In This Issue

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 2

Probably no more persuasive eveidence of the divided and changeing nature of the South can be found outside the region’s historic symbols of resistance and challenge in race relations. Massive numbers of people marching down the streets, a cigar-chewing, pugnacious Alabama Governor, the flapping sheets of the Ku Klux Klan, the closed, White church door, and the lunch counter at Woolworth’s — all once represented the political changes, social conflicts andhuman urges that composed muchof Southern life for two decades.

In this combined issue of Southern Changes,we leave for a little while the shiny floors of the South’s new airports and not only in passing the reflections of its glass skyscrapers in order to consider what has become of those once powerful sylmbols of the South’s struggle for something other than what was. From near and far, by the native and foreign-born, and with the obvious and hidden totems, we look now at what has become of the South’s symbols of protest and resistance.

As he moves about the streets of Paris, Southerner Tom Noland sets the stage by describing the South as the French see it and understand it today. The piece invokes humor, bewilderment and sobering questions about the portrayal of this region across the Atlantic. The images we project, perhaps, are themes we fail to see.

While Noland writes that the “mention of Fob James…” is met with shruggled shoulders and blank stares,” by the French, the governor of Alabama has received quite a different reception at home recently as he faces opposition and outrage among some legislators and representatives of the state’s poor. When James took office in January 1979 he repeated his campaign pledge of “a new beginning” for Alabama — away from the legacy of the past years. Now, as Wayne Greenhaw tells us, the beginning looks more like the end to some who analyze the business of the new governor. Greenhaw’s story cannot be entirely separated from the new generation of Southern governors who began and have continued to take office

Charles Young take sus to Greensboro, N.C. in early February where the celebration of the 1960 Black protest sit-in demonstrations were juxtaposed with the protest of Klan-related killings in NOvember 1979. With a sympathetic knowledge of the local actors, Young reaches no conclusions in his article about the strengths of yesterday’s symbols or the importance of today’s protests; however, he brings that city and those events further into focus and lets us think about our relationship to the paradoxes and the demands which such occasions represent.

We have also in this issue and African student who offers us a few observations about New Orleans and Rev. Wohlgemuth who shares his experiences as a White minister who faced in himself and others the fears of race relations.

Our department pieces review the strength of the “conservative coalition” in Congress — that group of Southern Democrats and the nation’s Republicans who have found common ground for the last hundred years — and the status of the women wage-earners over the past decade.

On the whole, the image of the South in this issue presents the same kind of contradictions, surprises, and disappointments that other generations have perceived in their own time. Still, in that cicruitous past and its many living symbols, Southerners can find uniquely the “oneness” which ties together the different people of this region. It is a oneness that is born of our conflicts and our loves — a oneness given the most common definition when individuals see themselves as a community of people living in that territory and influenced by the past we know as the South.

The Fears of Race Relations: Confessions of a White Pastor

By Paul F. Wohlgemuth

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 4-6

After serving 11 years as a pastor in two churches in racially changing areas I have concluded that nothing is more destructive to harmonious human relations than fear. I have analyzed my own feelings. I have observed and analyzed the words and actions of others. In all of these experiences and situations, attitudes and reactions, almost every time a racial problem is traced to its origin, it is found to be rooted in fear.

In analyzing fear, it is necessary to assess your whole life — from birth to the present. Most of us are not free of our past. We are, in a sense, what our pasts have made us. I am no exception.

I first became aware of my fear of Black people when my wife and I were hunting for a house in the early years of our marriage. 1 was in the army living in Battle Creek, Michigan. We had discovered the house we wanted, but I had also discovered that we would have Black neighbors. I cannot say that I was really afraid, but I didn’t want to live there because of the neighbors.

Some may question that fear was at the base of my reactions. Some may rather call it bigotry or arrogance or something else. I prefer to call it fear – fear because of ignorance. I had never lived beside Blacks nor even near them. I had had several in my classes while a public school teacher, but as neighbors, they were a totally “unknown entity” to me.

Early in my career as a White pastor in an area of racial change I recall being afraid to walk past Black teenage boys gathered to play in the public playground next door to my parsonage. They would glare at me silently as I walked by. Sometimes they would talk in low tones among themselves and then break into raucous laughter. One afternoon after a brief exchange of words, I saw one of the boys knock a White man to the ground and several of the others kick him. What had been said between them I didn’t know.

Later when I moved into a predominately Black neighborhood and groups of teenagers would walk by on the street and look at me, I’d wonder what they might be planning to do to me or my family. Of course, I didn’t know that they would do anything. It was fear of the unknown again.

Another fear I had to deal with was the reaction of White people because of my relations with Black people. In my first church in a racially changing

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community, I feared what my members would say and do if a Black person were to attend a worship service. Numerous persons had threatened to leave the service. Some said that if they did they would never return.

When a Black family moved in next door, I feared what the White people would say if I did what my religion demanded of me – to be a good neighbor, to visit the newcomers, to sit in their living room as I would with any White person, and, most importantly, to invite them to worship in our church as I would any White neighbor.

Every Sunday morning while in the pulpit of my church, I would anxiously watch the door of the sanctuary. Would today be the day a Black person would enter to worship? Would the offering be less? What would those who had threatened to leave the church do? What would I do?

These same fears followed me to my next pastoral appointment. They diminished my first year there because the community (parish area) was predominantly White. However even though business as usual in the church was”the order of the day,” there was an uneasiness in the community. An increasing number of “For Sale” signs were frightening the residents. As we saw our White members leave, the uneasiness developed into a nagging fear which was to last for several years.

How many would leave the church as they were leaving the community? Would enough remain to support the $85,000 annual budget? If not enough remained, what would happen to my status as a minister? Would my salary be reduced or would I be considered a “failure” and sent to a “small” church? Would I lose my influence among the leaders of our local church if I led them in the direction in which we were compelled to go? Would I be called “nigger lover” (which incidentally, I was)? Would Whites and Blacks be able to worship together, to study together, to eat together at fellowship suppers?

What if the church did actually become predominately or totally Black? That possibility led to another set of fears. Would I as a White minister be able to serve it? Could I, as a White person, minister to the needs of Black people? Could I preach to them?

These fears became crystalized during the sixth year of my ministry when the church had actually become predominately Black. My fear came not so much from the Black people in the local church, but from Black leaders in the General Black United Methodist Church.

While attending a Convocation on the Black Church, sponsored by Black Methodists for Church Renewal, I heard so much about Black preaching, Black music and Black worship that I became convinced that I was not the right person to serve a Black congregation. My fears had taken over. I must add, however, that through the kindness of some of the leaders of our local church, I was convinced that my fears were largely unfounded and that I should continue for another year.

I have seen changes occur in White families as they became the minority in the community and in the church. They had been the advocates of integration. They wanted an interracial church and worked diligently to make it so. I believe that they were sincerely dedicated to the cause. They worked beautifully with Black people in our church promoting them to positions of leadership. However, when they heard their small children assume some of the “Black” ways of speaking and saw Black and White little “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” coming home together, those deepseated, overwhelming fears of the ages emerged. Neither Black people nor White people on the whole favor interracial marriage. However, Whites fear it while Blacks simply oppose it. The opposition to integrating our churches came from Whites who feared that association of Black children and White children in church-school classes would ultimately lead to marriage. They saw the barriers which once had kept Black people “in their place” disappearing. They assumed that as the color barrier was being minimized the possibilities of inter-marriage would be maximized.

Now what are some of the fears of the Blacks? Although it cannot be said that all Blacks have the same fears anymore than it can be said of Whites, here are some which seem very real. These have come to me from Blacks with whom I have

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spoken openly and from my reading of Black authors.

Most of all, Blacks are afraid of being rejected by White people because of their color. Since every normal person may have the fear of being rejected by someone for some reason, we must see the distinction between the general fear of rejection and the specific fear of rejection because of the color of one’s skin.

It is difficult for White people to understand this, especially those of us who have never been a minority because of skin pigmentation. This fear is an indigenous part of the “Black situation.” Blacks have experienced it from birth to death for many generations.

“Rejection” is written all over the scenario of race relations. Although Black and White drinking fountains and restrooms are no longer seen in most of our country, they linger on quite vividly in memory. It is only within the past few years that the word “Black” on an application for a position has not been a barrier to the Black applicant. In many instances Black people with superior qualifications have been denied even the right for an interview because of color.

It must be admitted that many White people are sincerely trying to overcome their rejection of Black people. Yet, it is still evident in many ways. One of the most obvious of these ways is the rejection of Blacks in White churches. To be sure, very few churches have a “closed door policy”, but the “closed heart” signs are still up. The pious publicity of openness becomes only a goad when dampened by a halfhearted welcome. The forced smile and limp handshake can be more irritating to a person expecting a friendly greeting than the “Black” water fountains. Much of the rejection which Blacks once feared has only gone “underground” and has, perhaps, in this sense become more painful.

I recall a conversation I had early in the transition with a young couple who later joined our church. The young wife said, “Mother didn’t want us to move into this White community. She was afraid that we’d get hurt.”

This mother probably did not fear physical harm to her daughter, although that could not have been entirely ruled out. (She may have heard of the house which had been bought about a mile from where we sat and which before the Black family moved in was bombed.) Her concern was for the feelings of her daughter and her little grandchildren. She didn’t want them to suffer any more of the hurt of rejection.

Another fear is that of being cheated by White people. This fear might be a mutual one and in many instances may be unfounded, but real. This fear has been largely inherited. It is a well established fact that many Black sharecroppers have been cheated by the White landowner. Because of his lack of knowledge and understanding, he was often unaware of the false transactions in which his rights were violated until it was too late for recourse. Accounts of such flagrant dishonesty and abuse by the White man have filtered down from Black father to Black son. Is there any wonder that many Black people are suspicious of White people especially when many are still being cheated of their right as citizens to vote?

All of these fears, those of Whites and those of Blacks, have become barriers between the races. Fear undermines understanding. It blocks communication. It prevents a solution of the race problem.

Those who may still insist on ignoring fear as a barrier need only be reminded of the presence of racism all around us. To be sure, some progress has been made. Very few church doors are barred against Black worshippers today. Racial violence has subsided. But underneath the apparent calm there is still turbulence.

Paul F. Wohlgemuth is a retired minister of the United Methodist Church. His last church was in the Ben Hill community in the Atlanta area.

An Observation on New Orleans

By A.B. Assensoh

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 7

Former Alabama Gov. George Wallace had achieved such racial notoriety that before my arrival from Africa in New Orleans, I perceived that all the Southern region of the United States was an extension of the state of Alabama. I knew of the existence of the other 10 states, including Louisiana but I seldom placed them within the geographical ambit of the South.

The state of Louisiana, in which I reside now, seems to have been blessed with the presence of several bayous and the Superdome described as a monument beyond imagination. New Orleans can easily fascinate the new visitor. Upon my arrival, in January 1979, 1 was anxious to visit several historical sites. I visited the former Congo Square, now called Beauregard Square, named after a Confederate general. I also had a glimpse of the famous French Quarters, the citadel for near-decadence, where male and female prostitution reportedly thrives like the oil industry.

Strangely enough, the city appears to thrive on traditional ways, as it continues to be divided into parishes instead of counties. In some of these parishes can be found communities of foreign language groups, examples of which are the Hungarian settlement on the boundary line between Tangipahoa and Livingston Parishes; German groups in Acadia; Bohemians in Rapides; the Spanish settlements in St. Bernard; and the citrus-growing Yugoslavian community in the lower part of Plaquemine Parish. It was, also, interesting to note that more than any other racial group, the New Orleans French have maintained their culture, religion and, indeed, mode of living.

On the buses, at parks, in the restaurants, in classrooms, at work and even at conferences or seminars, one is able to observe how Blacks and Whites interact in New Orleans. Since the old folks, both Black and White, find it uneasy and uncomfortable to stand up for long on buses and streetcars, one may occasionally find them seated comfortably among one another. But the energetic White youngsters often prefer standing.

When I first came to New Orleans from Stockholm, Sweden — where I had lived for almost five years and had seen little or no racism – I did not know much about the local racial situation. One day, on a bus, therefore, I shifted from a seat to make room for a White boy standing to sit by me. Instead of sitting down, he said, “Thank you, I will stand here.”

A.B. Assensoh, currently studying at Dillard University in New Orleans, is a professional journalist from Ghana in West Africa.

French Images of the American South

By Thomas Noland

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 8-13

PARIS – As French television viewers watched in horror, 12 men leaped out of two vans and a car, crouched, and began firing guns at a group of people with signs. Bodies wilted like empty sacks and fell to the pavement. The sign-carriers fired back or ran for cover; some were cut down in mid-stride. Finally, after what seemed a very long time, police arrived, the shooting stopped and the men who fired were hustled off in paddy wagons.

It was not “The Untouchables” or “Hawaii Five-O” or any of the other American reruns that are standard fare on “Television Francaise.” t was the evening news, Nov. 4, 1979, and the astonishing footage had been made only one day earlier during an anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstration in a place few French had ever heard of Greensboro, N.C.

“You could tell from the tone of the anchorman, that the idea was ‘Once again, a violent outburst in this violent country,” recalled Chris Henze, a press attache at the U.S. Embassy who watches the news as part of his job. “I think things of this type get more attention if they come from the U.S. After Iran, the Greensboro shooting was the major story that night.”

There was an important aspect that set the Greensboro story apart from similar tales

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of American mayhem, however. The issue in Greensboro was race, and even if most French cannot tell Greensboro from Buffalo, almost everyone connects racial violence with “le sud” — the South.

It is Henze’s job to convince French journalists, who in turn convince the French, that such incidents are echoes of a Southern past that is long dead, and only twitches unexpectedly now and then.

The day after the shooting, he briefed a reporter for France-Soir – Paris’ largest circulation daily — who was about to appear on a television panel to discuss it. Evidently, Henze made his point.

“He did an admirable job of putting it in perspective,” Henze said, “talking about the rela tively low Klan membership in the U.S., the fact that it was an isolated incident. It was a very unfortunate event. That sort of item makes people believe we’re a country that allows racists to get out of control. I think there’s a great amount of ignorance about the progress that has taken place in the South.”

Indeed, comments from businessmen, day laborers, housewives and government workers interviewed here indicate Henze is right. The South’s forward strides from the dark ages of Bull Connor’s police dogs and Lester

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Maddox’s race baiting are recognized mostly by those rare Frenchmen who, in visiting or doing business below the Mason-Dixon line, have experienced the newest New South first hand.

For the great majority, impressions of race relations in the region are derived from sources so spurious that comments have a fairy-tale quality. Many believe the Georgia portrayed in “Autant Emporte le Vent” (Gone With the Wind) is the Georgia that brought forth Jimmy Carter, and imagine his Plains peanut farm to be graced by an ante-bellum mansion issuing nubile belles in crinoline dresses, and docile, buck-dancing Blacks who sing spirituals as they wander through the fields carrying enormous burlap sacks. Most Frenchmen do not know that George Wallace is no longer governor of Alabama; any mention of Fob James, who succeeded Wallace last year, is met with shrugged shoulders and blank stares. Some express a desire to visit the South they are attracted mainly by what they have heard of the gentle climate – but almost all want to see either Florida’s Disneyworld or New Orleans, where they imagine everyone speaks French. Mississippi? Alabama? South Carolina? These are terra incognitas to the French, slightly menacing places off the beaten path, places where, they believe, the kind of violence they saw on television Nov. 4 still occurs routinely.

A more realistic view is held by those whose friends or relatives have seen for themselves. Yvonne Perret, a Paris hotel clerk, has a cousin who bought a house in Jackson’, Mississippi and emigrated there with her husband and children. Mrs. Perret tells of worried letters from her relative after Blacks moved into the neighborhood, “which drove down the property prices.” And yet, she said, her cousin stayed on, and soon a daughter — Mrs. Perret’s niece – began to make friends with the Blacks who moved in.

“These were friends she loved and respected,” Mrs. Perret said. “It couldn’t be like the 1960s. Things must be changing there.”

Indeed, race relations in the South have changed a good deal faster than they have in France which is one reason why the French find it difficult to imagine the South’s painful and ongoing evolution toward a society of biracial equality. Here, although segregation never was established by law there is a strong feeling about what is French and what is not — and the Blacks, most of them from former French colonies in Africa, are not considered French.

As a rule, they do not mix socially with their former masters. While overt racial hostility is rare, the covert kind, described by a French government employee who asked to remain anonymous, is common.

“The French are much more racist than the Americans, because the races have no experience of living together,” the employee said. “If there is a Black man in the top floor of your apartment building, people still complain, they still say, ‘What kind of apartment is this, with Black people in it? ‘

A second reason why the French have been slow to accept racial change in the South is no fault of their own. What appears about the region in the French press often is

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reported first in the International Herald Tribune, the highly esteemed English-language daily published here. Generally, the only news about the South that makes the Tribune has to do with race – and usually, with racial confrontation. If a Frenchman were to write a history of the region since 1960, based on the Tribune‘s clip files, his volume would faithfully record the 1961 bus beatings and burnings in Birmingham and Anniston, Alabama; the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery; the 1971 school busing crisis in Charlotte and, of course, the recent deaths in Greensboro. The book would be topheavy with information in its early chapters. When race as an issue in the South quieted down in the early 1970s, the Tribune — and the French press — quieted down too.

And so, because the age of dramatic racial confrontation is mostly over, “We are told from America that America is no longer interested in fighting for the rights of Black people,” said a French professional, who follows American and French newspapers closely. “It (the American press) gives the impression that the situation is better. However, I always see stories where this is not true for example, the busing in Boston – but I don’t think the French public is aware of that.

“In France, people are just repeating what they read in the press. This is how they form their ideas. First the American press writes the stories, then the French press picks up what they say and it has nothing to do with reality. During the Vietnam War, you know, people were against America but they were just repeating what they read in the papers. Now that America is not intervening anywhere, the papers are saying America is weak, Carter is weak.”

Carter himself is a curiosity for people who equate ”farmer” with “peasant.” While the American press makes much of the president’s geographical origins, of his being the first Southerner to reach the White House since the Civil War, the French are more intrigued by his peanut business – which is widely misunderstood. “The French refer to Carter as a ‘marchand des cacahuettes’, the little Arab on the street who sells peanuts,” a Paris businesswoman said. “You say to them ‘He is also a very smart engineer,’ and they say, ‘Oh really?’

“I’m not too sure the average Frenchman even knows what being a Southerner means,” she continued. “You have to be very well-informed about America to know the difference. I don’t think most of them even know where Atlanta is.”

For those few who do know the role of Blacks in Carter’s election – especially Southern Blacks is notably appreciated. Le Monde, France’s finest daily and one of the most respected newspapers in the world, is unusually sensitive to race when writing about American politics. Unlike most foreign papers it has its own Washington staff and its reporting tends to be more comprehensive and accurate than that in Paris’ six other major dailies, some of which rely on second-hand information or short dispatches from Agence France-Presse.

Le Monde “no longer writes stories about Black voter registration in the South,” according to one French press critic – an indication of the newspaper’s acknowledgement of Blacks’ progress in this area. But the paper also exhibits an awareness that the struggle for Black equality is far from finished. When Andrew Young was dismissed as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations last August, Le Monde congratulated Carter on appointing another Black, Donald McHenry, to the post. It admiringly reviewed Young’s civil rights activism during the 1960s, his years with Martin Luther King in the heyday of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. And in a front-page editorial, the newspaper suggested that had Young been White, he might

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still have the job. It remarked that U. S. Ambassador to Austria Milton Wolf kept his position despite committing the same sin – meeting with representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) — which ostensibly led to Young’s ouster. Wolf, of course, is White.

But the French whose perspective on Southern race relations is closest to reality are those who have studied the region as tourists or investors. In both groups, according to U.S. officials here, the belief that the South is the land of “colored” waiting rooms, dual drinking fountains and midnight lynching parties has died an honorable death – and many of these Frenchmen, like New South apostles, are convinced the races get along better in Nashville or even Greensboro than in New York or Detroit.

William Tappe is regional director in Paris for the U.S. Travel Service of the Department of Commerce. Part of his job is to arrange tours of the U.S. for French journalists; in many cases his agency provides free airline transportation through an arrangement with the Civil Aeronautics Board, along with discounts on such items as hotel rooms and rented cars. He also monitors reactions of the journalists – as well as ordinary tourists – who return to France after a sojourn in America.

Among those who visit the South, Tappe says the only complaint, besides a universal disgust with fast food, has nothing to do with race relations. “Recently, some have commented on how fat the Americans are in the South,” he said, smiling. “The French who are concerned about racial discrimination think of it as part of the folklore of the U.S. They are a very small minority — those who are aware at all. They have been receptive to criticism of the U.S. and they have retained that and they expect to find it. Especially first-time travellers to the U.S. seem to think they find it.”

For the most part, the journalists and others who are helped by Tappe’s organization return with glowing accounts of Southern

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charm and hospitality, although many French are distressed to find that New Orleans is not the Gallic mecca they imagined. “There’s a tremendous attraction to Louisiana,” he said, “and Miami, the destination of a National (Airlines) flight from Paris, is becoming well-known. The rest of the South doesn’t have much of an image.” As for the folkloric dimension of racial discrimination, as rendered by the french-dubbed Gone With the Wind and perpetuated in the horror stories from the worst civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s, Tappe concluded, “It’s certainly not a problem for us in selling the U.S. as a travel destination.”

Similarly, a spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Division said the average French businessman who thinks of locating a plant in Dixie does not look upon Black-White relations the way he might have 15 years ago. Like the tourist who has educated himself about the region’s recent past, the businessman is more likely to consider the South’s labor climate than its racial climate.

Asked whether she knew of any French businessman who had balked for racial reasons over locating a plant in the South, attache Carolyn Ervin said, “I’ve never heard anything like that. French businessmen are aware of the easier labor climate in the U.S. generally, and there might be some understanding that the South is less expensive. The official U.S. government policy is to be neutral on all capital movement. We have lots of general literature which we give him (the potential French investor); then the Embassy lets the various state offices here know and they jump all over each other trying to get the industry.”

The jumping works both ways. Each of the offices also is interested in promoting its own state’s products for sale abroad. Louisiana, with an office near Paris’ most fashionable neighborhood, is the only state with a bureau in France; most states maintain their foreign offices in Brussels (headquarters of the Common Market), Germany or Japan. Especially aggressive as Atlanta increasingly becomes an international city, Georgia has foreign bureaus in Brussels, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Toronto.

“The serious investors,” Ms. Ervin added, “go to the large banks or investment houses, and they know, they educate them” about conditions in the South.

But how many serious investors take time to study Dixie? And how many tourists actually see the region? In relation to the total French population, with its fantasies, biases and amiable misinformation, both groups are miniscule. More importantly, the knowledge they acquire is barely diffused beyond a closed circle of friends and associates. Most of them are Parisians; the average French provincial never visits or does business with Spain or Germany, let alone the American South. Last year, according to the U.S. Travel Service, 259,818 Frenchmen came to America – and only 5 percent indicated they came to learn about the U.S. political or social conditions. Many more came to see “the sights,” and that, for the foreign tourist, means Hollywood, the Capitol and the Statue of Liberty not Birmingham, Little Rock and the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

The shooting in Greensboro last November is more likely to shape the average Frenchman’s impression of current Southern race relations than any single factor. His knowledge of the South is largely imagistic: a bulldog-faced Alabama governor blocking the schoolhouse door; firehoses sweeping back a crowd of Blacks who tumble and cover their eyes; a man, his voice like the waters, telling thousands of his dream; a body wrapped in blankets on the balcony of a Memphis motel – and now, the dead on a street of another Southern town that will never become a tourist mecca. School desegregation patterns and voter registration figures simply can’t compete with that.

Thomas Noland writes for the Atlanta Constitution from Paris and teaches English at the American College.

The Drama of Greensboro

By Charles Young

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 14-19

Greensboro is the insurance capital of North Carolina, not a textile and tobacco town, as it was referred to in the national media back in November following the slaying of five leaders of the Communist Workers Party during the anti-Ku Klux Klan rally. The media may be excused its hasty retreat to historical stereotype, however, for the killings did take place in a Black neighborhood, and they were carried out by a band of raiding Klansmen. It is perhaps natural then, when viewing the incident from a distance, to assume that the attack falls into the pattern of old-fashioned Southern White-racists direct action. But the reality is a little more complicated than that.

While textiles and tobacco do play a significant role in the city’s economy, as employers of some of the lowest paid workers in the area, the real money is with insurance, and with those who look out for it, the bankers.

Greensboro’s skyline shows as much. Most of the traditional retail establishments, large and small, moved out long ago to the shopping malls. But the town is not dead. Far from it. The tall buildings are filled with bankers, lawyers, accountants and insurance executives, along with all the office support forces.

Lending its support is the recently completed city and county governmental center, a sprawling complex of fortress-like structures bedded down within broad open plazas liberally sprinkled with meticulously designed plantings and an abundance of those large round white-frosted lamppost lights so dear to the hearts of modern-day architects.

And within shouting distance in the next block is the newest jewel in the mid-town crown: another major insurance company is nearing completion of its own monument to growth and prosperity. The topping-out ceremony for this magnificent edifice took place just prior to a November 3rd rally which returned Greensboro to the nation’s attention.

The rally was an outgrowth of the frustration the Communist Workers Party had experienced in its effort to organize a union at one of the city’s textile mills. The CWP had found that not many workers were very much interested in aligning themselves with a group which advocated such stringent measures against the existing power structure, including the mill’s owners, a longestablished family dynasty that has contributed sianificantly to the city’s overall economic posture.

Probably in an attempt to draw greater attention to its cause, and to generate a more favorable public image, the CWP decided to switch its focus to the Klan and to stake itself out as the leader in the fight against what it described as the resurgence of Klan mentality, not only in the South but throughout the nation.

And it gave them a rallying cry: Death to the Klan.

The slogan began appearing on posters around town and in leaflets passed out at shopping centers. By the time November 3 rolled around the word had gone out that the CWP rally was to be a challenge to the cowardly Klan to show themselves. They would be exposed as anti-Black, anti-labor terrorists who were ignorantly following the dictates of the imperialistic power structure which was determined to suppress the poor and the underprivileged.

To many residents of Greensboro, this appeared to be a fairly standard garden variety accusation, coming from a group venting its spleen out of frustration at its own failure to put forth an

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effective and persuasive program of labor organizing. Consequently, the fateful rally attracted very little notice outside the ranks of the two opposing groups.

But then the shooting started. And a lot of things changed.

As word spread about the shootings, the local outrage was not so much a protest that the people had been killed as it was anger that the warring factions had chosen Greensboro as the site for their battle. Eventually both groups were identified as outsiders and not representative of the nature of this city.

But after the smoke cleared it appeared that the Klansmen were interlopers and the CWP people, for the most part, were local and some with close ties to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s and others associated with more recent leftist activities.

It was a sticky situation for the defenders of Greensboro’s reputation as an enlightened and open society, in which all divergent viewpoints were tolerated. To some it appeared that an opportunity had presented itself for the city to reach out and lay firm claim to its liberal reputation by issuing a blanket condemnation of the Klan. To others the idea of coming down on the side of militant leftists; especially union organizers, was anathema. Apparently, the viewpoint held by the CWP was just a bit too far left.

As a result, the city’s leaders assumed a somewhat remote posture, seemingly content to let blame for the killings rest equally at the feet of both groups, neither of which deserved much regard. The important thing, according to the city fathers, was to provide protection for the general public, in case these groups of crazies got together again for further attempts to ventilate each other’s ranks.

The funeral march on November 11 for the five casualties provoked a rash of bitterness. Threats of retaliation and revenge had been daily utterances for a week. Otherwise disinterested citizens were busy making plans to be as far away from the march as possible. Rumors were rampant that the Klan would be in town armed and along the march route, eager to take advantage of the opportunity to pick off a few more of its enemies.

Consequently, a massive show of power was mounted by the city and the state. A state-ofemergency was declared, suspending the right to bear arms. Just under a thousand local police, state highway patrolmen and National Guardsmen were called out, ostensibly to protect the marchers but more realistically to prevent anyone with a weapon from getting into the area, whatever his viewpoint.

About two thousand people showed up for the procession, from various parts of the eastern seaboard. Media coverage was heavy. The day was rainy and cold, lending credence to the cliche about appropriate weather for a funeral. The mood was tense, faces grim. The riot troops, in full battle gear, formed a gauntlet along the funeral route. Swat teams manned rooftops and overpasses, combing the area with binoculars. Military helicopters fluttered back and forth above the scene, guns visible in open doorways.

For about three hours the crowd waited in the rain for the march to get underway while local officials and parade organizers argued about the CWP’s insistence that its members be allowed to carry arms to protect themselves from further Klan attack. A compromise was reached, and the CWP leaders were allowed to carry their guns but without ammunition.

The procession moved off, the caskets bearing the bodies of the five slain CWP members in th, lead. The march covered the two miles to the cemetery without incident.

With emotions running high, anti-Klan groups here set in motion an effort to organize a march later in the month as a general civil rights protest. However, general apathy toward the proposed march soon emerged among Black community

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leaders, and although rio one was talking publicly, in private it was conceded that it was risky business for local Blacks to let themselves become too closely identified with leftist extremists.

Clearly, there was going to have to be a change in leadership among the anti-Klan groups if any successful march could be staged. The CWP simply was too radical to serve as a catalyst for the kind of coalition that would be necessary to attract favorable attention from activists over a broad spectrum. The result was the birth of a February 2 Mobilization Committee, with a Black New York minister as its leader.

What followed then was perhaps the most carefully organized civil rights effort ever undertaken in Greensboro. Even the city’s demonstrations of the 1960s could not compare in degree of detail with what was to come. Organizations from a wide area of the country were to be courted and, if at all possible, brought into the fold. The umbrella was to be inclusive of any and all groups who could keep their private differences private and would pledge to participate peacefully.

The principal complicating factor, and the one which produced the most heartburn among the more cautious local liberals, was that the Mobilization Committee was planning its demonstration on February 2, the day after the 20th anniversary of the original civil rights sitins at a local dime-store lunch counter. The sit-ins in 1960 by four Black students from a local college had led to a nationwide breakdown in segregated eating facilities, raising the four to the status of folk heroes.

The February 2

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Committee’s timing was causing problems for the people in town who wanted to bring the four catalysts back for a commemorative celebration of the event. The four had now been successfully assimilated into the established system and the passing years had been kind to them, making them suitable figures to honor in public ceremony.

The February 2 people were just barely tolerant of the February 1 people. Friendships among Blacks and Whites in both groups were, to say the least, being stretched and strained. The February 2 people didn’t seem to find any particular fault in the desire of the February 1 people to bestow praise on the four students twenty years later. It was just that, so far as the February 2 people were concerned, theirs was a far more timely and important undertaking: a renewed commitment to fight suppression of all people everywhere.

The city fathers were not conspicuous in their willingness to cooperate with either group. For example, through some oversight along the way, the money to pay for the historical marker to commemorate the 1960 sit-ins had not been appropriated. When the state came through with a plaque, a sequence of events then occurred which led to a serious breakdown between the city and the Mobilization Committee.

An application by the Mobilization Committee for use of the city’s coliseum as its rally site was turned down, with the explanation that the facility had already been rented for the proposed date. Later it came to light that the city had agreed with an out-of-town promoter to co-sponsor a rhythm-and-blues concert made up of little-known entertainers. The co-sponsorship arrangement meant that the city would bear half the cost of putting on the show and would reap half the profits or losses.

This one maneuver probably aroused more local public argument than any other preliminary activity. To the Mobilization Committee it appeared to be nothing less than a clumsy obstructionist tactic. And to the general taxpaying public it appeared to be an expensive way of trying to prevent what, by that time, had become an inevitable happening. The memory of the $80,000 cost to the city as its share of the expenses for the November 11 funeral march was still fresh in the minds of many taxpayers.

The lines were drawn between the city and the Mobilization Committee.

There were charges and counter-charges, none of which did anything to reassure the observing public. Angry words crystalized in a civil suit filed by the Mobilization Committee to force the city to make the coliseum available for the rally.

After much agonizing and soul-searching, and with a little nudge from the federal judge who was to hear the suit, the city reversed itself. By this time, the city administration may have realized that its adversary role had provided the impetus which would surely result in a far larger turnout for the rally.

On Saturday morning, February 2, the cars and buses began rolling into the parking areas around the stadium early. They were coming from all over the eastern and southern parts of the country, and there were even some from the Midwest.

The day was bright and sunny and cold, with wind whipping across the asphalt

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stirring up swirls of dust through the ranks of the debarking visitors. Most were solemn-faced, subdued and bleary-eyed from rides overnight and longer from such places as Memphis and Atlanta and Chicago and Detroit and Philadelphia and New York and Washington.

By noon the sunny parts of the stands at the ballpark and the infield and a large part of the outfield of the stadium where the march would begin were filled with effusive rally-goers searching for their groups, guided by the red, black, yellow, green and orange banners announcing their origins. Laughter and shouts of recognition between friends tended to drown out the efforts by some of the organizers to issue instructions over a malfunctioning loudspeaker system.

Outside the stadium entrance the leaders of the various groups conferred about the order of march which would move across town to the coliseum. Provocateurs roamed about shouting out their particular messages of protest against one thing and another, and the more serious ones passed out pamphlets and handbills describing the general state of unhealthy affairs within the system. A few budding capitalists sold fried chicken and tee shirts.

The city had organized a contingent of special police and the state highway patrol had been assigned the duty of blocking off streets and roadways leading to the march route. The governor had ordered the National Guard to town again and they were scattered about in out-of-the-way places. Although the law enforcement body was sizeable, the mood of the day bore little resemblance to the tension that had prevailed at the November funeral procession.

The march itself moved off in an orderly fashion to the chants of freedom and power, banners held high in the pristine air, and proceeded at a brisk clip through the city streets and along the four-mile route to the rally site at the coliseum and arrived without incident.

It is a festive crowd,noisy and restless. About 7,000 people in a coliseum seating roughly 15,000 have gathered. Cheers come easily. Speaker after speaker is greeted with rousing ovations following even the mildest admonishments to the power structure. There are warnings to the president and warnings to the governor and warnings to the city’s mayor. They are told that they had better wake up and start responding to the needs of the people before it is too late.

With a few exceptions, this group of speakers is not eloquent. It seems that they are not intended to be. They are the nuts-and-bolts leaders representing civil rights and leftist factions from many parts of the country, and each is given three minutes to get his message across. It is very much like a political convention, with each speaker saying pretty much the same things but trying to do so in slightly different words.

And not everybody is listening. Many are roaming about visiting with their friends and gazing up into the stands searching for another familiar face.

But the general message seems to get across. These are not the days for violence. These are not the days for confrontation. But rather, these are the days for organization. These are the days for building up the ranks of leadership. These are the days for bringing economic pressure to the marketplace. There are a couple of factions on the floor who do not agree, and they boo from time to time. But it is only a minor distraction.

The strength of the rally seems to lie in the determination to organize and to play a more dominant role in politics and business. Toward the end there is a brief moment of tension when it is announced that one of the speakers has received a death threat. But that soon dissipates as the final speakers deliver their messages.

And then it is over. There has been no violence.

Outside, night has fallen on Greensboro and all across the parking lot the buses are firing up for the return trip to the distant cities. Great clouds of diesel smoke rise in the cold night air, like curtains closing at the completion of a long and drawn-out melodrama.

(Publisher’s Note: This is an excerpt from a book being written about the November 3, 1979 killings in Greensboro, N.C., of five members of the Communist Workers Party. Copyright 1980 by Charles Young. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reprinted without written permission of the author.)

Charles Young is a free-lance writer based in Greensboro.

A Year After Alabama’s New Beginning

By Wayne Greenhaw

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 20-22

Less than a year after Governor Fob James took over the reins of government in Alabama from George Wallace, it was announced that the state was on the verge of bankruptcy.

James’ promised New Beginning looked as though it was about to crumble before a foundation was laid. His record with the Alabama Legislature during his first year was next to nil. The new constitution which he had promised by mid-spring failed to survive in committee. Then he announced a new tax oil gasoline just as the pumps began to register close to one dollar per gallon and the state highway department could do nothing but weep for lack of funds. And when his liaison personnel with House and Senate didn’t count correctly the votes for James’ War Against Illiteracy program, it failed and embarrassed the new governor.

Within days of the announced bankruptcy, James, for the first time in any capital observers remembrance, handed over prepared budgets for the coming year to the legislators prior to the regular session. The proposed budget was thousands of pages long, lap-sized two volumes, and was taken with glee by Speaker of the House Joe McCorquodale and Lieutenant Governor George . McMillan. Both grinned like possums eating molasses as they held the gigantic volumes for the television cameras.

But during the next week in January, preparing for budget hearings and the new legislature which started in February, neither McCorquodale nor McMillan could be found in the halls of the newly renovated state capitol.

Shouting loudly out of the port of Mobile and the valleys of Birmingham, however, were members of the so-called blue ribbon commission on education. Out of the woodwork came commission chairman Dr. Harold Martin of the Magic City, saying the members’ time and energy had been wasted. The Governor had done them in with his $1.2 billion education budget which proposed a cut in elementary and secondary education. And from the hills of north Alabama, commission member Roscoe Roberts asked why the Governor had named them to the study group if he

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was not going to take their advice.

Executive director Paul Hubbard of the Alabama Education Association, who had been fighting James all the past year, pointed sarcastically at the budget and said it was worthless. He said that it would not only take learning out of the state’s education process but it would gut the teacher program.

And even James’ friend, superintendent of education Wayne Teague, who held the Governor’s political hand on numerous issues during his first year, shook his head in disgust at the proposed budget. Teague said he learned ask about the cut in elementary and secondary education from a six o’clock television broadcast. He pointed out that the state was already close to bottom in the nation in money spent per pupil for education.

From the plains of Auburn, Alabama Coalition Against Hunger director William Edwards said that he had found that one item in the proposed budget would cut $7.5 million from the school lunch program which now feeds poor children nourishing lunches in public schools. “This money pays the part-time help which are the lowest people on the totem pole of state salaries,” Edwards said angrily. “Fob James has said from the beginning that he plans to cut state employees. Now he’s aiming his political guns at the littlest man or woman he can find within state government,” he added.

Dr. Robert Lager, the governor’s education adviser who came up with the presented figures, meekly took up for his brainchild. Others in James’ office either were not available for comment or chose not to comment.

The education budget was only the first roadblock in what might become another of Alabama’s historic do-nothing

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legislatures, according to one Black Belt lawmaker. “We are in a hell of a shape,” the legislator said. “We have to face up to what Governor James is handing us right off the bat. By the time we’re in session, the people will know it’s nothing. Then what kind of program can the Governor have? He is putting himself in the hole from the first.”

Another central Alabama senator, Don Harrison of Montgomery said emphatically, “I am going to propose solid, positive legislation. I am going to vote on everything the way my constituents want me to vote.” One of Harrison’s proposals was a strict law against consumer fraud which he in the senate and progressive house member Euclid Rains of Dothan plan to co-sponsor. They pushed the legislation last year but without backing from floor leaders. This year they hope to give Alabama a Deceptive Trade Practices Act. It is the last state without such a law.

In the meantime, a handful of lawmakers concerned themselves with looking into Alabama’s regressive tax structure but warned that “we have about as much chance as we always have had,” which translates to next to none.

A tax study by the Coalition of American Public Employees in 1979 showed Alabama 51st in a list including the District of Columbia. Alabama’s tax collections came primarily from sales tax – 66.6% and still growing according to a study by the graduate school of business at the University of Alabama in 1974. At the same time, Alabama showed the lowest property taxes in the southeast with the possible seesaw exception of Mississippi.

James had promised that he would lift the sales tax from food and drugs, but when the regular session of the legislature opened, the lawmakers had not seen the proposal. “We are going to do something,” a lawmaker promised, “with or without the governor.”

Wayne Greenhaw of Montgomery Alabama, is a free-lance writer and the author of several books.

Economic Development Women’s Earnings: A Ten Year Review

Janet L. Norwood and Elizabeth Waidman

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 23, 25

The old saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” seems to apply to women’s earnings in relation to men’s no matter which earnings are examined. In 1939, median earnings for women who worked year round, full time in the experienced labor force were $788, or 58 percent of the median for men. Similar figures for 1977, the latest period for which earnings over an entire year are available, show median earnings of about $8,800 for women, or 59 percent of the median for men.

In the 10 years since the Census Bureau began to collect weekly earnings data, the ratio of women’s to men’s usual earnings has shown about the same pattern in May 1978, just as in May 1967, women full time workers still had median earnings that were only a little over 60 percent (61-62 percent) of the median earnings for men.

By occupation, these data show that, although the male-female earnings ratio has varied considerably over the years, the median for women is usually substantially lower than the median for men. For example, in sales occupations, where a large proportion of women are employed in retail stores while a large proportion of men sell cars, machinery,and insurance, women’s earnings in the second quarter of 1979 were about half of men’s earnings. In the professional technical area, where proportionately more women than men are in the lower paying occupations, i.e., nurses rather than physicians, women’s earnings were approximately 70 percent of men’s. In the clerical field, women’s wages were about 63 percent of men’s wages.

Almost all secretaries are women, as are 97 percent of all nurses, 86 percent of all file clerks, and 85 percent of librarians. On the other hand, only 9 percent of the industrial engineers are women, 9 1/2 percent of all lawyers and judges, 11 percent of all doctors, and 30 percent of all accountants.

These more detailed ouional statistics demonstrate that, on the average, employed women are working primarily in jobs at the low end of the pay scale. Even in a generally less traditional industry sector for women such as manufacturing, women are concentrated in such industry as clothing or electrical equipment where wages are lower than in many other types of factories.

The overall female-male earnings gap needs to be interpreted with care. Occupational and industry differences and the extent of labor force activity are, obviously, not the only factors involved. The fact that

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married women constitute the largest proportion of women workers may also play a large role in the female-male wage differential. Some analysts believe that many married women may put convenience of location or flexibility of hours above earnings or that they may not be as able as men to accept a promotion to a job with heavier responsibilities or a job which requires a great deal of overtime. Others believe that women have not, yet gained the self-confidence needed to seek aggressively the opportunities taken by men.

Whether these analysts are correct in their interpretations or not, we should not overlook discrimination. Many of the court settlements over equal pay in recent years have been based on findings of discrimination. Proof of discrimination, however, must go much farther than sample survey data. But these statistics can continue to provide guidelines as to what the earnings situation is for women and men in similar circumstances.

Obviously no one can predict the future with certainty. No one knows the extent to which working women will move out of the traditional occupations; or the degree to which women will gain earnings parity with men; or if their recent labor force gains will moderate. Whatever the scenario, however, women are likely to remain a permanent and important part of the work force.

Taken from the publication, Women in the Labor Force: Some New Data Series written by Janet L. Norwood and Elizabeth Waidman.

Republican-Southern Democrat Coalition in Congress

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 23-25

A majority of the Republicans and Southern Democrats formed in 1979 an effective, conservative voting bloc which moved Congress to revamp national priorities towards more spending for national defense and away from domestic programs. A Congressional Quarterly study in late January illustrates that when the Democrats of the South and the Republicans throughout the country voted together on issues, they were most likely to prevail. Last year in 70 percent of the roll call votes in which the coalition occurred, Republicans and Southern Democrats won. In 1978, the coalition had only a 52 percent rate of success.

While not a formal voting group, the “conservative coalition” is an alliance of Republicans and Southern Democrats who vote against Northern Democrats. The first major voting alliance in Congress between the Republicans and Southern Democrats began more than a century ago as they joined ranks in the “Compromise of 1877” when Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes was declared by a Democratic House and Republican Senate the victor in the contested presidential election of 1876. In return for political patronage and the end of federal enforcement of civil rights laws and the Reconstruction amendments in the South, Southern Democrats joined with Hayes’ Republicans. Since the late 1950s, when the coalition clearly developed to oppose proposed civil rights legislation, the voting group has coalesced on several different issues.

In the 1979 session defense, energy policy, reducing federal spending, and race-related issues reflect the concerns on which Republicans and Southern Democrats joined forces.

The Congressional Quarterly lists the major victories of the coalition in 1979 as follows:

-increased military budgets;

-the Senate vote to permit voluntary, prayer in public schools;

-the House vote to limit the powers of the Federal Trade Commission;

-the House vote to kill President Carter’s hospital cost control legislation;

-the Senate vote to pave the way for lifting economic sanctions against Rhodesia;

-the Senate vote to protect the tax-exempt status of segregated private schools;

-the Senate vote to kill a proposed constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of the President and the Vice President;

-the Senate vote to weaken the landmark 1977 Strip Mining laws.

The coalition also lost some votes. Enough Southern Democrats and Republicans defected from the ranks to kill a constitutional amendment to bar school busing as a means of achieving school desegregation and to pass some reform in the national welfare system.

In the field of energy, the coalition was usually successful. It trimmed the President’s proposed windfall profits tax on oil and kept alive the controversial fast-breeder reactor at Clinch River Tennessee.

Southern representatives most often voting with the coalition in 1979 were three members of the Virginia House delegation. Republican Rep. Kenneth Robinson voted 100 percent with the coalition while his colleagues Republican Rep. Robert Daniel of Spring Grove, Virginia and Democrat David Satterfield of Richmond stayed with the coalition’s voting about 99 percent of the time. Rep. Henson Moore of Baton Rouge, Louisiana also voted with the conservative coalition 99 percent of the time.

Alabama’s freshman Congressman Richard Shelby representing a district with more than 35 percent Black population voted with the coalition 97 percent of the

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time as did Republicans Archer and Loeffler of Texas and Duncan of Tennessee.

In the Senate, Virginia’s John Warner and Harry Byrd respectively led Republicans and Southern Democrats in voting with the conservative coalition. Warner voted 96 percent of the time with the coalition and Byrd joined 88 percent of the time. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Jesse Helms of North Carolina also agreed with the coalition more than 90 percent of the time. Freshman Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama agreed with the conservative coalition 75 percent of the time.

Southerners most often in Opposition to the voting of the coalition were Mickey Leland and Bob Eckhardt of Texas. Others included Harrison of Virginia, Lehman of Florida, Fisher of Virginia, and Ford of Tennessee. Leland and Ford are the only two Black Congressional members from the South.

Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and Lawton Chiles of Florida were more often in opposition to the conservative coalition than any other Southern Democrat in the Senate. Bumpers opposed the coalition 43 percent of the time and Chiles 37 percent of the time.

Although Southern Republicans as a group were the most loyal members of the conservative coalition, there were two exceptions. Louisiana governor David Treen as a Republican from the South had only a 33 percent record of agreement with the conservative coalition; however, he voted in opposition of the coalition only 3 percent of the time.

Obviously, Treen’s heavy duty of campaigning for governor in 1979 kept him from Washington and unable to vote often.

Republican Rep. John Buchanan of Birmingham was present for most of the key issues in the House where he agreed with the coalition only 52 percent of the time and opposed the coalition 46 percent of the time. Representing a district which has become increasingly populated by Blacks and labor union members, Buchanan is a Baptist minister who has described himself as “liberal on social changes” and “conservative on business issues.”

The conservative coalition’s victories last year came more often in the House. In 73 percent of the votes where Southern Democrats and Republicans joined forces in the House, the coalition won. In the Senate, 65 percent of the time the coalition prevailed.