A Tribute to Bell Wiley

By Steve Suitts

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

When I was at the University of Alabama I once had a theory that most professors and administrators showed up at meetings late because it was the custom of the university at that time to begin classes 10 minutes after the hour or half hour. With that impression of most college professors I was, of course, a bit surprised in a small way when Bell Wiley came to our meetings at the SRC offices usually ahead of time.

I should have known better. Bell was no stranger to me in style even at our first meeting. I had read many of his books on the Civil War and had come to know him as a very particular scholar. In the course of almost three years, I also came to appreciate the rare personal qualities of this Southerner who was in the best sense a scholar and a gentleman.

In fact, Bell was a far more gentle and quiet man than I had realized. While a Southern gentleman in manners, he seemed to favor sly folk humor and used it more than once. He also was obviously fond of bright red galluses.

Bell measured people and events carefully and often in silence a way that reminded me of the sage of the backwoods country store who always seemed to be sitting next to the potbellied stove in a pushed-back cane chair, saying little, and knowing a great deal more.

These personal attributes were reflected in Bell’s writing where the facts and lore about the common Southerner during the Civil War was often the stuff of which he wrote. Bell’s appreciation for Southern ways obviously did not diminish his capacity to be offended by Southern racism. He often scolded White Southerners and especially Southern leaders for their facile and disingenuous arguments attempting to keep up segregation.

I suppose it is a statement of the obvious that Bell Wiley made important contributions to the people and ideas of his own time. He was precise and prudent in his personal habits, generous in his love for the South, and stern in his demand that hatred and neglect be rooted out of Southern life. His books and the memory of his own life will keep those simple yet unreached ideals in the hearts and minds of many who were his students, readers, colleagues, and friends – all his admirers.

In this Issue

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 2-3

About this time of year in 1948 a simple, yet remarkable occurence took place in Richmond, Virginia. A Black man named Oliver Hill was elected to the City Council. In the next few years other political breakthroughs occurred. In Nashville in 1951 a Black attorney, Alexander Looby, was elected to the city’s governing board and in late 1953 the prominent Black educator Rufus Clement began to serve on the Atlanta school board.

Of course, it was not until after 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act that more than 20 percent of the South’s population began to have more than a symbolic opportunity to exercise and franchise and to help put Blacks into office

In this issue and others to come this year, we will be looking closely at the status of Southern politics and especially the achievements, disappointments, and obstacles that Black voters and Black officeholders face. Like some other rural and urban places in the South, Richmond now has several Blacks on the city council and a Black mayor. Yet the problems and limitations with which these and other officials must function are considerable as they attempt to translate political gains into real and specific social and economic progress; moreover, in many Southern communities even basic political gains have not yet been realized.

To set the stage for this on-going theme, this month’s Southern Changes tells of both the immediate and historic problems with which the poor of any color in the South must live today. Veteran writer Wayne Greenhaw gives us a glimpse of the lives of the poor, rural Blacks and Indians in south Alabama where the myths about welfare recipients are tragically disproven. Probably supported more by their own fierce sense of heritage and independence, these Southerners are fighting for nothing more than survival.

Our managing editor, Janis Powell, also files a report on the Protest for Survival, a ten day series of events last month when groups across the South attempted to object loudly to the fact that the poor were the major victims of the congressional efforts to balance the budget. Also, we have a

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soapbox piece which suggests that even when the federal government is not cutting back its programs touching the lives of the poor, its methods of measuring poverty to determine who will receive assistance is a distortion of need and reality.

Our two pieces on the political status of the South are case studies of two communities not greatly different in social and economic life. Both are located in the Black Belt of the South with large Black populations, an agricultural past,and little present industry. They differ perhaps most remarkably in their stage of political development.

From Dawson, Georgia, senior editor, Betty Chaney tells the story of recent Black achievements to break the racial barriers of elected office. We find here a sense of very real achievement and optimism on the part of Blacks who are the first to hold elected office. Even in “Terrible Terrell,” one of the life-long dreams of many in the Black community has finally come true.

As our cover story illustrates, the political journey in Lowndnes County, Alabama may be a sobering reminder of the difficulties that communities continue to face even after the political system has begun to change. A decade after Blacks began holding public office, Lowndes County’s Black and White officials find enormous economic and societal barriers that continue to stymie rapid change. With a caring view for detail and mood, Tom Gordon’s writing demonstrates that the burden of the past remains often the real limit for the future. Perhaps just as disturbing, the alternatives available to Lowndnes County in moving itself out of the poverty and racial conflict are clearly limited.

Finally, Patrice Gaines-Carter reviews for us the controversy in Florida over the McDuffie case where politics and the courts are being tested as means of dealing with the issue of police/community relations.

When finished with this issue, you may have a sense of frustration, puzzlement and perhaps even anger. At least these were some of my first reactions. At the same time I gather from these reports and perspectives some confirmation that the South retains a reservoir of energy, faith and devotion offering a possibility that this region may yet find and hold on to a better sense of community then has ever been known or practiced on this soil.

Survival Week Protests Budget Cuts

By anis Sharp Powell

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, p. 4

“No cuts in poor people’s programs” was the message being sent to Congress and the nation by the poor people and labor, civil rights, tenants and religious organizations involved in planning Survival Week.

Over 150 organizations in nine Southern states organized and endorsed Survival Week, a series of activities that took place May 1-11 to protest Carter’s efforts to “balance the budget” and “fight inflation” at the expense of poor people’s needs for jobs, housing, medical care, food and education.

The cuts threaten to close Black colleges, cripple health care for the young and elderly, and hundreds of thousands of families will face hunger, malnutrition, and starvation when the cuts eliminate the food stamp program. Organizers of Survival Week state that “Carter wants to spend $4 billion less on poor people so he can spend $4 billion more on guns and bullets.” They feel that the federal government is trying to trade the need for medical care and a decent income for two submarines and a bomber.

A spirited rally by the Atlanta Welfare Rights Organization on May 9 set the stage for a series of weekend demonstrations centered in Georgia. As a crowd of 300 rallied at the Richard B. Russell federal building to chants that “hungry people will steal, hungry people will kill” plans were being made for people all over to go to a rally in Americus, Georgia and march to Plains— Jimmy Carter’s home town. Two hundred marchers carried “Say No to Carter’s Budget Cuts” banners and other placards while chanting “Don’t want no Carter, no Carter; don’t want no Klan, no Klan; just want some justice, jobs and land” through the south Georgia countryside.

Mother’s Day marked the final demonstration for Survival Week. One thousand protestors, representing the South’s poor and hungry, marched in Atlanta on Sunday, in what the Committee for Survival called a “March for Bread and Justice.” The march followed the route of Martin Luther King’s funeral procession by Morehouse College where Rosalyn Carter was giving a commencement address to a freedom rally in University Park at the Atlanta University Center. The loudest chant of “Jimmy Carter has got to go” was heard as demonstrators passed by Morehouse.

Students staged a separate demonstration to protest the First Lady’s presence at the Black men’s college. They claimed her presence was a ploy to obtain the votes of Black and poor people by displaying her “concern for their welfare and respect for their educational institutions.” Four persons were arrested for criminal trespass and failure to disperse as they protested in front of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Chapel on the campus.

Congress meanwhile was moving toward averting the cutoff but many fear it will not move fast enough. Protestors also stress that simply reinstating the current allotment will not be sufficient. With the current rate of inflation, without an increase, the poor will have a 25 percent “budget cut” based on what they are receiving now.

The Measure of Poverty

By Pablo Einsenberg

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 5-6

When Lyndon Johnson proclaimed his unconditional War on Poverty in 1964, no one knew precisely the number or even the definition of “poor.” As a result, the Council of Economic Advisors quickly sought to designate the poverty population and concluded among other things that in 1961 a family of two or more making under $3,000 a year had been in official poverty.

An estimated food budget was the basis for determining the poverty index for different families. Based on 1955 surveys by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Council found that food expenditures accounted for one-third of a low-income family’s total budget. With that evidence, the cost of the 1961 “economy food plan” was multiplied by three, yielding a total amount needed by that family to meet all costs. This figure became the official poverty line.

Questions about the adequacy of the food plan were raised early. Even the author of the formula wrote in 1965 “with this plan, adequate nutrition is obtainable, but in practice, nearly half the families spending so little fell far short of adequacy. Of families spending at this rate in 1965, more than 40 percent have diet providing less than two-thirds of their requirements.”

In 1969 the model took on further administrative status when the Bureau of the Budget designated the index as the official government measure of poverty. From that point on all federal programs were required to use this official measuring system in determining eligibility and funding in many key legislative efforts to combat poverty.

Under the official measure, the current poverty index figures for families of various sizes are divided between farm and nonfarm.

Family Size	Nonfarm	Farm
1	$3,400	$2,910
2	4,500	3,840
3	5,600	4,770
4	6,700	5,700
5	7,800	6,630
6	8,900	7,560

In order to place the figures in context, one can look at the $6,700 a year allowed for an urban family of four. Officially speaking, such a family is not poor, although their income is under $130 a week, out of which all costs are supposed to come.

Suppose such a family lives in a small apartment or home. Even at a low temperature setting; the fuel bill could easily be $700 or more for the year. Rent (actual home ownership is unlikely) might be guessed at a conservative $150 a month, or $1,800 a year. The total of $2,500 for home and heat alone leaves $4,300 for all other costs. Food, clothing, medical care, transportation, and everything else are to be covered with scarcely $20 a week for each family member.

Of course, this family may receive food stamps or some other forms of assistance. Nevertheless, under the existing measure it is not officially poor. Yet families with three and four times the income of this hypothetical family of four are today wondering how to make ends meet.

For more rural people the problem becomes even more difficult. The federal government continues to assume that rural living costs are substantially less than urban costs. The 1979 poverty threshold for an urban family of four is inadequate enough at $6,700; a non-urban family of four is supposed to be able to get by on $1,000 less than that before it is included among the official low-income population.

The assumption that rural means cheaper is based on the idea that rural housing is less expensive and that family gardens and farms can help reduce grocery bills. However, the actual cost of basic commodities in rural areas can often be higher than in urban areas. Take as one current example transportation costs. Public transit rarely exists in rural areas. People are forced to drive more and pay more for gas than their urban counterparts.

While many rural people are

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able to maintain gardens, they still must purchase basic needs. Rural stores, lacking the high volume markets which enable cheaper quantity purchasing, often charge more than larger, urban outlets. Additional transportation costs also increase the prices for items ranging from flour to hair brushes.

Extensive research by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and others has shown that variations in the cost of maintaining fixed standards of living are very slight across the country. Nonetheless, the federal poverty line is roughly 15 percent less for rural areas. Is this supposed to mean that rural people should accept a 15 percent lower standard of living?

And while rural life does offer such non-urban virtues as openness, cleaner air, and a lack of rush hours, rural people also often have fewer recreational, social and cultural facilities. Medical care is generally harder to find, if indeed it is available at all. School districts are often underfunded, and jobs and other opportunities for youth are more limited. While some absolute costs may be lower in rural areas, they are more than offset by other factors preventing rural people from enjoying the same overall standard of living as city people.

The official poverty index fails to indicate accurately the extent of both absolute and relative poverty. Estimates are that 10 million more people—about a 40 percent increase—would be added to the poverty population if the measure were based on a diet incorporating more nutritional needs and current spending patterns.

In 1979, for example, the poverty index for a family of four stood at $6,700. The technique used to set that figure assumed that food would represent one-third of the budget or $186 a month. That translates into $1.55 per person per day for food. By any measure, a $1.55 a day per person for food is not adequate or rational.

Not only is the nutritional value of the plan questionable, but the current system for determining the food budget does not take geographic or cultural differences into account. Nor does it consider the changing dietary needs of persons at different stages of life. The elderly often have particular dietary needs that are expensive. Young mothers and growing teenagers certainly require diets that can easily exceed the food cost allowances.

Currently, the poverty level is raised by the increase in the consumer price index; however, the price of food and other basic necessities have increased at a far greater rate for most poor people.

Between 1977 and 1978, the cost of living for all items increased 7.6 percent, Nonetheless, the adjustment in the poverty index reflected the smaller, overall figure.

Since 1969 food has risen 94 percent while the total index has risen 78 percent. Costs for two other basic necessities—housing and energy—have also increased at a faster rate than the general price index. In 1978 as much as one-third of the income of the average poor household may have gone to pay for energy.

From both a numerical and human standpoint, then, poverty in America remains very real and significant. No amount of statistical manipulation can deny the poverty which is listed officially, let alone that which any more rational form or definition would reveal.

Perhaps government officials and others who should be outraged at the extent and persistence of poverty believe the rhetoric that these are conservative times and that programs are more likely to face cut-backs instead of expansion. In and outside of government, many people have lost a sense of the impact of poverty and are unaware of what an official definition of poverty means for poor people. It is hard to believe that after more than 15 years of anti-poverty efforts, we continue to utilize a poverty measure which is so far removed from real costs faced daily by millions of families.

Major reform in the poverty definition is an essential first step in a revitalized effort against poverty. In view of the mood of the times, though, advocates of the poor and near-poor must portray their concerns in ways the general population can appreciate. Poverty, after all, is more than just a moral wrong. It is also a fiscal and physical waste of resources. All society pays for poverty.

By whatever reasonable and realistic measure we may want to use, it is clear that this country has an enormous and not so invisible poor population—one that probably exceeds 25 percent of the entire population. We cannot escape this fact, no matter how hard we try to pretend that such poverty is not there. Widespread poverty means continued misery for the poor themselves and a waste of general human potential for all of us. It stands as a continuing challenge to our democracy.

This article is adapted from a publication of the Center for Community Change, a Washingtonbased organization assisting local community development in low-income urban and rural areas. Pablo Einsenberg is the Center’s president.

Political Changes in Terrible Terrell

By Betty Chaney

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 7-10

On a winter’s day in January 1980, Dawson, Georgia, internationally known for the racially inflamed “Dawson Five” murder trial of three years ago, quietly eased itself into the pages of history again. For this small, predominately Black, southwestern Georgia town, the county seat for “Terrible Terrell” County, making history is not something new. Back in 1960 it became the first jurisdiction to be sued by the Justice Department under the 1957 Civil Rights Act for discrimination in voter registration. This time, however, unlike much of its past history when Black men lined up against White to do battle, three Black men stood alongside three White men and were sworn in together as Dawson City Council members.

The victories for the Black men, Robert Albritten, Abraham Breedlove and Lucius Holloway, did not come easy. In fact they were the culmination of a long and fierce struggle. Terrell County was not nicknamed “terrible” because it rhymed; it had one of the worst records of race repression and violence in the South. Headlines about bombing and shooting of Black homes, the burning of Black churches, and even the murder of Blacks by Whites were not uncommon in Terrell County.

The September 13, 1962, issue of The Dawson Times carried the following account:

—Two Negro churches, about a mile apart as the crow flies, were destroyed by fire at practically the same time early last Sunday morning.

—One of the churches—Mt. Olive at Sasser—had been employed recently for weekly Negro voter-registration meetings.

—The other—Mt. Mary at Chickasawhatchee—reportedly had been intermittently used for that purpose.

On December 12, 1963 the paper carried another report:

—Officers this week extended their investigation beyond the boundaries of Terrell County into the bombing and shooting into of two Negro homes in Dawson early Sunday morning.

The home of Carolyn Daniels, Negro woman who was spear-heading the Negro registration drive locally, was extensively damaged by a bomb and the nearby home of Willie Eston, Negro, was riddled with at least 50 gun shots.”

Davey Gibson, whose family has been in Terrell for decades, recalled that on more than one occasion Black men held for

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various offenses were beaten after being released from jail, One man, he said, died after a number of days following such a beating. Gibson, one of the plaintiffs in the historic Justice Department suit against the Terrell County Board of Registrars, was himself the victim of another common form of repression. When he and four other college-educated Blacks were denied the right to register to vote because they allegedly could not read, they filed a suit against the county voter registrars and in reprisal the four teachers were not rehired.

The court in that case found evidence of discrimination against Black persons attempting to register and placed the Terrell County Board of Registrars under permanent injunction.

Then in 1968, the Terrell County Grand Jury Commissioners were placed under a permanent injunction by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals after it found that Blacks had been discriminated against in the selection of persons for grand and traverse jury service.

Still another permanent injunction was issued against Terrell. This time it was against the board of education whose dual school system was not dismantled until the 1970-71 school year.

Following these injunctions, three voting rights suits, involving the method of selecting the Terrell County Board of Education, the Board of Commissioners, and the Dawson City Council were all successfully challenged. The plaintiffs maintained that the county’s pervasive history of racial discrimination continued to have a present day effect and that at-large elections were being used to perpetuate the exclusion of Blacks from the political process.

The Court directed that the method of selecting the board of education members be returned to appointment by the grand jury. This resulted in two Black persons being appointed, becoming the first Blacks to hold countywide office in Terrell County since the Reconstruction era.

The election of the three Black city council members marked the first time ever that a Black person had been elected to the Council. Both Holloway and Albritten had run for the post, at-large, on three separate occasions. Their victories were the direct result of the court-ordered reapportionment plan brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of Black voters in Dawson. At-large elections in Dawson denied Black voters equal access to the local political process, the suit claimed. The three Blacks who were elected ran from wards in which there is now a majority of Black registered voters.

The election raises once more the question of whether or not Dawson has changed for good. Three years ago Attorney Millard Fanner paraded the evils of Dawson before a captive international audience during the “Dawson Five” murder trial. He portrayed the town and Terrell County as a White supremacist society that tried to frame five young innocent teens. When the murder charges were dropped for the five accused of gunning down a White farmer in a grocery store robbery, three of them left town. “Dawson is no place for a Black man,” one said.

There hasn’t been “any real social or economic change,” a Black minister, the Rev. Ezekiel M. Holley, said when questioned after the trial. “This is a racist town. Hate breeds here like a germ.” Ima Rude, the White executive secretary of the city council disagreed, however, saying “Dawson is the garden spot of the world. People don’t think in terms of color.”

Christopher Coates, the ACLU staff attorney who handled the voting rights suits, has been in and out of Dawson for the last five years. It is this very factor of race and the extent to which it colors all of Terrell county’s life that begins to explain a hardcore racist town like Dawson, he suggests.

“People from Andy Young to Jimmy Carter have said that if discrimination is stopped, everyone wins. Hogwash!” Coates said. “Whites get definite benefits from discrimination.”

He has found a pattern between racism and one’s own self-interest. It is sometimes more apparent in smaller towns like Dawson than in larger cities. With only a few jobs to go around, decisions about whether secretarial positions in the city clerk’s office go to Blacks or Whites loom vastly more

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important.

Coates believes that the level of repression in an area is directly related to the percentage of Blacks in the population and to the lack of White leadership that would advocate racial equality. The inclination on the part of officials to participate in blatant racist acts, he says, increases with the percentage of Blacks in the population.

By this standard, racial conditions in Terrell are no different than in surrounding areas. Terrell is one of 23 counties in southwest Georgia with majority Black populations. In Terrell County there was a mass exodus of Whites from the public schools to private schools when integration took place. In a county that is 60 percent Black, now the public schools there are 90 percent Black. Similarly, in neighboring Mitchell County the same thing happened so that now Blacks make up 48 percent of Mitchell’s population, but are 60 percent of the public school enrollment.

In other respects, though, “Terrible Terrell” is more staunch. Whereas some other counties might play it smart and allow a few token Blacks to register to vote, Coates said, so fearful was Terrell of Black power, they would allow almost no Blacks to register (12 Blacks in all) or serve on juries before lawsuits were won.

There are other exceptional factors too. One is Mayor James G. Raines. (Another is Carl Rountree, editor of the conservative newspaper, The Dawson Times, who still argues the segregationist line.)

In the Justice Department voter registration suit, Raines was then the chairman of the Terrell Board of Registrars and a defendant in the case. A wealthy landowner and Harvard law school graduate, Raines has been mayor of Dawson for a total of 16 years—12 consecutively—and is probably the most powerful man in Terrell County.

“Raines,” Coates contends, “is the key to why Terrell has had so many problems.” His inability to provide enlightened leadership has been the county’s biggest impediment, and because no economic pressure could be brought to bear on him, Raines was in an ideal position to provide that kind of leadership.

Raines responds to the charge in a humble, polite, good-ole-boy Southern fashion that he provided “the best leadership that I knew how.”

When the mayor talks about the changes that have taken place in Dawson during his

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administration, he speaks of things like better paved streets, a sewage and water system, fire protection and pension plans for the police department. No mention is made of jobs or industry. There is still only one major industry in town and no construction is underway. But even the things the mayor points to with pride have come under attack. Councilman -elect Holloway says the town needs to continue sewage extensions and to finish paving and maintaining streets in the Black sections of Dawson.

Holloway, long considered an “agitator” by the White community, says there have been no vast improvements in Dawson. Holloway should know since he’s been battling in Dawson for years: he was one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU suit against the board of registrars; in 1968 a plaintiff against the jury commissioners; and in 1976 a plaintiff against the board of education and board of commissioners.

Holloway said that the only change he had seen on the part of Whites since he and the other Black councilmen took office has been in a “show of attitude.” He points to the fact that the Dawson Chamber of Commerce is actually soliciting Black membership. He and his wife, Emma Kate, were offered and accepted Chamber membership.

It is still too early to judge the changes in Dawson from its racially-mixed city council. In a three White/three Black split, the mayor is the tie-breaker. So far he has broken two ties when councilmen were deadlocked along racial lines. One time, Holloway reports, he voted with the Whites and the other time he voted with the Blacks. The mayor agreed to advertise the fact that Blacks are now permitted to use the formerly all-White cemetery. The cemetery figured prominently in defense strategy in the “Dawson Five” trial to show that a White supremacist attitude existed from birth to the grave in Dawson.

The impact of the Black city councilmen is not expected to be immediate or monumental. The city budget, for one thing, was already set when the trio took office. Still the councilmen have high hopes. Holloway says he wanted to put more Blacks in clerical and white collar jobs in city governments and to appoint Blacks to board and commission positions. Breedlove looks forward to a new image of Dawson that will draw back Blacks who left and attract new industry to give them jobs. How close they come to having their hopes realized is a page from Dawson’s history yet to be written.

Betty Chaney is senior editor of Southern Changes.

The Past Of Lowndes County’s Future

By Tom Gordon

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 11-16

HAYNEVILLE, ALA.—The 124-year-old courthouse in this Black Belt town once was the political hub and social watering hole for White Lowndes countians. Remembered as stylish and attractive, the whitewashed building with green shutters not only housed most county government offices but also was the site of square dances, dress balls, and other items on the social calendars of the local White populace. The dances usually took place in the second floor’s courtroom, where couples would reach from an inside staircase or from two winding outer stairways facing the courthouse square.

The outer stairways are gone now and the music of the courtroom’s lively dances hasn’t been heard for years. Today the courtroom couldn’t host a ball, nor can it even house a trial. Leaks, cracks, peeling walls, and general deterioration prompted the state fire marshal to condemn the courtroom last fall. The rest of the courthouse is not far from a similar fate.

The historic building is giving way to the strain and neglect of decades—pressures that are perhaps as political and economic as architectural. Unlike the old faceless Confederate monument standing immovably and self-evident across the square, the courthouse has shifted symbolically with time and remains unrestored, condemned by local Black folks’ memory of the past and the White people’s view of the future.

As seventy-five percent of Lowndes’ 13,000 residents, Blacks for most of their lives knew this courthouse as a building only to be entered from the rear, a place where they could pay their taxes but not register to vote, the place where all-White juries could be counted on to acquit those charged with murder in civil rights cases. It was the most visible reminder of the do’s and don’ts that Blacks, not Whites, had to observe.

Since 1965, when the courthouse doors were thrown open to Blacks by the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and certainly by 1968 when Lowndes’ political leadership became shared by Black and White alike, the courthouse has not been the sort of place where Whites would wish to gather socially.

Facing a host of problems, the Blacks and Whites who sit on the county’s governing board probably couldn’t repair the building on their own anyway. Like most of its Black and some of its White citizens, the county government is broke and can only look to the federal government for funds to restore the structure.

It was 1965 when, politically, life began for many Lowndes Blacks.

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Martin Luther King, Jr. came around as did Stokeley Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. Nearby Selma rocked and reeled under voting rights demonstrations. In March, King led voting rights marchers to Montgomery right through northern Lowndes on U.S. 80. One of the marchers, a Michigan housewife named Viola Liuzzo, was shot to death after the march as she was driving in Lowndes along Highway 80. Three Ku Klux Klansmen later were convicted of federal civil rights charges in the case. But in 1978, Lowndes authorities obtained a Liuzzo murder indictment of Gary Thomas Rowe, the former FBI informant who helped convict the Klansmen. Rowe is fighting extradition to Alabama.

Five months after Liuzzo’s murder, a sunny afternoon incident in Hayneville plunged Lowndes into the spotlight again. Outside a small grocery store, a state highway engineer and volunteer sheriff’s deputy named Tom Coleman shot two White civil rights workers—a New Hampshire Episcopal seminarian and a Catholic priest from Chicago. The seminarian, Jonathan Daniels, died almost instantly. The priest, Richard Morrisroe, suffered a serious wound. Coleman was indicted later on a manslaughter charge and acquitted in a state court trial with an all-White jury in the Lowndes courthouse.

The two shootings had little effect on Black voter registration, which had begun a few weeks before Mrs. Liuzzo’s death and increased with the help of federal registrars acting under the Voting Rights Act. Soon after that, Blacks began campaigning for public office. Two were elected justices of the peace in 1968.

Lowndes Blacks now hold two seats on the five-seat county

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commission and four of the five seats on the county board of education. The sheriff, superintendent of education, tax assessor and coroner are Black. In two towns recently incorporated, Mosses and White Hall, Blacks also hold the reins of local government. Most of Lowndes’ Whites live in Hayneville and the county’s three other municipalities—Benton, Lowndesboro and Fort Deposit -where the governing bodies are predominantly or all White. But Blacks are likely to make electoral bids for offices in some of those towns later this year.

Even with the political changes, Lowndes County’s problems are many. They include widespread poverty, isolation and little education for many of the county’s Blacks. The county’s listed per capita income for 1977 -$3,817—is one of the nation’s lowest. About half of the county’s 13,000 residents receive food stamps, and in 1977 county residents received about $2.3 million in public assistance. There are also the problems of inadequate medical care and substandard housing, plus high rates of teenage pregnancies and illegitimate childbirths.

In addition, much of the county’s 4,000-member labor force has had to look outside the county for jobs. On the whole, the county has not been able to afford much of an industrial development effort. While “broke” describes the county commission’s present financial state, “disrepair” is a soft way to refer to the courthouse and county jail’s condition.

Though severe, these problems don’t overshadow the significant progress the county has seen in recent years. Government figures show per capita income has doubled since 1970, and federal programs have helped some low-income Lowndes residents obtain better housing. Piped-in water is available to most Lowndes residents, the public school dropout rate has declined, and the county’s infant mortality rate has become one of the state’s lowest.

There are also adult and child day care centers operating and free meal programs for senior citizens. The county health department has a home health care program and a federally-sponsored health clinic provides low-cost care to the needy.

In February, county industry-seekers cheered when Hayneville was approved for a $1.9 million federal grant to help build a facility for refining contaminated petroleum products. The project should create about 150 jobs and town officials hope it will mean more industrial growth.

Thoughts of significant private industrial development, however, are tempered by the reluctance of industry to go into majority Black counties. Corporate officials look askance on such populations, fearing they could be easily led and unionized. Some Lowndes residents fear the county’s industrial potential is being lost

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as paper companies buy up much of Lowndes’ wooded acreage.

There is talk about stepped-up improvements for the county school system which lacks a vocational training facility and full accreditation, but White students, White money and White interest have gone largely to two private all-White academies.

Improved medical care and boosting the number of resident physicians have been hampered by the failure to induce a young doctor to stay and raise a family. In recent years, physicians have come into the county to serve two-year stints under a federally funded program. None has stayed.

“There’s nothing for them to come to,” says John Norman, a White who heads the Fortex Manufacturing Co., a clothing concern in the county’s largest community, Fort Deposit (pop. 1,400). “We’re caught between the chicken and the egg. We can’t get the industry to move in and look around because we haven’t got any population to call on for employment. We can’t get the people here because there aren’t any jobs..(and)we haven’t got homes and things.”

Most of those who do work in Lowndes are in farming, retail business, some kind of government work or at one of the few manufacturing plants. There are others who could work but don’t, many Whites believe, thanks to handouts from Uncle Sam. “The government is the drawback,” says Tommy Bargainer, a pulpwooder from Fort Deposit. “I imagine Lowndes County gets more government money than any other county in the state of Alabama.”

Adds manufacturer Norman: “It’s a sad situation where people I run into every day are more interested in making sure they are properly signed up on the welfare rolls than in keeping a job.”

In his lifetime, Charles Smith has seen cotton farming, supported by cheap Black labor, almost disappear from Lowndes County and be replaced by soybean farming, cattle raising and the pulpwood industry. A leader in Lowndes’ civil rights movement and one of the two Blacks on the county commission, Smith is 65 and serving his second term. While Whites have accepted Black participation in the political process, Smith says the legacy of attitudes from the cotton days is a strong one.

“The plantation concept has been a way of life in Lowndes,” he says. “And a Black man was looked upon as property, not a person. This outlook has been sort of passed down from one generation to another.”

Indeed, for most of Lowndes’ 150-year history, cotton was the county’s lifeblood and Blacks were needed to grow, hoe, and pick the crop. Wagons and then trucks hauling

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bales of cotton were as commonplace as the Spanish moss which dripped from the trees around the county’s antebellum homes.

“It’s going to take some time to even educate the Black man to where he can perform as a progressive-minded citizen. He has been indoctrinated to believe he was second class,” Smith said. “Once a man’s mind has been destroyed, he hasn’t got very much else to deal with. That complacency of the Black man has got to be overcome and it’s going to take time before he’s out of that rut.”

If Blacks are handicapped by their own apathy and poor education, Smith notes that many Whites are shackled by their own self-interest and the hands-off attitude they have taken toward the county.

“You can feel it,” says Mrs. Uralee Haynes, the county school superintendent. ‘We’re just sitting back and watching each other. I don’t think anybody’s actually doing anything against each other, but both races seem to be apathetic.”

Older Whites, especially, view Black political power in the county as a sure sign the day of the locusts has arrived. “It’s just the saddest thing,” an elderly member of a prominent Lowndes family said one day last fall as she sat in her white frame home in Hayneville. Her voice was an angry whisper. “I really don’t know how else to describe it, because we haven’t got a chance. It’s almost like Reconstruction all over again.”

Tom Coleman, now retired and still living on the outskirts of Hayneville, says that the past ways of keeping Blacks from voting were needed. That’s because, he says, most Blacks couldn’t be trusted to vote responsibly. He and others haven’t changed their minds: “They don’t know who to vote for when they vote,” he said recently.

If ever so slowly or hesitantly, most Whites do realize that Black politicians are now facts of life. “It’s just not like it was back then,” says O.P. “Buddy” Woodruff, White chairman of the county commission. “I even feel differently myself. I can work with these people and I hope they feel they can work with me.” As for the commission, he says, ‘We’ve worked mighty well and close together and I can’t recall a controversy we haven’t been able to work out to the satisfaction of all concerned.”

A member of the all-Black Lilly Baptist Church choir in the central Lowndes community of Letohatchee, pausing on Sunday morning to chat before traveling to sing at another church, voiced the same view but with an important qualification, “We’ve come a long way,” she said, “but we’ve got a long way to go.”

Realizing the county’s limited resources cannot readily be overhauled, Black officials find themselves in unenviable positions. The county’s poverty and the local government’s inability to provide little more than basic services burdens virtually all county offices. For example, John Hulett, a Black in his third term as sheriff, was forced late last year to buy used cars for patrol vehicles.

At the same time, while some Whites see the county’s economic problems as naturally what happens when Blacks take over, Blacks are disappointed when they don’t see political participation result in economic gains.

Black voters “expected a lot overnight,” says Frank Miles, the county’s other Black commissioner. “But we explained you don’t do a lot overnight.”

Also not done overnight, more than a few Whites have come to support openly Black officials. One of Hulett’s White supporters is Linda Viera, a Lowndes native who runs a service station and grocery in Fort Deposit. “The first time he ran, the Blacks wanted him in office just to show they could get him in office,” she says. “Now the Whites are voting him in strictly because they found out he does his job. It doesn’t matter what color you are. If you break the law, he puts you in jail.”

Mrs. Viera, in her early 30’s, is part of a younger generation of Lowndes Whites who see things somewhat differently from their parents. “When I went into the Marine Corps, everybody was equal,” she said one afternoon. “There was no discrimination or anything. In fact if you called a Black a ‘nigger,’ you were automatically asking for trouble.”

Dickson Farrior, a White 31-year-old cattle farmer, employs Blacks who were his childhood playing companions. As a teenager, Farrior was only vaguely aware of the civil rights tensions in Lowndes, but in August 1965,while riding to high school football practice, he came

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upon the scene in Hayneville where Jonathan Daniels and Richard Morrisroe lay shot. He recalled how incredible such an event was at the time. As he grew older, he says, he also couldn’t understand how Lowndes Blacks could join the military, come home wearing a uniform and not be able to vote.

This regard for Blacks by younger Whites seems genuine and is based on some personal, past friendship. But even now for their children, these Whites’ closeness to Blacks ends at the schoolhouse doors.

Though the county schools were integrated by federal court order in the 1960s, they now are predominantly Black. Linda Viera’s two children attend the private, all-White Lowndes Academy.

Uncomfortable with having to choose between an all-Black school and an all-White school for his son, Farrior says he considers the academy the lesser of two undesirables. “We’ve just got a bad situation here,” the soft-spoken farmer said recently. “I really would like him to go to an integrated school because that’s the way life is. But we don’t have it here, so what do you do?”

0ne day last fall, Tom Coleman stood under the twin pecan trees outside his home and talked about his view of Lowndes county’s future. He didn’t expect a lot from the county’s Black leadership, and he didn’t think many of their Black constituents were capable of being responsible citizens anytime soon. The tone in his voice was not one of malice, but of someone who feels he knows what anyone else would know if they had lived in Lowndes.

“It’s not going to get much better unless they get some industry in here,” he said, “and if they get some more White workers to move in.”

Although he probably doesn’t know it, census projections may offer Coleman some hope since they do forecast that the White population of Lowndes will increase, especially as the county becomes more a part of the expanding Montgomery metropolitan area. The trend does not indicate, however, that the change in population will allow a reassertion of White political control.

Questions about the future of Lowndes County probably will be answered as much by a release from the past which Coleman and other Whites helped shape as from dramatic, unforeseen changes which come from outside. As the older generation of Whites finds some basis on which to work with Blacks, many of them carry a baggage of opinions and experience that defines progress as only White progress and the politics of accommodation as an art of limiting, not reconciling with Black influence.

By changing circumstances and outside experiences many younger Whites have been freed to see race relations more humanely. However, integration still appears to many Whites as acceptable only if on their terms. In a county where three-fourths of the population remains Black, integration to these Whites can mean Blacks sharing, but not controlling, power and privilege.

They also seem to be waiting for Blacks to make the changes that even they can accept. If Sheriff Hulett is elected and shows he is fair, they’ll support him. If the schools are separated, however, they’ll just wait until they are offered a better choice. They are not ready to see their own interests in integrated schools—apparently not enough to take the initiative with Blacks.

At the same time, Blacks in Lowndes have come to see that “the long ways to go” can’t be reached only by the vote. Disenchantment could set in and disinterest in voting could compound the severe limits that local Black officials already face. With those limits, it is also possible that Blacks may become the captives of the local and economic political system that offers welfare payments as the most attractive future livelihood for much of the population.

In the view of many Lowndes’ Blacks, White interest and commitment to the county would avert such a future. That White commitment, they say, also would have kept the courthouse from becoming a tattered shadow of its former self. White leaders, on the other hand, point to the planned petroleum refinery as a sign of better things to come. They also hope the future will bring another positive sign—a federally-funded restoration of the courthouse.

Neither of these developments will go a long way towards freeing most Lowndes citizens from their economic woes, but hopelessness is not a word that characterizes the mood of most residents nowadays. While Tom Coleman has his hopes, Mrs. Willia Gadson, a Black teacher in Hayneville High School probably spoke for most Blacks and Whites best. “As a whole Lowndes could be one of the best places in the world to live,” she said recently. “It’s too small to be divided.”

With a pause, she added, “In order to be free, you’ve got to free not just your person, but your mind.”

Tom Gordon is state editor of the Anniston Star in Alabama.

Half Pints and Rain Barrels: Hunger in Alabama

By Wayne Greenhaw

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 17-19

A dark-skinned woman with a sharp straight nose, aged twisted lips,and legs slightly bigger around than a half dollar, Annie Bell Brown looked surprised when more than forty people walked into her scrub-brush front yard.

She sat on a ragged old sofa somebody else had discarded years ago. She leaned forward and dipped Garrett snuff, and she cradled gnarled arthritic fingers gingerly around a swollen elbow that hung limply in a sling. A week before a local teenager had found her lying in a dirt street of Black Jack. Her arm was broken. Small dogs played around her frail body. The young man picked her up and carried her to an emergency room nearly twenty miles away.

Annie Bell Brown is one of about two-hundred residents of Black Jack, a no-man’s-land tucked between Saraland and Satsuma in Mobile County in south Alabama. Neither the county nor the towns will claim the territory.

A native of nearby Plateau, where she was born with a twin sister seventy-four years ago, she now wiles away her time on the porch of the one-room unpainted shanty for which she pays twelve dollars a month. The dwelling is furnished with a wood heater-stove, a rundown mattress on rustied springs, a refrigerator, and a rickety chest-of-drawers.

When the forty-some-odd people from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Washington D.C. visited her on a Coalition Against Hunger tour, Mrs. Brown, a widow, showed surprise in her big brown eyes. “I don’t get no food stamps,’ she said. “I don’t have the strength to stand in line all day,” she added. Asked if she could use food stamps if somebody brought them to her, her face lighted. “I sure could,” she said.

“I don’t know nothing about no Medicaid, Medicare or anything else like that,” she said. She receives a check for nearly $150 each month from Social Security, she said. “That’s from my husband, who passed,” she explained.

In a cupboard near the stove sat a one-pound plastic of black-eyed peas and a partial can of Luzianne coffee. In the refrigerator was a half-pint of milk and a jar of peach preserves.

Asked about plumbing, she pointed toward the rear of the shack where an outhouse teetered at the edge of a ditch. And she said the pump where she got her water was some fifty paces down the dirt road.

Sipping the strawberry Kool-Aid offered by Bill Edwards, a young man who has been fighting Alabama hunger most of his adult life, she half-whispered, “The Lord sent y’all. I know He did.” And local Black state senator Michael Figures took down her name and address. He said he would have someone with a food stamp form

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to her front porch by nightfall.

On the way north into Choctaw Indian country, Bill Edwards said that this is what his Coalition Against Hunger is all about. “We want to make the public aware that problems like this exist in our communities.” And a man from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development agreed. “It’s not just in the big cities of Washington, New York, Newark, Atlanta, it’s everywhere,” he said.

Within an hour the group bumped down a clay road in the Piney Woods near the Alabama-Mississippi border. Tall, handsome, Roman-nosed John Rivers, a fourth generation Choctaw, told about the problems of being the third race in a south Alabama county “where nobody ever wanted anything to do with you. We were told by the White people that we were not theirs. And the Black people didn’t want us. When I was a boy we had three separate schools for the three races in Washington County.”

He guided the way to a small frame house where a sickly olive-complected child clung to the skirt of his undernourished mother. The woman said her husband had died six months earlier. She was on food stamps, but they barely provided enough food for her and her four children. The other two boys and a girl were in school. As the group tromped through the crowded cabin, a representative from the county pensions and security office almost fell through the floor when her foot weighed upon a loose board.

Less than a half-mile away the group pulled into the grassless yard of a tiny house. It looked like something a middle-class child would build as a play hideout in the backyard of a suburban home. Out of the front door of the plywood and cardboard dwelling ran a three foot high little boy with a beaming round face and twinkling brown eyes. “Hi,” he said, “my name’s Bubba.” And the first woman reached down and swooped him up into her arms and uttered, “Give me a hug, Bubba,” and he hugged with a huge grip.

Inside the ten-by-fifteen-foot two-room house stood a barefoot woman in a red print dress. Two girls slightly smaller than Bubba held to her sides. She had sharp Indian cheeks, raven hair, soft brown eyes, and skin the color of the deep red clay. She invited the group into her neat well-scrubbed home.

Standing on the back stoop, she pointed out where she, her husband, and their three children had lived before the old house had burned to the ground. There had been no insurance. There was no way to rebuild.

“We tote water from up there on the hill. And up yonder

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we go to the bathroom. We catch water off the roof. We bathe in washtubs. And I wash the clothes in that there pan.”

“There ain’t no electricity. It got cut off. The power company got my bill mixed up with a fellow up the road. By the time we got it straightened out they said we owed $124 and I’d have to pay it to have the electricity turned back on. But we don’t have that kind of money.”

“It gets kind of cool in the winter. We have that canned gas. It’s a little and have to have it filled every week, and I cook with that.”

Holding her head high and defiant, she said, “When you are poor, you do what you have to do.”

On the way to yet another place Bill Edwards reiterated his old fight against an apathetic public. An angry young man, Edwards has been shaking his finger in the face of the rich and the fat for at least a decade.

A Californian, Edwards grew up in Orange County “which I guarantee you is just as backward in its way as much of Alabama,” he says. Studying history and political science at California State College in Fullerton, he came to the University of Alabama’s graduate school in 1969 and took a masters degree in social work.

Working with the National Democratic Party of Alabama, a predominantly Black splinter group in the early 1970s, Edwards developed a quick and deep insight into the state’s political world. He also worked with VISTA through Miles College in Birmingham. Again with Miles College, he moved to Greene County where for four and one-half years he had “quite an experience, saw poverty at its worst, watching the splitting-up factions of the Black people’s political life.” Then, for two years, he directed the Alabama Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers. He and his wife, a teacher from Birmingham, moved to Loachopoka between Auburn and Opelika in central Alabama and he began work with the Coalition Against Hunger.

Totally committed and estimated, Edwards slips into a passionate speech punctuated with cold hard facts. He looks back on President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty as the beginning of the dream to rid the country of hunger. “At that time the nation began its dream about actually doing something about poverty, actually getting the people out of poverty ” he says.

“All you have to do is look and see, and the myths about poverty die hard and fast. Some people believe all poor people are lazy, drive Cadillacs, eat gourmet meals from food stamps. These people work hard, keep their homes clean, and barely have enough to eat,” he states.

With Edwards on the day in the south Alabama country was Hollis Geer, staff attorney of Legal Services Corporation of Alabama, the co-sponsor of the hunger tour. Geer, who represents many of the Mo-Wa (short for Mobile-Washington counties) Indians, rides the country circuit at least once a week to check with her outlying clients.

A native of Boston, Geer moved with her family to Huntsville, Alabama, when she was 12, and after graduating from Duke in anthropology spent two years in Liberia and Ghana. Back in Boston, she worked with prison reform groups and attended Boston University Law School.

While still in school, she worked with Legal Services Corporation offices in Knoxville one summer, “and I knew I wanted to come back South and do this kind of work.”

In the push and shove world, she makes room in local churches for intake sites to meet with her clients. And soon she hopes to share an office in Chatom, seat of Washington County, with the Coalition Against Hunger people.

As the dust-coated school bus rocked back toward the tour’s starting point, Bill Edwards creased his forehead and spoke about the people. Leaning forward, he hit his fist into his palm “There is so much that we have to do. It’s an up-hill battle, but we think we can do it.” And to his side Hollis Geer nodded her head in agreement as the bus passed several tar-papered shacks with a scrawny collard patch and a rustied-out car in the front yard.

Wayne Greenhaw is a freelance journalist in Montgomery, Al. and is author of several books about Southern events and people.

McDuffie: The Case Behind Miami’s Riots

By Patrice Gaines-Carter

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, pp. 20-23

The story has changed several times since its beginning the morning of December 17, in Miami, Florida. It was about 1:50 a.m when police officers there say they spotted Arthur Lee MeDuffie, a Black insurance executive, doing daredevil stunts on his motorcycle.

After a high-speed chase, McDuffie was caught. At least a dozen police officers encircled him. For 20 minutes, according to reports, they beat him with nightsticks and flashlights. Four days later, after slipping into a coma, McDuffie, 33, was dead.

The police officers wrote up an accident report, saying McDuffie sustained injuries when his motorcycle hit a curb and went out of control. But, the pieces didn’t fit. The Dade County medical examiner became suspicious. Rumors about the “accident” were whispered throughout the police department, prompting an internal investigation of the case.

Working together, the medical examiner and police investigators found that McDuffie was handcuffed when he was beaten. The killing blow had crashed into his forehead at 90 times the force of gravity. The medical examiner believed

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the weapon that killed McDuffie to be a heavy-duty flashlight, swung two-handed like an ax. It cracked the skull cleanly in half, from front to back.

McDuffie’s death has shaken Miami, especially its Black community, like nothing prior to it in this decade. People who earlier dismissed Black cries of police brutality are now listening. “When all the facts are made known,” one investigating officer said, “it will make your hair stand on end.”

“Frenzied” was the term used by some officers who witnessed the beating. They said officers fought each other for a chance to beat McDuffie. One witness said, “It looked like a bunch of animals fighting for meat.”

One officer told a morning newspaper: “What really happened out there (the morning of December 17) is that the cops just went crazy. There’s no question that it never should have happened. The only way you could have stopped what was happening would have been to start killing cops. The feeling afterwards was that this guy was a nigger who was running from the police, and he deserved everything he got.”

Frederica, McDuffie’s ex-wife, whom he planned on remarrying last February, agreed that McDuffie’s death occurred because he was Black and outran the police. “Once they got him they got upset and they wanted to teach him a lesson.” She says she has taught their two daughters that they “can’t judge them all (police) by something a few did.” Her explanations help Shedrica, 8, but mean nothing to 2-year-old Bwana, who still runs to their living room window when a car drives up, and yells, “Daddy! Daddy!”

“They killed the wrong man this time,” a Black woman who watched McDuffie’s funeral procession said at the time. The insurance executive’s death and beating were different from the other cries of police brutality in the Miami community. For one thing, the victim died. Then secondly, in this instance, there were many witnesses, and the witnesses were police officers. Thirdly, McDuffie was a clean-cut, ex-Marine police officer, businessman, volunteer worker and father. He was no dope pusher; no drug addict; no robber. He ran from the police because his license had expired and he had already received one ticket for driving without it.

All of the officers charged were fired by their police director, Bobby Jones, on February 2. Then on March 31st in Tampa, Florida, five Dade County police officers—four Whites and one Latin—went on trial for charges stemming from the beating of Arthur McDuffie.

The trial was moved to Tampa after defense attorneys for the officers argued for a change of venue, claiming because of excess media coverage in Miami their clients could not receive a fair trial in Dade County.

Judge Lenore Nesbitt granted the change in venue, moving the trial to Tampa. In her decision, Judge Nesbitt said, “In fundamental justice to the defendants and for the welfare of the community, I am compelled to grant a change in venue.” She called the case “a timebomb I don’t want to go off in my courtroom or this community.”

Originally, six officers were to stand trial for charges in the death. But in pre-trial hearings, Judge Nesbitt dismissed as evidence the testimony given by officer William Hanlon, 27, during a polygraph examination. She discarded the testimony because Hanlon had not been told of his right to remain silent and to have legal counsel present during the examination.

Hanlon’s attorney called the verdict “a victory,” and it turned out to be just that when the judge later ruled that charges be dropped against Hanlon. The state attorney’s office found it impossible to prosecute Hanlon without the testimony in question.

Hanlon’s testimony is also considered crucial in the prosecution of Alex Marrero, the 25-year-old Cuban charged with second-degree murder. Hanlon testified during his polygraph examination that he saw Marrero swing his heavy-duty flashlight with two hands and strike the forehead of McDuffie. He said that after the blow McDuffie’s face was covered with blood.

Hanlon had faced a possible sentence of nearly 80 years for his charges of manslaughter and aggravated battery. Sgt. Ira Diggs and officer Michael Watts still face charges of manslaughter and aggravated battery. Officers Ubaldo Deltoro and Sgt. Herbert Evans Jr. are charged with accessory after the fact.

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Some people in the Cuban community are raising money for the defense of officer Marrero, claiming because he is a minority he was given the heavier charge. The claim has gotten some support in the Black community. However, the Black community has called for murder charges against all of the officers involved in the beating. The McDuffie family has filed a multimillion dollar suit against the county.

Dade County encompasses both Miami and Miami Beach as well as nearly a dozen other south Florida municipalities. The tropical land, billed by the Chamber of Commerce as a vacationland under the sun, has always felt the heat of racial tension. Until 1965, Blacks had to carry employment identification cards to get into wealthy Miami Beach. The cards explained why that person was on the beach usually as a day worker in the home of a wealthy family or a street laborer hired to keep the area clean.

The county has become one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country over the past decade. It covers 2,054 square miles, and its population has been fed steadily by the influx of immigrants to its shores. The population is approximately a million and a half.

Blacks, Latins and Anglos make up the population mix. It is expected after the 1980 census that all three will have less than 50 percent of the total population.

The Latin community consists mainly of Cuban refugees, with Colombians and other South and Central American groups on the increase. The Black community, about 14.4 percent of the population, contains Bahamians, Jamaicans and other West Indians.

The police department is a special sore spot for the Black community. Dozens of complaints of police brutality have been filed by Blacks over the years. In fact, some of the officers involved in the McDuffie case have extensive records of alleged brutality.

“The public is aware that there is a group of policemen who are headhunters, who are aggressive and seek out combat situations. They become violent at the drop of a hat,” said Robert Simms, director of the Community Relations Board. These people have been called the goon squad.

The suit filed by the McDuffie family is the second of its kind to be filed against the Dade County (also called Metro) police department recently. In February 1979 the Metro police officers burst into the home of a Black school teacher by mistake. The officers went to the wrong address during a drug raid. Nathaniel LaFleur, his son and his wife were beaten. LaFleur filed a $3 million lawsuit that is still pending against the county, but the state attorney’s office absolved the officers involved in the drug raid of any wrongdoing.

After the LaFleur incident, the Black community, with other supporters, asked for a citizen’s review board to oversee police complaints.

A year later, in February of 1980, the Metro Commission created the independent Review Panel to investigate “serious complaints or grievances” against county employees or agencies. The panel will have no investigative staff or subpoena power.

At a public hearing preceding the commission’s approval of the panel, nearly half of the speakers endorsed a competing proposal for a more powerful board with subpoena power. But fewer than 100 people showed up at the hearing and a third of them were grade-school children. Metro’s lone Black commissioner voted against the adopted structure for the panel.

While the panel is still being established, the Metro police department has done some in-house cleaning. A 1976 discrimination suit filed against the department was settled in January, after four years. Filed by the Progressive Officers Club, 76 Black county police officers, the suit charged discrimination in hiring, promotion, transfers and disciplinary actions. In the settlement, the police department agreed to pay all court costs, reconsider 200 Blacks who were turned down for police jobs prior to the suit and reconsider officers who were on a list for possible promotion to sergeant when the suit was filed.

Under the new agreement Blacks are guaranteed at least one-third of the available police commander, corporal and master sergeant positions. “It means two positions as police commanders, about 20 as corporals and two as master sergeants,” said Progressive Club member Lonnie Lawrence.

The agreement also calls for some revamping of the Metro Police Department’s policies and a requirement that all police officers undergo a psychological test as part of the department’s application.

In addition to the revamping, the department has a new police chief appointed in January. The former chief was fired from his position after the LaFleur raiding. Officer Bobby Jones, the new chief, decided to be a candidate for the position

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after the McDuffie beating, saying that it offered “a challenge” to him to weed out bad officers, create better relationships with the community and boost morale within the department.

Leaders in the Black community are suspicious of Jones’ motives, noting that he has worked alongside of the very officers charged in the McDuffie beating. Still, they have thrown their support behind Jones, calling for unity in the Black community. If Jones is to be the chief, the leaders say, there must be a unified Black voice for him to listen to. And, Jones has been a strong supporter of the Independent Review Panel.

Shortly after Jones’ appointment in January, another disclosure surrounding the McDuffie case upset the Black community. The Dade County Police Benevolent Association announced it had agreed to pay up to $2,000 for the defense of each police officer charged in the McDuffie case.

“They have shown their true racist color,” an editorial on a popular Black radio station stated.

Blacks in Miami waited for a verdict to see what the end of this chapter of confusion and anger in the community would be. But not without skepticism. They expressed outrage over the dismissal of officer Hanlon’s crucial testimony. “Are we to believe that police officers forgot to inform another officer of his Miranda Rights?” asked Marvin Dunn, an outspoken community activist in Miami.

There was also concern over the new site for the trial. The NAACP sent a telegram to the Justice Department, asking that they send someone to monitor the Tampa trial. Even Tampa residents questioned whether or not justice could be found there, where a Black youth was shot by a White police officer a few weeks before the trial began. The officer was absolved of any wrongdoing. The shooting is still a controversial issue in Tampa.

Following McDuffie’s death the Black community marched and demonstrated, led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Achievers of Greater Miami. They carried signs with messages like “Justice Now” “Who’s Going to Police the Police,” and “Remember McDuffie.” Five months to the day after McDuffie was killed, the all-White Tampa jury found the policemen innocent and three days of violence in Miami’s central city erupted, opening another violent chapter in a case which official police reports from last December still list as “accidental.”

Patrice Gaines-Carter is a reporter for the Miami News.

Sidebar: “We Are Tired of Praying”

Vol. 2, No. 7, 1980, p. 23

On May 17, in Tampa, Florida, four Dade County police officers charged in the beating death of Black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie were found innocent of all charges by a six member, all-male White jury. The jury deliberated only two hours before returning their verdict. What could have been the end to a grizzly story of police violence and brutality turned out to be only another part of it. By ten o’clock that night the city of Miami was a battleground and the battle cry was “McDuffie.”

When the verdict was given at 2:30 p m. Saturday afternoon, McDuffie’s mother Eula, cried, “They are guilty, they are guilty. God will take care of them.” The whole Black community of Miami was stunned.

The NAACP called for a protest demonstration at 8:00 p.m. and approximately 1,000 people gathered for a march to the Dade County Justice Department building. The marchers were made up of all elements of the Black community—businessmen in suits, young children in shorts, and old ladies in aprons. Their numbers grew as they marched. The march was reminiscent of the peaceful demonstrations of the 60s as the crowd moved toward the Justice Department building singing “We Shall Overcome.” When they stopped on the steps of the Justice Department building a community leader, Marvin Dunn, called for a prayer but someone in the crowd responded, “We are tired of praying. Let’s march in the streets.” The crowd grew out of control and some gave away to vented anger. A brick was thrown through a window and a police car was burned.

In the meantime, six miles north in Black, impoverished Liberty City, violence also broke out among Blacks, Whites and police officers. Fires were set, stores were looted and people were beaten, maimed and killed. Many witnesses reported that the police vandalized cars, smashed windows and spray-painted the words “Looter” and “Thief” on walls.

With sixteen people dead from the three days of disturbances in Miami, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it will seek civil rights indictments against the four policemen who were acquitted and a complete review of “past, present and future” reports of brutality by police and inaction by local judicial officers. The issues of “McDuffie” are now more than one case. They are the symbols of today’s race relations.