federal law in 1977 giving the poor greater access to food stamps, about 3 1 percent of all the poor throughout the country still do not receive stamps. In the South, the figure is closer to 40 percent.

“Almost a majority of the poor who aren’t receiving food stamps live in the South,” says Steve Suitts, SRC executive director. “In the South more than anywhere else in the nation, the risks of hunger and malnutrition are daily facts of life for many poor families.”

The SRC report shows, however, that the 1977 changes in the food stamp law have helped to enlarge the number of poor recipients. Before the changes were implemented, only 49 percent of all poor Southerners received food stamps. Now more than 60 percent are receiving stamps.

The major change in the program passed by Congress in late 1977 and implemented in the beginning of 1979 was the end of the “purchase requirement” – whereby recipients had to pay money to receive stamps. Other revisions not implemented yet include reducing administrative barriers and physical barriers such as the location of food stamp offices and the days and times in which stamps are issued.

Congressional committees in Washington considered the renewal of the food stamp program in December. Judy Currie, SRC staff member, says that Congress should realize that “the intent of the Food Stamp Act of 1977 – to serve those poor people who were being denied food by unnecessary barriers – is being achieved. Yet the program has not accomplished its goal of making a minimum diet accessible to all needy Americans.”

Cutting federal expenditures is often cited as the reason for Congressional opposition to changes that increase the cost of the food stamp program, which in 1980 may reach $8 billion. Yet, the SRC report

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notes that such an expense to provide the poor with a minimum diet “should not deter us from understanding its importance compared to the goal of more nuclear submarines or more government buildings.” Noting that only about one percent of the entire federal budget is spent on the food stamp program, Suitts. says that the effects of good nutrition can save the nation billions of dollars now lost from reduced productivity and medical costs.

By studying available information the report estimates that the average annual income of families joining the food stamp program recently is roughly between $3,500 $5,000. Most of the new participants in the South are not welfare recipients. Only one in 20 of the new participants in the South already received public assistance.

“Our study shows that food stamps, which may well mean survival for many, are now being opened to the working poor, families whose fathers are structurally unemployed, and middleaged workers too young for Social Security but too old to obtain decent jobs,” Suitts stated. Of the approximate 1.2 million people in the South who came onto the food stamp program for the first time in 1979, more than 1.0 million were the working poor and those not receiving public assistance.

“With the new changes in the food stamp program the percentage of participating Southerners who are public assistance households dropped by almost five percent,” says Currie. Approximately 23 percent of all Southerners in the food stamp program are receiving welfare payments (not including Social Security recipients), while outside the South almost 62 percent are on the welfare roles. (See the chart).

Other findings in the report show that the new food stamp recipients in the South come from largely rural areas and from those states where past participation has been low. The new participants are more likely to be elderly and from small families than those already receiving stamps.

Concluding that changes in the way the food stamp program is administered “give poor people a real chance to have an adequate die.t,” the report recommends that the ceiling on expenditures in the food stamp program be removed and that other administrative and physical barriers be reduced by further changes. The report also suggests that food stamp recipients be allowed to receive larger deductions for medical expenses so that parents “will not be forced to choose between food and health care for their children.”

A copy of the report “Too Poor for Food Stamps” can be obtained for $3.00 by writing to the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30303.

Mandatory Sentencing

By members of The Law Project

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 5-7

There is a great push on, in the media and among politicians, to institute mandatory sentencing and to otherwise impose more stringent sentences. Unless strongly opposed, this effort will likely be successful in the next session of the Georgia General Assembly. People are concerned with crime and the uncertainties of modern living, and they crave certainty. However, mandatory sentencing is not the answer. It will merely aggravate the present problem: too many people, particularly young men, are being sent to prison.

The Georgia penitentiary system is a crime. It brutalizes people, gives graduate instruction in crime and is seriously dangerous to your health. The United States regularly incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the so-called free world except South Africa, and Georgia is regularly at the top of the list of states in per capita incarcerations. (We’ve also had more executions and lynchings than any other state.) Why do we pay such a price for social order when others don’t seem to have to do so?

Most “crimes” in Atlanta and elsewhere are committed by young men from about age 15 to 25. (We use quotes here because there is more white collar and board room stealing, but a good part of that goes unpunished, is lightly punished or isn’t even against the law.) A large number of persons caught and sentenced are Black. Blacks make up 60 percent of the prison population but only 25 percent of the general population. The Black incarceration rate nationwide is about eight times more than White incarcerations.

Poor Blacks are particularly apt to get a time sentence when for the same offense, a middle class White person would skate

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by. (Lawyers have a motto: innocent till proven broke.) Poor Blacks will be particularly affected by harsher sentences, too. For example, the Atlanta Journal & Constitution (September 9, 1979 at 5-D) reports that in 1974 only 18 percent to 33 percent of those convicted of embezzlement, fraud and tax fraud went to prison and only for a year to a year-and-a-half. But 38 percent to 60 percent of the people convicted of burglary, larceny and auto theft went to prison for an average of two-and-ahalf to five years.

The prison system is one of the last bastions of raw White racism. Middle class Blacks don’t like to make an issue of this because they don’t want to be accused of being soft on crime (much like moderate Whites in the 50s and 60s didn’t want to be tagged as a “nigger lover”). But, it is time for all concerned citizens to be upset by the inequities of the so-called criminal justice system.

If putting more people in jail for longer periods would promote social order, it might be justifiable. But it won’t. Statistics show that the rate of recidivism for persons who have been incarcerated is much higher than for persons who are given alternate methods of treatment, such as work release. And keeping people in prison is expensive in itself. This society will lose all the way around. A few years ago we did away with jury sentencing in Georgia on the ground that there was too thuch disparity in sentences. Judge sentencing did not solve the problem and has resulted in just as much disparity (and it allows the State to pistol whip defendants into guilty pleas, sometimes, by holding over their heads the certainty of a harsh judge-imposed sentence if they don’t give in).

If anything, we need to go back to jury sentencing which allowed a community voice in punishment after hearing the mitigating and aggravating circumstances – rather than going further down the slippery slope to mandatory sentencing. The proponents of most of the mandatory sentencing plans try to make them more palatable to people of conscience by saying they are merely trying to eliminate “disparity” in sentencing. The media has avidly purveyed this line. But a principle sponsor, State Sen. Bud Stumbaugh of DeKaib County, blew this cover by declaring “that determinate sentencing would help cure ‘judicial leniency’.” (Atlanta Journal, Sept. 18, 1979 at 10-A.)

David Evans, Georgia’s Commissioner of Offender Rehabilitation and not known as a bleeding heart, sees mandatory sentencing and attempts to repeal the good time allowance for what they are. He opposes the proposals, saying “I don’t want the State to overreact and start changing laws to say that we have to keep people in prison longer.” (Atlanta Constitution, October 10, 1979 at 3-C.

As anybody who reads the Atlanta newspapers can see, they are cultivating an air of hysteria over the “rising crime rate”. For example, the Journal, on September 17, 1979 ran a frontpage story under a headline claiming that “Leniency Trend Thwarts Justice”; an accompanying story was headlined “Disparity Marks Prison Terms.” The thrust of the “Leniency” story was that in a half-dozen or so cases the recipients of short sentences went on to commit another serious crime. The existence of recidivism is hardly news; it would have been much more interesting for them to have told us what percentage of the people receiving various kinds of sentences become recidivists. In our experience, for example, a great majority of our clients who receive probation haven’t entered the criminal justice system again.

The newspapers’ recent scare articles never seem to mention a September 9, 1979 reprint in the Journal/Constitution “Perspective” section of a report by the director of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency’s Information Center. That author makes a convincing case that it is the reporting rate, not the crime rate, that is on the rise. Citing statistics gathered by the Bureau of the Census from crime victims, rather than from police reports, he concludes that the overall rate of serious crime has remained essentially stable for many years. “Thus,” he says, “the phenomenon of drastic increases in crime rates is explained by the fact that law enforcement agencies have been dipping ever deeper into the vast reservoir of unreported crime.”

One thing everybody agrees on is that the mandatory sentencing proposals will cost us taxpayers a lot of money. More judges, courtrooms, prosecutors, bailiffs, clerks, jurors, and other functionaries to handle the

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increased number of trials will result from the lessened opportunities for plea bargaining. And the longer sentences will require more jails, prisons, wardens, guards, and bureaucrats.

If the legislators are really interested in reforming sentencing, reducing disparities, and saving money, they would do well to study California’s fairly new sentencing law This law holds almost all sentences below about six years and removes a good bit of the judges’ discretion. We don’t know whether we believe California has the answer or not, but it’s at least better than the double digit sentencing proposals we’re seeing here.

The preceding article was provided by members of The Law Project in Atlanta.

Fighting the Klan in the Military

By Phil Wilayto

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 8-11

An aircraft carrier is really a small city. When it’s out to sea with a full crew and a complement of marines, it’s 5,000 people, almost all of them young men, enclosed in a small place for months at a time. In case of trouble, mechanical or social, there’s no place to go.

On February 9, 1979, a small one-foot wooden cross, covered with some kind of flammable fabric, was found burning in the enlisted dining area of the carrier USS America. In late January, a group of White sailors attacked a group of Blacks on the USS Concord, a 400-man supply ship estimated to have 20 Klan members aboard. The Navy has admitted that it is investigating Klan activity on at least one other East Coast ship, this one based in Charleston, S.C.

And the trouble wasn’t only on ships. Within the past year there have been crosses burned outside Ft. Eustis in nearby Hampton, in rural Chesapeake, there have been incidents of spraypainting of the letters “KKK” on Black people’s property in Norfolk and in Virginia Beach.

It was in this atmosphere of increasing racist incidents in the Tidewater area of Virginia that Bill Wilkinson’, Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, announced that he would hold a “recruiting rally” aimed at the military in Virginia Beach on October 5.

Since the 50s, the KKK has been splitting into a number of different factions and organizations. Wilkinson’s group, one of the newer ones, has established for itself a reputation as being one of the most rabidly violent of the Klan groups. This was the gang that held an armed march from Selma to Montgomery last summer, that shot into a crowd of Black demonstrators in Decatur, Alabama earlier this year, and that a few months ago was accused of whipping a White woman said to have committed the crime of eating lunch with some of her Birmingham, Alabama Black co-workers.

When Wilkinson announced his plans for the October 5 rally, a number of organizations in the Tidewater area began to make plans for a counter-demonstration. Two weeks prior to the 5th, a coalition of labor, community, civil rights, gay, and political organizations was formed to sponsor the demonstration. The coalition, called “People United for Human Justice” (PUHJ), grew to include 20 organizations and individuals, including officials from the longshoremen’s ‘union, the Teamsters, Carpenters and Joiners, Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers, the NAACP, Black Vanguard Resource Center; Unitarian-Universalist Gay Alliance, Palestine Solidarity Committee, Norfolk Coalition for Human Rights, and Workers World Party.

As both the Klan and the anti-racist coalition moved forward with their organizing, a number of other forces began to make themselves felt. One of these was the Navy.

Originally, Navy officials took the position that, while of course they deplored the racism of the Klan, they couldn’t legally forbid military personnel from attending the KKK rally. Several laws on the Navy books could apply. In particular a Defense Department directive suggests

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that military personnel can be banned from unlawful gatherings and where there is a likelihood of violence.

The coalition contended that this directive applied since the Klan rally did not have a permit, and in Virginia it is against the law to appear in public with a mask or hood. Also, the Klan has a history of violence and given the community’s feeling about the Klan recruiting there was a likelihood of violence. B’nai Brith filed a formal complaint with the Navy noting that membership in the Klan is not compatible with the Navy’s stated goal of equal opportunity and affirmative action.

Besides, the military has never felt hamstrung in outlawing participation in Black or Latin organizations, anti-war groups, or other political organizations. What the Navy’s position really did was to give the go-ahead to racist Whites to attend the rally and get “recruited”. This stand was to change later on in form but not in essence.

The local city governments took a similar approach of back-handed – and sometimes direct – support for the Klan. When the PUHJ spokesperson appeared at a session of the Virginia Beach city council and asked to make a statement, he was refused permission by unanimous vote of the council. Mayor Patrick Standing’s comment was that, “It’d be better to say nothing at all.” However, when the Klan finally announced the site for its rally, where should it be but an oceanfront vacant lot owned by the mayor’s family! The few Black council members in other Tidewater cities all went on record as opposing the Klan’s local organizing efforts, but their White counterparts all refused to follow suit, a development that the Imperial Wizard said he found “encouraging”.

The press, too, played a strong role in the development. Every throat-clearing and pronouncement by Wilkinson was treated with the seriousness and respect given a visiting dignitary, while coalition spokespersons were seldom quoted directly, if at all. And while the coalition members had never mentioned intentions of violence at their

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demonstration, it was that subject that seemed to most fascinate the city’s editors and TV news managers, so that by the time October 5 arrived an atmosphere of real tension had developed.

It was partially this tension that gave the Navy, which was under mounting local pressure to change its position on the Klan rally, an excuse to put the rally off-limits to military personnel. However, it also put the anti-Klan demonstrations off-limits. The Navy went even further and announced it would not have investigative agents at the KKK rally while giving the impression that investigative agents would be at the anti-Klan rally. Coalition members charged that the Navy’s new position was in fact trying to discourage anti-Klan activities while assuring racists that they would not be detected if they did go to the Klan rally. Even so, a number of sailors from the surrounding bases did turn out to protest against the Klan.

Wilkinson had set his rally for 7:30 in the evening next to the Virginia Beach Ramada Inn. At 5:30 pm, PUHJ set up a spirited picket line outside the Virginia Beach Civic Center, about a mile down the road. Under the watchful eyes of about 20 riot-equipped state police, the demonstrators carried their banners and signs and chanted, “Ku Klux Klan, Scum of the Land” and “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, the KKK has got to go”. The numbers gradually grew with new arrivals until well over a hundred people – Black, White, gay, civilian, military, students, and union members were all declaring their opposition to racism and racists.

About dusk, the group gathered for a rally, hearing representatives from the NAACP, Longshoremen, the Black Vanguard Resource Center, the Unitarian-Universalist Gay Alliance, and Workers World Party.

At 7:00 pm the demonstrators moved out to the Klan rally. CB reports from coalition members stationed at the rally site indicated the Klan was preparing to assemble and that some 200 state and local police had gathered around the rally site. Another group of about 40 anti-Klan demonstrators had also arrived and had set up a picket line across the street.

The police had previously announced that they would forbid anything but a small picket line. But the march proceeded anyway, behind the lead PUHJ banner reading “Organize to Defeat the

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Klan”, and the chants resounded off the walls of the resort motels, bars, and cafes.

By the time the marchers reached the Ramada Inn, their numbers had grown to over 200, far more than the dozen or so robed racists and the 40 or so sympathizers they had attracted. The police, however, were another factor. Initially positioned between the Klan rally and the demonstrators, they soon removed themselves to a phalanx position behind the coalition, sandwiching the picket line in between themselves and the screaming, taunting racists. If a fight had broken out – and there was more than one demonstrator who would gladly have thrown the sheeted bigots into the sea – the picket line would have been caught between two groups that had far more in common with each other than with the picketers.

Even so, the coalition members maintained the unity of the line and the volume of their chants until Wilkinson was under the protection of the police.

But as the line proceeded back down the march route toward the Civic Center, it soon became obvious that the night was not yet over. A mob of 40 to 50 White youth tagged along the side of the marchers, screaming racist insults and taunting the picketers. The police, meanwhile, were walking along behind the racists, trying to push them up into the line of march. Again, their actions could have easily provoked a fight and an attack on the picket line.

The line, however, never broke. Coalition members assigned to security formed a defense line along the outside of the marchers, turning back the attempts of the racists to split up the picketers. Finally, about a block from the end of the march, the demonstrators held a final rally, pledging to “continue to organize and build our movement till we can raise an army to wipe out racism and racists like the Klan once and for all, forever!”

Wilkinson left the area soon afterward, and while there has been no visible Klan organizing in Tidewater since then, the atmosphere of racist hatred which he tried to encourage bore some bitter fruit. A few days after the Klan rally, there was a cross-burning in a Virginia Beach trailor park. A week later, a 4 5-year-old Black youth was shot in the face with a shotgun by a group of White teenagers who had been taunting him with racial insults. In mid-November, two White Tidewater men were charged with shooting into a carload of Black students from Chowan College in North Carolina. And recently the local “patriots” have been busy trying to whip up a chauvinist hysteria against Iranians, an hysteria that bears a striking resemblence to the screaming mob at the October 5 Klan rally.

Nica Gobs, a spokesperson for the Workers World Party one of the organizations that played a leading role in building the local anti-Klan demonstration, offered her assessment: “The main thing I think we all learned was that you can’t rely on the government to stop the Klan. The City of Virginia Beach could have stopped the Klan rally, since it required a city permit and one was never issued. The mayor could have refused to allow the Klan to use his family’s property. The White city councilmen in the area could have condemned the rally. The Navy could have banned Klan recruitment and organizing in its ranks. And the cops could have spent their time harassing the racists instead of the anti-racists. But none of that was done. Instead, they all allowed and even encouraged the Klan to be public, visible, and active, and as a result the racist attacks and violence in the area have increased.

“That’s why from the beginning we encouraged the development of a broad-based coalition of labor and community groups to oppose the Klan. We have to rely on ourselves, on poor and working people, because we’re the ones with a real stake in destroying the cancer of racism.”

Phil Wilayto is a shop steward and writer in the Tidewater area.

Reflections on Racial Progress in Mississippi:1964 Freedom Summer and Rosedale Mississippi 1979

By Ivory Phillips

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 12-16

Editor’s Note: In October 1979 a conference was held in Jackson, Mississippi to commemorate and assess the civil rights activities in the state during the summer of 1964. Known as Freedom Summer, it played an important part in changing the old system of segregation. It brought about 1,000 volunteers into the state to help in political organizations, to set up “freedom schools” and to bring national attention to conditions in Mississippi. It was a summer filled with violence, resulting in the murders of the three civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

The four-day conference brought back together many of the summer’s participants. Following in the next pages, two writers give their impressions of the conference and reflect upon the conditions in Mississippi and the country 15 years after.

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In October 1979 Tougaloo and Millsaps Colleges in Jackson Mississippi hosted and Robert McElvaine co-ordinated a conference examining and commemorating Mississippi’s Freedom Summer of 1964. Like many other well-packaged media presentations in the past five years, this was a show-piece to reveal how much progress the state has made. Fortunately or unfortuiately, most of the sessions revealed how little has actually changed since 1964.

Racial progress can be viewed in a then and now comparative manner. When done this way the 1964 Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Movement, out of which it grew, loom larger than life. Such a progress report would read well.

Prior to the 1950s lynchings were common and police brutality prevalent. It was the period of the mid-50s and 60s that many nationally-publicized slayings took place Emmett Till, Mack Charles Parker, Rev. George Lee, Vernon Dehmer, and Medgar Evers. It also happened that thousands of Blacks left the Mississippi delta fleeing racial violence, and seeking economic improvement. Middle age and elderly Blacks who migrated from the state reveal today that they still have fears of Mississippi. Most are surprised at the changes they see when they visit the state today. Lynchings are now a rarity – due in large part to new laws and exposure by the national press.

Before the turbulent years of the Civil Rights Movement there was little semblance of justice in Mississippi courts. There were very few Black lawyers and court witnesses were treated disrespectfully. Punishments for White on Black crime were almost non-existent while punishments for Black on White crime were swift and severe. This was the era when Elmer Kimball, Bryon de la Beckwith, J.W. Milam, Roy Bryant, and other Whites went free while a 14year-old Black boy was lynched for allegedly whistling at a White woman.

The climate has changed somewhat. There are now many more Black lawyers in Jackson and in the various legal services offices and a little more justice, thanks to these lawyers and the Supreme Court.

The majority of Blacks worked on farms or as personal servants, with a large minority of teachers, ministers and small businessmen before 1964. Pay scales and work assignments for Blacks were most often degrading. Labor unions were almost non-existent. Businesses and public agencies did not have Blacks above menial positions.

Today as a result of federal laws Blacks are in most agencies and most are no longer on the farm. There is also strong support for the AFL-CIO and teacher’s unions.

No longer are there “White only” signs sporting public establishments. Blacks do not have to keep on driving when they need to use a public toilet, happen to be hungry or sleepy.

The days of segregated schools are gone. The vast majority of Mississippi children now attend integrated schools. There are no more hand-me-down books and equipment for Black schools.

Prior to the mid-60s only about 22,000 Blacks were attempting to vote. In most counties fear and discriminatory laws kept Blacks away from the polls, and, except for the all Black town of Mound Bayou, Blacks did not hold public offices.

As a result of the Civil Rights Movement and federal laws, over 500,000 Blacks are now voting. There are now over 600 Black elected officials. And, White candidates court rather than ridicule Black voters.

These reflections of racial progress hide many continuing injustices. If racial progress is to be

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discussed, the negatives as well as thepositives must be addressed. Rosedale, Mississippi, selected as a case study on racial progress in Mississippi, is for this reason much more typical than Jackson, Mount Bayou, Biloxi, or even Vicksburg.

Rosedale is located in northwest Mississippi, on the banks of the Mississippi river. Its population of 2,600 is mostly poor, mostly rural, and mostly Black.

Like the rest of Mississippi, Rosedale was slave country. Like the rest of Mississippi, Whites quickly returned to power after Reconstruction. Along with White rule came other characteristics of the rural American South.

This overwhelmingly Black town had long had two schools – one Black and one White. They were strictly segregated, with Blacks getting second-hand equipment and materials from the White school. Black teachers were paid less. As late as 1960 the per capita educational expenditure for Black children was $2.32 while that for White children was $125.10. There was often friction between Black and White students. School officials assumed that Black students were intellectually inferior to Whites. Consequently, physics, economics, and trigonometry were dropped from the Black school curriculum and replaced by health, sociology, and business arithmetic. Finally, Black administrators were subservient to White ones.

Since the schools were integrated in 1970 there is now only one school. Nevertheless, since that time the system has lost its Black junior and senior high school principals. No Black has been appointed superintendent nor served on the school board. The previously White school retained its name and became the senior high school. Discipline for Black and White students is arbitrarily different, with Blacks being dealt with more harshly especially through expulsions and suspensions. Because Blacks would dominate, there is no longer any viable parent-teacher association.

Even in the midst of integration there is segregation. The percentage of Black teachers in the system declined as White former bus drivers, postal clerks and aides have been hired. Some White students have left the public schools to attend all-White private academies. Many Black students have been arbitrarily placed in special education classes where there are very few White students.

Prior to 1964 the overwhelming majority of Blacks in Rosedale were farmers-plantation dwellers and day laborers. They were paid 34 percent of the per capita wages for the state and earned slightly more than $1,000 for the eightmonth working year. Other Blacks earned slightly more as maids and as personal servants. At the top of the economic ladder were the $2700 teachers, the $2400 preachers, and the “lucky” businessmen. The businessmen generally operated barber shops, beauty shops, funeral parlors, grocery stores, and auto repair shops.

In those early days, Whites generally worked at different jobs. Even those doing the same work grocery store, saw mill, factory – received higher pay than Blacks. With few available jobs, most Blacks lived in poverty and depended upon welfare and/or social security. The welfare payments were always small and different for Blacks and Whites.

The biggest economic change witnessed in Rosedale during the 60s had nothing to do with the Civil Rights Movement. That change was agricultural mechanization which required far fewer Black laborers. Now 44 percent of the Black population lives in poverty. It also paved the way for more industry. Consequently, today there are as many factory workers as farm workers in Rosedale. And, although the pay differentials are gone, job assignments and promotions place Blacks at a disadvantage. Even in 1969 Black median family income was $2,534 compared to a White median family income of $8,129.

Black businesses are still confined to small, single proprietor juke joints, barber shops, beauty shops, auto repair shops, and the like.

One Black factory worker who was born in Rosedale summed up the economic condition in this manner. “They built a new steel factory but that didn’t help the job situation much. Young people are still leaving as soon as they get out of school.”

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It is almost as if the justices in the Plessey v. Ferguson decision were speaking directly to the ruling fathers of Rosedale. From that day until some years after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, all public facilities and accommodations were strictly segregated. Those which did not have separate White and Black sections were generally open to Whites only.

In those areas where visible signs were not erected, the adamant, insulting attitude of proprietors and patrons were quite sufficient to maintain the desired order of things. In addition to public places, churches were strictly segregated unless some prominent White attended a function at a Black church and occupied a place of honor. Finally, if any White person ever ventured into a Black home it was as a bill collector, legal authority or some paternalistic figure. On the other hand, if any Black person ever ventured into a White home it was as a worker and by the back door.

As one visits Rosedale today there is virtually no evidence of segregation in public places.There are still, however, all-White private academies for elementary and high school children. Church services are still segregated. And, there still exists the all-White private Walter Sillers Memorial Park and the all-White V.F.W. The private vestiges of segregation seem to suggest that the people are still segregationists at heart. They are only integrated out of fear or respect for the law.

Closely akin to the segregationist attitude of Whites has been the submissive attitudes of Blacks. At stores and other commercial establishments Blacks stood back while Whites were given first service. Regardless of ages, Whites addressed Blacks as “boy”, “girl”, “uncle”, and “aunt”, while Blacks addressed Whites as “Mr.” and “Miss” and answered with “yes sir”, “no sir”, “yes m’am” and “no m’am”. Blacks were also careful not to offend a White person in speech, looks, nor gestures.

Under such conditions it is not surprising that few genuine friendships were formed across racial lines. At the same time, however, White men frequently took sexual advantage of maids, field workers, debtors and other Black women. During that early period the abuse was so prevalent that one elderly Black woman expressed her contempt for White men in the following manner. “They are worse than dogs. They want to go to bed with a colored woman for little of nothing but kill that same woman’s son and dump him in the river.”

Today walking along the streets of Rosedale one can bear the same expressions of submissive respect tt Black’s have for Whites and the condescending disrespect that Whites have for Blacks. It is fair to say, however, that it is not nearly as prevalent among Black adolescents as it had been prior to the 1960s.

There are still very few interracial friendships. And, although the incidents are not as numerous nor as flagrant as previously, there are still cases wherein White men sexually exploit Black women.

There is still much evidence of Black fear of Whites. This is true whether the White person is a law enforcement officer, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, orjust an angry average citizen. This fear was contrasted by a recently appointed Black official in Rosedale who said these Blacks won’t obey any Black policemen. But when we had only White policemen they dared not act the way they do now.

Looking back to the period of Reconstruction one finds that America’s first full term Black senator was from Rosedale. The town also produced in the 1870s two Black lawyers, one Black judge, one Black sheriff, one Black superintendent of education, and several state senators and legislators who were Black. That was one hundred years ago.

After Reconstruction only a handful of Black preachers and teachers were permitted to vote. Discriminatory laws, the Ku Klux Klan and adamantly racist attitudes turned back virtually all Blacks before 1964. That being the case, no Blacks felt they had a chance to win any office. Blacks also did not participate in the deliberations of the Democratic party. (The Republican party had been driven out of existence at the close of the l800s.)

As a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the presence of federal registrars, there are now more Black than White registered voters, 800 to 600. This improved situation has motivated

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Blacks to run in almost every election since 1969. They recently won offices as mayor and aldermen.

The revival of the White Voters League in 1979 to co-ordinate White strategies and solidify power against Black candidates, shows that attitudes have not changed. Arguments at polling places between election officers and legitimate poll watchers reveal the continued need for federal supervision. The revival of the Ku Klux Klan in 1979, riding through the heart of town with no permits, demonstrates the fact that Whites prefer Blacks being politically powerless. As these anti-Black activities take place the words of an earlier White racist in Rosedale, speaking of White tactics to end Reconstruction, sound current: “Any trick might be employed that seemed to promise a chance of success.”

The case study of Rosedale adds a sober perspective to the much lauded racial progress in Mississippi and shows what little impact the summer and the movement had on much of the state. In Rosedale and much of the state,a small amount of behavioral change and even less attitudinal change has taken place since 1964.

Only with this irrsight can some sense be made out of the piadoxes abounding in Mississippi today. Robert Earl May, a Black youth of 14 can be sentenced to life in the penitentiary without parole on charges of armed robbery-while progress is claimed because Reuben Anderson is appointed a county judge. The Ku Klux Klan can ride through the heart of town and the headquarters of Black legislative candidate Judy Gambrel can be bombed while progress is claimed because the teachers associations have integrated. Campaign workers for county supervisor candidate Benny Thompson can be fired by the incumbent but progress is claimed because the legislature was reluctantly re-apportioned. Paternalistic and opportunistic Whites can attempt to re-write the history of the 1964 Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Movement while progress is claimed because such a conference can take place peacefully involving Blacks and Whites.

Ivory Phillips is chairman of the Social Science Department at Jackson State University.

Reflections on Racial Progress in Mississippi:’Freedom Summer’ After Fifteen Years

By Gordon D. Gibson

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 17-19

Mississippi in 1Q64 had long been”the dark hell-hole of the Black experience,” in the words of Prof. William,Strickland of the University of Massachusetts. But in 1964 the Black people of Mississippi and their Black and White allies from all across the country rose up and proved that, even in Mississippi, change is possible. Looking back recently during a four-day symposium, Strickland and many other participants in Mississippi’s 1964 “Freedom Summer” reflected on various facets of change.

The symposium, even with its many flaws, uninvited people or last minute cancellations, was worthwhile. It focused the attention of Freedom Movement veterans (and a few current students who were in nursery school in 1964) on the changes wrought by Freedom Summer and other Movement efforts. One cannot understand the intervening 15 years without some knowledge of this history. One cannot understand the lesson that change is possible and, sadly, still necessary.

If Freedom Summer proved that change, being possible in Mississippi in 1964, is possible anywhere, it also, revealed in retrospect that the changes wrought were tragically insufficient in some respects, astoundingly profound in other respects, and ironic overall.

“What started here woke up the world,” commented Patt Derian, a Mississippi activist and former president of the Southern Regional Council now serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. That theme was repeated over and over by people who had observed the Movement from afar, people who had by 1964 been jailed scores of times in their efforts to bring change, and even people who, in that earlier era, were often viewed as part of the problem.

Yet too many of the changes were cosmetic and superficial rather than structural. The visionary hope had been “to root out evil and to cast out sin in high places,” but most high places remain high, and too many of them are still seriously tainted if not filled with evil and sin. Where improvement was most desperately needed, in the daily conditions of life for poor people, too little has changed, said most symposium participants. Poor people are still poor, and the system which made them poor and keeps them poor was not brought to its knees.

In its location and sponsorship the symposium on “Mississippi’s Freedom Summer Reviewed” mirrored both the great extent and the superficiality of change. The joint sponsorship of Millsaps and Tougaloo Colleges in Jackson, Mississippi, was itself a major advance over 1964 when then lily-white Millsaps would have resisted even the thought of such a conference. Fifteen years later many of the symposium sessions featuring big-name participants wound up being held, not at Tougaloo, the cradle of the Movement, but in the larger and better facilities of Milisaps. Some Milisaps classes were dismissed so that students could attend symposium sessions, while at Tougaloo mandatory class attendance kept many students away. Part of the symposium funding came from the non-profit corporation which is interim operator of Mississippi’s most successful TV station, once a bastion of segregation but is now under the direction of a bi-racial board and the nation’s first Black general manager. All of these changes between 1964 and 1979 are significant turnabouts in orientation, in thought. But being able to hold part of an inter-racial gathering at Millsaps College puts no money in anyone’s pocket. And it was clear that behind the scenes efforts had succeeded in taking away some of the symposium’s radical potential.

It is hard today to celebrate much over riding in the front of the bus, or to explain to a teenager the significance of being allowed into a once-segregated institution without risking one’s

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life. Still, one must rejoice in some of the changes that, although not directly sought, have flowed in the succeeding years.

Certainly the out-of-state volunteers of 1964 were changed by Mississippi. Although some SNCC veterans still resent the view that Freedom Summer was a “profound experience” for White college kids, it is true that many people were changed and will never be able to look at America as naively and uncritically as they did before 1964.

Willie Peacock was among those in SNCC who had opposed the use of volunteers in 1964, feeling that it would undercut the strides already made toward self-determination and community organization for change. He stated during the symposium that he still feels he was right, and others also mentioned the many projects dropped or diverted as volunteers poured in for Freedom Summer. Indeed, it would be fatuous to say that the Freedom Movement fulfilled itself by radicalizing White northern college students.

Yet the fact is, as former Congressman Allard Lowenstein and others noted, that the volunteers who came to Mississippi learned and took home more than they brought with them. America is still feeling the repercussions of what was learned.

For example, Mario Savio was among those volunteers going back to California with a challenge from Mississippians to confront at home the forces that supported oppression. In the struggle to raise funds for Mississippi, the Berkeley campus became an early battleground for the student revolution of the mid-60s. A succession of movements and causes – anti-war, feminist, environmental, ethnic, handicapped, gay, elderly, and so on – have evolved, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes competitively, and almost always involving some leadership tested in the crucible of Mississippi in 1964.

Concretely, the 1964 challenge at Atlantic City to the seating of the regular Mississippi delegation has changed how Democratic presidential candidates are selected. Without the rules changes that ensued, can one imagine the McCarthy challenge of ’68 that unseated LBJ, the McGovern or Carter nominations of ’72 and ’76? The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, now itself ,lily a memory, has shaped the Democratic Party (and by reflection the Republican too) ever since 1964.

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Although none of these changes were among the goals of Freedom Summer, although few of them have enriched or ennobled Mississippi, they must be reckoned: a generation radicalized, a host of other movements inspired and peopled, a political party changed.

And therein lies some of the irony of change.

“The Movement” as a whole and Freedom Summer in particular caused many changes and forced response to basic human and community needs from the government and foundations, for without some significant response the problems (and the agitation) would have continued unabated. Yet, while Headstart, CETA, Legal Services, community health care, and various other programs that continue to assist Americans, Black and White, may be seen as a lasting legacy of “The Movement”, some symposium participants cast them in a different light. These programs have made life more bearable without making basic changes in social structure. They formed a way for “The Establishment” to tame “The Movement”, to put it on a payroll, to place it under guidelines, rules, and regulations, and to channel its efforts in less radical directions. “The Movement” and “The Establishment” each re-directed the other.

And as Joyce Ladner, now Professor of Sociology at Hunter College, but in 1964 a Tougaloo student, commented during her address opening the symposium, too many careers have been built in the north on the claim, “I marched with Dr. King.” Too many people waited in the wings while the struggle continued at its greatest intensity, but have now claimed center stage. Too many people have walked through doors that others struggled and even died to open. A Black middle class is prospering and increasing while the poor are still with us.

One of the figures who, though absent, was present at the symposium in frequent references, was Fannie Lou Hamer. Hamer was poor when she was thrown off a delta plantation for attempting to register to vote. She stayed poor during the years that she worked in SNCC and MFDP. She died, still poor, in 1977, a heroine of the Movement’s successes, but still a victim of its failure to bring deeper change. In 1964, after the Freedom Democratic Party challenge at Atlantic City had been turned back with the offer of two token seats and the promise of future change, Hamer said, “I question America.”

Hamer’s statement still reverberates. After the symposium one still wonders about the changes wrought. Could they have been more far-reaching, more fundamental? Could they have avoided re-direction by “The Establishment’s” response? If Freedom Summer was possible in the Mississippi of 1964, almost anything is possible. If something better is possible, and we don’t have it, are we working toward it?

“I question America,” still, 15 years after Freedom Summer.

Gordon D. Gibson is a free lance writer and pastor of a Unitarian church in Jackson.

Blacks Confronting Minority Problems in the Sunshine State

By Al Burt

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 20-22

For the first time in Florida, a broadly based coalition of Black organizations has adopted an agenda for political action. Its priorities reveal the nature of minority problems in Florida. It seeks changes in matters ranging from local police action to U.S. policy toward Haitian refugees.

Known as the Florida Black Agenda Coalition, it has called for a task force to study the possibilities of a state operated lottery, whose funds would be earmarked for education, economic development and aid to the elderly; a change in the controversial Fleeing Felon Law, which permits law enforcement officers to shoot suspects fleeing the scene of a felony; property taxes scaled to income;, single-member legislative districts to increase minority representation; and the end of social promotions in the schools.

The coalition further asks for universal voter registration by postcard to make political participation easier. They are also seeking a state-financed study of sickle cell anemia and the disproportionately high incidence of cancer among Blacks; prison administrations that reflect the prison populations; resources for the poor accused of capital crimes that match those of the prosecution; and political asylum for 8,000 Haitian refugees in Florida.

“We are trying to identify the issues and the programs that have high impact for minority communities,” said Marvin Davies, minority affairs assistant to Gov. Bob Graham. Davies is chairman of the political action forum of the coalition, whose members are either elected officials or heads of Black organizations.

The issues go across the board, to all levels from federal to local. “There were somebig ones in terms of priorities,” Davies said, “We think the requiring of single member districts, for example, would result in the election of five more Blacks to the state House and three to the Senate.”

At present, the 120 members of the Florida House are apportioned in computer-drawn districts based onthe 1970 census. It has 21 single-member districts and the rest are the multimember districts with from two to six representatives each. There are four Blacks in the House. The 40-member Senate has five single-member districts, no Blacks.

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Beyond asking that the 8,000 Haitian refugees be recognized as political refugees, Davies says, “We are asking federal and state help for them while their status is being determined. In some cases, it may take two to three years for the legal process to determine if they will be admitted to this country. During the interim they should be given government help. We ought to be sensititve enough to know something’s wrong, something is causing them to come. Even if the reasons were economic, they deserve aid while that is being decided.”

The Fleeing Felon Law was a source of statewide controversy, but particularly in Pensacola and Tampa. Davies said, “Tampa corrected the problem with local policy, but we believe a change in the law is both preferable and still needed elsewhere.”

The lottery study follows an unsuccessful statewide referendum during former Gov. Reubin Askew’s last term in office (he opposed) to permit gambling casinos in Florida. The pro-casino forces similarly focused on the tax benefits for educational and other programs.

The agenda includes changes in six broad areas – affirmative action, criminal justice, education, business, politics, health-social, and taxes.

In affirmative action, the coalition asks for financial resources adequate for investigation and enforcement of equal opportunity laws; that management be held accountable for performance in reaching goals; that management proportionally reflect the work force; that unemployment be identified as the number one problem; that testing procedures be eliminated which systematically

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screen out Blacks; that there be an annual report outlining affirmative action performance at all levels of government; that each personnel office include minority recruiters; that the Florida Commission on Human Relations be more fully funded.

In education, the group wants a task force to study ways and means of helping Black students toward more positive attitudes and self-concepts; the monitoring of primary education to help under-achievers and the monitoring of education systems promotions to insure the upward mobility of Black educators; the elimination of social promotions for all students; the elimination of “tracking” (grouping by performance); better funding of programs at Florida AM University and a reaffirmation of its future; the Florida Student Assessment Test (literacy) to be used for diagnostic purposes only.

In reference to the economy, recommendations include a request that the governor commission an annual minority economic conference (the first, a joint federal-state affair, was held Dec. 78 in Orlando); full implementation of the Small Business Administration Act; hiring of Blacks in policy positions of state government, particularly in positions relating to tourism and development in the Department of Commerce (a Black, Don Griffin, has been hired as deputy director of the Department of Commerce); that the governor solicit and encourage private, state and federal help in recruiting minority developers; the development of bonding capability for Black contractors and developers; that Black firms be included in domestic and international trade shows and missions; that Black contractors be considered in the letting of all government contracts.

In addition to universal postcard voter registration, and the offering of registration on the day of the election, changes called for in the political area include a voting card be required for all high school graduates 18 or over; the governor’s support as promised in his election campaign for single-member legislative districts (and in state and local offices as well); an independent commission to draw the new districts rather than leaving it to the legislature; full representation in Congress for Washington, D.C.; making the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a legal holiday (a legislative resolution now permits that day off at the employee’s expense).

In the area of criminal. justice, changes in the Fleeing Felon Law, resources for the poor accused of capital rimes and prison administration led the proposals, but others include permitting the poor a choice of attorney when one must be provided by the state and for all communities, a citizens review board on police actions.

In health, the agenda seeks subsidized energy and utility bills for the poor; free transportation of the poor to human services; hiring of social services workers to reflect the population they serve; th’ previously mentioned studies of cancer and sickle cell anemia (a bill on sickle cell anemia was defeated in the legislature last year and a new one is pending in both houses which would provide $50,000 for a study of the problem); support for social programs aimed at teenaged pregnancy; greater state financial effort on the problems of malnutrition and hypertension in Blacks.

In the field related to taxes, the group asked for a state operated lottery; a proposal that the sales tax be frozen at four percent; that the homestead exemption on property taxes be increased from $5,000 to $25,000, thereby lowering tax bills in the lower price range; that property taxes be scaled progressively to income; that no citizen should lose his home for failure to pay back taxes until the tax assessor had tacked conspicuous notice of that prospect on the house in question. The latter resulted from a case in which a West Florida couple lost their home because they did not understand the liability involved in $3.50 back taxes.

The body has already adopted the agenda. The coalition’s plans now include a fundraising event whereby they can secure enough money to publish their agenda and make it available to every school and every home in the area. The coalition will be meeting with all candidates, both local and national, to make its agenda known and to let the candidates know what is expected of them in exchange for their votes.

Al Burt is a roving columnist for the Miami Herald.

Atlanta Community Food Bank

By Staff

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 22

Every year 20 percent of the food in America is thrown away for such reasons as improperly labeled items, undersized or oversized products and partially opened cases. In the Atlanta metropolitan area the problem of hunger and food waste is being addressed by the Atlanta Community Food Bank. A private, nonprofit corporation, the food bank bridges the gap between the hungry and salvageable foods.

The idea for the Atlanta Food Bank was first conceived by Bill Boiling, director of Street Ministries at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. Boiling was concerned with the problem of hunger and, after visiting the St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix, Arizona, decided a food bank was a good way to approach the problem. The food bank is a coordinated effort of businesses, religious and civil organizations and lots of volunteers. It salvages goods from local retailers, commercial establishments, grocers, packing houses and food wholesalers and redistributes them to non-profit agencies which serve hungry people in the community.

Several things are needed to maintain a food bank: a warehouse to store food; refrigeration units; donors of salvageable foods; and non-profit helping organizations willing to buy food from the food bank. The food bank contracts with food suppliers to pick up goods on a regular basis. Participating agencies come to the food bank warehouse and buy food on a regular basis, thus saving the agencies time, money, and energy.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank asks for a five-cent-per-pound share contribution from participating agencies to help the food bank with operating costs. The agencies involved assume the responsibility for preparing and serving the food to those in need as well as judging the fitness of donated food for consumption, thereby freeing the donor from any liability. At present over 15 agencies have chosen to participate in the program.

A food bank serves as a vehicle to bring together all sectors of the community to work on a common problem. Businesses are needed to donate food and operating equipment, such as trucks and refrigeration units. An incentive for businesses is a tax write-off which allows a company that donates to agencies serving the poor to write off all costs in production and handling plus half the appreciated value of the item. Volunteers are needed to pick up food from companies, identify helping agencies, and do administrative tasks. Religious and civic organizations can also contribute by donating time or money, and by publicizing the Food Bank itself.

Boiling has plans for the Atlanta Community Food Bank which would increase its ability to serve hungry people. Because of Atlanta’s proximity to agricultural resources and its commercial position in the southeast, he feels it would be a prime location for large-scale collection of salvageable food. Food distribution centers in rural areas could be established with increased food bank resources, thereby bringing hunger relief to greater numbers of those in need.

Anyone interested in learning more about the Atlanta Community Food Bank or about how to set up a food bank can contact Bill Boiling or Harriette Brown at number no longer current or write to Community Food Bank, 435 Peachtree Street, N.E. Atlanta, Georgia 30308.

Economic Development: Southern Representatives Oppose Welfare Reform

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 4, 1980, pp. 24

Proposing to increase present payments to the Southern poor, major welfare reform was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on November 7th with strong opposition from a solid, Southern Congressional delegation.

By a deceptively comfortable margin of 222 to 184, the House approved the Carter administration’s proposal to seek greater uniformity among state welfare programs and to reduce costs. The heart of the legislation proposed a guaranteed payment equal to at least 65 percent of the poverty level approximately $4,700 of welfare payments to a family of four today.

States would also be required to offer assistance to eligible families with two parents when the principal wage earner is unemployed. Presently, the public assistance program – Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) – assists only one parent families. Other provisions of the legislation reflect the Congressional mood of austerity and cut benefits to some recipients and strengthen incentives for recipients to work.

Solid opposition to the bill came from the South. Roughly seven out of 10 representatives from the 11 Southern states voted against passage supplying more than 40 percent of the entire opposing votes. No Congressman in Alabama, Mississippi or North Carolina voted for the bill and only in South Carolina did at least half of the Congressional delegation support the legislation. In that state Representatives Davis, Holland and Genrette supported the bill.

Of the Democrats opposing the reforms, Southerners constituted almost 75 percent of the entire group. At the same time, every Southern Republican except Treen of Louisiana, who was campaigning in his home state for governor, voted against the legislation.

Ironically, Southern representatives voted to oppose redistributing federal funds to the South where the major impact of the legislation would be felt. Ten of the 14 states which presently have welfare payments below the proposed floor are Southern – excluding Virginia where AFDC and food stamp payments presently offer benefits equal to about 69 percent of the poverty level. Most of the $900 million increase in federal contributions to state welfare programs would go to Southern states under the bill – which the Southern delegation solidly opposed.

Most Southern members apparently preferred the proposal of Rep. Archer of Texas who moved to recommit the bill to committee with instructions to report back legislation providing eight states and three counties with blocks of funds to run a demonstration welfare system according to their own design and allowing all states to set their own work requirements for welfare recipients. Almost 60 percent of the Southern representatives voted for the Archer amendment which failed by the narrowest margin – 200 in favor and 205 opposed.

Prospects for the legislation’s passage in the Senate is uncertain at best since Senate Finance Committee Chairman Russell Long of Louisiana has expressed opposition to the bill.

The chart shows the degree of support for welfare reform from each of the Southern states’ Congressional delegation.