Using our Past to Build the Future

By Wendy S. Johnson

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, pp. 3-4

The struggle for racial equity in the South has no timetable. As we advance the eighty-year mission of the Southern Regional Council-to promote racial justice, protect democratic rights, and broaden civic participation in the Southeastern United States-we must heed the lessons of decades past.

Marion A. Wright, Council president in 1952 wrote “SRC is the lengthened shadow of many men and women.” Since the beginning of our predecessor organization in 1919, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Southerners and our nation have been radically transformed. In the midst of this movement for change has been the Southern Regional Council, driven by the single-minded purpose of conquering racism and inequality, through research, education and action strategies.

Our history demands that we look back and borrow, as often as we need it, the wisdom, courage and lessons of our past.

Those who came together in the first twenty-five years of SRC’s existence, as the (CIC), had a strong dose of moral courage and purpose. They were black and white ministers, teachers, sociologists and presidents from leading black academic institutions and white Southern colleges and universities. The leadership of women in the CIC began to rise, with Jessie Daniel Ames and others as they organized an anti-lynching education campaign. The CIC believed that constructive ideas and sound information were important requirements to promoting racial change in the South.

Significant inroads against the longstanding injustices of Jim Crow were made over the last half century. The period of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s gave us some of the most powerful legislation of the last century-legislation that embraced themes of inclusion, freedom, justice and democracy and was fueled and forged by the civil rights movement.

For the next three decades, political transformation continued with the policies of Harry Truman, including the desegregation of the armed forces. Staff provided assistance to President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, regularly briefing the Committee on the main concerns of the South. This activity marked the beginning of SRC’s commitment to federal intervention in civil rights, a position that set the organization well outside the white mainstream in the region.

True dismantling of segregation, albeit slow, began with the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education decision knocking down the pillars of Jim Crow segregation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ( introducing the concept and practice of affirmative action) and the Voting Rights Act 1965 were the final blows to de jure segregation.

Black voting rights emerged as a the main postwar issue for the Southern Regional Council. The 1944 Texas case Smith vs Allwright, a landmark Supreme Court decision banning the all-white primary-opened the door for black political participation throughout the South.

The Voter Education Project established a precedent for institutional cooperation. The VEP used the organizing efforts of five civil rights organizations-Urban League, CORE, NAACP, SCLC, and SNCC- to do registration projects in communities. SRC served as the conduit for foundation money and the coordinating body to field staff.

SRC adopted a policy to service the national press on its coverage of race in the South as a strategy to influence public opinion. A reasoned and liberal view on desegregating the South was given voice by northern newspapers, especially the New York Times, since liberal Southern newspapers were nonexistent.

Today, inequalities still persist and our challenges are much more complex. Employment discrimination continues to be a fact of life, even for highly educated minorities. Just witness over the last decade the range of lawsuits alleging racial discrimination in some of America’s largest companies.

Even though we have removed poll taxes, literacy

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tests, and other barriers to the political process, we are confronted today with new complex influences in voting. Majority Black and Latino districts have been overturned by federal courts or legislative action–racial bloc voting and the growing influence of money in politics have all combined to disfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.

SRC is concentrating on specific action strategies for the 21st century. We believe that young voters are important to the electoral process and the advancement of progressive policies. Our new Youth Empowerment Project seeks to increase the number of voters ages 18-24 using research and intervention strategies. Our award winning audio documentary, Will the Circle be Unbroken? highlighting the civil rights movement in five southern cities, will serve as important curriculum in the middle grades and high schools.

Over the last decade our education programs have focused on helping middle school principals, teachers, administrators, and parents affect the key elements that create a school culture that nurtures learning for all children. We now face a new landscape in public education and must rethink our role in the education reform conversation.

Our work over the last eight decades has prepared us well for our newest initiative, Partnerships for Racial Unity. The historical signature of race relations has been the Black and white divide. While that struggle persists, the recent influx of immigrants into the region demands that we must implement programs acknowledging the changing racial and ethnic demographics. SRC will serve as a catalyst for strong alliance-building between Blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians. Multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalition building will allow us to amass our strength to achieve the goals of fairness.

The South of the future is in the hands of people like you and me–representatives of new and mature communities. We must lead the way and shape the new order of fairness and justice. We must hold up the mirror of history and meet the challenges of building an America as good as its promise.

Wendy S. Johnson is executive director of the Southern Regional Council

An Adventure in Faith: A Brief Story of the Interracial Movement in the South

By Robert B. Eleazer

Vol.22, No. 1, Spring 2000 p. 5

A booklet published by the Commission on Interracial Cooperation in 1930 reflected the CIC’s concerns and goals from the 1920s. Robert Eleazer was education director at the time.

The work of the CIC has been widely advertised as an “adventure in good will.” It is that, undoubtedly, but it is something more. It is also an adventure in faith-a gamble on the essential soundness of human nature.

At the close of the World War, when the country was seething with interracial suspicion, distrust, and hostility, when race riots were flaming in widely separated communities, and threatening to merge into a general conflagration, the Commission’s mediatory work was inaugurated in the hope of tiding over the crisis. Its promoters believed that if white and Negro people understood each other they would not fight, and that if given the facts about any particular situation, the best of each group might safely be trusted to try to do right about it. They believed that Negroes were both capable and worthy of having a say-so in dealing with the problems affecting them. They believed that white people in turn could be appealed to successfully on the basis of good will, justice, and fair dealing. The Commission undertook, therefore, the stupendous task of establishing across the South, thousands of points of light of interracial contact through which mutual understanding might be created and the facts discovered and acted upon.

The plan worked. Brought together for frank conference, the leaders of the two groups promptly came to terms, cast off their mutual distrust, and began to reestablish the relations of the races on the basis of friendly helpfulness.

Notable Results

The results have been notable. Assistance has been rendered in hundreds of educational enterprises for Negroes, involving millions of dollars; health campaigns have been promoted in every state, hospitals established, clinics conducted, public nurses employed; lynchings have been prevented and in a few cases, members of lynching mobs have been prosecuted and sent to penitentiary; legal aid had been extended to scores of helpless Negroes who were being intimidated, persecuted, or exploited; sewers, street pavings, water, lights, library facilities, restrooms, and other civic advantages have been secured for Negro communities; parks, playgrounds, and pools have been provided; Negro welfare agencies have been included in community chests; day nursuries and social centers conducted; colored probation officers secured-these are among a multitude of actual results achieved.

The Mob Still Rides

By Dr. Arthur F. Raper

Vol.22, No.1, Spring 2000 p. 6

During the 1930s, the Commission on Interracial Cooperation worked closely with the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching to end the brutal practice. Following an increase in lynchings during the early 1930s, the Commission conducted several studies on them. Below is an excerpt from a 1935 study, The Mob Still Rides, written by Dr. Arthur Raper, research secretary at the Commission.

The twenty-one lynchings of 1930–as many as took place in the two previous years combined–gave rise to an exhaustive case study of that year’s lynchings by the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, an association of well-known citizens of the South who undertook the task at the request of the Commission of Interracial Cooperation. The results of that study were summarized in an 80-page pamphlet, “Lynchings and What They Mean” and later in a 500-page volume entitled, “The Tragedy of Lynching.” These were written and compiled by Dr. Arthur F. Raper, Research Secretary of the Commission who directed and in large part conducted the studies.

Five years have passed and the lynching habit seems as strongly entrenched as it was in 1930. The record, which meantime showed a most encouraging decrease to the “low” of eight in 1932, went up to twenty-eight the next year, and to twenty in 1935. Whatever the cause of this trend, it is most disquieting and indicates that the mob is still potentially and often actually in the saddle in large areas of the country.

Confident that society continues to endure these barbarities chiefly because of misapprehension as to their nature and results, we are convinced that the fundamental remedy is to bring the facts into the limelight and keep them there. That, in brief, is the purpose of this little volume, in which Dr. Raper summarizes the results of careful studies, made by himself and Professor Walter Chivers, of the eight-four lynchings of the past five years.

Summary of Findings

A study of the eighty-four lynchings of the past five years reveals the following facts:

1. A larger proportion of the lynchings of this period occurred in the South than ever before, and a larger proportion of the victims were Negroes.

2. Eleven percent of the mob victims were not accused of any crime; an additional 30 percent were accused only of minor offenses. Of the other 59 percent, many were not guilty of the crimes with which they were charged.

3. Contrary to the general impression that rape is the chief cause of lynching, only 11 percent of the victims were even accused of this crime. Scarcely one-fourth were accused of rape and attempted rape combined.

4. Courts rarely indict lynchers, more rarely convict, and almost never impose sentences commensurate with the crime. Indictments have been returned in but one lynching in twelve, and convictions in scarcely one in thirty.

5. There is evidence that the peace officers participated in several lynchings and connived in many more.

6. Over nine-tenths of the lynchings occurred in the open country and a little over four-fifths in counties where the per capita income and taxable wealth were below those of their respective states. Over three-fourths of the threatened lynchings prevented were also in poorer counties.

7. When a mob does not lynch it sometimes dominates the court, and so brings a “legal lynching.”

8. Nearly 20 percent of the persons lynched and threatened by mobs were mental defectives.

9. The number of lynchings declines from a yearly average of 124 between 1895 and 1905, to seventy between 1905 and 1915, to fifty-three between 1915 and 1925, and to seventeen between 1925 and 1935. The past decade, however, shows more lynchings in the latter half than in the first half-the only decade in which this was true. The number of attempted lynchings also rose during the latter half of the decade.

The optimism of ten years ago is waning; lynchings are not fading naturally from the American scene; the mob still rides.

Race and Suffrage in the South Since 1940

Staff

Vol.22, No.1, Spring 2000 pp. 8-9

In the June-July 1948 issue of New South, the Southern Regional Council published an assessment of the progress made toward unencumbered access to the ballot for Black Americans in the 1940s. Below is an edited version of the Council’s perspective.

In any future history of suffrage in the South, the decade of the 1940s will probably be known as the time of an awakening among Negroes and of a change of attitude by many whites toward Negro participation in this phase of government. Certainly during the last eight years the Negro has advanced in the exercise of the right of franchise at a much faster rate than at any other time in the past half century.

The new trend is noticeable to any investigator who makes a tour of the South. He finds considerable change in about seven of these states and a lesser change in the remaining ones. He feels highly encouraged as he passes southward through Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; but his enthusiasm wanes when he strikes Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Continuing the tour, his spirit revives as he proceeds through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Throughout the section, the investigator notes a decline in the barriers to voting in the urban industrial areas, while he observes but little change in the rural farm areas.

Preceding the publication of this pamphlet is a report of investigations made by Ralph Bunche and Gunnar Myrdal in 1940. The gradual weakening of the poll tax and the abolition of the white primary, which Myrdal forecast, have now been wholly or partly realized. It is the

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purpose of the present writer, therefore, to reveal the lines and extent of progress since Bunche and Myrdal made their studies.

One method of showing the causes for the unprecedented gains of Negroes in the Southern United States is to analyze the status of the poll tax, the system of registration, and the white primary as each has operated since 1940.

The use of the poll tax has dwindled, though its severity varies considerably from state to state. Of the eleven Southern states which once required the fee, four have abolished it. These are North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana. South Carolina and Arkansas retain the levy, but in each instance the amount is only one dollar, it is noncumulative, and it is payable only one or two months before the election. Texas and Tennessee exact a larger sum of money than South Carolina and Arkansas, but the tax here is likewise non-cumulative. Oklahoma has never required a poll tax. Only Mississippi, Virginia, and Alabama remain, then, where this celebrated instrument constitutes a significant barrier either by the amount of money to be paid, by the time and method of payment, or by its cumulative features.

The poll tax is merely one of the series of schemes which were contrived a half century ago to reduce the size of the electorate and to keep it under machine control. Greater than the poll tax as a barrier to voting, and far greater as an instrument for race distinction, is the registration requirement. This requirement entails hardships for many Negroes for the reason that every single registrar is a law unto himself. With very little centralized state control of registrations and elections, these officials are left to do as they please.

Among the states of the Solid south, a change toward greater equality in most phases of the electoral process has come first in the states of Virginia and North Carolina. The reins are tightened on Negro registration in South Carolina, but here again not so tight as a decade ago. In Florida, likewise, there is a letting down of the bars except in most of the counties in the northern part of the State. In Georgia, a similar change has come, particularly in the cities.

The old time devices hang on most tenaciously in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The state of Texas is one of the most advanced in the entire South in the attitude of officials toward registration of Negroes. And a similar condition is developing in Arkansas. In Oklahoma race distinction in registration disappeared some time ago, while a similar condition exists for Tennessee, except for two or three river bottom counties.

To generalize for the whole region, it would be difficult to point to more than a handful of Southern cities with a population of 25,000 or more in which there is vigorous opposition to Negroes becoming registered voters. It is in the rural south where 65 percent of the Negroes reside, that the greatest difficulty in meeting voting requirements is encountered.

To make certain of the disfranchisement of the Negroes, the state Democratic organizations of the South forty years ago adopted the “white primary,” whereby only white Democrats could vote in this, the only meaningful election of the region. In view of the fact that there were only a handful of Black Republicans left following the disfranchisement of around 1900, this racial requirement of the Democrats inflicted the most fatal blow which the Negro had yet received.

The abolition of this electoral device [in 1944] struck at the root of most of the former difficulties of Negroes in their efforts to attain citizenship status. Among the factors which led to a 26 percent increase in the number of qualified Negro voters, none exerted a more powerful influence than the elimination of the white primary.

It is in order at this point to evaluate this new development and suggest procedures for the future. Because of the poverty and limited education of hundreds of thousands of white Southerners, the forces of reaction in the South have always been powerful. This group stands ready to fight any movement which seems directed to the advancement of the Negro. Regardless of the reaction and demagoguery, it seems highly improbable that the progress made by the Negroes as voters during the 1940 decade will wane.

For some time now electoral reform organizations and advocates of a free ballot generally have attempted to abolish the poll tax. In this effort they have enjoyed considerable success. But now it would be well for them to consider leveling their guns at the discriminatory registration practices in a half dozen Southern states. Since it is registration which is now the greatest deterrent to voting by Negroes, and since the law of all the Southern states, as well as that of the Federal Government, provides for remedies for the numerous instances in which these officials willfully debar many potential voters, the parties aggrieved should make a much wider use of the courts than they have in the past. These agencies wiped out the white primary; they have diminished the rigours of registration in some places; and above all else, they have been largely responsible for creating the favorable public opinion noted throughout this pamphlet.

Reflections on Redistricting in 2001

By Laughlin McDonald

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, pp. 9-10

Despite the confusion created by the Supreme Court’s recent decisions striking down majority black congressional districts, legislators would be advised to keep several things in mind as they approach the 2000 redistricting.

The Court did not rule that majority-minority districts are unconstitutional. To the contrary, the Court held that a state may conduct redistricting “with consciousness of race” and that it may put minority communities in a district where they have “some common thread of relevant interest.” What a state may not do, according to the Court, is subordinate all of its traditional redistricting principles to race or redistrict solely on the basis of race.

The Court also affirmed the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act. That means that states covered by Section 5 of the Act, which includes most jurisdictions in the South,must take race into account in redistricting to make sure that they do not enact plans that cause a “retrogression” in minority voting rights. For example, if a covered state with twenty majority black house districts were to enact a plan following the 2000 Census that contained only fifteen majority black districts, the plan would be retrogressive on its face, i.e., it would make minority voters worse off than they were under the previous plan, and would almost certainly violate Section 5.

States, whether covered by Section 5 or not, must also comply with Section 2 of the Act. Section 2 prohibits the use of any voting practice that “results” in discrimination, or causes minority voters to have less opportunity than other voters to elect candidates of their choice. Thus, where reasonably compact majority-minority districts can be drawn, and where candidates favored by minority voters are usually defeated by whites voting as a bloc, the failure to create majority-minority districts could be vulnerable to challenge in court under Section 2. As Justice O’Connor has written, it would be “irresponsible” for a state to disregard Section 2.

It would also be prudent in light of the Court’s recent decisions for proponents of majority-minority districts to make a contemporaneous record showing that in instances where such districts were drawn, the legislature also took into account non-racial factors, such as complying with one person-one vote, maintaining the configuration of existing districts, maintaining an existing partisan balance, keeping together communities with similar interests or socio-economic characteristics, and drawing districts that were contiguous and reasonably compact. This list is not exhaustive, but if the legislature can show that it took these and similar factors into account it should be able to rebut any charge that someone might later bring that it drew districts solely on the basis of race.

Another issue which is already causing controversy in some states is whether to use the actual or corrected census figures in drawing district lines. The census bureau and the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most respected scientific organization, have concluded that the actual count, or enumeration, of residents will likely significantly undercount minorities. For that reason, the census will correct the undercount by surveys or statistical sampling conducted after the enumeration. The actual count and the corrected count will be released at the same time in 2001.

The Supreme Court has held that the corrected count cannot be used for purposes of apportioning, or allocating, congressional seats among the states. But there is nothing in the decision that prohibits a state from using the corrected count for all other purposes, including drawing district lines. The states, for example, will no doubt insist that

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the corrected count be used in allocating grants under various federal programs. Otherwise, if the enumeration were used, states could lose millions of dollars in federal money.

There are at least three reasons for believing that legislation prohibiting use of any data in redistricting except the actual enumeration would be unlawful:

First, it would likely violate the one person-one vote principle, which requires states to make a good faith effort to draw districts of substantially equal population. The state’s are given some leeway in complying with this standard to accommodate reasonable state interests, but no state could claim that using admittedly inaccurate data, when accurate data was readily available, furthered any reasonable state interest. The use of inaccurate data would be especially suspect in the context of congressional redistricting, where the equal population standard is most strictly applied.

Second, since the enumeration disproportionately undercounts minorities, using it in redistricting could violate Section 2 and Section 5. For example, it could lower the benchmark (or basis of comparison) for determining whether a state’s redistricting plan which reduced the number of majority-minority districts was retrogressive and/or resulted in the dilution of minority voting strength. It could also result in the “packing” of undercounted minorities in a district to limit their effectiveness in other districts.

Third, the sponsors of legislation prohibiting the use of corrected census data have generally been Republicans who apparently believe that most of those who would be missed in the enumeration would vote Democratic. Excluding those individuals from the redistricting database could confer an advantage on Republicans by minimizing the influence of minority, i.e., Democratic voters. An effort by one party, however, that “consistently degrades” another party’s influence on the political process would be an unconstitutional political gerrymander.

Given the fact that more accurate data is available, the only conceivable purpose to be served by using the uncorrected census in redistricting would be to dilute minority voting strength or gain a systematic partisan advantage. Neither of these justifications would be constitutional.

Redistricting is always a difficult and divisive task. It won’t be any easier this time around as legislators wrangle over the meaning of the Court’s new redistricting decisions and how to deal with the census undercount. Resolution of these issues is particularly critical for minorities, for it will determine whether there is further erosion of their political influence or continued fulfillment of the promises of the Voting Rights Act.

Laughlin Mcdonald is director of the Southern Regional Office of the American Civil liberties Union

An Educator’s View of Segregation

By Chester Travelstead

Vol. 21, No. 1, Spring 2000 pp. 11-12

On August 2, 1955, as Dean of the School of Education at the University of South Carolina, Chester Travelstead delivered a speech citing eight problems in education, an act which led to his dismissal. Shortly thereafter, Travelstead became dean of the College of Education at the University of New Mexico where he retired in 1977 as Provost Emeritus. A portion of Travelstead’s speech that addressed school segregation was published in the January 1956 issue of New South. It has been edited for inclusion below.

The problem of integrating the races in our public schools is unprecedented. Educators and laymen in this state [South Carolina] are faced with making important decisions related to this matter. The time has passed for us to hide our heads in the sand and ignore the existence of the problem.

I must say in the beginning that I have been surprised and disappointed that the education profession in South Carolina has made no public statement giving its views on this matter. I have seen nothing in print, nor have I heard any official pronouncements from any of the official education organizations, including the State Board of Education, concerning their positions on this question.

In the absence of such statements from the professional organizations, we do not know how the members of these organizations feel about this problem. It seems imperative to me that this or any other issue of so great import deserves and demands public discussion. As I examine the bases of our own government, the Bill of Rights, and all other pronouncements of our forefathers-I find nothing which requires, justifies, or even allows a notion of second-class citizenship for any group. The fact that we have practiced segregation on the assumption that it was right and just, does not make it right and just.

Besides one’s own personal beliefs in this matter, there is the legal side of the question of segregation. The highest court of our land has said that the practice of segregation in the schools is unconstitutional. Our oath of allegiance to this constitution does not allow us the luxury of upholding it if and when we think it suits our purposes and tastes. If we choose to circumvent these duly constituted agencies of law, how will we explain and justify this action to our children and [grandchildren]? Our children will learn much by observation of our words and deeds. We certainly have an obligation to them in this respect.

There comes to mind the question of what to do when parts of the state constitution are not in agreement with parts of the federal constitution. If one looks at this situation as a citizen of the United States, he can give only one answer. He must support the federal constitution.

Such statements have not yet been made by state officials in South Carolina, but the fact remains that all South Carolina laws requiring segregation by race in the public schools are now null and void.

In some sections of the

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South, boards of education have gone on record as agreeing with the Supreme Court decisions and as being willing to work toward an early implementation of these decisions. As we boil down the various possibilities, we have left four main alternatives:

• Accept the Supreme Court decision and work sincerely toward its implementation;
• Reject completely the Court decision and work persistently to keep our public schools segregated by attempting to circumvent, delay, and out-maneuver the law;
• Submit to the appropriate court a plan of “good faith compliance” with the Supreme Court ruling;
• Abolish our public schools and attempt to set up private schools on a segregated basis.

The decision to take any one of these four courses will be major. Therefore, such a decision by educators, community and state leaders should be made only after careful consideration of the possible consequences of each choice.

The possible consequences which might follow the fourth alternative–that of abolishing the public schools–are many. First, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to turn back the clock on education more than a hundred years. Most people do not want to abandon public schools, if it can possibly be avoided. Thinking men are not at all certain that abolishing the public schools will correct our troubles. Decisions concerning these matters must be made–and must be made soon.

In this connection, I would like to close with [a] quotation from John Ruskin. “Doing is the great thing. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time they come to like doing it.”

When Public Means Private: School Vouchers

By Gale Greenlee

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, pp. 12-13, 21

As the presidential race 2000 heats up, Democrats and Republicans take their places at opposite ends of the political totem pole to debate issues such as campaign finance reform, the Confederate flag, and police brutality. On the education front, no issue is more controversial than school vouchers. Voucher advocates, generally conservatives, plug school vouchers-which are often promoted as “school choice” or “opportunity scholarships”–as the cure-all for a beleaguered and much maligned public educational system. Detractors, generally progressive, teacher unions, minorities and many high profile organizations (such as the ACLU, the NAACP and the National Education Association), have publicly denounced such schemes as poorly disguised attempts by the right wing to subsidize religious schools, push a conservative political agenda and, in the process, dismantle public education as we know it.

Currently, only three programs–in Milwaukee, Cleveland and the state of Florida–use tax dollars to fund students’ education at private schools. Though the voucher movement is growing, it faces many obstacles and opponents.

On the national level, the voucher debate has gained widespread attention due to recent court battles. In 1998, Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court upheld Milwaukee’s voucher program. Last year, on December 13, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from a Vermont case, in which parents wanted state money to subsidize their children’s education at parochial schools. One week later, a federal judge in Ohio declared Cleveland’s four-year-old voucher program unconstitutional, stating that it violates the separation of church and state; that case is likely to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court. More recently, on March 14, Florida State Circuit Judge L. Ralph Smith Jr., declared Florida’s school voucher program unconstitutional. The state plans to appeal that decision.

“Voucher programs have become prevalent nationwide,” says Steve Benen, spokesperson for Americans United for Separation of Church and State (www.au.org), a Washington, D.C.-based religious liberty watchdog.

Benen notes that interest in vouchers is spreading throughout the South, as states such as Alabama and Georgia consider programs, and others like Virginia and Kentucky debate giving tax credits to parents who send their kids to private schools. Additionally, Louisiana, which has a strong pro-voucher lobby within the Catholic Church, has repeatedly attempted to pass voucher legislation, albeit unsuccessfully. Perhaps the most important move occurred in June 1999 when Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed into law the nation’s first statewide school voucher program. Following Judge Smith’s ruling, the program will not

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continue next year, but the debate certainly will.

Under Florida’s plan, all public schools would be graded “A” to “F,” and students attending failing schools would be given the option of enrolling in another school, including religious schools-at the expense of tax payers. The plan faced stiff opposition, from the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as local and statewide PTAs.

In Escambia County, located in the panhandle approximately one hour from of Mobile, Ala., seven of the county’s thirty-eight elementary schools and two of its nine middle schools were given an “F” rating for the 1998-99 school year.

Barbara Frye, spokesperson for Florida’s Escambia County Schools, says the A+ plan was based on a fallacy. “The fallacy is that the children are not ‘trapped’ and we will also maintain that the schools aren’t failing,” she says.

She explains that schools are ranked based on the average score of fourth graders on the Florida Comprehensive Achievement Test (FCAT). She argues that using an average score, rather than measuring individual student progress, skews the results and obscures the fact that “You can have many students not learning, sitting in an ‘A’ school.” She also criticizes the plan for not giving vouchers to low-achieving students, but rather to students who simply live in a district with a “failing” school. Furthermore, since the voucher schools are private, they are not required to adhere the same standards and regulations as public schools and therefore aren’t accountable to taxpayers. “It doesn’t make sense,” Frye says.

Regardless of the judicial challenges to Florida’s plan, it seems likely that Governor Jeb Bush’s brother and presidential hopeful George W., would, if elected, promote vouchers on a national level. In fact, the February 29 edition of the New York Times quoted the Texas governor as calling “portable” federal education dollars.

The South is also a key force in the school choice debate, not only because many conservatives live in the Bible Belt, but also because two organizations that fund private vouchers have roots in the region: Children First/CEO America Foundation and the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF).

CEO America, based in Bentonville, Ark. was started in 1992 and now operates more than 70 programs across the country. Its website clearly states its mission is “to promote parental choice in education through private

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tuition grants and tax-funded options.”

“We use these programs to demonstrate how these public policies could look,” says CEO America President Fritz Steiger. He says the organization proudly considers itself a “parent advocacy organization” that helps parents “understand how school choice works and how it helps them.”

Since 1992, the organization has given more than $1 million in scholarship money to students in Atlanta and Little Rock, more than $300,000 to ones in Chattanooga, almost $560,000 to ones in Mississippi and more than $8 million to programs in San Antonio, Texas.

Targeting low-income children, CSF is a two-year-old $100 million foundation underwritten by Republican fundraiser and venture capitalist Ted Forstmann, and CEO America board member and Wal-Mart heir, John Walton. Incidentally, Walton is also founder of School Futures Research Foundation, which manages charter schools in California, and he is a director of a for-profit corporation that also manages charter and public schools. CSF, which offers opportunity scholarships to disadvantaged kids, initially identified 40 partner cities, 15 of which are in the South-including Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama, Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, Savannah, Georgia, and Jackson, Mississippi. After its first year, CSF expanded its program nationwide to help needy low-income children.

People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org) argues that the two organizations work hand-in-hand; while CSF strives to create a grassroots demand for vouchers, CEO America lobbies for voucher legislation, and then entrepreneurs eagerly await the opportunity to “supply the new privatized education system.” Since privately funded programs don’t use public money, it’s difficult to criticize CSF’s efforts, which are often publicized as mere philanthropy.

If anything, the voucher movement has amassed a curious mix of conservatives and people of color advocating for better educational opportunities. In fact CSF’s national board of advisors includes Dorothy I. Height, chair and president emeritus of the National Council of Negro Women, as well as Martin Luther King III and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young.

Still, vouchers are not without critics. Governors of some Southern states, like Mississippi and North Carolina, remain staunch voucher opponents. In February, while giving his 7th Annual State of American Education address in Durham, N.C., U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley called for a renewed fight against voucher programs, saying they “divert us from the real challenge of lifting up all of our children.” Presidential hopeful Vice President Al Gore has also spoken out against vouchers, calling them a “big and historic mistake” that drains much needed funds from public schools.

A prime example of the loss of funds is Edgewood, Texas, part of the San Antonio school district. Backed by CEO America, the Horizon voucher project diverted more than $4.5 million from public schools as roughly 800 students accepted vouchers, worth up to $4,000; the district lost $5,800 in public funds for each student who left. According to Steiger, the project is a success in that it gives public schools competition and an impetus to reform.

As Benen notes, “Their [CEO’s] program is perfectly legal because it’s doesn’t use government funds. Still, I find it troubling that these ‘philanthropists’ have enormous funds to put into education but are using it in ways that I feel are counterproductive.”

Donna Fowler, spokesperson for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) agrees. “It’s hard to be opposed to them [CEO America] because it’s private money,” she says. “But we have to look at what the effects are over time, and we’re seeing that the effects are minimal at best, and harmful in some cases.”

The jury is still out concerning whether voucher programs can actually raise student achievement. According to AFT, an evaluation of the Milwaukee program by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor John Witte found no difference in achievement levels for voucher students versus public school students. Still, that same data was later re-analyzed by pro-voucher advocates, and not suprisingly, showed that voucher students outperformed public school students in math and reading.

Whatever the case, voucher advocates and public school supporters continue to go toe to toe. For many Southern states with rural communities that lack private schools, public school is the only viable option. But for those with increasing numbers of charter schools, as well as private schools, publicly funded school voucher programs remain will continue fuel debate in the year 2000.

Gale Greenlee is a writer and editor at the Carolina Peacemaker in Greensboro, North Carolina. She served as a training and technical assistance coordinator for the Corporation for National Service’s LEARNS program at the Southern Regional Council until October 1999.

Youth Building the Rural South

By Ajulo E. Othow

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, p. 14, 18

Ajulo E. Othow is the Project Manager of the Southern Rural Development Initiative’s (SRDI) Community Development Corporations projects and programs. SRDI is a unique collaborative of community-based institutions working in the poorest communities of the rural South based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I’d been working for the Southern Rural Development Initiative (SRDI) for only two months when we had our third Annual Assembly (trial by fire is integral to our institutional culture). Yearly we bring together our 33-member collaborative of community-based development institutions to learn and share, to be rejuvenated by our connection to a larger movement, to reaffirm our collaborative model, and to highlight our regional identity.

As a neophyte staff person, and relatively new person to the community development field, I felt almost completely detached from this group of people who shared a history of struggling for justice in the South. Still, I searched for someone like me, someone who seemed unfamiliar with the surroundings, culture and language, someone who didn’t seem to know the whole story of the movement and its actors. I found no one.

Later, at our post-Assembly debriefing, when my turn came, I casually yet tentatively (so as not to offend anyone) remarked that I didn’t see anyone under thirty. All of my

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colleagues agreed and immediately began to inventory the participants, particularly those members who sent a staff or board member under thirty. Again, zero. I then realized that every time I was introduced to a board member or partnering organization, it went something like this: “This is Ajulo, our new staff person … She single-handedly brings down the average age of our office.” I always found the remark funny and thought it a compliment to my youthful genius. But I quickly realized that it had nothing to do with me, and almost everything to do with our field, and the individual institutions that comprise it.

Here’s my soapbox analysis. First, through the pervasiveness of popular culture and the lack of critical thought, young people are vilified. They are not considered as assets but are viewed as issues, threats, crowds in need of unfettered controls. They are difficult to understand and impossible to communicate with. Some of the folks I met were surprised by my position, frequently asked my age, and were curious about what made me different.

Second, too few young people are visible in the community development field; an entire segment of our constituency is not being actively engaged. We are building communities of the future without building leaders for the future.

And third, SRDI’s work is focused on persistently poor places in the rural South. Both history and perception support the notion that young people must leave their rural communities to lead productive and prosperous lives. We are challenged with understanding the impact of this on rural communities and community-building work. And then there’s technology–what does this revolution have to do with youth staying in rural communities?

SRDI, has picked up this issue and turned it into the start of a long-term strategy to build the capacity of our member institutions around engaging young people. This initiative has two sub-themes which we will address at this year’s Annual Assembly, Claiming Home: Youth Building the Rural South of 2000 and Beyond. The first theme concerns internal sustainability. Our institutions must create space for young people in governance and management, ensuring that these institutions are sufficiently flexible to reshape themselves when faced with new ideas from young people in power. The second theme is around our community building work. We must ensure that our institutions are accountable to the young people in their communities by involving them in visioning and shaping stronger communities.

The planning for the Assembly involves young people–ages fifteen to thirty–as designers, participants, and evaluators. Young people will also lead presentations and workshops on issues of importance to youth including education, political participation, starting a family, and working in the rural South.

Over the course of three days of workshops, speakers, small and large group activities, and cultural presentations by folks of all ages, SRDI, our members and fifty youth from around the region will generate ideas, share models, ask tough questions, and build momentum for a long term strategy to engage tomorrow’s leaders and community builders today.

The intergenerational nature of the assembly will even extend to the entertainment. Carpetbag Theater, Inc., a community-based nonprofit theater group, will perform, addressing issues of racism, classism, sexism, and ageism.

Our annual Assembly will look very different from last year’s, and with some measure of success we’ll find that our institutions and our communities will too.

The Federal Executive and Civil Rights

Staff

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, p. 15

In 1961 the SRC submitted a forty-eight-page report to the Kennedy administration entitled the “Federal Executive and Civil Rights” in which it advised the implementation of eighteen steps for the administration to model in order to improve civil rights. Reproduced here is a truncated version of the report which appeared in the March 1961 issue of New South.

The Southern Regional Council has submitted to President Kennedy and his administration a 48-page report proposing actions by the executive department to strengthen civil rights and improve race relations.

The report, entitled “The Federal Executive and Civil Rights,” states that the President holds power under the Constitution and existing statutes which, if used, “could carry the country far toward good race relations.”

It furthers declares: “Presidential action should not be so emphasized as to blunt the drive for remedial legislation. But the existing powers of the office should be used, and every governmental program administered in such ways as to move expeditiously to end discrimination and to open all careers to talent.

“The federal government’s own operations need to be a model of just race relations, or else the credentials of the government to lead others are weak.”

The eighteen proposals made by the Council are summarized as follows:

1. Appoint a staff adviser on race relations and create a single office to review all federal programs to ensure nondiscrimination in the government’s own operations.

2. Use the influence of the executive office to broaden Southern support for civil rights.

3. Announce as a national goal the full and free development of all our human resources, thereby setting the moral tone of America.

4. Direct overseas information programs to interpret our racial strife and change truthfully and candidly.

5. Continually review federal employment to insure nondiscrimination, rather than rely on the current processing of complaints.

6. Frequently appoint qualified Negroes to high level administrative posts in government service here and abroad.

7. Affirm support of the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision and opposition to segregated schools; direct the Department of Justice to test in court its existing authority to intervene in or initiate school desegregation suits.

8. Give special attention to racial equality in federal aid for vocational training and the schooling of children of military personnel.

. Give no federal research funds to colleges and universities that restrict admission because of race, creed, color, or national origin.

10. Direct the Department of Justice to be vigilant in the prevention or control of violence and intimidation connected with school desegregation or sit-ins.

11. Adequately staff the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.

12. Sponsor a national voter registration drive, supported by wide distribution of information on voter qualifications and procedures in every state.

13. Require all National Guard units to drop racial bars.

14. Examine the “separate, but unequal” clause in the Hill-Burton hospital construction for unconstitutionality.

15. Make a final, decisive effort to end segregation on common carriers in interstate or intrastate traffic.

16. Require large contractors of the government to recruit Negro employees as a condition for contract award.

17. End at once federal cooperation with discrimination in the apprenticeships and employment services.

18. Guide federal housing programs with a policy of encouraging integration.

Making the Promise of America Its Practice

By Alexis M. Herman

Vol. 22, No. 1, 2000, p. 16

The good news comes from everywhere, virtually every day. America is on a roll. More than twenty million new jobs have been created since President Clinton and Vice President Gore took office in 1993. Wages are up, and at 4.1 percent, the nation’s unemployment rate is way down-especially among women.

When the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, the Southern Regional Council’s predecessor, was created in 1919, approximately one in five women worked. Today, women are nearly half the American workforce. Not only has the number of working women more than doubled, but the jobs have also changed. In the past twenty-five years, the percentage of female attorneys has jumped from 7 to 29 percent, while female physicians have increased from 13 to 25 percent. One in three businesses is owned by a woman. In today’s information age, women are web developers and online financial advisors, jobs never imagined by our foremothers.

But the bright light of our country’s prosperity isn’t shining on all American workers. And even though more American women are participating in the workforce than ever before, there is still a substantial gap in the wages paid to men and women.

As we enter the twenty-first century, it is simply wrong that women earn about seventy-five cents compared to men. Working women pay the same for goods and services, and should be paid the same for the work they do.

Of course, there are people who claim that pay discrimination is a thing of the past. One study even claimed that we don’t have to worry about it anymore because very young women with no children had essentially achieved parity with their male counterparts. That would be fine if women never aged, or never had children. But we aren’t living in Pleasantville. We are living in the real world, and we need to take real action.

Thanks to the leadership of organizations like SRC we have made progress, but we need to continue focusing America’s attention on closing the pay gap once and for all. The truth is, that women who make less build up less in their employers’ pension plans. So, pay inequity adds up to pension inequity. This is money women never get back. And when it comes to retirement savings, instead of compounding interest, we are compounding injustice.

At the Labor Department, we are addressing the pay equity issue in three ways. First, we are putting a focus on helping workers-particularly women-get the skills, training and education to get ahead. In today’s economy, how you grow depends on what you know, and we are calling on the resources of government, business, community and faith-based leadership to help more women get on the road to success.

We are also supporting women who are making the delicate transition from welfare to work. For them, the thin line of trustworthy child care, reliable transportation, housing and training often separates failure from success. And we are creating security nets across the country to ensure these women not only have jobs, but also a real future.

Finally, we are continuing to speak out about the need to raise the minimum wage. More than 10 percent of the 10 million Americans who would benefit directly from the increase are African-American women. Over one year, a dollar an hour increase is enough for a low-income family of four to buy groceries for seven months: or pay rent for five months, or invest in their own training with a year and a half of community college education.

As America’s workplace evolves at warp-speed, these are the things we must do to ensure that we leave no one behind-particularly our nation’s women. We must continue to work together, to create policies together, and to lift our voices together, until we have truly made the promise of America, the practice of America.

Alexis M. Herman is U.S. Secretary of Labor. She co-founded the Black Women’s Employment Project at SRC in 1972.