Welfare Reform: States Race to the Bottom

Staff

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 1-2

With the election season looming, and both Clinton and the Congress positioning on the welfare reform debate, agreement on a welfare reform package is now considered unlikely this year. But the real action is already taking place in the states.

President Clinton vetoed the exceptionally callous welfare reform legislation supplied by Congress in January. But unless the election reverses the heartless mood in Washington, control over programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) will be handed over to the states through block grants. This fundamental shift in government policy will be devastating for the more than thirteen million Americans who receive aid, 8.8 million of whom are children.

Absent federal action, states are already racing each other to pass regressive measures–restricting benefits and limiting eligibility. Although in many cases the state reforms are less restrictive than the vetoed federal bill, more than forty states have instituted time limits, work requirements, and family caps. Waivers, now in place in more than thirty-five state, allow states to avoid compliance with existing federal regulations.

In some instances, states have sought waivers to implement favorable changes, lifting thresholds on the value of a car of home owned by the applicant, for example. Child care assistance for working parents, a necessity to bridge the transition from welfare to work, has been included in state legislation. But , when available, child care is routinely underfunded, covering far fewer families than need aid. An effective program will

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cost more, not less, as noted in the Texas article below.

Federal block grants, with drastic funding cuts, will open the way to undermine monthly benefit levels, already at rock bottom. State governors are supporting the move to block grants, agreeing to roughly 25 percent reductions in welfare spending in exchange for greater control over shrinking resources. While military budgets are largely untouched, at more than 54 percent of budget outlays, the welfare reform proposals, which are liable to be resurrected in some form, these opinion pieces were distributed under the umbrella of the American Forum, a national clearinghouse for editorial opinion, organized in twelve Southern states, which provides views of state experts on major public issues. Copyrighted by the respective state forums, they are edited slightly to be as up to date as possible, and reprinted there with permission.

Texas: Fundamentally Flawed

By Patrick Bresette

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 2-3

The powerful impetus in Congress to reform this nation’s welfare programs has rapidly degenerated into little more than an ideological contest, but one likely to yield disastrous consequences. Divorced from reality, ignoring current research, and focusing on all the wrong issues, Congress aims to implement welfare reform that would create vast inequities among the states and provide little meaningful change.

The stated goal of welfare reform is simple enough–to convert welfare into a stepping stone to economic independence and self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, what has become lost in the current debate is the program’s original intent–protecting disadvantaged children. The proposals being considered dismantle the current system without putting something better in place. These measures would likely push millions of poor families deeper into poverty.

In Texas, poor women and children will be the ulti-

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mate victims of what has become a cynical display of overheated rhetoric versus reality. Instead of presenting a workplace plan during debate on welfare proposals, Senators joined House members in bickering over assistance to teen mothers and their children. It is a side issue–less than 5 percent of Texas welfare mothers are under age nineteen. Meanwhile, lawmakers have ignored the crucial problem of helping welfare mothers become economically independent.

Under the vetoed federal proposal, likely to be recycled, Texas would have fared worse than many other states. Texas would initially receive about four hundred dollars per poor child annually, while thirty other states would receive more than one thousand dollars per poor child.

Despite well-publicized compromises on a formula to allocate federal welfare funds, little was done to address this unfair distribution. Characterized by its creators as “equitable and dynamic,” this formula is neither.

While Texas would have qualified for a small “growth state” allotment, the slight increase would still leave the state perpetually below the national average of federal funding per poor child. Even more sobering is the inability of this “dynamic” formula to keep pace with inflation and projected population growth. And, it would do nothing to offset millions of dollars in cuts that Texas will experience in food and nutrition services, programs that serve abused and neglected children, and services for children with disabilities.

Most welfare reform proposals also require dramatic increases in mandatory work programs for AFDC recipients, while providing inadequate resources for those services. In Texas, reforms could double or even triple the number of welfare mothers currently in work programs with nearly 20 percent less funds to run the program.

And while many have applauded the inclusion of child care funding, the congressional proposal included only half of that needed to match the increased work requirements. Such a plan could force Texas to provide child care for as many as fifty thousand additional children by the year 2000.

Any meaningful welfare reform should include an emphasis on work and training, but all current research clearly indicates that increasing these efforts will take time, innovation, adequate child care and more money–not less. The work and child care provisions of the proposal were so underfunded that the Congressional Budget Office predicted thirty-five to forty states would be unable to meet these new work requirements.

The welfare reform proposals are fundamentally flawed. Focused primarily on budget cutting, they shift responsibilities to the states with unrealistic expectations and inadequate resources. They would distribute funding in a manner that values poor children differently from state to state and ignores real reforms in education and training that could help welfare families become self-supporting.

Congress has shirked the courage and leadership necessary to face the real and difficult realities of overhauling welfare.

Patrick Bresette is associate director of the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin, Texas, a not-for-profit research and policy analysis organization focusing on programs that impact children and families. The article was prepared for the Texas Lone Star Forum

Arkansas: Flexibility for Failure

By Richard Huddleston

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 3-5

Courtesy of the Republican-controlled Congress, welfare reform block grants will soon be coming to Arkansas and other states. States will have unprecedented flexibility to set eligibility criteria, choose funding levels, and set program priorities.

One common feature of these new block grant programs: states are not required to run their own programs.

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Instead, the states can turn them over to local jurisdictions. They would also permit private companies, non-profits, and charitable or religious organizations to run welfare programs. Ideally, such flexibility could enable states to experiment and redesign programs to better serve local needs. In reality, neither states nor local jurisdictions are equipped to shoulder these new responsibilities.

Under these plans, Arkansas, like other states, in-stead of the federal government, would now be deciding who is eligible for assistance. The state could establish criteria to encourage, for example, two-parent families or better assist grandparents raising their grandchildren. It would also be able to offer new incentives for participants to seek and hold onto jobs, such as not counting any income earned during the first year or so of a new job or penalizing recipients for saving assets.

Conversely, the state could define eligibility so tightly that much of its case load disappears. Provisions of the block grants allow the state to limit how long families can receive welfare, subject, for example, to a sixty-month maximum. An extremely short time period would have a devastating impact on the poorest of the poor–those who are the least employable.

The block grant proposals would also give Arkansas wide latitude in determining how much it wants to spend on welfare. Although the block grants will freeze federal funding for welfare, the state is not obligated to make up the difference.

Under the vetoed congressional plan, the state was required to spend only 75 percent of its average annual expenditure. As an incentive to spend at least that much, for every dollar the state spends less than that, its federal block grant would be reduced a dollar.

States would have more flexibility in defining spending priorities, too. Arkansas could spend as much as thirty percent of its welfare block grant funds, for example, for other state programs with block grants, such as those for child protection or social services. And with few exceptions, Arkansas could use the block grant money in any way that accomplishes the grant’s goals, including ending dependency on public assistance, reducing the incidence of out-of-wedlock births, and maintaining two-parent families.

The new grant programs include a few prohibitions on spending federal funds and eliminate or greatly weaken some of the current federal requirements. As mentioned above, states would no longer be required to offer cash assistance under any circumstance. Nor would states have to provide as much job training and child care services to Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients, or transitional Medicaid assistance to recipients who get jobs and leave the welfare rolls.

If state leaders are truly sincere about welfare reform, they will need to address three issues: child care, health care, and employment. The state will have to provide child care and health care to keep people employed once they leave the welfare rolls. Families making minimum wage or slightly more simply cannot afford these services.

Employment is a more complex issue. The state could try to get recipients to take any kind of job. Some states, notably Wisconsin, have used job search programs and aggressive case management to move recipients into low-wage positions on the assumption that any job is a good one for someone who doesn’t have one. But that approach does not improve the economic prospects of children and their families. A full-time minimum wage job

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pays substantially less than the official poverty line, which was $15,141 for a family of four in 1994. Another option is for the state to offer education and training so recipients acquire work skills and are employable on a long-term basis. This approach, however, has its own shortcomings. Job training programs, especially those administered by government, are expensive and have had mixed results. In the end, a combination of the two approaches will be needed.

In our rush to reform the welfare system, our approach must allow the public to participate in the debate, especially those directly affected by the change. If we do not do so, the reform process will surely fail.

Richard Huddleston is a research analyst with Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Virginia: Stinginess Amid Wealth

By Steven L. Myers

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 5-6

Despite its relative wealth, Virginia spends far less to assist its poor citizens, most of whom are children, than most other states. During the 1980s, the income disparity between rich and poor families was more pronounced in Virginia than in any other state. The average annual income of the top fifth of Virginia’s families increased nearly $21,747 while the average annual income of the bottom fifth actually fell $1,813. By the end of the decade, Virginia had the eighth largest income disparity between rich and poor families in the United States.

Only seven states have average annual family income greater than Virginia’s but Virginia’s average monthly welfare payment ($277 for a family with two children) ranks only thirty-sixth in the country. As a result of Virginia’s failure to adjust for inflation, the maximum welfare payment for a family of three in Virginia actually lost 58 percent of its value from 1970 to 1994.

Today, welfare payments in Virginia provide less than 30 percent of the income needed to escape poverty. Even when other benefits, such as food stamps, are taken into account, most welfare families in Virginia are forced to survive on assistance totaling less than two-thirds of the federal poverty line.

In theory, most welfare recipients in Virginia have long been required to participate in employment activities. In fact, however, Virginia has funded employment services, including education, job skills training and child care, necessary to make participation possible for only about one-half of those welfare recipients for whom participation is supposed to be mandatory. Although politicians have mastered the “hot button” rhetoric of welfare reform, few have squarely faced the cost of reforms and their impact on working poor families struggling to get by without welfare. During [1996] debate, proponents of the a welfare reform legislation that became law in Virginia a promised to more than double the number of welfare. During [1996] debate, proponents of the welfare reform legislation that became law in Virginia promised to more than double the number of welfare recipients working or participating in “workfare” or other employment activities; however, thus far, the budget for child care for welfare recipients has been increased by less than two-thirds. No one has yet explained how the resulting “child care gap” will be filled, but additional funding (at least $6.7 million per year) will be required before welfare reform can be fully implemented.

The consequences of inadequate child care funding would be ominous not only for current welfare recipients, but also for former recipients and the working poor. After one year of transitional child care assistance, former welfare recipients working in low-wage jobs will be forced into a subsidized child care system for the working poor which is already swamped by excess demand. In recent years, waiting lists for subsidized child care for the working poor have swelled to more than thirteen thousand children statewide. In some localities, working poor families must now wait years for child care services. If former welfare recipients are given priority for limited subsidized child care funds, working poor families denied child care subsidies may be forced into the welfare system. On the other hand, if the subsidized child care system for the working poor cannot accommodate them, many former welfare recipients will be forced back into the welfare system. In either case, after a temporary decline, the number of Virginians dependent on welfare will once again increase, and welfare reform will have failed.

Budget cuts considered each year also reflect little understanding of the relationship between welfare re-form and the working poor. Because part-time and low-wage jobs often do not include health insurance benefits, the prospect of losing Medicaid coverage deters welfare recipients from accepting employment. Although moving welfare recipients into jobs is a major goal of welfare reform, the governor proposed a budget amendment which would have eliminated Medicaid coverage for thirty-six thousand teenage children in working poor families. While the General Assembly defeated this proposal, similar proposals may be considered again next year. Such cuts would undermine welfare reform by forcing many working poor families onto welfare in order to secure health care for their children.

As the debate on welfare reform continues, Virginians must measure extravagant claims against the reality of limited funding. If we are serious about reforming the welfare system, we must support leaders who have the integrity to confront the cost of effective reforms honestly.

Steven L. Myers is a staff attorney with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

Georgia: Scapegoats and Resentments

By Marti Keller and Lane Goldberg

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 p. 6

The rhetoric surrounding the current debate over welfare reform plays on the growing insecurity in the U.S. today, appeals to our desire to find simple solutions to complex problems, and encourages us to seek scapegoats to bear the blame for the problems confronting our country.

In Georgia, a survey commissioned by Senator Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.) revealed that many Georgia voters have great misconceptions of federal government spending. For example, of the six hundred respondents, a full 20 percent said that the government spends most of its money on welfare and food stamps. In reality Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and food stamps amount to about 2.4 percent of total federal out-lays.

Rhetoric driven by misinformation deceives the American public and obscures substantive issues which must be addressed. It ignores the fact that the majority of welfare recipients are children. Most significantly, the leading proposals for welfare reform, if implemented, will victimize our children. In fact:

• One-fifth of American children and more than three hundred thousand Georgia children are poor.
• The maximum monthly AFDC check for a family of three in Georgia is $280, to be used for rent, child care, transportation, clothing and other non-food, non-medical expenses.
• There is no state in the U.S. in which AFDC and food stamps combined bring a recipient family up to the poverty line: in Georgia, such families reach only 46 percent of the poverty level.
• A parent working full time for the federal minimum wage of $4.25 per hour earns $7,438 per year, 40 percent below the poverty line for a family of three.

Any effective welfare reform efforts must begin to deal with the systemic roots of poverty. Serious proposals for reform must deal with the lack of available jobs as well as the fact that many individuals lack education and training critical to helping then find and maintain employment. A living wage is also a necessity. It is unacceptable that anyone should work full-time and still be unable to meet even their most basic needs.

If we refuse to invest in our families, not only will we continue to see our position in the world economy decline, but we will face the intensification of problems associated with poverty such as crime, substance abuse, births to teens, and underemployment. The money we might have spent to support our families and our economy will (as is frequently the case now) have to be spent to combat these social problems. The fears, anger, and resentment that have become woven into the fabric of our society will continue to grow and to disempower us and our children will disproportionately endure the consequences.

We have a choice: we can continue to allow our fears and our insecurities to guide our welfare policies or, with courage and forethought, we can begin to accept realities and try to change them constructively.

Keller is the former executive director and Goldberg is a policy intern with the non-profit Georgians for Children.

Work First, People Last

By Preston Quesenberry

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 p. 7

In the name of “independence,” and “responsibility,” states around the nation have been implementing “Work First” programs designed to force welfare recipients into the workforce. While such programs are supported by their proponents as “giving families the help they need to become self-sufficient,” they effectively entail using public dollars to coerce welfare recipients into the private sector’s lowest-paying and least desirable occupations, with little hope of advancing from them. While welfare recipients are obviously not forced at gunpoint to engage in society’s most-exploitative jobs, the time-limits and strict sanctions which accompany Work First legislation effectively coerce them with the threat of starvation.

The federally-mandated Job Opportunity and Basic Skills (JOBS) programs had at least partially emphasized long-term training for work which really could provide participants with a modicum of independence and self-sufficiency. Thanks to federal waivers, however, the Southern states of Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia have been revamping the JOBS programs and shifting the emphasis to getting welfare recipients into the workforce immediately. This fact is boldly proclaimed in government press releases boasting about the new programs, as in this statement from the office of North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt: “County departments of social services across North Carolina began shifting their welfare families from JOBS, a program that emphasized long-term training, to Work First, which emphasizes short-term training, work, and personal responsibility.”

Commenting on Virginia’s Work First program, Virginia Poverty Law Center attorney Steve Myers pointed out the basic problems with this model, a model he said has “become the vogue and spread like wildfire among state governors.” “According to the Work First model, education and training doesn’t work; what works is work,” Myers said. “The problem with this strategy is that half of AFDC recipients don’t even have a high school education. How they are going to support themselves at the end of the time limit without further education or training is hard to understand.”

Practically, most Work First participants can’t support themselves at the end of the time limit. Finding jobs as cashiers at fast food restaurants or retail stores,earning five to six dollars an hour at part time work, former AFDC recipients–most of whom are mothers with children–cannot be expected to support themselves without government subsidized child care (while they are working), Medicaid (because most of these low-wage employers don’t provide health insurance), and other benefits just to get by. In Cobb County, Georgia, for example, the average salary for Work First participants is just $727 a month before taxes–hardly enough to allow a mother of two to become “independent” and “self-sufficient.”

Following a philosophy that all work–no matter how low paying, routinized, exploitative, or monotonous–has intrinsic value, proponents of Work First boast of the programs’ effectiveness in getting welfare-recipients employed while ignoring what kind of employment is being obtained. In press releases, Georgia brags of putting five thousand welfare recipients to work, North Carolina of placing 9,239 participants (twice as many as JOBS did in the same period a year earlier) , but neither boasts of the average salary or nature of the jobs being acquired.

So valued is work as an end in itself, that state governments are willing to subsidize the supply of human resources to low-wage employers not only indirectly through publicly funded medical insurance and child care, but also directly by paying employers to hire welfare recipients. Both Mississippi and Virginia, for example, divert AFDC and Food Stamp benefits to pay employers one dollar for every hour that a former welfare recipient works for them.

Instead of subsidizing private employers, perhaps states should guarantee a minimum standard of living. Instead of forcing “responsibility” on welfare recipients, perhaps they should force responsibility on private employers to provide a decent wage, health insurance, and reasonably attractive work. Furthermore, instead of taking the insufficiencies of the current JOBS program as proof that “education and training don’t work,” perhaps state governors and legislators should see them as proof that education and training programs require more funds and resources. This would be the true road to independence and self-sufficiency.

Preston Quesenberry is a graduate student at Emory University’s Institute of Liberal Arts.

Voting Rights Assault: Heard This Song Before

By The Rev. Joseph Lowery

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 8-10

In 1964, following the passage of the Public Accommodations Act, I was among a delegation that went with Martin King to see President Johnson to talk about voting rights. We were very concerned that there were less than three-hundred black elected officials in the United States and almost none in the South. President Johnson told us in his Texas drawl that we just had won one significant piece of legislation and there was no way in the world, this soon, following the ’64 Act that we would have a voting rights act. “Y’all be patient and come back later.” “Yessir, cap’n.” And we went on back to Birmingham.

In the A. G. Gaston Motel we drew up the blueprint for a Selma campaign. SNCC had preceded us into Selma, but not much had yet happened so we decided to move massively into Selma with the voting rights campaign. And what President Johnson said he couldn’t do, we did. From Selma to Montgomery, with reverberations across the country, we wrote the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We went back to see Mr. Johnson and said, “Here Mr. President, you said you couldn’t write it, we done writ it for you. Sign it.” You recall how he went on national television and in that same Texas drawl, signed the Act and said, “We shall overcome.”

The Voting Rights Act was born in movement. If it is to be preserved and extended, it will be in movement. It will not be simply in dialogue nor just in litigation. For it is an expression of the soul of democracy and it must be reiterated and reaffirmed in the hearts and minds and souls of the people. And that only happens in movements. So if we are serious about the current assault on voting rights, we will gear up for movement.

As we look at where we are today it seems I’ve heard this song before. Look at today and look at the close of the nineteenth century. Isn’t it a familiar tune? We watched the tumbling towers of democracy and the disenfranchising of black voters. We watched legislative lynchings, judicial rape of freedom and justice, and the rise of terrorism to enforce a political agenda. So, when we talk about the 1990s, we could very well be talking about part of the 1890s. We look today at the destabilization of democratic institutions, the disenfranchisement of black voters, Supreme Court decisions such as Miller v. Johnson. We witness the outlawing of majority black districts and Latino districts.

We talk about collusion between the political and business forces. Are we sure we’re not talking about the 1890s? The Republican-controlled Congress reduces taxes for the rich while the rich reduce jobs for working people. Political and business forces export jobs and merge corporations to expand unemployment and reduce services to poor communities. When you talk about the rise of terrorism to enforce a political agenda, are you sure you’re not talking about angry men bombing federal buildings on one hand and blasting affirmative action on the other? Are you talking about a new militia mentality including skinheads and extremists and police departments with Mark Fuhrman mentalities? Some who sound like, act like, legislate like, adjudicate like they are afflicted with a Mark Fuhrman mentality. The rejection of the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s recommendation to eliminate disparities in sentencing between crack and cocaine offenders is a legislative lynching in 1995 as legislators lynched in 1895.

So we have to clear our vision to reclaim the momentum toward justice and democracy. We must wake up,

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rise up, march up, run up, fly up, sign up, vote up and vote out these forces who are assaulting workers rights, voting rights, women’s rights, and American justice.

We must understand that the assault and retreat of the 1990s transcends race and color. The timing of the assault on affirmative action is not accidental. It is happening at the same time that we continue to see mega-mergers, corporate downsizing, and the exporting of jobs.

If you can keep angry white men confused and directing their anger mistakenly against issues of “affirmative action,” “preferential treatment,” or “reverse discrimination” they tend to be less than vigilant at understanding the corporate agenda. I suggest that while blacks and other minorities are the first fired, when the dust of the whirlwind settles, more whites will lose jobs and the crisis in health care will impact more white families. We must help those who are hoodwinked to understand that the entire body politic will taste the bitter cup of economic violence.

In the black community, we know what it means to be working more and earning less. We know what it means to say the faster I run the behinder I get. So we must strengthen the coalition of conscience. We must find ways to break through the barriers of mistrust and suspicion between black and white. We must join in fighting policies that export jobs while expanding poverty here. The pain of another Reconstruction is not limited to inflicting pain upon blacks. It is painful to all middle and low income Americans.

We must understand that this current assault on voting rights is designed to narrow the electorate to protect special interests. What to think of a Supreme Court that declares that race-conscious remedies for race-based discrimination are unconstitutional? That makes no sense at all. The Supreme Court has five confused people.

What hurts me so much about Clarence Thomas is that he’s from Georgia. Pinpoint, Georgia. We felt that once this dude got out, once he got on the Supreme Court, good God, if ever anybody, in this life, is free at last, surely, “he gon’ remember who he be.” He will be free of political restraints and he will have made it.

I believe that when Clarence Thomas got out of law school he looked at two highways up: one was crowded. All the members of the black caucuses, legislators from Georgia, North Carolina, everybody was over there. Wasn’t nobody over here on this other side. He said, “You know, shoot, I’m getting over here. It ain’t crowded.” And he did. He went right straight on up non-stop. But, once he got there .. .

When he was nominated we went and met with him.We met for two-and-a-half hours. Among other things, he said, “Dr. Lowery, I believe in what Dr. King stood for. I believe in what you represent. And you will not be ashamed of me if I am confirmed.” So we didn’t fight him. He had the votes anyway.

But I am ashamed of him. And I have written him that I’m ashamed of him. And he has become to the black community and to this country, what Benedict Arnold was to the nation, a deserter. What Judas was to Jesus, a betrayer. And what Brutus was to Caesar, an assassin.

To say that we must dismantle majority-black and majority-Latino districts is a new variation on an old trick to dilute and control black leadership. Nothing is more disgusting than to listen to these people use Martin Luther King’s comments about character and content and color-blindness to justify their madness.

This country has never been color-blind. The old phrase “without regard to race or color” always means that folks of color get left without. Unfortunately, history shows that without predominantly black districts, blacks don’t get elected. That has changed in some instances. And the evidence is not promising. Gary Franks said the other day when we were in a discussion on CNN that he didn’t want his people to have to go to a black district to get elected. I told him I didn’t want my children to have to go to Connecticut to get elected either.

Let me say a couple of other things. First, I want to talk about the spiritual undergirding that has to exist in this movement. I want to start with black elected officials. I’m proud of the fact that most black elected officials have conducted themselves with dignity and integrity and their presence and stewardship have made a difference in life. But there comes a time when we must look at the level of accountability and recognize that we are weighed in the balance and found wanting. We did not struggle to win the Voting Rights Act just to change the color of government, but to change the character of government

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as well. Therefore, we must see to it that black elected officials are held accountable. We must no longer vote for people just because of the color of the skin, but for the content of their character, and the caliber of their stewardship. We must see to it.

Many black folks are not apathetic, they’re disappointed. There’s a difference in apathy and disillusionment. Apathy implies you don’t give a damn. Disillusionment implies that you did once but don’t now. And how come? It is not simply that black elected officials have not been able to deliver to the extent that we hoped. That couldn’t happen. Our expectations were too high and our minority status too low to deliver at the level of expectation. But they could have addressed the futility and the hopelessness, and perhaps could have delivered more if we were convinced that even though they weren’t able to deliver, that they tried their hearts out, worked their butts off, and could not be bought. Could not compromise on certain principles. We have not seen enough of that courageous, bold kind of stewardship.

Black elected officials must be helped to understand that they are products of movement. And they must reflect the spirit of movement in their stewardship. We don’t need black politicians who are just like white politicians. They must move at a different level of activism and sacrifice.

At our SCLC convention, we voted to work with other groups to establish an national panel to talk about black voting strength. We must also talk about accountability. We must have a network of principles of accountability.

We must find ways to strengthen the coalition of conscience. We have to help white folks. It’s our responsibility. We are the only ones who can help the white folks. Let me tell you what I mean.

That O.J. thing, wasn’t it interesting? It pained me for white people to think that black folks didn’t feel sorrow and pain about the death of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. I just hate that anybody would think that. Good God, as much as we’ve suffered from violence. We can weep with the families. It’s as crazy as folks talking about black folks’ being soft on crime. How in the hell are we going to be soft on crime? We are the chief victims of crime. And to say that black folks won’t vote to convict black criminals is a lie.

In Georgia, SCLC fought the two-strikes-and-you’re-out legislation. Our Governor–three-strikes-and-you’re-out wasn’t enough for him. We recognize what it was, we knew what the net result would be. You know who is going to be out–or rather who’s going to be in. You know who. But, we fought it. But do you know that black folks overwhelmingly supported it. Because they’re fed up with crime. This was an opportunity to say so.

So black folks cheered the O.J. verdict but it had nothing to do with O.J. You don’t understand black folk, white folk. Most black folks I know don’t think his name is Orenthal, they think it’s Oreo. But this was an opportunity to say look-a-yonder, for once the system that has corrupted and corroded and destroyed and devastated us down through history, white folks get a chance to see what it looks like.

But black folks understand white folks. Wouldn’t none of us be here except that our ancestors understood that survival was at stake. White folks don’t understand us because too few of them will take the time to hear our cry, feel our pain, share our anguish, understand the disillusionment. We have to change that in a coalition of conscience. We have to say, “Let us renew the struggle.” No privileged group in history ever willingly relinquished its place of privilege. It has to be wrested from them.

Not voting is too expensive. Look what it cost us. Newt, Dole, student aid decimated, health care eliminated, Medicaid inundated, job programs mutilated, voting rights assassinated, untruth exacerbated, the elderly aggravated, and ethical and moral productivity constipated. It cost us, cost us not to vote. So we must now gear up for a new movement. A new movement that joins the community of faith and the coalition of conscience.

Justice ain’t gonna happen through osmosis. Justice ain’t gonna roll down by capillary action. Somebody must raise the level of consciousness, walk the walk and talk the talk, pay the price and make the sacrifice. We are committed in the context of non-violence through the political and economic resources we have. We must get back in motion with the fire in our belly.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery is the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His remarks are edited from a speech on October 28, 1995, to a voting rights conference in New Orleans organized by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Southern Regional Council.

Black Southern Churches Under Fire

By Barry E. Lee

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 11-13

Historically, the church has been the “soul of the black community,” says the Reverend Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Since April of 1993, at least twenty-seven black churches (and at least one with a racially mixed congregation) in the South have burned under suspicious circumstances. According to the Center for Democratic Renewal (CDR), an Atlanta-based civil and human rights action research center which specializes in tracking hate crimes, the number increases to forty-five if acts of vandalism are included.

This recent rash of church fires brings back haunting memories of the horror of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham on September 15, 1963, in which four black girls were murdered. The apparent rebirth of what many black community and civic leaders consider “domestic terrorism” has generated great consternation, national focus and a sense of urgency to end the fires.

Although church burnings were fairly common during the 1960s, the recent spate of fires has “caught everybody short,” according to Mary Frances Berry, Chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, because most groups had ceased to monitor incidents of this sort.

Since 1986, there have been reports of suspicious church fires every year. The frequency of these acts increased dramatically in 1995 when thirteen churches were torched. Already in 1996 ten churches have been destroyed.

Most of the blazes occurred in rural, isolated areas served by volunteer fire companies where water must be transported to the fire site. In most cases there have been no witnesses and no arrests made. In the eight cases where arrests have been made, all the perpetrators have been white. A white fireman has been charged with arson in the fire set at New Liberty Baptist in Tyler, Alabama, on February 28, 1996.

Seventeen fires were set during Black History Month, on the anniversaries of important civil rights events like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination and the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, or near the time the King Holiday is celebrated in mid-January.

The states hardest hit have been Tennessee with eight fires, and Alabama and Louisiana with five each. In Louisiana, four churches were torched on February 1, 1996, the anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins, all in East Baton Rouge Parish. And in Alabama four churches were set on fire during a three-week period in the town of Boligee.

Officials responsible for investigating the fires are very reluctant to attribute racial motives to the tragedies or to speculate that a conspiracy links all of the fires. However, ministers of the burned out churches in Boligee, civil rights leaders, and the Center for Democratic Renewal have no doubt that the culprits have racial motives and that the fires are linked: all of the fires have hit black and integrated churches, all those arrested so far have been white and in some cases these white males have ties to white supremacists groups, and most of the fires occurred on or near civil rights anniversaries.

In a press conference held on March 27, 1996, at the King Center in Atlanta, the Reverend C.T. Vivian, chairman of the CDR, told the audience “what is used against black people will be used against all of us tomorrow. There must be redemption for the nation. We as Americans can stop this racist destruction.”

The urgency to end the burnings and the attending national focus is influenced by several factors. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, local black churches often served as the Movement’s nerve center. Prayer vigils, strategy sessions, anti- segregation speeches and sermons, and protest rallies were based at black churches. This institution was the one place where African Americans claimed total ownership, and equally important, it was also the central training ground for African American leadership.

The suspicious nature of these fires is viewed as a direct attack against the life-force of many African Americans. The Reverend Donald Upton, pastor of Inner City Baptist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, which was burned in January, best summed it up by saying, “We were more than just a church. We were providing jobs, we were a bank, a childcare center. We were trying to improve our community.”

Given the recent assaults on affirmative action, the actions of white supremacists and militias and the general racial tension across the nation, many African American leaders feel these fires are psychologically linked to the current racial backlash and hope to break the apparent cycle of arson before it escalates any further. The involvement of public figures such as Reverend Lowery and Reggie White, an assistant pastor of Inner City Baptist Church and a famous professional football player, has helped bring national attention to the fires. Both Lowery and White have publicly condemned the burnings and have endorsed rebuilding fund-raising efforts.

Black leaders are worried about the plodding and perhaps misdirected nature of the investigation. Officials from the FBI and ATF interrogated members of Inner City Baptist and confiscated property belonging to the church and pastor, but have not returned the items. Reverend Charles Mack Jones, former president of CDR contends that federal officials are “too busy probing the victims rather than looking for the real culprits.”

As tragic as the news is about these churches, there is some good news. Multiracial and cross-regional support has been building to help fund the resurrection of the churches that have been destroyed. Many of the congregations, particularly those in the Boligee churches, are small and had inadequate insurance to cover their losses. A fund has been established by the ministers in Boligee to rebuild their churches. For those readers who want to contribute, please send your check to: Greene County Emergency Church Fund, Route 2, Box 94, Eutaw, AL 35462, c/o the Reverend Levi Pickens.

Pressure is building to bring an end to this episode. The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), and various state and local agencies continue to investigate.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has promised a committee hearing later in the year, but no date has been set. Civil rights leaders, local ministers, and their congregations wonder: how much later? These burnings have been going on for years. Although no lives have been lost yet, parishioners of blacks churches are not safe as long as these arsons continue.

Concerned citizens should contact the Center for Democratic Renewal at (404) 221-0025 to inquire about other ways to offer help. Information about the fires can be reported to the ATF Arson Hotline, (800) 366-9501.

Sidebar: Black Church Burnings: A Chronology

• April 4, 1993–Springhill Freewill Baptist, McComb, Miss.
• April 4, 1993–Rocky Point Missionary Baptist, Summit, Miss.
• July 21, 1994–Springfield Baptist, Madison, Ga.
• September 8, 1994–New Wright’s Chapel, Shelby Co., Tenn.
• January 13, 1995–Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, Crockett Co., Tenn.
• January 29, 1995–Friendship Missionary Baptist Church, Colombia, Tenn.
• January 29, 1995–Canaan African Methodist Episcopal Church, Mount Pleasant, Tenn.
• January 31, 1995–Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, Bolivar, Tenn.
• June, 1995–St. Paul AME, Dallas, Ga.
• June 20, 1995–Mount Zion AME Church, Greeleyville, S.C.
• June 21, 1995–Macedonia Baptist Church, Bloomville, S.C.
• October 14, 1995–Zion Chapel AME, Sun, La.
• December 22, 1995–Mount Zion Baptist Church, Boligee, Ala.
• December 25, 1995–Mount Moriah Baptist, Efland, N.C.
• January 8, 1996–Inner City Baptist Church, Knoxville, Tenn.
• January 11, 1996–Little Zion Baptist Church, Boligee, Ala.
• January 11, 1996–Mount Zoar Baptist Church, Boligee, Ala.
• January 27, 1996–Cypress Trails United Methodist Church, Spring, Texas
• January 27, 1996–Resurrection Lutheran Church, Spring, Texas
• February 1, 1996–Cypress Grove Baptist Church, Zachary, La.
• February 1, 1996–St. Paul’s Free Baptist Church, Baker, La.
• February 1, 1996–The Sweet Home Baptist Church, Zachary, La.
• February 1, 1996–Thomas Chapel Benevolent Society, Zachary, La.
• February 21, 1996–Glorious Church of God and Christ, Richmond, Va.

Sources: Center for Democratic Renewal, USA Today

Barry Lee is a graduate student in the Women’s Studies Institute at Georgia State University.

BOOKS: Freedom’s Light

Reviewed by Jacqueline Rouse

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 15-16

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Charles M. Payne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, 525 pages).

In grasping the tradition of organizing in the state of Mississippi during the decade of the sixties, Charles Payne seeks to analyze two components: how a large group of people “who were historically dependent, mostly apolitical, and vulnerable to violence,” were moved to become activists in changing the conditions in their lives. And, how a new generation of young civil rights workers became carriers of the tradition of organizing in rural Mississippi. Payne forces us into the deep piney woods and hilly terrains of southern Mississippi, in order for us to appreciate the longevity of resistance by a cadre of undaunted “race” men and women. By acknowledging these new “movement centers,” he provides an essential link in the evolving historiography of the modern civil rights movement.

Drive-by shootings, firebombs, rattlesnakes thrown onto front porches, homes and crowds shot into, cars forced from rural and state roads–the “horrific terror of the system of Jim Crow” in Mississippi. Payne pulls us into the thicket of terrorism in order to release us into the safety of strong local independent leadership. Furious and free from economic reprisals from the local whites, these independent farmers, self-employed veterans, Pullman porters, entrepreneurs, and a few private professionals, organized community leagues, councils, and youth chapters of the NAACP.

In the sixties the community organizing witnessed the arrival of young idealistic workers like Bob Moses, James Lawson, Lawrence Guyot, and Hollis Watkins. Via written introductions, Vernon Dahmer, Amzie Moore, C.C. Bryant, E.W. Steptoe and others adopted, nurtured, groomed, and when appropriate, introduced these fresh voices to their neighbors and friends. Intrigued by the new declarations about their “rights,” the elderly and teenagers offered themselves to test the limits of repression. Nightly rallies served to encourage and inspire. Faith in “simple justice and common decency” was re-enforced by testimonies, prayers, and spirituals.

Still many African American Mississippians would become committed to “dat mess” only after the arrest or attack on a relative, neighbor, friend, or leader. Mothers joined after teenagers were expelled from schools or arrested for protesting. Brutal murders often increased the number of local activists. Southern white racists be-

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came aware that further violence provoked retribution, and the successful boycott of downtown white merchants.

The flood of violence brought little federal intervention. Though supposedly worried about a tarnished national image, state officials were locked into the Southern code of behaviors, as civil rights workers continued ti be beaten and murdered. So, the leaders of the movement in Mississippi decided that the state would host Freedom Summer of 1964.

White civil rights workers came into the state with SNCC in the early sixties. For Southern white civil rights workers their commitment often severed ties to heritage and kin. But some black workers feared that the presence of large numbers of white students would strip self-esteem and political empowerment from poor rural black. Their presence could exasperate internal tension. But, Moses and Fanni Lou Hamer reminded SNCC that it could not practice discrimination. After all, hundreds of white students would surely bring the national media and federal protection, they argued.

The “coming of age” of statewide activism seems centered in the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and its national challenges to the Democratic Party in 1964 and on the floor of Congress in 1965. The Great Society came into the state in the mid-sixties via the Head Start Program. Payne clearly recounts the pain inherent in growth. Now that the shootings, Killings, evictions and the loss of employment attached to activism had begun to diminish, the black middle class and “progressive” whites joined forces to control federal monies earmarked for community projects.

Reaping the harvest from others’ struggles, these newcomers and “reformed” old-timers, quickly became the contacts for Washington. Tension abounded over the administration of new programs, the independence of previously dependent rural folks, the lack of access to power, the role of white volunteers, and the disrespect new workers had for poor black people. Long tine workers became angry at the lack of inclusion and the new agendas set by those with little or no history in the struggle. Feelings of betrayal and delusion forced some to leave the state and even the country.

The book’s success springs from a vivid appreciation of the drive for justice in the pre-Brown era. Though recent studies of this modern civil rights era have begun to explore the lives of “local people,” Payne’s gift is the names and purposes he assigns to the masses. Not only do we come to know C.C.Bryant, but we understand the courage and aggressive actions his generation took. We can appreciate how Gus Courts could not be intimidated by violence for standing for righteousness for all of his life. Names omitted from history are not only included, but we are able to make the connection of the fundamentalism of their actions. They organized not only around the ballot and citizenship, but they carried young men on sporting outings, sponsored local chapters of the Boy Scouts, youth chapters of the NAACP, singing groups, oratorical contests, and numerous other activities which would groom another generation to be proud and committed to the black villages and hamlets of the Jim Crow South. Their national affiliations with the NAACP sparked Ella Baker and Septima Clark to direct the new arrivals in the 1960s to them in order to continue that tradition. Payne helps us to understand what I call our “ancestral mission”.

For these young members of SNCC would come to appreciate their new environs and to understand they were of, not merely in, communities who would hold them accountable for their race work. Thus, Payne’s major strength, and the significance of this exciting work, is realizing the history of long term local community-based organization in the black Jim Crow South compared to short term community mobilizing by national leaders or organizations in this modern period.

Payne excels in the attention he gives to the growth of black nationalism in SNCC after 1966 and the varied women who joined this liberation struggle, particularly Susie Morgan, Lula Belle Johnson, and Laura McGhee. Through his work may be a companion piece for some in the recent barrage of works on this modern period, I believe this work accomplishes a sense of connectiveness with the period and its people. Payne’s work isn’t merely another scholarly search for the indigenous people. He claims, names, and gives them voice with professionalism, respect, and sensitivity. I’ve Got The Light of Freedom will bring respect from colleagues and peers, but moreover, it will most likely generate a sense of gratitude from the subjects of this narrative. For being able to make that leap, Charles Payne should be very proud of this award winning book.

Jacqueline Rouse is associate professor of history at Georgia State University. She is author of Eugenia Burns Hope: Southern Reformer, published by University of Georgia Press, 1989, and a contributing author to Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia.

Anthologizing Appalachia

Reviewed by Tal Stanley

Vol. 18, No. 1, 1996 pp. 17-18

Appalachia Inside Out. Volume I: Conflict and Change; Volume II: Culture and Custom. Edited by Robert J. Higgs, Ambrose N. Manning, and Jim Wayne Miller. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995, 741 pages).

Attempting to anthologize creative and critical writing about a region as diverse and conflicted as Appalachia is a daunting task. How can the geography, grassroots politics, society, folk and popular cultures, collective struggles for social justice, fiction, cultural analysis, unrecorded lived experiences, and a host of other aspects of this region be anthologized in a way that gives justice to Appalachia’s complexity?

Such were the challenges facing the editors of the two-volume anthology, Appalachia Inside Out.

Inside Out is generally successful at facing the challenges of anthologizing a growing body of writing about Appalachia. With more than two hundred critical essays, reviews, poems, short stories, autobiographies, articles, vignettes, and excerpts from longer works, the collection’s greatest assets are its focus on more contemporary writing and the diversity of persons included. With selections from such writers as Booker T. Washington, “Mother” Jones, Pinckney Benedict, Myles Horton, Theodore Roosevelt, Lou Crabtree, David Whisnant, Tom Wolfe, Nikki Giovanni, Edward J. Cabbell, Marilou Awiakta, the editors offer a historical range of reflections on Appalachia’s social and cultural diversity. This Appalachia appears not as an isolated backwater, but as a region shaped within the context of social and cultural forces broadly active throughout the South and the United States. Across this range of work there are Appalachian and non-Appalachian writers who complacently remain within the limits of regional stereotypes and the marginalizing conventions of race, class, and gender. There are other writers, both Appalachian and not, who question those easy answers and push us to think in new ways about ourselves, Appalachian regional identity, and political understandings of the region.

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Of particular interest to persons working for social justice in the South and in Appalachia are essays by Steve Fisher, Marat Moore, Laurie K. Lindberg, Mike Yarrow, Judith Fiene, Helen Lewis and Rich Kirby–to name several. A project of this scope cannot do everything and every significant aspect of Appalachian culture and experience cannot be given equal weight; however, largely missing from Inside Out are writings that have emerged from grassroots struggles for social change.

Good sources for these writings would have been the Appalachian Women’s Alliance and the Mountain Women’s Journal, or even the old issues of The Plow.

While several selections seem not to have been printed elsewhere, by concentrating on already published works, Inside Out sometimes fails to represent the creative expressions of Appalachian collective politics. This is particularly damaging in the anthology’s concluding chapter, “Regional Identity and The Future,” for it is generally around questions about a place’s future that these Appalachian collective politics and a sense of regional identity emerge. Instead, this chapter, like the anthology itself, is often constricted by abstract definitions of place and a lack of attention to more political visions of an Appalachian future.

For this, readers should see other recent work such as Fighting Back in Appalachia: Traditions of Resistance and Change (Steve Fisher, editor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), and It Comes From The People (Helen Lewis, Mary Ann Hinsdale, and Maxine Waller. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).

By and large, Inside Out is a helpful addition to the Appalachia studies library. Sometimes with poignancy, sometimes with bitter satire, sometimes with insightful analysis, this anthology always refuses a “consensus view” of Appalachia culture.

This collection represents a regional culture shaped among a broad diversity of people, often divided and fragmented by racism, class prejudice, and traditional gender roles. Editors Higgs, Manning, and Miller have worked to complicate the easy definitions of Appalachian culture and stereotypes of Appalachia.

Tal Stanley is a graduate student at Emory University in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts.