Interchange

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980 pp. 2-3

“Being right never won an election.” Eugene Witherspoon:, once told me and others as we sat on the hog fence outside of Freedom Quilting Bee in Alberta, Alabama. “It takes all the votes of all the Black folks and smarts enough in figurin’ out how to win before the White people do,” he said.

As a local sage whose survival in his early years required good instincts and common sense, Mr. Witherspoon was always trying to get young and old Black people in Wilcox county to register and vote so that the majority Black population could have its voice in local government. Yet, years of dodging the “White man’s trouble” in the early 1900S convinced him that even in a majority Black county, Blacks as well as Whites – in competition, or in concert – must know one another and each’s values.

While he died before seeing the first Black elected to an important county office in Wilcox, Mr. Witherspoon’s rural wisdom introduces the question of everyday life which the region faces and this issue addresses: what specific strategies in the stateways and folkways of the South are Black and White people using to render change in the region and to understand one another?

Two of our contributors this month offer analyses of elections held late last year in Tennessee and Louisiana and tell of how Blacks and others are attempting to make politics work. Despite the election of an arch-conservative as governor of Louisiana, Norma Dyess suggests that the politics of compromise with an unusual coalition of Louisiana interests may give the state, and especially Blacks and women, a progressive administration. It is a view of politics that has often been the hope -after election returns had soured. Still, such hopes and analyses are increasingly adopted as the best course even before the balloting.

Closer to the North and South border, Terry Ketter takes a critical review of the defeat of a Black, former state court judge Otis Higgs, in his bid for the mayor’s office in Memphis. Ketter explains that, while the Black candidate lost simply because of the burden of his race, it’s not entirely clear that Higgs was destined to lose, especially if he had developed a better campaign. The appraisal of the Memphis election should remind us of how fragile are the coalitions upon which politics is built and how important is the art of effective politics if there is to be political changes.

With a keen eye towards many of the hidden assumptions of Southern living, Ray Gavins reviews the impact of desegregation in schools and on the values of our entire society. By trying integrated education, Professor Gavins believes that the education of Blacks has been improved, Black protest in other fields has been encouraged, and White resistance has mellowed. Just as in politics, the movement toward integrated schools has demanded specific strategies which have something of a mixed record.

Betty Green Stokes worries in her short piece about how much of the work of Blacks and Whites today appears to be sanctioning a sense of everyday separatism and Peter Young writes to remind us that even the most troubling events in race relations have a history and perhaps a cause far deeper than current events suggest.

Betsy Brinson also reports on the strategies offering hope for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, Despite little. time and increased opposition, the ERA may prevail because coalitions of new groups and peoples are finding their own self interest in the issue and are more willing to do some old fashion political organizing.

In our department pieces we read of a study from the

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Southerners for – Economic Justice telling us that workman’s compensation laws now provide largely for employer’s compensation and an analysis of the recent Congressional vote on limiting powers of the Federal Trade Commission – a movement which Southerners led with swiftness and overwhelming support – offering some notable contrast with their votes on welfare reform reported last issue.

In all these areas and enterprises, honorable or ignoble, people are searching for ways in which to protect their values and further their own interests and those whom they support. It’s a process of trial and error for which there is no clear reward to tell us who is trying rightfully. Knowing what is wrong and what fails is much easier in hindsight. Eugene Witherspoon had his own system: for his friends and those of whose work he approved, he went to the hen house and gave them eggs. Mr. Witherspoon’s insight that “being right” isn’t enough should be tempered with the recollection that he did kn6w and value his friends, even if in his lifetime he couldn’t get them all to do right.

The Impact of Desegregation on Society: Are Values Changing?

By Ray Gavins

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 5-9

Selfishness is the most constant of human motives.Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts which sweep away the heaped up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times,while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearingly, burrowing always at the very roots of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away.

Thus wrote Charles Waddell Chesnutt in 1901 as he pondered racial repression in his native North Carolina. It was a central theme in The Marrow of Tradition, a novel he wrote about the Wilmington Riot of 1898 and the killing of at least 20 Negroes. Chesnutt, formerly principal of Howard School in Fayetteville, today Fayetteville State University, visited Wilmington to study the causes of the violence. He discovered that the city fathers, arch-Negrophobes in every way, were especially culpable. Although Marrow received low marks from White reviewers, who objected to Chesnutt’s militant tone, it dramatized the tragic consequence of unopposed prejudice.

Chesnutt’s jeremiad prompts us to put the topic of desegregation and values into perspective. While the South and nation have weathered the storms of Brown, the Civil Rights Act, and HEW’s recent suits to integrate public higher education, noncompliance has been and continues to be apparent. Brown provoked massive resistance. Tensions after the Civil Rights Act culminated in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. HEW’s current strategy, which includes withholding federal funds, is stirring much anger and judicial delay. Seventy-eight years later, aided by social science and statutory change, we can rationalize inaction better than Chesnutt and his generation, yet we are unable to avoid dire consequences.

Objectivity and balance are hard to achieve when discussing assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs. As cultural ingredients they make up the core values, informing and influencing what people are willing to fight for or against. Great variance is possible. The White Citizens’ Councils of the 1950s campaigned for the preservation of segregation, while the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the early 1960s demonstrated against Jim Crow, disfranchisement, and economic oppression. Given counterpointing values, and the chronic powerlessness of Blacks, it is not altogether surprising that progress has been slow. In fact, when the historian looks at the record, he or she is confronted by the adage: the more things change, the more they seem the same.

The task before us is urgent. Values, pro and con, conflicts, subtle and overt, and dilemmas, individual and collective, contribute to current uncertainty about desegregation. At the heart of the problem is a long and undemocratic tradition of inequality; it is institutionalized and seemingly impenetrable. Conservatives, who claim a truly egalitarian society is impossible, argue that poverty is permanent and Blacks are hopelessly inferior. Eschewing equality of opportunity or how the system could assure it, they provide instead an elaborate rationale for what amounts to a policy copout. To be certain, there is a need for opposing views that are humanistic and directed toward the ends of social justice.

American history should

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yield some answers. Of course, it is far easier to marshal historical facts than it is to say what the facts mean – in human terms. Occasionally, too, reckoning with the past is frustrating and embarrassing. Still, because honest inquiry can illumine our present and thereby shape our future, we must make a conscious effort, barring none, to say where and why matters went wrong, even if we do not agree. If exhortation or preaching is the net result, rather than effective implementation of educational equality, that in itself does not justify giving up the task. If we do give up, the losses – in human terms – will be staggering.

Contradictions in race relations, antecedents of today’s ambivalences, are rooted in experience. For at least 244 years White Americans viewed Afro-Americans as a strange, subhuman species of property, fit for perpetual enslavement or, if not enslaved, forced into a mudsill status. Considered ineducable, Blacks worked rather than learned because there was no place for them in society except the bottom. Slavery governed every aspect of White-Black contact, even circumscribing that small percentage of the Black population believed to be free. Paralleling the peculiar institution was the development of political democracy for White males. Not only were women and Blacks excluded; there were dangerous divisions between rich and poor, North and South. The paradox of bondage and freedom survived the American Revolution of 1776, but it exploded in 1861, bringing emancipation and reconstruction to over four million Blacks. Society, nonetheless, rejected them.

Segregation and labor exploitation supplanted slavery. Whatever happened to Blacks by constitutional decree (for awhile voting, officeholding, and state supported schools) occurred in the framework of sanctioned separation. Blacks’ efforts to break out of their closed world usually meant further proscription, as in the case of Chesnutt’s Wilmington mob massacre. A half century elapsed before the day-to-day insurgence of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s bore fruit in Brown. Even then, violent resistance ensued. Negroes had not been accepted. No meaningful school integration would be forthcoming for 15 years.

An idea whose time had come did not flourish; America possessed insufficient moral and spiritual courage. Interracial tolerance, understanding, and acceptance, each indispensable to peaceful transition, lagged behind law. Emotional distance created more fear, suspicion, and mistrust. The cry for Black power triggered White backlash, muting counsels of moderation on both sides of the color line. Gunnar Myrdal had contended earlier that Whites harbored conflicting feelings about race, and events proved him correct. Whites believed in freedom and equal opportunity yet rationalized prejudice and discrimination against Negroes. The situation leads to an unfortunate separation of ideals from realities, thought Myrdal, permitting Americans to pass laws to alter practices they were supporting at the deepest psychological level. The Kerner Commission Report took this reasoning a step farther. America, it concluded, “is moving toward two societies, one Black, one White – separate and unequal.”

The history lesson here is simple: essentially autonomous communities, much less their segregated educational institutions, cannot be merged properly without reorienting values. Our dilemma is how to apply the lesson. Writing nearly a quarter century after the first Reconstruction, Chesnutt understood that the Negro’s future depended upon ending White prejudice and violence. “Our boasted civilization is but a thin veneer,” he stated, ‘which cracks and scales off at the first impact of primal passions.” A novelist with an undisguised Black perspective, he scorned selfishness, the handmaiden of tribalism and racism. If “the most constant of human motives” were attacked, society could usher in a day of decency, morality, and goodwill.

That day is not at hand a quarter century after Brown, the Second Reconstruction. Mechanisms are now desperately needed to promote social justice. Society is not simply biracial like Chesnutt depicted it in 1901; it is multiracial and multiethnic. Desegregation is an area of Black-White relations as well as a process for bringing numerous disaffected groups into the mainstream, including Blacks, women, workers, poor people, and nonWhite minorities. Their interdependence is conceded, since inequality in America relates to race, sex, and class. Notwithstanding new formulations of the problem, we ought to look beyond statutory law (as Chestnutt did) and deal with human horizons.

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The impact of desegregation on society is salutary. It challenges Americans to square creed and practice, to take affirmative action, and to foster meaningful human relationships. Unhappily, value changes have lagged behind legal changes, throwing a monkey wrench into enforcement.

Are values changing? When so much seems the same, I wonder. The anti-busing movement, White flight, and racial indifference on college campuses are national phenomena, for instance. Each is connected to a resolve either to hold the line of advance or, where possible, to turn back the clock. If education is to continue its role as a major instrument for desegregating society, we cannot ignore the values lag.

To shed some light on what we can do, I shall stress three categories: advantages of integrated education, human rights issues in learning, and community outreach.

Integrated education is equal education. It enhances cultural sharing and interracial communication, props to equal opportunity. Chief Justice Earl Warren, recognizing its value to the nation’s civic health, declared in 1954:

…it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Segregated education deprived children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities, Warren maintained, and did them psychological harm:

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

“We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place,” the jurist submitted. “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.”

Brown protected a legal right and established a social principle. With the noise being made about quality education and reverse discrimination today (euphemisms for neighborhood schools and limiting Black admissions) we sometimes forget. The NAACP won Donald Murray’s right to attend the University of Maryland Law School way back in 1935, almost two decades before the big decision. While the Association, even then, mobilized its resources against the ‘separate but equal’ philosophy, the overriding purpose was to liberate America and the Negro from the tentacles of segregation. The integrated school shaped the vision of an integrated society.

Credit for sustaining the vision belongs not only to the NAACP, the lawyers and plaintiffs, but to an older generation whose unheralded sacrifices kept the ball rolling. Next was the student vanguard. Believing in the cause, Black pupils of Little Rock (thanks to

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the presence of Federal troops) braved hostile White crowds. Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes witnessed rioting at the University of Georgia, as did James Meredith at Ole Miss. Vivian Malone encountered the governor, who blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama. These events were prologue to boycotts, sit-ins, and mass marches. What started in education had spread to transportation, public accommodations, voting, and employment.

Between the 1960s and now the ferment has subsided. Skepticism reigns – in Black and White. “I hear much talk that integration is impracticable, that as an ultimate goal it is an ideal like equality, but that as a practical program it is unfeasible,” observes historian C. Vann Woodward in Racism and American Education: A Dialogue and Agenda for Action. “1 know that this isn’t a universal attitude, but I hear more of it, and I am concerned.” All of us should be concerned.

We should support the view that integrated education is advantageous to society, partly because it vindicates those who have struggled for it, but more importantly because it buttresses cultural pluralism. Appreciating our racial and ethnic diversity broadens intergroup tolerance, respect, and understanding. People who differ from us in color, language or religion, therefore, need not be outcasts. They are entitled, like everybody, to first-class citizenship. Were these humanistic considerations integral to American education elementary, secondary and higher; public, parochial and private our schools would not only serve the ends of competition but of cooperation as well. There still may be time, through cooperation, to transform vision into reality.

Human rights issues, imaginatively incorporated into learning, can help. Freedom, equality, self-determination, dissent, reform and interracial cooperation, taught as positive concepts, could make classrooms crucibles of social change. Humanities and social sciences, disciplines which treat man’s interaction with his fellowman beckon us. To do the job (no matter what the purists claim) it is not necessary to turn lecterns into soapboxes, only that we raise new and critical questions about historical experience. Hopefully, the queries will redirect our thinking concerning the contemporary world.

The finest synthesis of these perspectives I know is Mississippi: Conflict and Change, a state history text written by James W. Loewen, Charles Sallis, and others. The authors, an interracial group of five men and three women, working as a teacher-student research team from Tougaloo and Millsaps colleges, represent the fields of sociology, history, political science, and literature. At the time of publication in 1974, three of the authors, including Loewen and Sallis, resided in the Magnolia State. Their study “traces the history of Mississippi: from prehistoric times until today, covering all areas of social life and concentrating on recent developments, especially the civil rights struggle and the search for social justice.”

The book seeks and sustains

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rapport with the students, using simple but thought-provoking language. Maps, figures, tables, photographs, short biographies, marginal definitions or comments, conceptual questions, and annotated bibliographies appear throughout. The searchlight is on people and what happened to them. After a Chamble of Commerce style introduction, which is fun, readers receive a primer on misconceptions about history, emphasizing ideology and myth. They then see the layout of the land, Indian civilizations from pre-history through European exploration, settlement, control, removal, and the Trail of Tears.

They view the internal tensions of a frontier state, unsettled by slaves, free Blacks, Northern abolitionists, secession, and Civil War. From here on, readers witness failure and triumph; democracy comes slowly. Negro political participation is blackjacked with violent and racist campaigns. Populism is similarly defeated. Jim Crow is unopposed, though cotton tenancy collapses and brings on the depression.

Like Black spirituals, blues and folklore, White minstrelsy and country music often reflect the hard times. William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams write about the hard times. Growing Black aspirations, catalyzed by World War II, inaugurate statewide civil rights operations. Citizens’ Councils organize chapters in 110 towns after Brown, but Uncle Sam Freedom Summer, and SNCC at least see token desegregation. Emerging from tragedy and conflict, Mississippi moves forward. While every problem is not solved, industrialization improves employment, income, literacy, and cultural life. According to the final chapter, the future promises greater urbanization in-migration, and equality.

However, Mississippi children do not use the book because the department of instruction, wary of its content and viewpoint, rejected it. The frustrated authors lost their suit for adoption in state court, but they have appealed and the matter still awaits a decision in Federal Circuit Court. Needless to say, an unfavorable ruling will weaken human rights emphases in learning. Also it would wipe out similar textbook projects elsewhere in the South. The case challenges scholars, teachers, parents, and students. If human rights are not taught, they cannot be practiced.

Community outreach is the watchword for change, linking gown and town, educators and activists. A forum for those who care about integrated education and human rights issues, it facilitates dialogue and action. Principled pronouncements are not ends in themselves, they need backing – people, publicity, and political clout. Chesnutt, mind you, continued his fight against prejudice through the Negro press and the Cleveland, Ohio NAACP. Today, too, it is very important that we concretize our concern.

Cooperative efforts can contribute significantly to communities. The Institute on Desegregation, based at North Carolina Central University, involves interested Blacks and Whites from triangle-area colleges and universities. A valuable clearinghouse, it deals with the most pressing problem in Carolina higher education. Through its inter-institutional research group, studies are conducted which influence affirmative action. The Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations, housed at Duke University, utilizes oral and multiracial sources to write recent Southern history. By bringing to the campus retired organizers like Ella Baker and Virginia Durr and selecting as visiting fellows noted activists like Vincent Harding and Sue Thrasher, it merges university and community in a unique setting. Its nontraditional approaches to the past and present have consciousness-raising value. The North Carolina Humanities Committee, with headquarters in Greensboro, funds projects in community change. The speaker-consultant program, for instance, encourages organizations to draw upon the observations of academic humanists in formulating strategy for reform. Enterprises such as these suggest that we have ample opportunity for immediate outreach.

It is true that in scope the problems are national, regional and statewide, but it is on the local level where change is nullified or nurtured. What do we know of past and present race relations? Can we form community coalitions? Does desegregation lower academic standards? How do we get more Black faculty members in predominantly White universities? These and related questions impel us to seize the horns of our values dilemma. If we can circumvent the ways in which the dilemma immobilizes us and the structures through which we work, we can attack “the most common of human motives.” Then perhaps we can avoid the consequences which Chesnutt found in Wilmington.

An associate professor of history at Duke University, Ray Gavins is a member of the Southern Regional Council. This article is from a paper which he delivered to the National Conference on Desegregation in Higher Education, July 19, 1979, Raleigh, North Carolina.

The South: Its Attitudes and Changes, Its People

By Bettie Green Stokes

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 10-11

It seems to be a national concensus that the South has come into its own and is now a part of the nation. Through the social revolution and the death of Jim Crowism (1950s and ’60s), a new image appears in full bloom. The majority population of the South has ridded itself of deep feelings of guilt and the largest minority population has raised its head from a cringing posture. The smog of bigotry is lifting, and on a clear day some see broad horizons for the South.

Southern politicians, officials, and other concerned citizens are campaigning and speaking out in a forthright St atesmanship (or stateswomanship) manner. Coming out of Alabama, “the heart of Dixie,” are officials ushering in a new rhetoric, declaring that the state of Alabama has long since dropped the racial issue. There is now a call for “a new beginning” from Alabama Gov. Fob James, and for “the brotherhood of man” from Sen. Howell Heflin.

We cannot declare, however, that 300 or more years of attitudes and customs have been swept away, leaving no residuals, no reprecussions. There remains much in racial attitudes which could prove explosive.

The South is a multi-racial area, much like the nation and there are some characteristics common to the region:

-The racial distribution is consistently spread throughout the Southern states;

– According to 1975 statistics, there is notable poverty among all races;

– Each race has its own special interest group in addition to those that exist in support of numerous causes.

Despite the common traits, there is a separate struggle of the races, so intense that every group

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in the region has its special racial interest group.

For Whites, there are two groups: The Nazi Party, that declares all Black Americans are inferior, and seeks to purify the nation by purging it of Blacks and Jews; and the Ku Klux Klan, which unfurls a somewhat different banner today, deemphasizing its “white supremacy” creed of the past, but demonstrating that same philosophy through its vigilant stance for law and order. Organized to the hilt, Blacks are seeking and often arrogantly demanding, “all that Blacks are due and have been deprived of over the centuries.” At the same time, there are other special interest groups throughout the population organized for a special cause: ERA, abortion, gay rights, prisoner’s rights, and environmental protection to name a very few

Each wages with a degree of zeal that shows no caring for others and leaves the impression of concern only for its own isolated interest, thereby developing an opposing hostile group. This fragmenting eventually creates something like the game of tug-of-war where there is little object other than to pull against in order to hold the line.

It is significant to note that the racial special interest groups serve to emphasize separatism. Attitudes which each fosters continue to accept racial separatism. The separatism jargon of all groups keeps aglow that old image of segregation. It opposes progress, in that it encourages clannishness and isolation.

While cause groups unite and form successful coalitions around “causes”, they have made little dent in the wall of racial separation that is being built.

To redirect the trend, techniques should be developed that will foster negotiation. These should involve communication across racial lines, providing a means of getting to know and appreciate one another. Such communication would promote an opportunity for individuals to know the worth of each other and to salute the human dignity of one another. If this kind of interpersonal relationship could begin to develop, such an approach could move attitudes from the present racial separatism towards wholistic citizenship responsibility.

Any organization concerned about the welfare of its constituency would do well to direct considerable organizational know-how toward involving its grass roots members in interracial communication. It takes intelligent action by all the people for real progress. The greatest good any organization can perform is to objectively try to inspire and insure a high level of literacy, information, and self-esteem, not just among its “leaders”, but right down to the grass roots. This is a crucial time, and “leaders” would do well to reevaluate their techniques, attitudes, and reactions toward other racial groups. It is incumbent upon all racial groups to create a more fulfilling future through knowledge of ourselves and our country’s history.

Formerly the president of the Alabama Women’s Political Caucus, Bettie Green Stokes is a Black woman who has been involved in organizations supporting the civil rights movement, women’s rights and civil liberties.

Greensboro Deaths Were Foretold

By Peter B. Young

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 12

In 1968-1969, as a consultant to the President’s Commission on Violence I reported (as if from another planet) the existence of a large underclass of deeply troubled Whites in North Carolina and elsewhere. I described this phenomenon as a “White ghetto,” with social pathology remarkably similar to that which is so well known in the Black ghetto: ignorance, unemployment, poor health, a drenching saturation of racism and random Saturday night violence.

I further pointed out to the commission that routine police measures of surveillence and harassment were (and are) not only useless but also counterproductive. And I explicitly suggested the probability of a violent confrontation worse than any we had known in the 1960s.

A week ago, in the New York Times, it was painful (but not surprising) for me to read that the radical victims at Greensboro were college graduates, while their killers held “marginal jobs”.

Permit me to say something to these two groups, described in the media as “extremist fringe groups”.

To the radicals: The historic crisis of American radicalism has been its perennial failure to “break through ” to ordinary working people. The difference of class and culture have been virtually unbridgeable.

I respect your courage in going into the mills and becoming active in the labor movement. But I suspect your approach was “elitist”; you didn’t really listen to those folks. If you had listened, really listened, you would not have staged a rally around the slogan, “Death to the Klan”. An abstraction called “the Klan” is really all that exists in the White ghetto. These folks were born into “the Klan”, and it is all they have. (Ironically, it seems likely that the Greensboro assailants may not have been officially members of any Klan organization, yet they are so obviously born into “the Klan” as to pose a profound dilemma for the official Klan officers of the state.

To the Greensboro 14: I know who you are, and I know why you did it. One of you was quoted in the Times as saying, “God save America and this honorable court.” That is a way of saying you knew going in what the price would be and you were (and are) willing to pay that price. You were unable to follow the techniques of the late Dr. Martin Luther King; you could not commit a nonviolent act of civil disobedience so you committed a violent one. An atrociously violent act, I hasten to add. The deadly aim of your fire shows that marksmanship standards in the White ghetto remain at their usual high level. Now brothers (and wives and children), do some hard and long praying on what you have done.

The road to a decent American future continues to be difficult. Whoever thought it would be easy? We should pause now to mourn the dead, the wounded and, yes, those shattered “Klan” families in the Piedmont.

The writer, a public relations counselor in Massachusetts, covered state politics and civil rights, including the Ku Klux Klan for WRAL-TV in Raleigh in the mid-1960s. He was a consultant on White extremist groups to a study commission headed by Dr. Milton Eisenhower appointed by President Lyndon Johnson after the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

(Reprinted from the Charlotte Observer.)

The Unmaking of a Black Candidate: Memphis

By Terry Keeter

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1908, pp. 13-15

Otis Higgs, Jr. told the public that he did not want to be elected mayor of Memphis simply because he is Black, and in November the voters turned around the meaning of his remark and made that wish come true: he was not elected, simply because he is Black.

Higgs campaigned hard in both the Black and White communities and made an unprecedented number of public appearances before church, civic and political groups. But as Higgs was pledging not to. run a campaign based on color, he was probably also setting a record in colorless campaign rhetoric. The former state criminal court judge failed to attract any undecided voters and went into election day with much of his hardcore support coming from the same knee-jerk liberal and Black-for-Black’s sake voters he had the day he announced.

Shortly after the election some political observers maintained that Higgs was simply a victim of racial prejudice and, regardless of his positions or what he had to say, he would have been defeated by White fear of a Black mayor. Voting patterns leave little doubt that he did lose solely because he is Black. The final returns gave incumbent Mayor Wyeth Chandler 120,207 mostly White votes, or 52.9 percent, to 107,323 mostly Black votes, or 47.1 percent, for Higgs.

Jesse Turner – a member of the Shelby county board of commissioners and NAACP natiqnal treasurer – presented to the local NAACP branch an analysis of the voting. Turner’s report showed Chandler with a meager 1,300 Black votes, or 1.4 percent, and 88.6 percent of the White votes – leaving Higgs with 98.6 percent of the Black votes and 11.4 percent of the Whites. Black registration comprises 42.5 percent of the 343,157 registered voters in the city – or 145,832 potential Black votes.

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According to Turner, the 66 percent total voter turnout represented 64 percent of the Black voters and 68 percent of the Whites. The election – a rematch of the 1975 runoff for mayor showed a substantial increase from the 58 percent turnout registered four years ago.

As an obvious Black-White matchup, the election returns posed the real question of whether Higgs could have won in spite of the fact that he is Black. Could he have attracted more Whites? Could he have won on the issues?

The biracial support for Higgs was at first impressive. He had the endorsement of the municipal fire and police unions, several other labor organizations and the editorial page endorsement of the city’s largest newspaper, The Commercial Appeal. But, armed with endorsements that no Black mayoral candidate ever had,Higgs failed to translate this support into votes.

Much of his failure could possibly be traced to the start of his drive for the mayor’s office. The former judge had problems with his campaign organization. In the early weeks of the race, Higgs’ campaign was about as organized as a street fight and not nearly as exciting.

During this period, campaign leaders spent almost $14,000 on rent for a headquarters, threw a fund raiser that lost considerable funds, and agreed to lease a ton of billboard space which resulted in a lawsuit from a minority businessman.

After such moves it became obvious that the Higgs’ campaign was not getting anywhere and something had to be done. Higgs frantically met with Black leaders such as Russell Sugarmon, the NAACP’s Maxine Smith, Vasco Smith and Turner and begged their help. It was a pitch, however, for the group leaders in the Democratic Voters Council – not to help set campaign direction and decisions, but to handle the grass roots ward and precinct work to get the Black voters to the polls on election day.

For Sugarmon, who as a candidate for county court several years ago had been snubbed by Higgs, the decision was not easy. He chose, however, to go to work for Higgs and became listed as a campaign manager.

The Higgs campaign soon expanded from a single manager to two, three and then four. But Sugarmon quickly brought a sense of organization to the camp and devised a complicated yet effective plan to get out votes. For the first time the campaign began to use some of headquarters building that was eating up funds in monthly utility bills.

Some fences could not be mended. No help came from U.S. Rep. Harold Ford of Memphis and his politically powerful machine. Nor was there an endorsement from James E. Smith and his local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. (AFSCME s strained dealings with the Black mayor in Atlanta, Maynard Jackson, were cited as a prime reason that Higgs failed to win an endorsement from the Memphis local.) Only token support came from the predominantly Black union group.

However, the Black turnout was one that could have spelled victory under normal circumstances. Almost 65 percent of the registered Blacks voted and almost all voted for Higgs. But work by Chandler’s camp -. coupled with a series of poor top level decisions in the Higgs campaign – pushed almost 70 percent of the White voters to the polls – mot to vote against him.

The final two weeks before the election were a series of disasters for Higgs as his campaign came apart at the top.

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For weeks, Higgs had blasted Chandler for running a racist campaign and had the incumbent on the defensive. Chandler had made the job easy by attending a citizens counsel meeting and pledging allegiance to the Confederate flag, and by asking the Election Commission for a “White only” list of voters who failed to go to the polls in the first city election in October.

Failing to understand its advantage, the Higgs campaign decided to bring together 16 Black elected officials – and no Whites to endorse the candidate. Although Higgs had the support of some White officials, the move allowed Chandler to make charges of his own concerning racism and wiggle out of a trap he had dug for himself. It may have been the key factor in determining where moderate White votes would go election day.

The Higgs campaign also decided to call a press conference where the candidate would neither confirm nor deny a police report relating to a cross-burning alleged to have occurred because the candidate had an illegitimate son born 21 years ago. The media had been skeptical of the cross-burning and its connection with the claim of an illegitimate son until the candidate held his press conference. With the candidate himself focusing on the allegation without denying it, the media and others went after the story. Even some of the staunch Higgs supporters saw this as the straw that broke the back of a campaign that had already been weakened by poor decisions.

In the last days, Higgs continued to maintain a hectic pace of speeches and appearances. Yet he spoke to neither the issues nor the voters. Throughout his campaign Higgs displayed a consistent lack of decisiveness. Many of Higgs’ positions on important matters facing the city were “maybe” or “I’ll have to look into that.”

The “maybe” included such items as a tunnel for the interstate highway through Overton Park a proposal that might solve the controversy raging for decades but at heavy expense. Items under “I’ll have to look into that” included the multi-million dollar sludge burning plant – one of the largest capital improvement projects in the city’s history.

Higgs’ firm stands appear general or even peculiar. They included such items as “to be tough as nails on crime,” to be ”fund a ni e ntally fair” with municipal fire and police unions, to let the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce name his chief administrative officer and for some reason apparently known only to the candidate to change the name of Beale Street to Beal Street-USA.

Higgs also spoke not to the crowds, but somewhere above them. “I can walk and talk with kings and potentates and still speak the common language of the simple garbageman,” he said, in a somewhat pompous tone that appeared to reach about an equal number of kings, potentates and garbagement “The renaissance in this city must begin with a new mayor,” he said early in the campaign. The “disconnected frankness of the community” in discussing city problems “must be replaced by projections of positivism and affirmatism. We should be harmonious here if for no other reason, for pragmatic reasons.”

In the face of such lofty pleas the election returns showed a divided city Black and White. The saddest result for the city of Memphis is that W. Otis l-liggs, Jr. lost the race for mayor because he is Black.

Higgs should have lost the race because his campaign was a colorless gray.

Terry Keeter is a reporter for the Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tennessee.

Affirmative Inaction in Blackbelt Governments

By Marge Manderson

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 16-18

On the roads of the rural Southern Blackbelt you are likely to almost as many Blacks as Whites. Nearly one of every four people you meet will be a Black woman. But in the region’s courthouses and municipal offices, it is likely that you will never encounter a Black person behind a desk, a counter, or a typewriter as an employee of local government.

The odds are considerably higher that you will not see a Black woman in such a position. And some rural Blackbelt governments, if you should search diligently you will not find a permanent, full time Black female employee – not even in traditionally Black menial jobs or traditionally female clerical jobs. In many large rural Blackbelt government workforces, you will find, at the most, a total of only three or four Black female employees.

More than 2.4 million Blacks live in rural counties in the area sociologists have named the Blackbelt, the old plantation and slavery counties that stretch in a crescent from Virginia to Texas. Once, 300 of these counties had more Blacks than Whites. Even now, rural counties that lie along the old Blackbelt are at least 30 percent Black. In all such counties, 44 percent of the aggregate population is Black. Black women number 1.3 million. They are 23 percent of the aggregate population.

Rural Blackbelt governments have shunned this vast reservoir of human potential when jobs were filled. A current Southern Regional Council survey clearly demonstrates that where Blacks do not control county commissions or hold powerful city office, the Black share of public jobs is small and most Black public employees are in menial job categories. Analysis of 1978 workforce patterns of 14 rural Blackbelt governments in three Deep South states reveals only the slightest broadening of employment opportunity. Token numbers of Black men have entered traditionally White but low status blue collar Protective Service and Skilled Crafts jobs, token numbers of Black women have entered Office/Clerical jobs. in most kinds of jobs, however, time has stood still, frozen since the era when Blacks were unwelcome visitors in the seats of local government.

The sharpest exclusion

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from public employment falls on those who are both Black and female. Of 14 governments examined by the Southern Regional Council, a total of five employed f4wer than five Black women on a full time, permanent basis. One government employed no Black women at all -not even in the clean-up job that is the traditional lot of Southern Black women. Although the average number of permanent, full time employees in the 14 governments is 131, the average number of Black female employees is seven – one in 19.

The survey shows one change has affected Black women since the fall of racial segregation: they have edged into traditionally White fem ale Office/Clerical jobs. Yet, they hold these jobs in scarcely token numbers. In 14 governments, fewer than one in five of all permanent, full time Office/Clerical workers is a Black woman, while nearly three of four of these jobs are held by White women. The number of Black women in non-menial, non-clerical jobs is miniscule: their overall total can literally be counted on the fingers. They hold one in 73 of all such jobs. Not surprisingly, in light of the low status jobs to which they are relegated, Black women are far more likely than other race/sex groups to earn low salaries. They are not to be found at higher salary levels.

Does a low turnover rate in these relatively small governments necessitate their slow Affirmative Action progress? It appears not. There were in the 14 governments substantial numbers of “New Hires” in 1978, but when opening jobs were filled, existing disparities were reinforced. For every one job filled by a Black woman, 11 jobs were filled by other races or sexes. For every Black woman hired in either the traditionally Black Service/Maintenance category or the traditionally female Office/Clerical category, 52 such jobs were filled by other faces or sexes.

During the decades of the Fifties and Sixties, rural Blackbelt county and city governments were the centers and symbols of Southern resistance to desegregation and Black citizenship rights. Among these tradition dominated governments, a slow rate of compliance with the national mandate for equal employment opportunity should, perhaps, come as no surprise. But the degree of their intransigence, as revealed by the Council’s survey, is nothing short of astounding. At the present rate of change, the target date for full employment participation of Blacks in local, rural governments will be several hundred years hence, and, for Black women, even beyond.

Public employers who have not moved to correct the effects of past discrimination through suitable Affirmative Actions are subject to findings of illegal discrimination. To comply with

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the law, when a reasonable basis exists for determining that Affirmative Action is appropriate, employers must institute specific, appropriate personnel actions to remedy past or present discrimination. Under clear and specific guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, substantial under representation of Blacks and women in individual job categories, when revealed by statistical analysis, constitutes a “reasonable basis” for Affirmative Action changes in personnel practices or policies.

When, for example, the pool of qualified, experienced minorities and women is limited because of historic restrictions on their employment, it is the responsibility of employers to take Affirmative Action to expand the qualified applicant pool. It is the employer’s responsibility to establish training plans and programs, including on-the-job training, which provide Blacks and women with the opportunity, skill, and experience necessary to perform in responsible public jobs. It seems clear that Blackbelt governments that complain they cannot locate qualified Blacks and women must face up to their own responsibility to expand the applicant pool.

The employment record of governments such as those surveyed by SRC can and must be reversed. It cannot be permitted to harden into a deliberate act of defiance of national law and policy, a posture of affirmative inaction. The full forces of the national government and the forces of local community pressure must be mobilized toward that end. Two and a half million Black constituents of rural Blackbelt governments can no longer be denied equal participation in local public employment.

Some of the statistical findings that show the shocking under representation of Black women in rural Blackbelt governments are highlighted below Statistical data were taken from official reports for the year 1978 for eight county and six small city governments in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina (Public school employees and certain appointed officials are not included in the data governments must report.) Data are for full time, permanent employees.

Black women are substantially under represented in overall employment. They are more than one in five of the relevant population areas, but only one in 16 (68 of a total of 1056) of all county employees and one in 27 (29 of a total of 772) of all city employees.

Jobs of responsibility and status, or even low status blue collar jobs, are rarely held by Black women. Of an overall total of 871 non-clerical, non-service maintenance jobs, Black women hold only 12 jobs, or one in 73.

Black women now hold a token number of traditionally White female Office/Clerical jobs, but they are outnumbered by White females four to one. Eighteen percent (58 of 315) of all such jobs are held by Black women and 73 percent (231 of 315) are held by White women.

Black women earn low salaries more often than other groups. They do not hold higher salaried jobs. Nearly one in two (45 percent) of all Black females earns less than $6,000 a year. Fewer than one in seven (15 percent) of all other race/sex groups earns less than $6,000.

Black women were substantially underrepresented among New Hires for 1978. One in 12 (37 of a total of 455) of all New Hires was of a Black female. A total of 158 employees were hired in the non-menial, non-clerical job opportunities of Officials/Administrators, Professionals, Technicians, Paraprofessionals, Protective Service workers, and Skilled Crafts workers. Only three of them were Black women (one Technician, one Professional, and one Protective Service worker).

The complete study of employment patterns of Black men and Black women, entitled “Affirmative Inaction: Public Employment in the Rural Blackbelt”, may be ordered by sending $5.00 ($4.00 plus $1 handling cost) to the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30303.

Marge Manderson is a program officer for the Southern Regional Council.

Women and Minorities in Louisiana Elections Despair or Hope?

By Norma Dyess

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 19-23

At first glance,the 1979 election returns portend a grim future for women and minorities in Louisiana for the next four years. In fact, many human rights activists have been in despair feeling that the outcomes of the gubernatorial, statewide and legislative races represented a giant step backward.

The main source of pessimism and alarm was the election of third district Congressman David C. Treen, the first Republican governor in 102 years. No moderate, Charles Percy-type Republican, Treen is a bedrock, longtime conservative who once belonged to the States Rights Party, was one of four Congressmen voting in 1974 against impeachment of Richard Nixon and has made feminist and civil rights activists recoil in distrust by his Washington voting record.

Their concern was compounded by the fact that the governor of Louisiana is probably the most powerful governor of any of the 50 states. He controls the purse-strings, a vast array of appointments and patronage opportunities and generally oversees a network of political power that guarantees his formidable grasp on the harness of state government.

But other elections were just as discouraging. Consider the scorecard:

-Only three women and one Black sought statewide office this year. All but incumbent State Treasurer Mary Evelyn Parker were defeated by White men. Former Secretary of the Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Sandra Thompson of Baton Rouge lost her bid for Secretary of State, as did Ben Jeffers, a young, Black management consultant from Baton Rouge. Louisiana Women’s Political Caucus President Lynne Hair, also of Baton Rouge, was defeated in her race for Commissioner of Elections. With the exception of Parker, all statewide elective offices are held by White men.

-Of the 28 women who ran for seats in the state legislature, only three were elected. Furthermore, the state Senate lost its only woman member with the defeat of Virginia Shehee of Shreveport. In the House, formerly the state’s only female Representative Diana Bajole of New Orleans will be joined only by Mary Landrieu, (the 23 year-old daughter of Moon Landrieu, former Mayor of New Orleans and now HUD Secretary), and Margaret Lowenthal of Lake Charles. At least three of the women who ran for the state legislature were anti-feminists whose elections

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would have been a setback for the women’s movement.

-There was a net gain of only two Blacks elected to the legislature. Sen. Henry Braden of New Orleans will be joined by William Jefferson, also of New Orleans. The new Black state representative is Charles D. Jones of Monroe.

-While strides were made the fact that 28 women were politically viable enough to wage strong campaigns for the legislature, for example, the overall results and above all the election of Treen made 1979 appear something less than a watershed year.

But there is another side to the story.

The same Republican victory that has signaled disaster has some liberals optimistic that perhaps the best is yet to come.

It’s a long story, and one that is as unique to Louisiana as crawfish etoufee, filet gumbo and Mardi Gras.

Louisiana is just now truly beginning to emerge from the decades-long grip of rural poverty that existed alongside the rich oil fields, the bustling commercial activity of the river port in New Orleans and the developing tourist industry of that area. The recent boom of the petrochemical corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the oil, gas, and related industrial growth of Shreveport and the manufacturing plants throughout the state has produced a more even distribution of the state’s wealth. It has also produced a nascent middle class – a political innovation that was bound to have a dramatic impact on the state government.

Surprisingly enough, it was Gov. Edwin Edwards who provided the mechanism that quickened the arrival of the new government. Back in 1975 Edwards was embroiled in his bid for re-election, and the memory of his 1971 gubernatorial bid was fresh in his mind. The closed primary system he was operating under pitted him against a legion of other Democratic contenders for the October primary spot. This meant that Democrats spent long months bitterly slugging it out, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars only to have to turn around and face a lone Republican candidate who often managed to swallow up 40 percent of the vote. While the Democratic party and candidates were bitterly divided and emotionally and financially drained, the Republican sat back until his December appearance, fresh as a daisy and with votes in hand. Determined to “reform” this procedure, Edwards began

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pushing for a change. In 1976, he won. The legislature passed the open primary law.

In 1979, Dave Treen, the Republican nominee who was handed a mantle as a reward for his longtime party loyalty when times were bad, had to jump in at the forefront to assure himself a place in the general election. He would have to campaign just as long and spend just as much as the Democrats.

At the same time the Republican nominee was virtually assured a spot in the general election, because he started out with the usual 35-45 percent expected vote as well as a chance to pull out an early lead on the Democrats.

In the first primary, there was a stunning array of Democratic contenders, the top elected officials in the state, and each had something to offer. Lt. Gov. Jimmy Fitzmorris of New Orleans, who as chairman of the Board of Commerce and Industry had made jobs and industrial inducement the foundation of his campaign, was early-on tagged the frontrunner. House Speaker “Bubba” Henry of Jonesboro, the “Mr. Clean” of state government, was the tall, Lincolnesque godfather to the Independent Legislature I Good Government faction. State Sen. “Sonny” Mouton of Lafayette, a diminutive Cajun, had labored in the vineyards of the legislature for 15 years for liberal causes. Secretary of State Paul Hardy, a boyishly handsome, young newcomer from St. Martinville had just been elected to his first statewide office. And Public Service Commissioner Louis Lambert of Gonzales, with the support of organized Blacks and labor, hoped to follow the historic footsteps of Huey P. Long by jumping from the PSC into the Governor’s Mansion. These five men represented the full gammut of political philosophy, intellect, and integrity. But only one would face Treen in the runoff. Everyone assumed it would be Fitzmorris. It wasn’t.

After a close primary that required several recounts and three court rulings before a decision, Louis Lambert emerged as the Democratic candidate who would battle Treen for the go vernorship. The state’s populist heritage and the considerable political clout of organized labor and urban Black groups (over 100 in number) that had put Lambert in the runoff, was expected to put him over the edge – until an incredible phenomenon that still has the Democratic party reeling began to take shape. All four of the defeated Democratic primary contenders joined together to endorse Republican Treen over their fellow Democrat.

That development is what finally tilted the scales over to Treen. With the support of some Democrats, Treen was able to carry the traditional Republican votes and enough of the new middle class independents. It was close – a margin of less than ten thousand votes among over a million cast. Still, it was a victory for Treen.

The fact is that Treen owes his election to a large segment of the Democratic party. The four gubernatorial candidates were not the only elected Democratic officials to cross party lines to endorse him. Legislators and local officials all across the state actively worked toward his election. The Iberia Parish Democratic Executive Committee even voted unanimously to endorse him over Lambert.

The most fascinating aspect of this boost from Democrats is that Edgar Mouton, the most liberal of all of them, is the one to whom Dave Treen owes the most. A quick took at the demographics of this year’s returns shows why: North Louisiana went for Lambert in spite of “Bubba” Henry’s help (due to labor’s pressure increased recently by the heavy amount of unionization accompanying the lumber/paper mill industry). New Orleans went to Lambert despite the endorsement by Fitzmorris. But Acadiana was another story. While 97 percent of the Black vote in the state went to Lambert, the Lafayette parish area was an exception. Because of Mouton’s support, Lafayette even the Black boxes – went resoundingly to Tree n. (Because Mouton endorsed George McGovern for president in 1972, Lafayette was also the parish in the state that McGovern carried.)

Ironic? It appears that way until one considers that Mouton says he extracted a commitment from Treen prior to his endorsement regarding appointments of women and minorities in his administration and the operation of several key programs as well.

Mouton didn’t have to work very hard to achieve that promise; it was one that Treen

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had articulated repeatedly throughout the entire campaign. Since the state only has 98,211 registered Republicans, the Treen machine set its sight early on capturing the votes of what they termed “discerning Democrats”. During the primary, Treen worked hard to moderate his philosophy, moving so far to the left in some cases as to usurp some traditional Democratic positions. The end result was that on virtually all of the issues of the day Treen’s positions were essentially identical to those of his Democratic opponents.

In fact, Treen came out early and strongly in favor of affirmative action programs, even saying that quota systems were sometimes necessary to ‘address the grievances of the past.” He publicly apologized during a live television debate with Lambert for his having been “remiss in the past” in the area of race relations in response to a question about his membership in the States’ Rights Party and acknowledged that he had a lot of catching up to do in that area. His position on labor-management relations was downright friendly compared to Democrat Hardy, who campaigned on vituperative attacks on organized labor.

The glaring exception to Treen’s conversion was his opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment; he was the single gubernatorial candidate who did not come out in support of ratification of the ERA. Near the end of his runoff campaign, however, he began hinting that he “had an open mind” and that Mouton, who was lobbying him on the issue extensively, “was beginning to make a lot of sense.” Treen also sounded like the old Dave Treen on crime. In fact, much to his political gain, Treen cornered the market on the “hard on crime” line early in the campaign.

Because he moderated his positions, recognized his need to establish political debts to certain key Democrats and “discerning Democrats” in general, Treen is now the governor-elect. As a newcomer to state government, he says he needs the advice, counsel and guidance of leading Democrats, and has pledged repeatedly a bi-partisan administration. He is publicly committed to appointing women and minorities (as well as the elderly and the handicapped) to key policymaking positions.

Treen is no political naif. As the first Republican governor of a deep South state in over a century, Treen is aware his performance in office will reflect glaringly on his party and will affect Republicanism throughout the South for years to come. As LSU Prof. Mark Carleton recently pointed out, “If he (Treen) is a flop he could be the last Republican governor for another hundred years.”

Gov. Edwards is waiting in the wings, eager to reclaim his old job with $450,000 already sitting in his campaign coffers. Elected eight years ago by a coalition of labor, Blacks and liberals, Edwards has appointed more Blacks and women to government positions and done more to steer state government in the direction of their needs than any other in Louisiana’s history. He has publicly pledged to be back in 1983.

Edwin Edwards is leaving office this year with the highest popularity and approval rating in the polls of any Louisiana governor in history. Treen will have to encroach mightily on the governor’s “coalition territory” to stave off that kind of opposition in four years.

If any state in the union has little patience with politicians who don’t it’s Louisiana. That is not a state that is particularly enamored of the lofty ideals of “good government”; it is a state steeped in the tradition of autocratic Gallic rule, of benevelent dictatorship, of despotic populism of the Longs. Less than it demands honesty and reform it demands action. And such preferences diminish in the energy-short and inflation plagued 1980’s.

Louisiana in the 1980s will face a unique opportunity for women and minorities to impact state government as inexorably and as emphatically as they did

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in the 1970s – and possibly more so. As more of them discover they have an entree in the vast network filtering down from the governor’s office, more programs will be developed and funded, more victories will be won in the legislature, and more women and minorities will be getting elected.The ground is fertile for change.

The mantle of his party bearing heavy on his shoulders, Treen’s victory is founded on a shiveringly thin margin of 9,557 votes and campaign promises and debts to liberal Democrats. Certain of formidable Democratic opposition in four more years, Treen will probably be a man of his word. With the economic law of Supply and Demand, Louisiana’s gubernatorial politics, and the state’s unique history, the Treen administration may add up to an opportunity for those so long denied equality in the South.

Norma Dyess is a Baton Rouge native currently working as a reporter for the Louisiana News Bureau, a private state government reporting and service agency.

ERA and the South

By Betsy Brinson

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 24-25

Early ERA advocate Crystal Eastman suggested in 1923 that “To blot out of every law book in the land, to sweep out of every dusty courtroom, to erase from every judge’s mind that centuries old precedent as to women’s inferiority and dependence and need for protection; to substitute for it at one blow the simple new precedent of equality, that is a fight worth making, if it takes ten years.”

Fifty-seven years later the goal of equal rights for women is still not yet realized within our system of law.

After years of almost no movement, significant gain was realized in the last decade. In 1972,Congress voted to send the resolution to the states to secure the required 38 state votes needed to make ERA the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-five states have voted “aye” but three additional states are needed to succeed.

But the last few years seem to have produced a stalemate for the campaign. No state has ratified since 1977. Of those 13 states yet to endorse, not surprisingly the Southern states represent a major block to be persuaded. Indeed only Tennessee and Kentucky have ratified. Tennessee has since rescinded; Kentucky’s legislative attempt to rescind was vetoed by the acting governor Thelma Stovall.

The opposition has not only increased its legislative lobbying effort, but it has expanded its attack to the court system itself with challenges aimed toward disenfranchising state legislative votes supporting ERA. These lawsuits unfortunately require ERA proponents to divert needed energy and funds from the legislative forum.

Who opposes ERA? Increasingly we witness the opposition of economic interests in insurance and banking which

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see the passage of ERA as a major threat to the restructuring of benefits and credit mechanisms. It comes as no surprise that such wealthy entrepreneurs will undermine basic human values especially in a period of economic instability.

Equally significant is the opposition rising from fundamental religious factions who fear that ERA will undermine the more traditional male and female stereotypes. The r e c e n t M or in on excommunication of Sonia Johnson who was found guilty of defying church authority for espousing ERA support is only one example. What is even more disturbing than Ms. Johnson’s “trial” and ouster is the Mormons’ callous disregard for the basic American adherence to free speech and due process values in order to preserve their own authority.

The anti-ERA takeover of the Virginia meeting to elect delegates to the national Conference on the Family is another example. Ironically it was Alice Paul’s desire to strengthen the family and to improve the future of American children which motivated her to first write the ERA in 1923.

Proponents are unwilling to publicly concede that securing three more states may not be possible by March, 1982 given the political realities of the times. But, in the spirit of their feminist foremothers, ERA strategists are now laying the groundwork for a long-term campaign designed to secure eventual success – whether it takes two years ot twenty. That strategy has already begun to move into the political arena.

Witness the state of Virginia in last fall’s legislative elections. Careful analysis preceded the targeting of several races for funds and volunteers on behalf of pro-ERA candidates. Telephone banks were set up in which calls to every registered voter in selected districts were conducted in order to identify the pro-ERA voters. A follow-up contact by telephone or mail was made to each pro-ERA voter to insure their support at the polls for the preferred candidate. In all targeted races, pro-ERA candidates were successful.

In other Virginia campaign activity, pro-ERA petition drives were conducted in legislative districts where key anti-leaders will stand for re-election in 1982. The purpose of the petition drives was to identify pro-ERA voters for lobbying and to identify voters ‘who can lay the groundwork now for anti-legislators’ defeat in the next elections.

Similar targeting is now taking place in states that will hold legislative elections in 1981. These include the Southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

The second movement which gives rise to encouragement is the increased coalition-building currently taking place. New constituencies among homemakers and religious groups are committing themselves to the struggle. Expanded efforts of labor unions toward education and advocacy of their membership offer hope too for the campaign. One specific example is in Virginia where the Virginia Education Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers’ leadership spearheaded the recent rally where thousands of workers joined together at the Virginia General Assembly to support ERA. Similar organizing efforts are planned for other unratified states.

The influx of minority women and civil rights groups is also significant. Increasingly we see evidence of shared communication and cooperation which did not previously exist in support of ERA among racial and ethnic minorities. There is clearly a growing recognition by minority women themselves to the same pronouncement expressed by Essence editor Marcia Ann Gillespie when she said, “I did not stand up for my rights as a Black person in America to be told that I have to sit down because I’ma woman”.

And in conclusion, let us not forget that the idea of equal rights is still a revolutionary concept. As sociologist Jessie Bernard so aptly reminds us: “Women’s revolutions, unlike men’s, are not apocalyptic. Women do not expect Armageddon. We are accustomed to a relatively slow pace.” Over the years, we have had our successes; we will succeed too with ERA.

Betsy Brinson is the founding director of ACLU s Southern Women’s Rights Project. She was recently selected as one of Ms. magazine’s “Women to Watch in the 80’s.”

Workers’ Compensation Systems

By Southerners for Economic Justice

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 26-27

Workers’ compensation systems across the country have fallen short of real worker compensation and often come closer to employer compensation, according to a report of the Southerners for Economic Justice. Originated only partly in response to the increased dangers workers were facing in the industrializing workplace of the early 1900s, the laws were also the result of industry’s need to rationalize and predict production costs. Current analyses show that over the years compensation programs have served the needs of employers far better than workers and that workers are in fact carrying a double burden the physical and psychological risks of the workplace and the economic costs when those risks become reality. The South, in particular, falls short of adequate and just compensation in several important ways.

In 1972, each state’s compensation system was evaluated by the National Commission on State Workman’s Compensation Laws. Even though members of the Commission were picked from agencies like insurance companies and the AMA, their analysis labelled workers’ compensation “inadequate and inequitable”. The Commission published a list of 19 minimum requirements that should be met by each state. To date, no state has met even the minimum requirements.

From the beginning, the compensation system set a twoto seven-day waiting period for filing a claim. Under the system if the injured worker is off the job for less than the prescribed waiting period, he is not compensated for lost wages. Most Southern workers lose a full week’s wages before they are eligible for reimbursement. In 1978, eight out of ten Southern states had a waiting period of seven days, compared to 14 out of 40 for the rest of the country.

Reimbursement, when it comes, is only a portion of the pre-injury wage. In 1978, the maximum percent of pre-injury wage to be given as compensation was 66 2/3 in all Southern states except Florida, where it was 60 percent. Compensation systems tend to undercompensate for lost earnings, while not taking inflation or the worker’s future earning potential into account at all. With prices rising at a yearly rate of over 10 percent, fixed benefits soon lose much of their buying power. All states set maximum limits on weekly wage benefits (based on the state’s average weekly wage), so the pre-injury wage percentage is irrelevant after a point. The maximum weekly wage benefit in 1978 in all 10 Southern states averaged $133.65, as compared to $202.94 for the rest of the country.

Another way this system shortchanges the worker is by using private insurance companies, which add profit to the expenses paid by workers. Private insurance companies’ expenses and profits absorb from 40 to 50 percent of the cash flow from premiums. In the 10 Southern states, all insurance carriers are private. When you compare the state-run companies with the private ones, you can see just how much the workers stand to lose For example, Ohio, where a state-run insurance scheme is required, has some of the lowest premium rates for industry, and yet delivers 100 percent of the state’s average weekly wage ($241) as the maximum weekly wage benefit. On the other hand, South Carolina, the state in the South whose figure comes closest to Ohio’s, requires low premiums for industry – in fact it ranks third nationally and yet delivers only $185 or two thirds of the state’s average weekly wage.

A widespread and serious problem in Southern compensation laws is the lack of

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any wording in the statutes that would keep an employer from firing workers who have filed workers’ compensation claims. Of the 10 Southern states, only one has any prohibition of such retaliatory firing. In Arkansas, the offense is a misdemeanor with a fine up to $100 or imprisonment up to six months. In all the years of its jurisdiction, the Workmen’s Compensation Commission in Arkansas has not levied this penalty once. A claims examiner told a reporter that to do so would in fact be discriminatory – the incidence of retaliatory firing is so commonplace that to penalize a few offenders would constitute discrimination. The machinery for tracking down all the offenders simply doesn’t exist. In some Southern states, legislatures are being pushed to address the problem of retaliatory firings, but the movement is far from being widespread and the victories so far have been qualified ones!

A final inadequacy in workers’ compensation schemes is in the area of occupational disease. Benefits awarded nationally to occupational disease victims total a mere 1.35 percent. The Southern picture is even gloomier with 35,000 victims of brown lung disease in the U.S. totally and permanently disabled, and with a mere handful receiving compensation, the inequity is startling. (Since 1975, more than 800 disabled brown lung disease victims have filed claims for Workers’ Compensation in the Carolinas; only 167 have collected any benefits. Whereas less than 2 percent of Workers’ Compensation claims in North Carolina are challenged by the employer, over 80 percent of the brown lung claims are challenged.) Delaying tactics of insurance companies subject workers and their families to long hard court battles – with delays of three or more years not uncomnon. Workers have often settled out of court for inadequate amounts just to survive financially.

The rapid industrialization that has taken place in the South in the last 30 years has meant increasing numbers of Southern workers are being exposed to workplace hazards. With State Chambers of Commerce enticing industry into the region with promises of lowered compensation costs, Southern workers’ health and safety are in particular jeopardy. If workers’ needs and rights are met fairly, the whole community benefits. If, on the other hand, their rights to adequate and just protection from workplace dangers are sacrificed for the greater profits of industry, the whole community suffers.

Just recently the National Labor Relations Board handed down a ground-breaking decision in the area of workers’ compensation. In Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corp. (1 l-CA-7792; 245 NLRB No. 135), the full Board ruled that the employer had violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing a worker who had filed a workers’ compensation claim. The Board’s action sustained the earlier decision issued by Administrative Law Judge Joel A. Harmatz on April 17, 1979, in Winston-Salem N.C.

Labor law specialists agree that the decision marks a turning point in worker protection from retaliatory firing. Anyone who has been fired for filing a workers’ compensation claim should contact his/her regional NLRB office.

Released by Southerners for Economic Justice, 1931 Laurel Ave., Knoxville, Tennessee 37916

Federal Trade Commission

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 28

With Southerners leading the charge, the U.S. Senate soon will consider legislation already passed by the House of Representatives subjecting the Federal Trade Commission’s regulatory actions to a one-house Congressional veto and proposing to limit severely areas in which the FTC can act. In an overwhelming vote of 321 to 63, the House approved on November 27 an amendment sponsored by Rep. Elliot Levitas of Georgia that would halt any FTC action by vote of one chamber of Congress if the other chamber did not object within 30 days. Levitas praised the House vote as an end to “government by bureaucratic fiat.”

Rep. Bob Eckhart of Texas, one of the few Southerners opposing the amendment, argued against limiting the authority of the-only agency that we can call a consumer agency in the entire U.S. government.” The Carter administration also voiced opposition to the one-house veto as an unconsitutional invasion of executive authority.

As a compromise, the House version provides for an expedited judicial review of any challenge to the constitutionality of the congressional veto. Several national consumer groups have threatened such a challenge if the law is passed.

Only five other Southerners in the House joined Rep. Eckhart in opposing the amendment. Of the 108 representatives from the South, only six voted against the veto amendment. They were three Congressmen from Texas Eckhart, Henry Gonzales, and Mickey Leland Herbert Harris of Virginia, Dawson Mathis of Georgia, and Bill Dickinson of Alabama. The votes of Republican Dickinson and Rep. Mathis were surprising since both have received low ratings from consumer groups for their past voting records.

A strong FTC regulatory action relating to several industries in the country in the past few years has fueled increasing controversy on Capitol Hill. One of those industries the association of funeral homes was able to secure another amendment to the FTC authorization earlier in November exempting that industry from all FTC regulation. Hence, if it becomes law, the House legislation will stop the pending FTC rule requiring funeral homes to provide itemized funeral costs to their customers.

On the Senate side, where the House version now rests, a similar bill has already been reported by the Senate Commerce committee. While the legislation has no one-House veto provision, it would restrict agency proceedings presently underway in areas relating to children’s advertisement and used car sales.

Alabama Sen. Howell Heflin is also pushing for limits on the FTC ability to order divestiture in some anti-trust proceedings. If passed, Heflin’s amendments would halt present FTC action against the Exxon Corporation and several cereal companies.

The full Senate bill is sponsored by Wendell Ford of Kentucky, the chairman of the Senate commerce consumer sub-committee, who says he opposes a Congressional veto. Ford prefers to limit the areas in which the FTC can take any action. For example, his legislation would prohibit FTC regulation of insurance companies.

Senate action on the FTC bill is expected before the spring.