Women and the Constitution

By Sharron Hannon

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 1-3

In 1776, Abigail Adams wrote husband John, importuning him to “remember the Ladies” in drafting the code of laws of the new nation.

However, the “ladies” were not remembered by the founding fathers. Eleven years after Abigail Adams’s letter, the framers of the Constitution drafted a document beginning, “We the people.” What they meant was, “We the men.” In 1787, women were not considered even three-fifths of a person, as male slaves were. Women were disfranchised and largely invisible in public life. It would take more than a hundred years of struggle to get the U.S. Constitution amended to allow women to vote; an amendment stating that women have equal rights with men has yet to be added, despite more than sixty years of trying.

In the fall of 1986, as preparations got underway for celebrating the bicentennial of the Constitution, a group of women approached former first lady Rosalynn Carter with the idea for a symposium that would “remember the ladies.” She lent her support and so, in February 1988, an overflow crowd of 1,500 women from every state and ten foreign countries gathered in Atlanta to study and discuss and call attention to the founding fathers’ omissions.

“Women and the Constitution: A Bicentennial Perspective” was sponsored by the Carter Center of Emory University in conjunction with the Carter Presidential Library and Georgia State University. Rosalynn Carter asked three former first ladies-Lady Bird Johnson, Betty Ford and Pat Nixon-to join her as convenors of the symposium. All agreed, although health problems prevented the latter two from actually attending the conference.

Nancy Reagan was also invited to be a convenor. She declined-understandably. For while attempts were

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made to keep the conference scholarly and non-partisan, there was no way to avoid comparisons of women’s generally forward progress during preceding administrations and the retrenchment that has followed during the Reagan years. It was similarly impossible not to wonder what a change in White House tenants may mean for the future of issues like the Equal Rights Amendment, which was defeated three states short of ratification in 1982.

“We’ve become comfortable with our prejudices,” noted Rosalynn Carter in a pre-symposium press conference. “We need to be inspired to make our country better. I hope that’s something the next election can do.”

Though none of the presidential candidates attended the symposium (being busy campaigning in New Hampshire at the time), the organizers no doubt hoped to catch their attention by scheduling the event less than a month before Super Tuesday. They at least caught the attention of the media: 150 reporters and radio and TV people swarmed around the hotel where the conference was held-a surprisingly large number for a conference on women.

But then there were some big drawing cards: Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Their presence drew attention to how far women have come since 1870, when Myra Bradwell was denied a license to practice law because she was a woman, and 1872, when Susan B. Anthony was arrested for trying to vote.

Women still have a long way to go, however. As Coretta Scott King noted in her address to conference participants, if black women were represented in Congress in proportion to their numbers in the general population, there would be

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thirty black women in the U.S. House of Representatives and seven Senators. Instead, there is only one black woman in Congress: Rep. Cardiss Collins of Illinois.

Many conference speakers pushed for women’s increased involvement in politics, both as voters and candidates. “If you don’t run, you can’t win,” was the theme of Ferraro’s speech.

Former U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug had a unique idea for speeding up women’s access to political power. “Let’s ask both parties to commit all open seats to women until some measure of equity is reached,” she suggested during the closing plenary. “Let’s ask that one Senator of the two from each state be female. Why not?”

Other speakers looked at the judicial system as an arena for advancing women’s rights, pointing out that it wasn’t until 1971 that the Supreme Court used the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to find sex discrimination unconstitutional. Since then, more than fifty cases have been heard by the Court relating to hiring, promotions, maternity leave, disability insurance, pension rights and seniority.

“Not all such challenges have been successful,” noted Justice O’Connor in her keynote speech. “But there is no question that the Court has now made clear that it will no longer view as benign archaic and stereotypic notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females.”

In the l980s, however, the number of sex discrimination cases being heard has declined. “There are not a lot of Fourteenth Amendment cases left to bring,” said Isabelle Pinzler, director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, in a panel discussion with other attorneys on the role of advocacy in promoting women’s rights. “Without the ERA, there won’t be much change.”

Another drawback to progress through the courts was raised by former EEOC chair Eleanor Holmes Norton: “We must depend on the generosity of a largely male judiciary.”

This is especially true of federal courts. Since 1981, President Reagan has filled 334 seats on the federal bench-and only twenty-seven of his appointees have been female.

So what about the Equal Rights Amendment? It was the topic of both a mini-plenary (“ERA: Was It Worth It?”) and a panel discussion (“Putting Women in the Constitution: The Future of the ERA”), and it was obvious from both sessions that there is no consensus on the future of the struggle for ratification.

There is not even consensus on the past. Some regard the 1972-1982 period of national focus on the ERA as the finest hour of the women’s movement.

“Never have women learned so much and moved so fast,” said panelist Erma Bombeck, who spent a year traveling with former White House Press Secretary Liz Carpenter to lobby in unratified states.

Others, however, resented what political scientist Janet Bowles termed the “artificial consensus” to make the ERA the centerpiece of the women’s movement. “The demise of the ERA gave feminists freedom to reassess other goals,” she said.

Eleanor Smeal, who as president of the National Organization for Women was the strategist behind the ERA Countdown Campaign, was unwilling to pause to argue the past.

“We must go forward,” she said. “The drive for total equality is still so needed. Statutes can be reversed. Executive orders overturned. What we knew then intellectually, we now know through experience-we need a constitutional guarantee.”

NOW, in fact, has already launched a drive for “the new ERA” and activists were busy circulating petitions among the conference participants. It was the only active organizing visible-a fact that troubled some.

“It doesn’t make sense to spend these resources and gather this talent without using it as a stepping stone,” said Margie Pitts Hames, an Atlanta attorney who argued Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, which established the right to abortion in 1973. “I see no agenda, no plan, no direction. We’ll go back to our various places without mobilizing the energy I feel here.”

Hames and others had hoped the conference might at least generate some resolutions. And they were further disappointed by what they perceived as a decision to avoid issues like abortion rights, homelessness and the feminization of poverty, which were not directly addressed in any of the thirty-one panels or five mini-plenaries.

But the goals of the conference were academic, not activist; focused, not broad. What the organizers aimed to produce was not resolutions and a plan of action, but some serious scholarship on the conference topic which will be disseminated through various professional journals and through a secondary school curriculum being developed in conjunction with the Carter Center.

The research generated by the conference as well as audio and video tapes of the proceedings will be maintained by the Carter Center and the National Archives. Georgia Public Television is also putting together a documentary on the conference which will be shown on PBS stations nationwide.

For most conference participants, the best part was just being there-in one place at one time-with women who have been Cabinet members and served in Congress, who have argued or been plaintiffs in landmark court cases, who are deans of law schools and college presidents.

“It was a real high to literally rub elbows with so many incredible women,” said Heather Kleiner, who is working to revitalize the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Georgia.

It was impossible to come away from such a gathering not feeling empowered and energized. “This conference is a kind of political chicken soup,” noted Bella Abzug. “It helps you get out of bed in the morning and say, ‘I can conquer the day.'”.

Sharron Hannon is a Georgia-based freelancer who writes frequently on women’s rights issues.

Talking Down Reform: Filibustering Campaign Reform

By Ann McBride

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 4-5

During February, the cots were back in the United States Capitol. For the first time in years, the Senate was involved in an extended round-the-clock filibuster-endless debate to thwart the will of the majority.

The bill under discussion was S.2-the Senatorial Election Campaign Act. This measure, introduced in 1987 on the first day of the 100th Congress, is a comprehensive campaign finance reform bill, designed to fundamentally transform congressional campaign financing. And while S.2 has fifty-two Senate co-sponsors and broad support in the country, a minority of Senators has blocked the bill.

There can be little debate that the present campaign financing system is in desperate need of reform. Unlimited campaign spending, in the words of Majority Leader Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), threatens to make Congress “a part-time legislature because we must be full-time fund-raisers.” Congressional campaign costs have increased fivefold since 1974, totaling $373 million in the 1986 elections. An average Senate seat now costs $3 million, requiring candidates to raise the equivalent of about $10,000 every week during a six-year term. The average cost of a House seat has also soared-from $87,000 in 1976 to $329,000 in 1986.

With these costs, only those who are personally wealthy, or those willing and able to raise large sums from special interests, can even consider seeking congressional office. This system of unlimited spending creates an arms race mentality in Congress-candidates faced with an unlimited spending system seek huge and ever-growing sums of money to run their campaigns.

Freshman Senator John Breaux (D-La.), elected in 1986, says: “MY first task in considering whether I would have the opportunity one day to serve in the U.S. Senate was not whether I was old enough, constitutionally, or whether I was smart enough to handle the job … whether I had any ability to legislate, which is the duty of this very august body. The first question I had to decide was how I was going to raise enough money…. How much of my life and family life was I going to have to commit to raising enough money before I would be able to have the opportunity to exercise any talent or ability or education to be a good member of the U.S. Senate.”

And retiring Senate President Pro Tem John Stennis (D-Miss.), first elected in 1947, said, “The amount and sources of money spent in Senate campaigns is an embarrassment to our country and it is a blot on the integrity of the Senate because of the appearance of impropriety.”

With the increase in campaign costs, congressional candidates have increasingly gone hat-in-hand to the special interest political action committees (PACs). In 1974, PACs gave $12.5 million to congressional candidates. By 1986, PAC giving exceeded $130 million. As a result, the 100th Congress came into office more indebted to special interest PACs than any other in history.

PAC money, far from being even-handed, heavily favors incumbents over challengers. In the 1986 election cycle, PACs gave $90.7 million to Senate and House incumbents and only $19.4 million to challengers. In the same election, according to a Common Cause study, one-third of all PACs gave 80 percent or more of their contributions to Senate and House incumbents.

PAC money is money given for a legislative purpose-it is contributed to provide special access and special influence for special interest groups on Capitol Hill. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) put it most bluntly: “We are the only human beings in the world who are expected to take thousands of dollars from perfect strangers on important matters and not be affected by it.”

To be sure, PAC contributions do not necessarily guarantee votes or support; PACs do not always win. But the influx of special interest money is eroding public confidence in our elected officials and creating the image-if not always the reality-that PACs are buying access, influence and results in the United States Congress. Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) has said, “The average citizen feels that public officials are beholden to special interests. This sense of alienation, this feeling that the electoral system is no longer their system, is responsible for much of the cynicism and lack of participation by citizens in politics today.”

S.2 squarely addressed the fundamental problems of the current system-unlimited spending and ever-increasing dependence on PAC dollars.

First, S.2 would establish a system of spending limits for Senate elections; the individual limits would be based on the population of each state. In return for agreeing to

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spending limits, Senate candidates would receive public benefits, such as reduced mailing costs for their campaigns. No direct public financing is provided as long as both candidates agree to abide by spending limits. If one candidate decides not to participate, and raises funds or makes campaign expenditures in excess of the spending limit, then public money would be provided to his or her opponent.

Second, S.2 would limit the growing dependence on PAC dollars by establishing an overall limit on the amount of PAC contributions a candidate may accept. For House candidates, the limit is $100,000; the Senate limits are based on the population of each state. If the S.2 limits had been in effect in 1986, PAC contributions to Senate candidates would have been cut by two-thirds-from $45 million to $16 million.

S.2 received strong support within Congress. Fifty-two Senators co-sponsored the bill-the first time since Watergate that a Senate majority has gone on record in support of a comprehensive reform bill. But Senate action on S.2 was blocked during the 1987 filibuster.

S.2 moved to the Senate floor in June 1987, and Majority Leader Byrd tried a record seven times to limit debate. While fifty-five Senators were willing, invoking cloture requires the support of sixty Senators-and the debate droned on.

The Senate returned to S.2 in February 1988 and again the obstructionist minority turned to a filibuster. Sen. Byrd scheduled round-the-clock sessions in an effort to break the filibuster and took an eighth cloture vote. But the minority prevailed once again. And S.2 was set aside.

During debate on S.2, opponents raised a number of false claims. “It will cost hundreds of millions,” they argued. In reality, if both candidates in a Senate race agreed to spending limits, no direct public funds would be provided.

“S.2 doesn’t do anything about PACs,” opponents claimed, ignoring the fact that the aggregate PAC limits established by the bill, had they been in effect during the 1986 campaign, would have cut PAC contributions to Senate candidates by two-thirds.

“S.2 will protect incumbents,” they argued, ignoring the tremendous advantages enjoyed by incumbents under the present campaign financing system.

“S.2 will prevent Republicans from winning in the South,” they argued. Yet this claim ignored the recent experience in the South. In 1980, for instance, four Southern Republican Senate candidates-all non-incumbents-won election while spending less than the limits in S.2. In 1986, three of these four candidates sought re-election as incumbents. Each Senator spent more than the S.2 limits, and each Senator lost.

This issue will not go away. Efforts to reform the system will continue.

Millions of citizens will be involved in the fight. More than seventy national organizations have joined the coalition in support of S.2. Included are traditional allies within the public interest community, but also joining the coalition are such diverse organizations as the American Association of School Administrators, the American Jewish Committee, the American Public Health Association, the American Public Power Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Farmers Organization, and the National Farmers Union.

In addition, more than 270 newspapers nationwide have supported the bill. The Washington Post, for instance, has called the current campaign financing system “fundamentally corrupt. Every citizen knows it. So does every legislator.”

As former Watergate Special Prosecutor and Common Cause Chairman Archibald Cox has noted, most scandals involve broken laws. In the case of the campaign financing scandal, the laws themselves are the scandal and they must be changed.

Ann McBride is the Senior Vice President of Common Cause.

Pulling Farms Out of the Hole

By Jim Hightower

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 5-8

The good news for American farmers in 1988 is that the farm crisis has officially been declared “over” by the Reagan Administration. The bad news is that their good news is a lie.

With the national media’s attention recently riveted on Wall Street’s problems, the Administration is trying to spread the propaganda that the 1985 Farm Bill has worked and that prosperity is just around the corner-for U.S. agriculture.

That is going to come as a surprise to the 235,000 farmers who have been squeezed out of agriculture as a result of the price-busting, surplus-generating 1985 Farm Bill, and it is going to offer mighty cold comfort to the 130,000 other farmers forecast to go under in 1988.

The Administration bases its rosy assessment of agriculture’s prospects on the fact that net farm income rose in 1987 for the first time in years and that the volume of our farm exports increased. That would be happy news, indeed, except that the small increase in farm income last year came out of the taxpayer’s pocket rather than from a healthy increase in commodity prices, and while export volume went up, the dollar value of those exports went down.

This Administration is proving again that figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.

Our nation’s farm economy still is a wreck. Last year was not quite as bad as 1986 or 1985, but it was not a year to celebrate, and 1988 looks even worse. Farmers will know that the farm crisis is “over” when they start getting a-fair market price for their commodities and a warm smile from their bankers. That day will not come until we do away with Washington’s ill-conceived farm program.

The Reagan Administration promised that the 1985

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Farm Bill would accomplish four goals: (1) increase farm income; (2) reduce taxpayer costs; (3) increase agricultural exports; and (4) lower crop surpluses. When Reagan signed the bill, he was quoted in the New York Times as saying the legislation “provides new hope for America’s hard-working farmers and our rural communities.'”

After two years, we can see that the 1985 Farm Bill has failed miserably on each point. Just consider this:

• Net farm income rose by an average of $500 Million between 1985 and 1987, when adjusted for inflation, which is an increase of less than 2 percent. Every penny of this very small increase was due to record high taxpayer subsidies, which, for many producers, must now account for two-thirds of their gross farm income. The prices which producers were paid for most of their crops continued to fall, just as they have since 1981, often to only one-half of 1987’s actual production expenses.
• As bad as prices were in 1987, they will get even worse in 1988. Under the Budget Reconciliation Act just signed by President Reagan, target prices this year will drop an additional 1.4 percent on top of the 2 percent reduction already mandated by the 1985 Farm Bill.
• Taxpayer costs increased an additional 27 percent to support these failed farm policies in 1987,when compared with 1985. The projected three-year price tag of the current farm bill is now over $68 billion–about $16 billion more than first estimated. Between 1981-88, this Administration will spend a whopping $122 billion on failed farm programs, the third largest U.S. expense behind defense spending and Social Security. This Administration has also spent nearly $50 billion more on its farm program than all that was spent for U.S. agriculture in the previous forty years.
• U.S. farm exports have declined by about one-third in the last seven years, dropping from $44 billion in 1981 to $31 billion in 1985 to $28 billion last year. The decline between 1985-87 was over 10 percent. If you subtract the Export Enhancement Program, which allowed Russian livestock producers to buy wheat at 36 cents a bushel less than the U.S. price, the decline in farm exports since 1985 was nearly 12 percent. Even forecasters at the U.S. Department of Agriculture now predict that the value of U.S. farm exports will decline by 2 percent in 1988.
• Crop surpluses have not been reduced either, as the amount of U.S. wheat and feedgrains in storage is up by 10 percent over the past two years.

The results are as ugly as you would expect. The 1985 Farm Bill forced another 235,000 farmers out of business, not because they were bad producers or bad managers, but because they had to fight bad farm policy. It’s the same policy which, since 1981, has caused us to lose over 600,000 productive U.S. farmers–20 percent of our farmers shut down in a stunningly brief time.

According to the latest projections from the American Bankers Association, well continue losing 2,504 U.S. farmers per week in 1988.

These bad policies have stuck U.S. farmers with debts of nearly $175 billion, while farmland values have dropped by another 19 percent nationwide. In some parts of the Midwest. good, rich farmland is now worth less than one-third of what it was in 1981. Farm lenders now hold eight million acres in foreclosed farmland–property which they cannot sell–of which the U.S. Farmers Home Administration possesses 1.6 million acres. Sixty-seven percent of the farmland sold by FmHA was sold to speculators and agribusiness concerns which fall outside the mandate of the agency.

Both FmHA and the Farm Credit System are eager to sell only to those who can pay cash. No family farmer has the cash money to plunk down on farmland for a son or daughter, but an investment syndicate does. A real estate. developer from Mesa, Ariz., has purchased dozens of farms in Iowa. He told the New York Times that he rents the farms, sometimes to former owners, and gets up to 12 percent in return on his investment in cheap, foreclosed farmland. Since 1981, the number of acres managed by farm management companies has increased by an area the size of Colorado. The twelve largest land-owning insurance companies hold three million acres of farmland worth $2.3 billion, while commercial banks hold about 400,000 acres worth $350 million.

The misery is compounded when you consider that the 1985 Farm Bill has produced another 25 percent decline in tractor sales, has prompted the layoff of another 8,800 farm implement workers, has forced another 700 farm implement dealers to close, and has caused over 100 agricultural banks to shut their doors.

While we are now selling 28 percent fewer John Deere tractors than in 1981, sales of Mercedes Benzes in this country have skyrocketed by 57 percent. While farm prices were falling, food-processing profits were going through the roof, and the power of the food industry was being concentrated at a dizzying pace. Five companies now control two-thirds of the U.S. beef industry, and one of those companies, Cargill, also is one of five multinationals which dominate 80 percent of the world’s grain trade. These are the companies that benefit from a farm policy which saw the United States, in 1986, stockpile 250 million tons of unsold grain when only 40 million tons of grain would have averted the famine taking place in Africa.

If there is any good news for American farmers for 1988

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it is contained in the farm credit rescue package that Congress passed and sent to the President shortly before Christmas. This legislation is good news for farmers for two reasons.

First, it is real, tangible help for farmers who have been struggling to pay old debts while trying to survive on less income. Secondly, passage of this legislation is a victory that nobody believed farmers could win until the American Agriculture Movement, the National Farmers Union, the National Farmers Organization and the Save-the-Family-Farm Coalition stood shoulder to shoulder and demanded that the Farm Credit Act of 1987 address their credit problems as well as their bankers’.

This legislation includes debt restructuring and interest rate write-down provisions. Additionally, Congress provided up to $500,000 per state for mediation services that can help farmers work through their debt problems.

Benefitting most from this legislation are the 150,000 farmers nationwide who have been fighting for seven years with the very federal agencies that were instructed by Congress to help them.

With a victory under our belts, the farm community

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again has its work cut out. Priorities for 1988 include:

Election of a Democratic President. No farm program is better than the people who administer it. This Adminstration [sic] has used its discretion to hurt family farmers at every opportunity, by lowering target prices to the maximum allowable, by failing to comply with court orders on farm lending practices, and by refusing to implement disaster programs authorized by Congress. Without a President who is committed to helping farmers, new farm legislation will be an impossibility.

Strengthen the Democratic majority in the Senate. By retaining the Democrats we now have, such as Sen. Lloyd Bentsen from Texas, and winning contested seats in Missouri, Minnesota, Washington, Pennsylvania and Nebraska, farmers can gain additional clout for passing an effective successor to the 1985 Farm Bill.

Tinker with the ’85 Farm Bill. An example is eliminating penalties for farmers who try to cut production costs and protect the environment by reducing pesticides.

Develop rural economic development legislation. The federal government has a role to play in helping farmers diversify production into new cash-value alternative crops and become processors of their commodities as well as producers. Such federal assistance should include federal loans and insurance for alternative crops; financing for producer-owned and -operated processing operations; research funding for the production and marketing of alternative crops; and dissemination of market information on alternative crops.

Ultimately, there are three basic policy approaches to tackling the farm crisis: (1) let the family farm system go, leaving control of our food supply in the hands of investment syndicates and conglomerates; (2) stick with some version of heavy taxpayer subsidization of commodity producers and shippers; or (3) replace expensive tax subsidization with some form of effective supply management.

It is that third alternative that best serves American taxpayers and American farmers.

By strictly limiting our production of certain commodities to the known demand, U.S. farmers will eliminate price-busting, tax-eating surpluses. They will produce to meet the actual demands of the domestic market, world cash and credit markets, and world hunger needs. In return for matching their production with real demand, a realistic and fair price floor would be established for these commodities at roughly the cost of production, thus preventing price busting by monopolistic purchasers.

By selling America’s farm commodities in the marketplace, instead of to the government, we can “zero out” the humongous sums that taxpayers have been forced to pay in the form of crop subsidies to farmers, conglomerates and syndicates. In 1987, crop and storage payments cost U.S. taxpayers over $22 billion. A supply-management approach would eliminate all crop subsidy payments to farmers, saving taxpayers $18 billion in its first year and $22 billion thereafter. Under this approach, the only taxpayer outlays are to combat world hunger, to create a conservation reserve, and to establish a crop disaster program.

Simply stated, this is the single best approach that exists for pulling good farmers, overburdened taxpayers and the rural economy out of the hole.

Jim Hightower is serving his second four-year term as the elected Texas commissioner of agriculture. His comments are excerpted from an address to the ninth annual convention of the American Agriculture Movement, which met in January in Wichita, Kansas.

Texas Leads in Pesticide Right-to-Know

By Elaine Davenport

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, p. 7

One of Texas Agricultural Commissioner Jim Hightower’s pet projects has come to fruition, and he is calling it “the beginning of a new age of enlightenment in the agricultural workplace.”

On January 1, Texas became the first state to require farm operators to provide workers with specific information about chemicals they may be exposed to in agricultural jobs. Known as the Farm worker Right-to-Know Law, it applies to employers with a gross annual payroll of $50,000 or more for permanent workers or $15,000 or more for seasonal workers.

“That would apply to almost all vegetable and citrus growers, or they shouldn’t be in business,” says program coordinator Beltran Chavez. In fact, the law is not meant to apply to small operators.

Chavez estimates at least 10,000 employers are covered by the new law and must maintain a list–by crop–of every chemical used or stored on the farm in excess of fifty-five gallons or five hundred pounds. The employer must keep the records for thirty years, or send them to the Texas Department of Agriculture for storage and retrieval.

The Texas Department of Agriculture and the Texas A&M Extension Service are jointly responsible for training agricultural employees about the proper use of agricultural pesticides. This mandate differs from similar laws for other industries, which put the training burden on the employer.

The TDA and Extension Service are developing bilingual crop information sheets about the chemicals most widely used, their health effects, emergency procedures, employers’ responsibilities and workers’ rights. These sheets will be provided to employers for distribution to farm workers. Video training materials are also available.

The TDA has hired three staff persons for the project and five Right-to-Know specialists to work in the field. Despite recent hard economic times in Texas, the legislature authorized about $400,000 per year for the new program.

“Agriculture is the last major recognized industry to come on board with right-to-know,” says Chavez, who previously administered farm worker health programs at migrant clinics in both Texas and California. “That’s probably because of the strength of the agricultural and chemical lobbies.”

Surprisingly perhaps, there have been few harsh responses from employers. “We have had forty or fifty requests from producers for information,” says Chavez. “They seem to have realized that some law was eventually going to affect them, so there was some measure of acceptance.”

Chavez says that he expects other states to have right-to-know laws for agriculture soon, probably not through legislation as in Texas but through regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and other U.S. government agencies which will be extended to cover agriculture.

Commissioner Hightower has made the Right-to-Know program a priority because he thinks agriculture should stop and take a look at chemicals. “They are a habit and an expense,” says Hightower. “We should see if chemicals are warranted in terms of the long-run ecological effect.”

Freelance reporter Elaine Davenport divides her time between Austin, Texas, and London, England.

Changing of the Era in Mississippi
…A Southern Tragedy
By Ed Williams

Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, p. 10

I remember Ross Barnett as a wonderful phrase-maker. In those more trusting days, nobody thought that he might just be good at delivering phrases made by witty writers, as John Kennedy was then and Ronald Reagan is now.

Barnett was governor of Mississippi when I was a student at Ole Miss in the early 1960s. I can see him now, standing on tiptoes behind a lectern, head back, right arm stretched skyward, poised to swoop like a diving hawk as he pounded home his point. Even after he was out of office, he continued to give speeches around the state, talking about Teddy Kennedy (“that grrrrrreat driver, that grrrrrreat swimmer”) or the meddlesome federal government.

I still get a lot of laughs telling stories about ol’ Ross. There was the time, for instance, when some Parchman prison trustys assigned as servants at the governor’s mansion took off to Arkansas on an unauthorized trip that they obviously hoped would be one-way. Maybe they took the governor’s silver with them; I can’t recall.

Ross’s comment: “If you can’t trust a trusty, who can you trust?”

Then there was the time Ross had flown to make a campaign speech in the Delta. He got out of the small plane and walked into the propeller, which was, thank heavens, rotating slowly. When he came to in the hospital, Ross said he had learned that “the front end of an airplane is like the back end of a mule”–that is, you’ve got to watch both of them.

The islands of Quemoy and Matsu, off the China coast, figured in one of the debates between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon during the 1960 presidential campaign. The islands were controlled by the Chinese anti-communists in exile on Taiwan, and the mainland Chinese bombarded them during the late ’50s and occasionally in 1960.

Statehouse reporters asked ol’ Ross what he would do about Quemoy and Matsu. “I’d appoint ’em to the Game and Fish Commission,” he said.

Ross Barnett died recently at the age of 89. He had been a trial lawyer and a successful one, winning huge (for a poor state) verdicts in damage suits against power companies and other opponents with deep pockets. A friend of mine concluded that Barnett, the shrewd lawyer, had played the dumb ol’ country boy before so many juries that he had finally become a dumb ol’ country boy.

I don’t know whether that was true, but I know that when he had a chance to lead Mississippi into a better future he chose instead to embrace the bitter past.

People can sit around all night telling Ross Barnett stories and leave the impression that he was at worst a goodhearted, amiable buffoon, but that’s only part of the story. He was also a committed racist. He believed that blacks were inferior, that segregation was the will of God as well as the law of Mississippi. His rabble-rousing resistance to the idea that the Constitution applied in Mississippi provoked a bloody insurrection on the Ole Miss campus when federal officials tried to enroll James Meredith. Two people died in the riot. The next day, federal troops occupied the campus to end what I have always considered the last battle of the Civil War.

Barnett was a pleasant companion and in some ways a good and caring man. But he was an eager servant of the force that for centuries poisoned his region–racism.

Perhaps it seems unfair to blame political leaders such as Barnett, Orval Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama for reflecting the passions and prejudices of their time. To me, that is no defense. One measurement of excellence in political leaders is how well they grasp the important opportunities and help shape their times.

Remember, Ross Barnett was governor of Mississippi at the same time Terry Sanford was governor of North Carolina. The difference in the two men says a lot about the differences in the two states.

Ed Williams is editor of the Charlotte Observer‘s editorial pages, from which this article is reprinted.

…’Our Day Has Come’

By Staff

Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, p. 10-11

My fellow Mississippians: Our day has come, and what a glorious day it is.

This is our day of hope and destiny, and we are eager to be about our business. My speech will be brief–for the labor we have to do is long–and the future of this great state requires our deeds and not our words.

Yet, it is appropriate today to pause and think and talk about the journey we are beginning. For today marks not only the beginning of a new administration, but a new beginning for Mississippi.

This is, most of all, a time to speak of change and in these days and weeks and months and years ahead, it truly will be our time to do the work of change. We do not take up this challenge with an illusion that it will be easy or fast, that all the barriers which have blocked our progress will yield overnight. We know the struggle will be long and difficult. We bear the burdens of past shortcomings of promises unkept, of possibilities untapped, of dreams so long deferred, so often disappointed, that they almost seem to disappear.

Yet, now our people, in both parties, in every age, have risen up–to reach beyond things as they are, to renew the quest for what Mississippi can become. Our purpose yours’ and mine–is not to blame or look back in regret. Our, cause–yours and mine–is not to break with what is best in Mississippi, but at long last to fulfill it.

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Into that effort, we carry the blessings of this state–a magnificent heritage, an abundant land, an ideal location, and most of all a people as brave, as resilient, as honest and as hard-working as any in American history.

By all rights, Mississippi should be leading and not lagging. We have all had the faith that one day this would happen. We have been patient. We don’t have to be patient any more, for our day has come. That new day demands of us here, of all who hold public office, a new standard. Every dollar that is misspent, every resource that is misdirected, represents a road not built, a school book not bought, a police officer not hired, a sick child not healed. Integrity is more than an ideal–and the cost of corruption must be counted not only in broken laws, but also in human hurts and broken hopes.

A new day also demands a new and uncompromising drive for the very best in education. In the elementary and secondary schools of this state, in our colleges and universities, at this very moment students are reading and writing and being graded. In the quality of all those classrooms, our future is also being written; our prospects can be read; and there today, we are deciding whether Mississippi will make the grade tomorrow.

We will not have first-rate schools if we give them second-rate resources.

We will not advance economically if we are stalled educationally.

To any who say, “We cannot afford the price of better schools in Mississippi,” we reply: Mississippi can’t afford the cost of ignorance, illiteracy and wasted talent.

A new day in this state means a new prosperity for all our people. For too long, we’ve only talked the talk; now, we must truly walk the walk. And the path to our prosperity will be marked by the milestones of our own efforts.

What is at stake is more than our statistical standing or our material well-being. Opportunity is basic to human dignity; hope is basic to the human spirit. Good jobs with decent wages, with a chance for individuals to prove themselves and improve the standard of their life, is central to the character of our state and to the condition of our families. None of us, none of us, wants to see the next generation moving away, drifting out, looking for work far from home. All of us, all of us, want Mississippi to be a place to live in, and not a place to leave.

Finally, a new day depends fundamentally on our resolve to banish racism forever from the state of Mississippi. We know in our hearts that the chains of prejudice have bound more than one group: they have held us all back. A society divided against itself will not prosper. And we know from history and from our own lives the anguish and the frustration of racial injustice–and we can be proud that so many among us have given so much in the belief that we shall overcome.

We share the faith that we are each God’s children. After all the years, let us hear anew His truth that we are all brothers and sisters. That ideal is written into our laws, and now it must be woven into the fabric of our lives.

Mississippi is among the oldest states of the American union, the 20th to be admitted, almost a century and three-quarters ago. Long time and turmoil, great achievement and heartache, have passed since that date in 1817–and since my own ancestors moved to Choctaw County less than 20 years later. Mississippi has been tempered and tested; this land and its people have known hard passages and good times–and we have given much.

Long enough have we endured. Now it is our turn to lead. It is our turn to gather the strength that is in us, in our spirit and our yearnings, and claim our rightful share of the American promise.

In this endeavor, let us work together–legislature and governor, separate branches in common purpose, willing to put politics aside for the sake of progress. Those of us, legislative and executive, who were honored by election last year were not chosen to simply stay where we are. If that is all we do, we will have failed and have forfeited the confidence of those who voted for us. None of us believe we will fail.

My fellow Mississippians: To you, we promise a government equal to your hopes. From you, we ask involvement and a determination to hold this government to a higher standard. To our children, we promise to fulfill the future by giving our all to the present. And to my father, I promise I will do my best.

History is something that should be controlled and not controlling. We in our generation can make the history of Mississippi. We are affected by the stream of events in other places, in earlier eras. But, in the end, the only limitations we face are those we put on ourselves.

So let us welcome this new beginning with a prayer for strength, with a pride in our people and with the courage to do what is right.

Our day has come, so help us God.

This is the text of the recent inaugural speech of Ray Mabus, the new governor of Mississippi and a member of the Southern Regional Council.

Septima P. Clark 1898-1987

By Bill Steverson

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 12-16

I WAS BORN IN CHARLESTON, S.C., the same place where I am living now. My father was a slave on the Joel Poinsette plantation. He came out of slavery not feeling one bit of violence. I’m glad that he gave to me a lot of that, because I have never felt angry with the people who really shunned me or did any kind of thing to make me feel that I was not worthy of things that they enjoyed. I still have that feeling, however, that my life is a life that’s different from theirs, so I don’t have that hate in my heart and I’m sure that I’ll never have it anymore.

Now my mother was different. My mother was a strict disciplinarian. Her mother was part Indian, and there were three sets of children in her family. My father, too, had a number of children, but he was Joel Poinsette’s Great Fellow. He took the children to school; he stayed with them when the mother and father were having their fun. He saw to it that they were bathed and dressed, and he grew up loving those kids. I’m glad for him, because as I had to work, I felt that the nonviolence that he gave to all of us is worthwhile. My mother was raised in Haiti and came back here to South Carolina to live. She had an altogether different attitude from that of my father.

In South Carolina when I was around 18, I knew that there were no public schools for black children. The missionaries from Boston, Massachusetts, came down here and they started what we call Avery Institute, but it was not a public school. We had to pay. We only paid a dollar and a half, but the economy was such that my parents did not have that much money a month to pay for me to go to school. So I worked with a dressmaker across the street from where I lived at that time, and there I helped take care of her children while she sewed, and I worked at others in sewing, then I was able to go to Avery Institute with that dollar and a half she paid me every month I could get my work in high school.

Those people did an excellent job. We had things in the languages–Greek and Latin and French and Spanish along with the English and social studies. When we finished, we took an examination from the state, and after taking that, examinations in eleven different subjects, it made us qualified to go over on the island on the east coast of Charleston and teach. We couldn’t teach in the city of Charleston; segregation was at its height. And no black teacher could teach in the city of Charleston although we had a Menninger Normal School for whites and they had the same kind of training that we had for blacks. But they taught the black children as well as the whites, and we could not go to those schools; nor could we teach at all. That was the way it was 1910-1919.

No matter what you wanted to buy, you couldn’t try on a dress in any of those rooms in the stores. You had to go into a broom closet to try on whatever you wanted. And then when I got to the place where I would go down to the tax office to pay taxes on my house, I would have to stand back of the wall until every white person had paid and then I could pay my taxes. It was really something to think about. And on the street on which I lived, it was integrated-that is-there were German families, and Irish families and Italian families all on that street. And when we got our skates at Christmas time we couldn’t skate past their door. We had to go on the outside of the street to skate. That’s what we had to do. We really had real segregation.

IN 1919 I CAME FROM THE ISLANDS and felt, well, there was an artist here, Edwin Halston, who told us about a thing called the NAACP. I thought that was a good thing to join, and I did join. When I joined up, I heard about black teachers not being able to teach in the city of Charleston, so I took my class that I was teaching at Avery Normal Institute and went from door to door to see if black parents

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wanted their children to teach black children in the city of Charleston, and I found that they did, so we got their signatures, some of them on little pieces of paper bag. And after getting those signatures, we gave them to the president of State College in Orangeburg-Tommy Miller. He took them to the Legislature and in 1920 we got black teachers in the school, and in 1921, they got black principals in the schools in Charleston.

When I taught on the islands at that time, I had 132 children in my class and in my school. I was a teaching principal; there was one other teacher with me. We were paid $25 a month. We paid board out of that and taught the children as well. We had a schoolhouse with no indoor nor outdoor toilets. We had a bucket where we could get some water from somebody down the road from where we were. They did give us a board on the side of the wall painted black. We used that board to write our lessons on, and this is the way we taught. But you’d be suprised to know that I have a young man living there in New York who paddled across (to the island) to come to that school, and he is one of the highest paid lawyers in the United States.

During the (Depression) when we had no money whatsoever, and food was being given, the only thing the people could do was to be sure whatever ground they had in front of them and plant vegetables so that they could have some vegetables to grow and to eat. We really didn’t know what we could do about meat. I can remember standing in line for quite some time to get a can of hash. That can of hash would have to last a family all day long. I do know that we could buy-we didn’t call them hotdogs at that time, but sausage, and cut them into little pieces and with a plate of grits you were able to eat that little piece of sausage with a whole plate of grits. I can’t say we didn’t have any real troubles. On the islands, we didn’t have babies immunized. We had sixty-eight babies to die in a short time, and then after that we had people who suffered because they didn’t have vegetables and meats, and because of that, pellagra took over, and we lost a lot of people on account of pellagra. It was around the last part of the 1920s into the ’30s.

I WENT TO COLUMBIA in 1926 to work, and I worked there as a teacher for nineteen years. There I made a little bit more money. I got $62.50 a month and paid my board out of that.

We found that white teachers were being paid so much more money than black teachers. In fact, when I was on the island, the white teacher that had her school there across from the one where I was teaching, was getting $85 a month while both of us were getting just $50 a month. So when I went to Columbia, I thought it would be a good time to try to see if we couldn’t do something about equalization of teachers’ salaries.

I went (to Columbia) to teach the third (grade) at the C.A. Johnson High School. All grades were together at that school. And, I must say that I felt that the supervisor of that school-Mr. C.A. Johnson-was an excellent person. He came around monitoring the rooms, and when you failed to teach the children as he thought it should be done, he had two meetings a week: a professional meeting and a building meeting in that school. And so, we would be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays until around five o’clock listening to Mr. Johnson teach teachers how to teach. Sometimes it would be to figure addition for the little children; another time it might be social studies for the bigger ones. But whatever it was, that’s the way he worked.

But we still had segregation and we still had the unequal salaries. So Benedict College and Allen University had meetings, and with those meetings we learned something about the political side of life and what we needed to do to sit where we needed to sit on buses, to go into the restaurants and eat, to go into the five ten cent stores and be able to sit down and eat as well as buy toothpaste and other things. Those were the things that you couldn’t do. And the hospitals. We had a time with babies and hospitals. The black babies were really sort of discriminated against, but you know, there was a white doctor who came to some of those meetings to tell us how about how those black babies were suffering, and we were able through Dr. Manse (a black doctor), we started a hospital there. I can’t remember the name of the hospital now, but most of us gave something like fifty dollars apiece to get that hospital started. And in that way, we were able to get people to see the needs of a big city like Columbia, and get Columbia going so that we could have our rights.

Of course we walked at nights from one place to another with equalization of teachers’ salaries.

And Thurgood Marshall came down and we showed him our checks, and with those checks we went to the statehouse, and after a discussion of quite some time, they decided that the National Teachers’ Exam should be given and black teachers would then be able, after taking that test, to try to qualify to get the same type of salary. About forty-two of us decided that we would take the test. We took the test, and we made good. Salaries raised. They tripled, not doubled. ‘Cause from $62.50 it went up to $175 and I felt so wealthy that I decided I would go back (to Charleston). You know I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree then. I taught in the mornings and went to Allen and Benedict at night. And when I finished Benedict in ’42, I went to Hampton and got a degree in’46.

IN JANUARY 19,1957, the South Carolina Legislature passed a law that no city or state employee could be a member of the NAACP. The Clarendon County teachers decided they would say that yes, they were members. Most of our teachers wouldn’t say yes. Forty-one teachers in Clarendon County decided they were members of the NAACP and because they said “yes” they were hauled to Charleston and Anthony Williams was the judge and he claimed that we did not-he did not have enough facts in the case-so he closed that thing down that day. When he did that, the next day the Legislature opened up and said, “Change the wording from ‘no city or state employee could be a member of the NAACP to list your affiliations’.” And those who listed their affiliations were dismissed also.

They took away my job and my pension and everything. Over my name went 726 letters to black teachers, and those black teachers were afraid, of course. And they had to be, because about 169 teachers came from Virginia and Washington to get our jobs. But you know the people in Clarendon County refused to board them. Anyway, they sent me a letter June 8,1956, that I could not teach in Charleston any

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longer, so I couldn’t. That’s when I went to Highlander Folk School.

I had put in money in my retirement pension-the letter’s right there-but I could not get them to say that I should have my retirement. Four per cent of my monthly money had to go to the retirement, and when I received an award down in Miami, in 1975, the Governor of South Carolina then decided I should have some of my money, and also he sent me a letter with $3,600. Later on, in 1981-25 years afterwards-they sent me a part of my money. They owed me $72,000. ‘Cause it’s $5,000 a year, and they owed me $72,000 but they wouldn’t give it to me. They gave me $20,000. It was good because I was able to pay the mortgage off on my house. Right now I’m working for my current pension. I’m supposed to get $5,000 a year until I die, but I haven’t gotten it. I’m still working on it-I’ve got some people working on it now. I never did get back to teach any more in South Carolina, but I was a member of the School Board for eight years.

When we went down to the hearing at that courthouse, Judge (J. Waites) Waring was the (federal) judge here. When we down to that hearing, some of those white people didn’t want us to sit in the seats, and Judge Waring said “Why they’re the people that are supposed to sit in those seats. They’re being tried.” Then we sat on those seats.

Judge Waring played a great part in South Carolina. One night we had a testimonial for him after he opened the Democratic Party, and he said that night that you know a judge has to live with his conscience. Judge Waring said, “I have to live with my conscience and I can see white fellows that I know are bums come into that court and being treated like first class gentlemen, and I see black people come into that court who I know are great men, and they’re treated like bums. I couldn’t bear to see that go on.”

Of course, you know he was terribly harassed. His wife was going to speak at the YWCA. That night some white men surrounded the house and took pieces of cement and threw through her window. She was sitting on the couch, but they didn’t hit her, thank goodness. Another time he had to have guards when he went to the barber to get his hair cut; men had to stand on both sides of him. Mrs. Waring went on Broad Street to get a paper written and the woman refused, she decided that she couldn’t do it for her. And then she invited some people to a tea at her house, and they had some people coming all the way in here from Florida, but the black people in Charleston were afraid, and they wouldn’t go. Just a few of us. Mrs. Waring differed from Judge Waring. She called them decadent and low-down when she spoke at the YWCA. She really blessed them out, but he never would do a thing like that. He just said to the reporters, now here are the papers, if you want something to print, here it is.

HIGHLANDER FOLK SCHOOL was really a school for problems. People were afraid of Highlander, but Highlander did an excellent job getting attitudes to change and making social change as we went along. I went in 1954. I felt very good about the Highlander Folk School, and then I felt that I would try to get some of the people off the islands to come to the Highlander Folk School. While up there, we got them to meet northern whites and southern whites, northern blacks and southern blacks. They slept in the same room. They washed dishes together, and held their conferences in the library together.

Esau Jenkins was one of the fellows. He decided it would be good if he could come back home and get his people registered to vote, so they could have a better life on the islands-on Johns Island in particular at that time. And so, that’s what they did. We didn’t have a place. A minister wouldn’t let us have any meetings in their churches-they were too afraid. So we bought a building with the help of some people in the north; they sent us some money through the Highlander Folk School through Myles Horton (founder and director of the school) to buy a building. We started the Citizenship School there. We found out that they didn’t want teachers who were certified teachers to teach them, so we found people who could read well aloud and write legibly to teach in those schools.

WE DIDN’T HAVE STORES over on the islands, so we had to teach them how to fill out applications, how to write out money orders for things that they wanted. Some wanted to read the Bible-those who were living on plantations and having those Wednesday night meetings. There were others who wanted to read the newspaper. And those are the kinds of things that we did. We listened to them, and so we found out just what they needed, what they wanted. We worked on that, ’cause when we found out when they learned a word from the paper they could use it with the Bible, they could use it in other ways. That’s the kind of thing that we did.

Then the Marshall Field Foundation came in and they gave us some money and we were able to get people together. When it was a busy time for them on the farm, we paid them to come to school at nights. And when we paid them to come to school, it was surprising to see them feeling so good about being able to buy a new pair of jeans, or whatever they could. [This was on Johns Island]. The teaching-we started with thirty-seven women in 1957, and then when we were teaching them for three months, we were able to get them to come to Charleston to go up to try to register to vote. But you know South Carolina had that silly law where they had to read and say “I am not guilty of miscegenation, wife beating, larceny or anything against the election laws.” Now when they could read that, they could get a registration certificate. And when we were able to get through quickly, Esau taught them in the buses when he brought them over to the places. The men worked at

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nights on the wharf and so the women in turn had to teach their husbands how to memorize that part of the election laws. That’s the way we did it.

Anyway, after we were able to get them to say that, the law was changed. Well, the Voting Rights Bill came and they did not have to read that section of the election law. I don’t know if you know it: Georgia had thirty questions and they had to answer twenty-four of those correctly. Louisiana had twenty-four questions, and one question was “I am not the father of an illegitimate child.” Even though she was a woman she had to say that. All of those things have been wiped out with the Voting Rights Bill in 1965.

Alabama-it’s real funny. We had a man with a Ph.D. there, teaching at that Tuskegee, and he was teaching there and he could not answer that registrar. The question was, what is a thief? And he never could tell that man what is a thief. He found out when he came to Highlander that he should have said: “A thief is a nigger that steals.” As long as he did not say that, he could not get a registration certificate, although he was a Ph.D. fellow.

In Mississippi we had twenty-four questions that they had to answer, and then there were questions after that that were given by the registrars. Those questions-they wanted to know how-something about living in Mississippi. As long as they couldn’t tell how well off they were in the state of Mississippi, they could not get a registration certificate. But you know, it’s suprising, after the Voting Rights Bill when they didn’t have to do all of that, Mississippi sent the first black man to its Legislature, by the name of Robert Clark.

HIGHLANDER WAS CLOSED DOWN in 1959. I was arrested, you know, in August of 1959. They had a court trial-teaching an integrated group. They really said I was serving whiskey but they found out that I was teaching-it was against the laws of the state of Tennessee to teach an integrated group. I had sixty blacks and twelve whites in class, and Myles (Horton) was in Monaco at the time, taking this American citizenship education over there, and these people didn’t like it, so they surrounded us one night when we were having a workshop. They surrounded the school house, and we were showing a film that I had from the Southern Regional Council-“The Face of the South”-and it was telling how the Southern people failed to give black children education and the like.

They came in. They wanted to know, where’s Septima Clark. I said: “Here I am.” They put me in a car. The moving picture was still going on. The man told some of the people to turn it off, and they said, well, you have arrested Septima Clark and we don’t know how to work this machine, so they just jerked it out of the wall. Those people started (singing) “we will overcome.” Two or three white boys were there at that time, and one started strumming on a guitar, and they put all three of them in that car with me. When we got to the jail, I asked them if I could make a phone call. I was gonna call a lawyer in Nashville, but they said “No.” I said that I know I have the right to make one phone call, but they wouldn’t let me make it. About two o’clock that morning, two white missionaries came to take me out. When they came, they would not let them use a check. They had to get cash money. And Esau said it was suprising to know that those people all came together and found $500.

THE FIRST TIME I MET Martin Luther King was in 1957 when we had that 25th Anniversary [Highlander had been founded in 1932.] Mrs. Roosevelt came too. So Dr. King and Mrs. Roosevelt and a fellow from North Carolina- the fellow that did the evaluation of my book, Echo In My Soul, he came at that time too.

I thought well of (King). He spoke so well for a young man, and I was very happy to hear him talk about this nonviolence that he found was so great. That’s when he talked about (how) the South is going to really go ahead of the North, and that integration and registration and one other kind of -gration he says, with laborization, was going to be the things that would help the South to become the kind of thing-I always felt that the South would out do the North too. At that meeting, we had a black fellow to come from New York who was related with the communists. We had another white fellow to come in on the bus who was also related with the communists. And when Dr. King and those left they put those great big billboards on the road, and under that, they put “Communist Training School.” Put them all up through Tennessee-from Georgia to Tennessee. I can’t figure that man’s name that came, but…this was a white fellow that was working with the governor in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time.

Right after the hearing-after we had that court trial- the school was closed down, but we stayed on there and we worked right there. We had a big workshop of people from the foothills of Missouri. Lots of them were afraid, but they came. Then we had some people from the Appalachians we were trying to get to do something about milk…and their section at the time. They became afraid so they left, but the black people came on, and then we started our schools throughout. We started workshops, and we started schools in the eleven deep South states.

Rev. (Ralph) Abernathy’s wife gathered together quite a number of women who came from the (Montgomery) Improvement Association. I can’t think of quite a few of those ministers’ names who came up one night, but we had lots of big workshops-fifty or more at a time would come, and when they came up, we talked about the government under which they were living and tried to get them to see that they needed to change the kind of government that they had so that things would be better. That’s when we started branching into those various states, and starting affiliate groups

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throughout the eleven deep South states, and also starting the schools-teaching them to read and write. You know in some places they had to write their name in cursive writing [in order to vote].

IN 1957 I HAD A LETTER from Mrs. (Virginia) Durr telling me about Rosa Parks. She wanted to know if Rosa Parks could come to the Highlander Folk School, and would we be able to send for her so that she could come free of charge. So, we sent her money to ride on the bus, and also money to eat on the way, as she was coming. I was really impressed with this woman. She kept the faith, saying, she had no qualms whatsoever about being arrested because she would not give up her seat to a white man who came into the bus after she had been seated. And so, she was arrested. And after being arrested, fingerprinted, and Mr. Nixon from Montgomery went down there and took her out.

At the Fiftieth Anniversary (of the Highlander Center) she was there in Tennessee. So. Rosa Parks turned a lot of things around from refusing to give that seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Well, it has been good to know her.

IN COLUMBIA, S.C., WHEN I was teaching there, there was a woman named Fleming who got on that bus and refused to go to the back. And that bus driver thought that he was going to be very much of a hoodlum, I guess, and he was going to put her off that bus, but she fought back. Of course, we had quite a case there with Fleming and that bus driver, but that wasn’t the first time for South Carolina. I was on that bus on one of the main streets and a white man pulled the coat off of a black man because he was getting in the bus ahead of him. You know what I did, I rode all the way down to the bus station that day, and I told them that this man had paid his fare just like that other fellow, and he didn’t have to wait for a man. He could wait for women, but he didn’t have to wait for a man to get on the bus. He could get on the bus in front of a man, and he couldn’t understand why that man had that kind of feeling.

They brought in a man from Atlanta who spoke to us and got us stirred up about that thing. I can’t think of his name now but he was over there at one of those universities, and we all became concerned, and we decided that we were not going to let anybody tell us where to sit on those buses. We didn’t get any result until the Rosa Parks affair, we really didn’t get any results. We always had somebody fighting.

(Many people in South Carolina) didn’t think about using the courts. They were going try to do it themselves- violently. That’s when we had a number of meetings at Benedict College, with Herman Long, and a number of meetings when Thurgood Marshall came down. Those are the kinds of things that we did, but we really didn’t feel as if we could do any nonviolent work at all. We were going to fight that thing out ourselves. But we didn’t have success, because over and over again those things were happening- you know-fussing and fighting on buses. We weren’t going to sit to the back if we didn’t have to.

We didn’t feel as if we could listen to the people who were really feeling that they had to work nonviolently. We didn’t feel that way. Not only Columbia, but I know we had the same thing in Atlanta with Stokely Carmichael. He didn’t feel as if we needed to work nonviolently. Dr. King had him at his house one Sunday afternoon and then that Monday I had him and he brought six boys and I fed them all at a restaurant there on Auburn Avenue, but he still didn’t feel as if we should be nonviolent. So, he took me home that night and he told me that, “Miss Clark, I’m not gonna let anybody hurt you. But I’m not going to feel that Dr. King has the right idea.” And I said, “Do you think its well to have boys to knock out the windows of the merchants on the street?” He said, “Well, if they don’t do right, we just have to do that.” Anyway, he left us and he went to England, and I happened (in 1972) to go to Washington and when I got into that Martin Luther King Center there, he was speaking. He saw me coming in the door, and he said, “Here comes the lady who helped me to be nonviolent.”

But you know he came here two years ago, and I bet you 600 policemen surrounded that church in front of that Piggly Wiggly. They’re still afraid of Stokeley Carmichael. Nevertheless, Stokeley spoke that night, and I said everybody else could take over the city because the policemen were all there.

We had numbers of people who didn’t feel as if nonviolence was the thing. They really didn’t. They thought you were foolish to be non-violent. Stokeley thought so, too. He thought I was foolish to try to tell them not to fight. They were going to fight.

THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET (change) to happen is to get the people to see things like you see them. If you don’t get them to organize themselves within and see what’s happening to them, you don’t get anything done. Don’t try it by yourself. See how many people you can get to realize what you would like to have done, and this is the way you can get change.

When I first started, I thought that I would be able to just tell people (to change). I thought I could tell teachers that you just tell the people that you’re going to be a member of the NAACP and that would solve the problem. It didn’t happen that way. They didn’t have that same feeling, so they wouldn’t do it that way. When we got them, got all of the illiterate people ready to register and vote, then we were able to let them see how far behind they were with jobs, how far they were behind with money, and how far they were behind with everything else. That was the way we got them to come together. If change is to come, we’ve got to get groups together who think about the things that need to be done, otherwise you don’t get change to come.

Septima Poinsette Clark died December 15, 1987, at a nursing home on John’s Island, S.C. She was 89 years old, and during her long, productive life had been involved in many of the most significant civil rights struggles of the century. Her words below are excerpted from an interview recorded in 1983 by Worth Long and Randall Williams for the Southern Regional Council’s Civil Rights Radio Documentaries Project.

Edited by BILL STEVERSON

Increasing Worker Participation Is Essential to Economic Growth

By Staff

Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, pp. 18-19

The 1987 annual meeting of the Southern Regional Council was organized as a conference on Unheard Voices: Worker Participation in the South’s: Economy. Participants included men and women from all parts of the region, with diverse backgrounds in labor, law, activism, day care, economic development, government, finance, agriculture and other fields. At the conclusion of the conference, the statement below was adopted. Following the statement are excerpts from the remarks of selected participants.

CONFERENCE STATEMENT

Increasing the participation of workers in decisions at their own workplace and in the economic policies of their own region and country is essential if the South and the nation are to realize future economic prosperity. Worker participation can take many forms–cooperatives, unions, worker-owned businesses, community development cooperations, community- based enterprises, worker-controlled pension funds and others. All are valid so long as the voices of those who work are genuinely heard in the decisions about the workplace, wages, and the governing economic policies.

We believe that a country dedicated to democracy in its government cannot function efficiently and equitably with authoritarianism in its workplace.

Increased worker participation helps to improve productivity, preserve jobs, improve wages, and increase the opportunity for economic gain by all. While these benefits are not the consequences of increased worker participation alone, they cannot be accomplished in the future in the South or in the nation without it.

By almost every reliable standard, United States industries have fallen behind as technology and the international economy have become more prevalent. Some parts of the South, especially, have declined in jobs and wages due to these trends. To reverse these developments–to increase productivity and global competitiveness–investments in human capital must become much more important in economic policy and at the workplace, and workers’ voices must be reflected in the decision-making. Competitiveness–productivity, quality, flexibility, and innovation–in a worldwide economy depends on well-educated, well-trained people. Developed people are an almost unlimited asset; underdeveloped people are a serious liability.

Our future lies in recognizing this simple truth and in coming to grips with its implications. Over the next thirty years the nation’s and the South’s workforce will change as much as the workplace. Demographic trends strongly suggest that within three decades racial minorities will constitute as much as 40 percent of the workforce in the United States and probably more in the South. Similarly, the role of women will continue to increase in the economy. Together, women and racial minorities will be the vast majority of Southern workers in the early part of the next century. In the past, these groups have been the least educated, the least trained, and the least well-paid. Today, they continue to be the victims of private and governmental discrimination. Tomorrow, however, their work will determine the future of our regional and national economy.

Another important consideration influences our reassessment. If ever it was true, no longer in this country is there a direct, necessary connection between what is good for an “American” company and what is good for American communities and its workers. The existence of transnational corporations operating from the United States across the globe means, simply, that the profit motive at these companies may often direct resources, jobs, and investments in ways that are not in our national interest. This phenomenon requires international and national policies that protect the interest of American communities by promoting the participation of workers in decision-making and establishing minimal global workplace standards.

To achieve the benefits of greater worker participation, we believe the following changes in policies and practices are vital:

~ The United States government should seek enforceable minimal international labor standards that protect workers and promote human development just as it now seeks international trade agreements.

~ The federal and state governments should develop a system of lifelong education and training to foster improved worker skills and to invest in human development. In its universal application to job training, housing, and education, the system could be generally modeled after the G.I. Bill.

~ The federal and state governments should adopt policies that provide more equitable sharing of the benefits

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and costs of economic change. Employers should be required to give adequate notice of plant closings and large scale layoffs. Workers should be guaranteed notice of and protection from hazardous materials in the workplace.

~ National and state investment banks should be created to meet important economic needs that promote job creation, job retention and improved wages–needs that are not now sufficiently met by private credit markets. These banks should support valid forms of worker participation.

~ The federal government should provide legislation guaranteeing workers greater direct control of their own pension funds.

~ The federal government should improve the usefulness of federal laws relating to the voting rights of employees in stock ownership plans. It should also encourage more directly worker ownership through taxes, law, and funding.

~ The federal and state governments should spur the development of worker cooperatives and community development corporations and improve the laws requiring reinvestment by financial institutions and insurance companies into local communities and enterprises with valid worker participation.

~ The federal and state governments should affirmatively adopt and implement effective laws removing all forms of racism and sexism from the workplace.

~ The National Labor Relations Act should be strengthened to protect the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively and to streamline the procedures permitting representation elections and prohibiting unfair labor practices. The Act also needs to be revamped to accommodate the growth of service and information industries.

~ The federal government should increase the minimum wage of the Fair Labor Standards Act so that the wage is at least half of the average wage in this country.

These changes will not solve all problems of the South’s future economy; however, they will give a meaningful voice to workers and go further than other efforts to help assure future prosperity for all citizens and communities.

Community Development Corporations

By Carol Lamm

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 19-20

Over the years, MACED has worked at economic development from many angles. We began by providing technical assistance to worker cooperatives and then went on to work with locally owned private businesses. We did our first policy work in the late 1970s when we convinced the state of Kentucky that there was more to economic development than branch plant attraction. Back then we helped state officials design a loan fund for small businesses. We have worked with bankers to make mortgages more available to moderate income families. We have a couple of for-profit subsidiaries now that invest in businesses, mostly forest product industries, where we concentrate our technical assistance.

A couple of years ago, MACED decided that we could not continue to put all our eggs in the diversification basket, that is, into looking for ways to get around the coal industry. We began to do some research and policy advocacy on ways to make the coal industry itself have a more developmental impact on the region.

Our most recent project involves grassroots education as we assist an organization in Kentucky’s fifth congressional district which has the lowest percentage of high school graduates among its adult population of any congressional district in the country. Over the past year we have started or worked with seventeen affiliates in the district’s twenty seven counties.

When I step back from this recitation of activities and ask, “What have we learned that I can share today?” I came up with three major areas.

First of all, we have learned that economic development is more than job creation. Ken Johnson spoke yesterday about the limits of counting jobs as a measure of progress. He pointed out that the ways wages are earned and the distribution of wages are other important measures. Whenever a region’s economy can serve moderate and low income people better, that is economic development. Sometimes economic development can mean new and better jobs for people. But, economic development can also mean better housing, schools, and medical care. There are a number of ways to make the economy work better for people besides job creation, critical though that is.

A second lesson recognizes the importance of doing something, then thinking about it, then doing the next project based on what you figured out. This sounds so obvious, but I have seen community organizations, to say nothing of state government agencies, that skipped the thinking part, or constrained their evaluations in such narrow ways that their question became, “Did we send out as many brochures as we said we would?” One of the most satisfying aspects and exciting things about working for MACED is the way that we repeatedly step back and look at the results in the light of bigger goals. We keep getting new insights into what might work.

Let me tell you a little bit of how we looked at forest products when we started out about twelve years ago.

There are hundreds of small sawmills in eastern Kentucky. They are very important in the economy for the low income people who are employed in them and in logging. So we began providing technical assistance to existing sawmills. Then, we stepped back from that and said, “Well this

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is not really having the effect that we would like to have. It is not creating new activity. Let’s start working with sawmill startups.” So we did that through financial and technical assistance. Then we stepped back and said, “This is not getting us to very many people. What can we do that will give us a lever on this forest products industry and, actually make a significant difference?”

We saw that each of these little sawmills had marketing problems. They were so small that they could not accumulate enough lumber to sell in certain markets, even if they knew where they were. They were selling high quality hardwoods to be made into pallets because they could not get together enough of them to sell to a major buyer. So we established a lumber yard and sawmill that was big enough for the export market. This had an impact on many sawmills in the area. They now had a steadier market than before.

Our ability to act and reflect points to a special role that Community Development Corporations can play in state policy-making, too. Because we are small and energetic organizations, CDC’s can try out different approaches and get some feel for their relative success while the state bureaucracy is still waking up to the thought that a new direction is in order.

Part of thinking involves choosing issues opportunistically, strategically.

We looked the housing situation over for several years, looking at the reasons given for the dearth of housing starts and the prevalence of sub-standard housing, even among middle-income families in the mountains. We chose a housing issue upon which we could make a difference. We concluded that one problem lay in the kind of mortgages that were available. Banks were offering ten- to fifteen-year variable-rate mortgages with from twenty-five to thirty-three percent down payments, minimum. The thirty-year fixed-rate, five-percent down mortgages that were widely available throughout the US, simply weren’t to be had in eastern Kentucky.

In the rest of the country, banks had figured out ways to sell their long term mortgages to buyers who wanted long term fixed rate investments through secondary mortgage market mechanisms. In eastern Kentucky, bankers weren’t familiar with those mechanisms, and there existed a handful of regulations that made secondary mortgage marketing difficult in rural areas.

MACED organized a consortium of ninety-four out of the 102 bankers in eastern Kentucky. We negotiated the necessary changes with one of the secondary mortgage market outfits that was receptive, and we organized training sessions with the bankers. They then were able to make loans that they could sell in the secondary mortgage market. We also put together two bond issues that together raised $46 million for low-interest rate mortgages and used some innovative financing that made the mortgages available to considerably lower income families than would have qualified otherwise.

We chose that point of intervention very strategically to make a difference.

For the last nine years I have worked for MACED, the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development. From an office in Berea, Kentucky, MACED works in the central Appalachian Mountains.

Starting a Worker Owned Cooperative

By Frank Adams

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, pp. 20-22

There are a variety of reasons for starting a worker cooperative. They include workers’ desires to own and work in a business where human values are of equal importance to productivity and profits, an owner’s decision to retire or sell an existing business, the threat of a plant closing, or a community’s determination to help create jobs by starting a new business. Whatever the reasons for starting a worker cooperative, there are several steps which can be taken to increase the probability of success.

Most new businesses, including worker-owned cooperatives, typically develop through four phases:

Organizing. A three to six-month period in which the decision to organize is made.

Startup. A phase that usually lasts for six months in which the basic business strategy is tested.

Growth. A phase that may last for several years in which the markets are expanded, management techniques and governance systems are refined, production techniques are altered as dictated by experience, and the workforce is expanded.

Consolidation. The phase in which the worker-owners assess their experience in reaching the targeted growth and develop the firm’s goals and strategies for the next three to five years.

During the organizing phase prospective worker-owners

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must decide whether they really want to establish a worker cooperative. If, for whatever reason, you are thinking of forming a worker-owned, democratically controlled business, either to produce goods or provide services, you must ask yourselves some hard questions about your motivation and the risks involved.

Are your reasons for wanting to start a worker-owned business sound? Do you and your prospective fellow owners share a common understanding and enthusiasm for the venture? Do you have a viable business idea or concept? Is there a market for your proposed product or service? If so, is the market growing or shrinking?

Are you knowledgeable about the various legal and organizational forms which can be used to set up a democratic workplace? Is a worker cooperative the type of business you want to set up? What about finances? Do you have sufficient money to start or buy a business? How much money will have to come out of your own pockets and where can you obtain the rest?

Worker cooperatives are for-profit businesses in which only the firm’s employees can be owners, usually after a probationary period. Worker cooperatives are somewhat different from consumer and agricultural producer cooperatives. Consumer cooperatives are owned and controlled by their patrons (customers) who want to purchase high quality groceries at reasonable prices and obtain cost savings on other consumer goods. Producer cooperatives are primarily supply and marketing cooperatives created by independent farmers to purchase farm supplies or process and market their products. Neither type is owned or controlled by its employees, and neither type sees worker ownership and workplace democracy as its primary objectives.

Worker cooperatives are usually started by more than one person. The organizing group, or steering committee, understands and accepts the basic tenets of workplace democracy:

~ Every worker-owner owns one membership share which entitles him/her to vote in the election of a board of directors and to participate in self-governance;

~ All worker-owners contribute both labor and capital; No one outside the firm can be an owner. Profits earned or losses sustained are allocated to worker-owners according to hours worked, gross pay, or both;

~ Wages vary according to skill and seniority, but usually the range between the highest and lowest paid workers and managers does not exceed a ratio of 5:1. This fosters the well-being of the entire group and insures that a few do not get rich in comparison with, or at the expense of, the lower paid workers.

Reading and agreeing with these tenets is easy, but putting them into practice in a business is tough. The fundamentals of worker-ownership are almost self-defining, but because most workers have had little or no experience owning or managing their workplace, putting these principles into practice requires experimentation, patience, and attention to fairness.

In order to fully understand worker cooperatives, it is necessary to talk about the relationship of money and ownership to employees and workers. Money is needed to organize a worker with materials and a place to work, to meet the expenses of daily operation, and to use when the going gets tough or business recessions occur. Whoever puts up the money to start the business becomes an owner and holds equity in the enterprise. These investors take the financial risks and earn the financial rewards of entrepreneurship.

In a traditional for-profit capitalist corporation, the degree of control is directly related to the equity held by the individual investor. Investors do not have to work in the business to exercise the rights of control. Dividends on the net profits of the business are paid out to the stockholders according to the size of their equity investment as denominated in the number of shares they own.

Unlike traditional capitalist corporations, worker cooperatives give workers control of the business on a one person-one vote basis without regard to their level of equity except for the membership fee paid by each worker-member upon joining. The membership fee is a capital contribution equal to the contribution of every other member, which puts the new member at equal risk with fellow worker-owners. The balance sheet of a worker cooperative differs in several

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ways from a traditional firm where capital controls labor. In a pure labor-managed cooperative only workers are shareholders, and each owns only one share of stock. A member’s one share of stock is divided into two parts, political and economic rights, which have differing but related functions. First, a worker-member’s share of stock insures a right to vote, certain other membership rights, and the right to a share of any profit or loss. These constitute the political rights of worker-ownership. Second, a share of stock assigns the net worth of the cooperative’s assets to a system of internal capital accounts. An account is established for each member-worker. The initial balance in these accounts is the membership or equity contribution made by each member upon joining the cooperative. These internal accounts are the repository of the economic rights of the worker-owners. They derive from the contribution of labor, not the purchase of stock shares.

The worker cooperative system of internal accounts generates internal debt capital for expansion and modernization, creates reserves against recessions, and provides worker-members with a share of equity.

It is largely through the internal, individual accounts system that a worker cooperative raises the owner’s share of risk capital to start a business and generates the internal debt capital to run a business. The internal accounts also help effectuate the principles of workplace democracy.

Another unique feature of work cooperatives is their policy of employment security. They make every effort to keep their members employed even during economic downturns. In a conventional capitalist firm, workers directly involved in the production of goods and services are assumed to be expendable. They can be hired and fired as demand warrants. Direct labor is determined by production, which is a function of sales and the desired level of inventory investment. If sales decline, workers are laid off or dismissed so that inventory does not build up too high.

In a worker cooperative these relationships are reversed. After a probationary period workers are either accepted into membership or rejected from membership and terminated. Thus the amount of labor is fixed, at least in the short run. Since the number of workers (and the labor available) determines production, in order to match production with sales it is necessary to adjust inventories upward or reduce prices of products or services to maintain sales volume during economic downturns.

During business downturns or recessions worker cooperatives use a variety of techniques to maintain employment levels and prevent layoffs. Worksharing, aggressive sales efforts including reductions in prices, and ultimately shared reductions in income, may be used as part of the strategy of balancing the production and sales equation.

Placing people ahead of profits in a worker cooperative increases the importance of the planning process and of maintaining a flexible workforce; it also accentuates the need for good management. These are the same employment security principles which have used so successfully during the past two decades by a few enlightened American firms, and by the Basque worker cooperatives in Spain.

Frank Adams is author of Putting Democracy to Work, a practical guide to worker cooperatives.