In this Issue

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 2

This issue brings Southern Changes full circle with its first anniversary. Because it has matured in format, and we hope, coverage of events and issues, the magazine has been greatly benefitted by the first year’s experiences.

As a chronicle of the ongoing struggle for equality, Southern Changes apprpriately begins its second volume with a concern for the status of Blacks in 1979. In the Soapbox piece, Vernon Jordan sets the tone in his thoughts on the Black agenda for the 1980s. Jordan believes that the next ten years must improve the nation’s record of achieving a society where race is not a dividing fact since in the last decades we have failed.

On the same issue, our cover story for this month reminds us of the historic beginnings of many of today’s most pressing controversies. A small community of farming Blacks on the Georgia coast struggle to regain land taken from them in World War II for “the national interest”. The fight of families to regain their land and heritage at Harris Neck is a vivid illustration of how past wrongs ought not — cannot — be seen as a mere history without contemporary importance.

We can also see a little too much of ourselves or neighbors in our article on the continuing saga of the modern Ku Klux Klan. Although limited, KKK activities have spread to all parts of the region and may show more about the present status of race relations in what sentiments they echo than the outright racism they exude.

In another article Steve Hoffius takes a look at an employment and training program in South Carolina that is giving some Black and White women a chance to enter new jobs. It is a story of how the changing nature of the South can be one of progress and new opportunities.

Our department pieces include a new section on the comings and goings of Southerners of note and a review of the North Carolina legislature’s performance in 1979. As we said last year, we continue to see in ourselves, our region, and our nation “the opposing qualities which make living in the South exciting and worrisome.”

The South’s Economic Future

By Staff

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 3-4

Southern state development leaders prefer low-wage industries and anti-union laws as the primary thrust for the future economic growth in the region, according to a survey released by the Southern Regional Council (SRC).

Citing both “bewilderment and hope” in the findings of the survey of board members of the Southern state economic development agencies, the SRC reports show that “right-to-work” laws that restrict union activities are the most preferred strategy for Southern states to attract industry. As the same time, improved vocational education and upgraded general education were endorsed as two ther steps for the South’s future economic development.

The areas of growth which the development leaders endorsed in the SRC survey completed in late 1978 were sectors “where the wage rates have been low in the South.” For example, the food processing industry was a high preference of Southern development leaders for future growth while wage rates in the industry have been among the lowest in the region during the last decade.

Steve Suitts, executive director of the Council and author of the report, says that the development board whose members were surveyed reflect only a narrow segment of the Southern population and “need to be more representative.” Only two percent of the 169 development board members in the Southern states are Black or other minority and less than one percent are female. “There is no representation of community-based organizations which substatially represent the poor” and few members are from labor groups. The report also finds a need for more representation of “small industrial owners and merchants throughout the region.”

9(Board members on the state development boards in North Carolina were not included in the survey because the agency was in the process of legislative change during the time of the survey. The report is based upon questionnaires which were completed by 43 of the develpment board members in 10 Southern states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, & Virginia).

State development boards and agencies in the South have primary responsibility for establishing priorities and programs for economic development. Southern agencies annually spend more than fifteen million dollars of state fnds to promote the states’ economic fortunes largely through personal contact, recruitment, traveling, and advertising.

Almost all development board members surveyed endorsed “balanced growth” for the South’s future yet a few admitted that they didn’t know what the term actually meant. The chemical industries were, in fact, the first to choice of most leaders surveyed. One in five board members preferred it. Other areas of high preference included mining, manufacturing, tourism, and entertainment.

Suitts points out that develpment leaders have a preference for areas of economic growth which haven’t had rapid job growth in the South during the last nine years. For example, almost 17 percent of those surveyed chose agriculture as their first choice for economic development. “The fact is that jobs in agriculture have been declining over the past 20 years,” Suitts said. If Southern states intend to develp jobs in areas of low growth, “promotional activities alone will not secure such an ambitious objective as reordering the areas of growth within the South.If the trend indicates that development boards do not place the highest priority with creatingjobs in economic development, the very purposes of the agencies are in question,” the report states.

The choices for economic development analyzed by political affiliation revealed surprisiing results. For example, strong and weak Democrats were more likely to endorse low-wage industries as preferred areas of development than were Republicans. Strong Republicans selected high-wage industries more often as their first preference than did any other political group.

Weak Democrats and Independents — not Republicans — chose “right-to-work” laws as the foremost strategy for economic development more than any other political group. Almost half of both weak Republicans and Independents believed that “right-to-work” laws were the preeminent strategies for the South’s

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economic future.

The report also noted that native-born Southerners were more likely to endorse low-wage industries and “right-to-work” laws than were those not born within the region. “At the same time,” Suitts stated, “it is encouraging that lifelong Southerners to note that development leaders born within the South are those who believe that bi-racial cooperation is in any way important in economic development for the future.”

The Council is sending its finding to the state economic development comissions, federal agencies, and Southern governors. The report recommends that Southern governos appoint a more diverse board for economic development and that the agencies institue more focused, direct activities showing that the primary objective of economic development in the region is creating gainful employment for Southerners.

In addition, the report recommends that state agencies “abandon the preferences for areas and strategies of development that stress cheap labour and anti-unionism. ‘A good day’s work for a good day’s pay’ should be enough of a philosophy and slogan to emphasize the attractions of an energetic work force in the South,” the report concludes.

Copies of the report are available from the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, N.W., Atlanta, Georgia 30303 at $3.00 each.

The Black Agenda For The 1980s

By Vernon Jordan

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 5-9

Publisher’s Note: On July 22nd, National Urban League President Vernon Jordan delivered the keynote address at the organization’s annual conference. Most news accounts closely covered the portions of Jordan’s speech on the coming Presidential campaign where he stated, “the Black strategy should be to hang loose and make the candidates come to us. No one can win without the Black vote. ” His remarks on the status of race relations and the agenda for Blacks in the 1980S deserve much more circulation than they have yet received.

Adopted from his speech, this article is the thinking and perspective of one of the country’s leading Blacks, a native Southerner, and a former staff member of the Southern Regional Council.

Twenty-five years after the Brown decision Black Americans are assessing the fruits of that great victory. Brown ushered in a new era. It struck down the institution of segregation. It laid the legal, idealistic, and philosophic basis for the second reconstruction. It engendered realistic prospects that our nation would bring about real racial equality.

The fifteen years that followed Brown justified Black people’s faith. Real progress was made. Civil rights laws, court decisions and executive orders changed the face of the nation. Yes, Brown inaugurated a new dawn in America. But the day is passed, and Black people now find themselves once again in the dark midnight of persistent disadvantage.

This is not a popular view today. Many people claim that our progress has been sufficient, and that race is no longer a factor of consequence in America today.

The debate on Black progress reminds me of the old question, “Is the glass half-empty or is it half-full?” The answer depends on your situation. If you are sitting on a shaded lawn next to a well-stocked cooler, the glass is half-full. But if, like the masses of Black people today, you are wandering in a parched desert, that glass is not only half-empty, but it is in danger of becoming just another mirage.

There has been progress; there has been tremendous change, and more Black people find themselves in better circumstances than at any time in our history. It would be dishonest to claim otherwise. Blacks in high positions have proliferated. Blacks in corporate jobs have sharply increased. Blacks are in jobs never before open to us. Blacks are in schools and colleges that never allowed us through their doors.

Yes, there has been progress – for some of us.

Does that progress justify the claim that our battles are over, that the war is won? Does it justify claims that Black problems are now based on class, not race? Does it justify the view that Black leadership is not responsive to the changed national climate? And does it justify the claims that affirmative action and minimum wage laws harm rather than help Black citizens?

As much as we celebrate the progress Black people have made we must insist that the glass of our hopes is half-empty and draining fast.

The myth of Black progress is a dangerous illusion used as an excuse to halt further efforts to extend real progress to all of our people. The myth of Black progress illustrates the negative attitude toward Blacks. It purports to show that Blacks have made progress and those who have not have only themselves to blame. It sanctions the vile myth that the poor are really an underclass, incapable of

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being helped, unwilling to rise out of their poverty.

Let us start with jobs. Work is the measure of a person’s worth in our society. It is the key that opens all other doors. How much progress have we made in employment?

Some of us have done well. Black men and women in both the public and the private sectors are holding job titles and receiving paychecks unheard of for Black people a decade or so ago. They are solid symbols of the progress some of us have made.

But they would be the first to admit that they are visible only because of their rarity. They are exceptions. They form a small part of the Black work force. The masses of Black people are still in the worst jobs our society offers. Black workers are twice as likely as Whites to be in low-pay, low-skill jobs, and less than half as likely as Whites to be in the jobs that count in America.

The Black unemployment rate is higher than it was when the Brown decision was handed down and higher than it was when we marched on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Black people are experiencing Depression-level unemployment. With the nation now entering a new recession, Black people still have not recovered from the last one.

Black youth have become an endangered, lost generation. Unemployment rates for Black young people approach sixty percent in our cities. Our neo-conservative critics blame it on the minimum wage. Get rid of the minimum wage laws, they say, and Black unemployment will go down.

Why then, has White youth unemployment gone down at the very time the minimum wage has gone up? Why accept the curious thesis that Black jobs depend on abandoning the minimum standards of compensation every industrial nation demands? The last time Black people enjoyed full employment was in 1863. There were no minimum wage laws under slavery; we’ll take our chances with them today.

Income is a basic measure of progress. Some of us have made great strides. A few have reached parity with Whites. We are often told about the nine percent of Black families in the upper income brackets. But what about the other 91 percent? How are they doing?

A third are poor – three times the White race. The majority are near poor. They earn less than the government itself says is needed for a minimum adequate living standard. Half a million Black people were added to the ranks of the poor in the 1970s. And in this International Year of the Child the majority of Black children are growing up in families experiencing severe economic hardship.

The shameful fact this nation must face is that the gap between Whites and Blacks is growing instead of closing. At the end of the sixties the typical Black family income Was 61 percent of the typical White family income. Today, it is down to 57 percent.

Education is another basic area. Twenty-five years after Brown more Black children attend racially isolated schools than in 1954. The South has integrated its schools, the North has not. Chicago’s schools are more segregated than Jackson, Mississippi’s.

In some cities Black high school dropouts outnumber graduates. Many school systems program Black youth for failure.

Many of our children spend twelve years in schools and classrooms indifferent to their fate, and then cannot pass minimum reading and arithmetic requirements.

Yes, more Blacks are attending college than ever before. But the majority are in two-year community colleges while the majority of Whites are in four-year schools that put them on career ladders denied to Blacks. Black enrollments in medical and professional schools are declining while total enrollments rise.

Has there been progress in housing? Some. More Black families are living in decent housing, and some are living in suburbs that never saw a Black face after the maid’s quitting time. But the point is whether Black progress is real when measured against standards enjoyed by White Americans.

By that standard, there is still an intolerable gap. One out of five Black families live in housing that the government says is physically deficient. HUD says Blacks are three times as likely as Whites to live in housing that has serious deficiencies. And Blacks are twice as likely as Whites to pay more than they can afford to get decent housing.

It is clear that the glass of racial progress is only half-full; that Blacks remain disadvantaged. It is clear that race continues to be a major determining factor in our society.

DuBois was right when he

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warned: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” The challenge of the 1980s consists of dismantling the dehumanizing, brutalizing color line that places a ceiling on Black opportunities and removes the floor from Black security.

Yet, the Black agenda for the 1980s is an agenda that is “black” only in the sense that Blacks are disproportionately poor. It is an agenda that transcends race, sex and region. It is an agenda directed at helping all of America’s poor and deprived citizens. It is an agenda that is in the national interest.

The civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s concentrated on securing basic social and political rights. The struggles of the 1970s were defensive, largely limited to preserving the gains we made. Those of the 1980s must be to secure parity between Blacks and Whites; to remove race once and for all as a factor in determining the rewards and responsibilities in our society.

The Black agenda for the 1980s starts with full employment. We reject absolutely any policies that assign poor people and Black people to the role of cannon fodder in the war against inflation. We reject any unemployment goal above the bare minimum. We insist on federal compliance ‘with the full employment mandates of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill.

There is no ambiguity about our position. We want jobs. We want them now. We prefer them in the private sector. We’ll take them in the public sector. And we’re not interested in all the excuses people give why we can’t have those jobs. The right to work and to earn is a basic human right. It is being denied to disproportionate numbers of Black people.

Full employment and Black parity in jobs implies another basic item on the Black agenda: affirmative action.

The Weber decision removes a major obstacle to voluntary affirmative action plans. Very few government agencies or private corporations can honestly say they give minority workers a fair share of the jobs at all levels of employment. Too few can honestly demonstrate that they’ve made a maximum effort to do so.

After Weber, there can be no more excuses. The Weber decision clearly states that affirmative action plans can be instituted to eliminate manifest racial imbalances. The court approved numerical goals and timetables. We call on all public

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and private employers to initiate and to implement broad, vigorous affirmative action plans and to strengthen present programs designed to bring parity to Black workers at all levels. If such plans are introduced this year and implemented throughout the next decade, then by 1990 we can celebrate the end of affirmative action because its goals will have been met.

And those plans must include numbers, even if some people call them quotas. No company inaugurates a marketing program without a clear idea of the sales level it wants to reach. And no company can be serious about an affirmative action plan without a clear, numerical goal.

In addressing the question of affirmative action I have stressed the private sector’s role. That is no accident. It is in the private sector that we find – along with enthusiastic compliance – the strongest resistance. Four out of five jobs are in the private sector. Between 1974 and 1977 – even in the midst of a recession and a weak recovery period – the American economy generated over five million new jobs. Seven out of ten were in the private sector.

Black people did not get their fair share of those jobs. In fact there was a loss of private sector jobs for Black men in that period. While other groups, including other minorities, were expanding their share of newly created private sector jobs, Black men suffered an eleven percent decline. For every ten Black men with private sector jobs in 1974, only nine were employed in 1977. Jobs go up, but Black’s jobs go down.

That’s why we must have vigorous affirmative action. That’s why affirmative action is at the top of the Black agenda for the 1980s.

A humane society must provide for those who cannot work, even in a full employment economy. And in an economy where jobs are few and the jobless are many a decent, equitable. income maintenance system is a necessity. Yet, the present welfare system is an intolerable mess. President Carter is to be commended for his attempts to get even a limited reform measure through a Congress noted for its hostility to the poor. The President’s proposal can be supported only as a first step toward development of a comprehensive, federally administered income maintenance system free of punitive elements and available to all in need.

Another key item on our agenda for the 1980s is a national youth development program that would assure our young people of the skills, schooling and services they need to participate fully in our society. The Administration’s current review of all federal programs that impact on youth should lead to a comprehensive national youth policy. That policy must go beyond mere coordination of existing programs to deal with the problems facing the nearly ten million Black and White poor children in America. Their needs

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cannot be sacrificed via the altar of the balanced budget.

Health is an issue on everyone’s agenda. The nation is in the midst of a debate on health care, a debate that has been personalized by the media. Black people don’t care if a plan is labeled Kennedy or Carter, and our view of plans for catastrophic health insurance -is that Black health today is catastrophic. There is enough evidence that the Surgeon General ought to determine that being Black is dangerous to your health.

Black people have limited access to quality health care. A nation concerned that it has too many doctors must realize that Black neighborhoods have too few doctors. And the barely adequate public health facilities in many Black neighborhoods are being closed down to balance local budgets.

The Black agenda for the 1980s includes a national health system that is unified, comprehensive, consumer oriented, and guaranteed total quality health care services for all.

The Black agenda also includes decent housing for all. Thirty years ago Congress passed a National Housing Act with the goal of providing “a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family.” It is time to realize that goal – thirty years is long enough.

The first step toward assuring decent housing for all should be taken immediately. We favor immediate passage of the pending amendments to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These amendments would give HUD the right to take positive steps to end housing discrimination. We call for swift passage of this new -and desperately needed – enforcement power.

The agenda for the 1980s also includes other measures such as set-asides for minority contractors, an accurate count of Blacks and Browns in the crucial 1980 census, and much more. But the basic, core items outlined here will be enough for some people to say our agenda for the 1980s is an impossible dream.

We are told this is an “era of limits,” an age of “new realities.” The era of scarcity is supposed to be upon us. The long lines in front of empty gas pumps are supposed to be the harbinger of the future. That’s behind much of the new negativism and selfish privatism that infects our society. The guiding principle seems to be: Those who have, keep what they’ve got, and those who don’t have, will get even less.

Recently President Carter spoke of the crisis of confidence among Americans, and he rightly deplored the selfishness that pervades our society. He called on the nation to unite in a new patriotic thrust that wages war on the energy crisis. We support the President’s call to lick the energy crisis, but we say that energy is not a moral issue. The price of gas or the numbers of barrels of imported oil are not the stuff of which moral crusades are made.

Tapping the latent moral fervor of our nation and rekindling the belief in American ideals needs a worthier subject. It needs an inspiring vision – the vision of racial equality. That is a moral issue, an issue still unresolved. It is an issue that tests the moral fiber of a nation.

Our agenda for the 1980s is a battle plan for the war against racial disadvantage and poverty. It is an agenda that promises to revive America’s heritage of idealism and its confidence in traditional values of justice, brotherhood and equality.

Black people understand the struggle for equality. We know we must weather the storms ahead – storms of recession, of racism, of an uncaring nation. Yes, we know our days of sacrifice and struggle are not over.

Our struggle is for America’s soul. We know that our struggle is one to revive the floundering moral principles of our nation. We have faith in America’s ideals, in her promises of equality, in her innate morality. Our faith has been sorely tried, it has been burned in the furnace of racial hatreds, but always, Black people have revived their faith in America and through their example and commitment, America’s faith in itself.

Preparing Women For Engineering Technology

By Steve Hoffius

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 10-13

Katherine Prior is a nurse, a long-time nurse. For 18 years she has worked at hospitals in the Carolinas, returned to classes for more education, and now is a licensed, practical nurse. She has never made more than $4.10 an hour.

She’s tired of it.

Now, on a morning when she is scheduled for night work, she looks a little uncomfortable. She stands in an air conditioning and refrigeration workshop at Trident Technical College in Charleston, S.C., wearing protective goggles and holding an acetylene torch. Hesitantly, she moves the torch around two joined pieces of copper tubing, turning them a cherry red, and melts silver solder between them. She takes off her goggles and squints to see how she did. A little too much solder, says the instructor, but a good job. She has just soldered her first tube, and puts it aside carefully, beaming with pride. “I want to show my husband,” she says. “He won’t believe it.”

“How much could a woman make if she went into air conditioning work?” someone asks the instructor. “Oh, she’d start out around $4.00 an hour” – Katherine’s eyes widen – “and then after about three years, after she became a full-fledged technician, from $8.00 to $10.00.” Katherine smiles and shakes her head. “Three years?” she asks. “Sounds all right to me.”

Katherine and dozens of other Charleston-area women are members of a new program at Trident, a model for others around the country; FACET/FACIT. The acronym stands for Female Access to Careers in Engineering Technology and in Industrial Technology. Its purpose is to prepare women for high-paying jobs in fields not traditionally open to them.

Pat is also a nurse, making about the same pay as Katherine. She has worked in hospitals for eight years and decided recently to move toward a higher paying job. She visited Trident Tec’s downtown campus to investigate the classes necessary toward earning her RN degree and then her Masters. With that degree she hoped she could find a job teaching in a nursing program. Instead she found out about FACET/FACIT. “With this,” she says, “I don’t have to take six years, I can make more money, and I’ve got a better chance for a sure job.”

Her family doesn’t like it. “My mother keeps telling me, “You’ve got a good job. Why don’t you keep on nursing?’ I tell her ‘It’s my job and it’s my life.’ And then when my brother comes home from the Navy Yard and tells me how much he makes welding, well, I know it’s time for a change.”

According to Trident officials, traditional jobs for women – secretarial, nursing, dental hygienist, teacher – pay salaries that average in the $6,000 – $9,000 range. Many jobs that have been identified as “for men only” in businesses and industries offer salaries that average about $4,000 more. “And the jobs are available,” insists Kay Mathers, acting director of the program. “One of the reasons we started this program was that industries came to us looking for help in meeting affirmative action requirements. They need women, and until now the women simply weren’t available.”

The FACET/FACIT program has two main components. In one part of the program, high school girls are offered eight weeks of daily classes, films, and tours to acquaint them with job possibilities in the surrounding area. They learn about communication skills, the different requirements for various jobs, the problems and benefits of each, and take part in “hands-on” workshops in which they work with small engines, instruments and tools. Once or twice a week, they tour local plants – everything from the town of Hanahan’s water works to the Polaris Missile Facility – and see for themselves what jobs in engineering and engineering technology would entail.

The second part of the program is the section

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in which Katherine and Pat are enrolled. It is directed toward women who are beyond high school age, who hold jobs but feel the need, as Katherine and Pat do, to make a change in their careers. These women gather weekly for a three-hour “Career Exploration Course.” For one hour they hear about a particular job area chemical, mechanical, electronic, architectural, and civil engineering technologies; welding; drafting; and more – usually from a woman already employed in the field. She explains the work, the pay, the other employees and their reactions to women in the field, and she answers questions.

“One of the stock questions,” says Mathers, “is ‘How does your husband feel about your job?’ and ‘How are you treated as a woman there?’ The answers to the first one vary. To the second one it’s usually that at first men test the women a lot, but when they find the women can do the job, they accept them. Other questions deal with how to handle the extra assistance that men often give and how to deal with advancing ahead of qualified men. Because of affirmative action, that’s a real issue now. One woman in the class assumed that the woman in that position wouldn’t take the advancement. It just wasn’t fair, she said. The other woman laughed. ‘You’re damn right I took it,’ she said.

During the remaining two hours of the class, students participate in workshop experiences. In a class on aircraft maintenance, they test metal parts for hairline cracks. In the air conditioning and refrigeration class, where Katherine and Pat took part, they cut copper tubing, widen one end of a piece (“swedge it,” said the instructor), and then solder the two together. The lecture for that session had been uninspiring. None of the students asked questions. No area women could be found who worked in the field, so the class was taught by a male Trident instructor. He said in his seven years at Tec, no woman had ever entered the program. “I’d like to see some women get into air conditioning I refrigeration here,” he said, “if only because it makes a special difference in the classes it’s hard to explain just how – from when it’s all men.” The women rolled their eyes and nodded. They seemed to have an idea of the change their presence would make in an all-male class.

But when they reached the workshop, their eyes widened and mouths dropped open as each tool was used. The cooling unit of a refrigerator had been turned on before the class, and the coils were covered with frost. One by one, the women slowly approached it, and reached out their hands to the coils, withdrawing them quickly, their fingertips covered with snow. “Goll-ee,” one whispered.

The career exploration workshops cover fields in which some of the women are already interested, and others – like air conditioning repair and installation – that few had ever considered. In these, the workshop experiences seem to make the difference, and change a foreign field to an exciting one. When the instructors offered up the acetylene torches, the women raced for them.

These FACET/FACIT programs, though, are really only preparation. A woman who has been through the program will be familiar with engineering and industrial jobs, but will not yet be trained for one. That’s the long-term goal of the program: to supply women with enough information and encouragement that they will take the step that until now has rarely been considered, to enroll in an engineering or industrial program at Tec or another college.

The program’s classes take care of the information. For the encouragement, Mathers and the other staff members have set up extensive opportunities for counseling and support sessions.

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Here they serve both women in both the preparation programs and the engineering technology classes.

“Before classes started last time,” Mathers explains, “I sent out letters to all instructors asking them to let us know when women in their classes seemed to be having a hard time. We get together with them and talk. We have counselors on the staff. We can get them plenty of tutoring assistance. And we have “Nurture Sessions” – we have to change the name, some of the women feel that at their ages they don’t need “nurturing” – in which we get together all the women engineering technology students. We have some programs for them, and some social gatherings. We try to have second year students together with the first year students, as a way of saying ‘Look, I got through it. You can, too.”

Apparently the program is succeeding. In the spring of 1977, just 6% of the students in Tec’s engineering technology classes and 2% of those in industrial technology were women. In the spring 1979 quarter, after one year of the preparation classes, 17% of the engineering technology and 6% of the industrial technology students were women. In those two years the number enrolled in both had increased from 50 to 175. Beyond that, many enrolled in school programs elsewhere. Of 28 senior high school girls in the program last year, 20 enrolled in engineering or engineering technology programs in the fall.

The program’s success is spreading, too. Already similar ones have been established at three other South Carolina Technical colleges: Orangeb urg-Calhoun, Tn-County, and Greenville. Schools in 30 states have requested information, and 46 video copies of the program’s 12minute explanatory film have been mailed out.

FACET/FACIT has been funded for two years now, first by the S.C. State Department of Vocational Education ($61,000) and then under the federal Career Incentive Act ($90,000). The response has been so positive, says Trident Vice President for Development Mary Jolly, that it is about to become a regular part of the Trident offering. “Women,” she explains, “are a major part of the workforce – half the women between 18 and 64 are working. If these women have special needs, if they need special education, then we have a responsibility to take care of that. That’s what a technical college is here for.”

The college also needs the students for more selfish reasons. Shortly before FACET/FACIT was begun, the school was forced to lay off five of its engineering technology instructors because of dropping enrollment. The increase in women had come when the school has needed them most.

Trident, however, needs the students no more than the students need the special training. Both Katherine and Pat admit that they would rather stay in nursing, if they could. But when 18 years experience produces no more than $4.10 an hour, it is inevitable that women will move from the field of nursing – or teaching or secretarial work or other low-paying jobs – into new areas. Thanks to affirmative action, jobs in skilled, high-paying trades are now available to women. And thanks to Trident’s new program, women are receiving the push needed to fill those jobs.

Steve Hoffius is a free-lance writer in Charleston, SC. He is a former intern with SRC’s Southern Voices, and staff member of Southern Exposure

Harris Neck Battles U.S. Government

By Chini

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 14-17

For the people of a tiny fishing and farming community located on Georgia’s rich Atlantic coast, standing up to the Klan and going to jail are but small prices to pay in their 37-year struggle with the United States government for reclamation of their community.

Taken in 1942 by the federal government for the World War II campaign, the 2,687 acres of land known as the Harris Neck community provided an economic base for 75 to 95 Black families.

Located 40 miles south of Savannah, Georgia, this plenteous tidal basin, intersected by three navigable rivers, is a natural bed for oysters, crabs, shrimp and clams. The topsoil of the area is a fecund mixture of black dirt and white sand.

So rich was this land that not only were all the community’s substantive needs met, but also an economic base was built. The families before 1942 has built an oyster cannery, fishery, and processing facilities for the food grown in the productive “truck gardens” located on the land. The only item that families had to purchase from outside their community was flour.

Because of the closeness of the community, the culture had remained very strong, with histories and skills being passed from generation to generation. Many Africanisms were preserved in the rich “gullah” tradition of the Georgia Sea Islands.

The Black families had lived on this land since

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January 16, 1868 when General William T. Sherman issued the celebrated Field Order No. 15, which set aside all the Sea Islands, from Charleston to Port Royal, and adjoining lands to a distance of thirty miles inland, for the use of Blacks. This coastal area had been under the control of rich white planters, who had fled the land in fear during the Civil War.

Blacks were given title to 485,000 acres of land, including parts of the . dread “Peru Plantation” located in McIntosh County, Georgia. This is the parcel of land, settled by these 75 to 95 Black families, that later became known as the Harris Neck community.

The takeover of Harris Neck by the federal government during World War II began a chain of events that continues even today. While the men of the community were in Europe shouldering their share of the U.S. war effort, the federal government, encouraged by local businessmen, came to Harris Neck, gave its residents a 48hour notice to move, set fire to their homes and their crops, bulldozed their community burial ground and gave the residents as little as $2.44 per acre for destruction of their lives and livelihood.

One of the businessmen involved, E.M. Thorpe, received nearly$ 14,000 for his 26 acres of land and retained 14 acres of land located on one of the three intersecting rivers, while another businessman, Irving Davis, not only sold the Harris

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Neck families a 26-acre tract on which they are still “temporarily” relocated, but also retained grazing rights on the land for his herd of cattle.

All Harris Neck families contend that the government promised to return this land at the end of the war. However, upon the foundation of crushed bones, charred homes and thwarted lives, the U.S. government erected a “temporary” air base consisting of three 5,000 feet runways, a water system, docks, roads and approximately 98 buildings to house the Third Fighter Command.

Many residents moved from their land would not live to know that this air base was never used extensively because of the marshy conditions of the land and the proximity of other war time military installations. Many would also never know that this land was not to be returned by the U.S. government to its rightful heirs. Soon after the war, the voice of the Harris Neck community was lost in the roar of land speculators including churches, various businesses, as well as local individuals.

The chances of returning home grew even slimmer for the Harris Neck residents when, in 1944, the Surplus Property Act gave federal agencies and state and local governments priority over the rights of the former residents. Under the Farm Credit Administration and the War Assets Administration, McIntosh County was named receiver of the 2,687 acre tract. County Attorney Paul J. Varner pointed out that McIntosh County had “big plans” for maintenance of the air base facilities.

These “big plans” never commenced. Soon after county takeover of the land, local government officials and businessmen came in and looted the government property.

Tom Poppell, former McIntosh County sheriff, obtained a lease for 102 acres of the land at a cost of $10 per year. Poppell, later accused by the federal government of using adjacent lands for “importation of marijuana”, surrendered his lease in 1957 because of alleged improprieties in obtaining the land. Poppell admitted in a letter to Georgia Sen. Eugene Talmadge, that although he knew the land taken by the government had been promised to be returned to Blacks, he felt McIntosh County was the better landlord.

Perhaps because of improprieties that resulted from county takeover of the land, the federal government moved to retake the land on May 25, 1962. The government declared the 2,687 acre tract a wildlife refuge, stating that it was the “only place on the eastern seaboard where the Canadian wild geese would land.”

Alton Davis, son of Irving Davis, was allowed by the federal government to retain his father’s grazing rights at a cost of $1 per year. Davis is also one of five current commissioners in McIntosh County.

Meanwhile the Harris Neck families waited and observed. In 1972, the 26 families who are direct descendents of the original community organized to reclaim their ancestral land.

Led by Edgar Tim mons, Jr., the Harris Neck community formed the People Organized for Equal Rights (POER) and in April 1979 staged a camp-in on the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge. POER asked the U.S. government for a $50 million reparation to the community to rebuild churches, schools, businesses and residences lost during the military takeover.

U.S. District Judge Avant Edenfield issued a restraining order against the camp-in which residents chose to ignore. On May 1, in an emotional confrontation with federal marshals, three Harris Neck residents, Edgar Timmons, Jr., Rev. Chris McIntosh and Hercules Anderson, as well as Atlanta activist Rev. Ted Clark were arrested.

Three days later, Judge Edenfield sentenced the four men to 30 days in jail and ordered the refuge closed to the public. Federal marshals were instructed to arrest any trespassers. The four protestors are out of jail, pending appeals.

The Harris Neck community has moved its fight to other arenas. In a counterclaim filed in the U.S. District Court to the government’s ejection action the residents are asking for return of their titles to the land.

U. S. Representatives Walter Fauntroy (D-Washington, D.C.) and Bo Ginn (D-Georgia) have introduced a bill, HR 4018, calling for return of the land to the residents.

The residents now await a court ruling on the validity of their case and for the bill to be reported out of Congressional committee.

However, they do not wait passively. With the support of such groups as the Emergency Land Fund, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the people of the Harris Neck community are waging a massive informational and educational campaign for the public.

At the beginning of the summer, 28 Black elected officials, including Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson and State Reps. Douglas Dean and Bobby Hill, pledged their support to the Harris Neck community.

In July, during a three-day protest rally commemorating their eviction from their land,

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Harris Neck residents were warned that the issue was “larger than they thought.”

Emergency Land Fund Executive Director Joe Brooks told the residents they were a part of a national scheme to take land away from Blacks, especially fertile land on the Georgia coastal islands, including Hilton Head and Jekell Islands. “In 1905, Blacks in this country owned more than 15 million acres of land; now, in 1979, Blacks own less than 3 million acres; and, by 1985, at this rate, Blacks will be landless,” warned Brooks.

Earl Shinhoister, regional director of the NAACP, advised the residents not to be deterred in their struggle, not even by the likes of such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of White People, who had eleven members stationed at the protest rally to heckle the Harris Neck residents.

Comedian-activist Dick Gregory told the residents recently that he had several serious questions about the government’s takeover of the land. Gregory said that he thought the issue went beyond the government taking farming and fishing land from a small Black community. Gregory suspects the building of a military airstrip and the history of drug trafficking in the area may mean that there is government involvement in illegal dealings.

A long-time community resident, a child during the 1942 eviction, best sums up the “new” Harris Neck spirit, “I feel something is going to give. I feel good about it. I believe the Lord is going to look out for us. He’s going to help us because we need this land. Our children need this land.”

Chini is a member of the Southern Collective of African-American Writers.

The Continuing Saga of the KKK

By Vanessa J. Gallman

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 18-21

Publisher’s Note: The Ku Klux Klan traced the famous “Selma to Montgomery” march last month. While predicting a group of 2,000, the Klan leaders had fewer than sixty followers on US. highway 80; none the less, KKK related violence has grown over the past year without strong opposition from local authorities. In fact there has been only one recent prosecution of misconduct relating to Klan violence in the South – and then only by a federal prosecutor. This article by a Black editor of the Charlotte Observer looks at the Klan’s activities and their meaning for present race relations.

Police rifles peered down from rooftops and a helicopter carrying emergency medical supplies hovered over the streets of Decatur, Alabama June 9 as 1,500 supporters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) marched to city hall.

For more than a year before this day, SCLC supporters had persistently protested the conviction of Tommy Lee Hines, a retarded Black man convicted by an all-White jury of raping a White woman. The civil rights organization had even set up a “tent city” on the city hall grounds.

Klansmen had reacted by gathering 7,000 for cross burnings and yelling racial slurs and brandishing weapons at SCLC protestors until the tension between the two groups climaxed with a confrontation that left two Blacks and two Klansmen wounded.

SCLC would never march in Decatur again, Klansmen vowed. SCLC declared they would “march against repression” despite the threats and called in reinforcements from nearby states to swell their usual 75-member group.

On the sweltering June day of the march, two rows of helmeted National Guardsmen, with guns raised for easy aim, separated the marchers from about 50 Klansmen standing on a curb across from city hall. Straining like horses against bits, Klansmen waved sticks and yelled obscenities to a taped, instrumental version of “Dixie.” “Free James Earl Ray” was the chant that left many hoarse.

Earlier in the day, 150 robed Klansmen and an equal number of unrobed supporters rallied on the city hail steps denouncing an American government they claim has forsaken democracy, ignored the needs of White people and encouraged race-mixing.

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Bill Ricco, the 22-year-old grand chaplain of the Alabama chapter of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, trembled in his anger and hatred as he addressed the crowd. Bouncing on his heels, with jowls flapping and green eyes piercing, Ricco denounced integration as having put “Black apes in our high schools and elementary schools with our superior White children and forced them to mix. And the day a Black ape lays his Black paw on a little White girl, the Ku Klux Klan will move in and trim that paw back.”

Hostile racial slurs set the tone for the Klan rally but there were more haunting statements that rang painfully familiar – calls for the end of social service programs and affirmative action.

“I, for one, am sick of Negroes and other minorities being given the jobs I deserve,” Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson of Denham Springs, La., told the cheering crowd. “I’m sick of the government saying the next 40 troopers you hire in Alabama are going to be Black.

“If they have some Black people who qualify for the job, that’s one thing. But to spend our tax money out beating the bushes to find something that doesn’t exist, that’s another.”

The issues Wilkinson hammered at the crowd were the same concerns being expressed by many politicians and their legislation – Bakke, Proposition 13 and the attempt to outlaw forced busing.

Without his white robe, Wilkinson would merely be labeled “conservative.”

It is in conservative tones – “Negroes” instead of “niggers” – that Klansmen are presenting Blacks, Jews and organized labor as sacrifices for a floundering economy.

Klan demonstrations are not peculiar to Decatur. Crossburnings and the showing of the proKlan film, “Birth of a Nation” are commonplace occurences throughout the South. In the past year, the White supremist groups have become more forceful and vocal:

—Last November, 75,000 Black fans packed New Orleans for a football game between Louisiana’s two largest Black colleges and a weekend festival celebrating Black food and Black culture. About 100 Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by 27-year-old, college educated David Duke, marched to a White supremist statue marking the end of Reconstruction. Blacks had threatened to hold an “educational” rally at the statue to await the Klan but confrontation was avoided when police persuaded Klansmen to march earlier than announced.

*In June, a man scheduled to testify against two Klansmen charged with shooting into the homes and cars of Black leaders in Birmingham, Ala., was killed the day before he was to testify. Police say his death, from a blow to the abdomen, was the result of an argument unrelated to the Klan case. But some question the strange coincidence.

—Events surrounding the showing of “Birth of a Nation” in China Grove, N.C., still have both Black and White residents on edge.

—On July 8, anti-Klan protestors objected to the film’s showing by burning the condederate flag on the steps of the community center where it was to be shown later. Armed Klansmen were held back by police but vowed revenge. Protestors armed themselves and began 24-hour patrols of the Black community. They feel they have reason to worry. Their sheriff, “Big Bad John” Stirewalt campaigned as a Klansmen when he was elected in 1966.

—Klansmen claimed responsibility for the abduction and beating of a Black preacher from Columbus, Georgia who stood on the Cullman, Ala., courthouse denouncing Hine’s conviction. The preacher was forced into a truck, beaten with a belt and tree limbs and stripped leaving only his shorts.

—Terrorism and gunfire continue as Klan tactics in Tupelo, Mississippi where Blacks are boycotting and demanding better jobs, housing and education.

Incidents of Klan uprising continue – in Selma, Ala. robed Klansmen appeared at a city pool “to protect our children” from Blacks and the U.S. Navy is currently investigating Klan activities on ships docking at Charleston, S.C.

Although those members of “The Invisible Empire” who actually march in many cases number less than 100, it is not the number of white robes that concern civil rights workers the most. It’s what they see as a “Ku Klux Klan mentality” throughout the country.

That mentality, according to U.S. Rep. Walter Fauntroy, “has expressed itself violently in Decatur, but we see it expressed on Capitol Hill in votes that say that we are not concerned about the elderly, not concerned about the sick, not concerned about Blacks.”

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Sociologists have labeled this era the “me generation” and economists admit the country is now in a recession. It’s a difficult time to try to needle anybody’s conscience, even if for rights and privileges long overdue. It’s an ideal time for Whites, many feeling the pinch of hard times, to look for ways to relieve the burden. The Klan offers a way – end social service programs, busing, affirmative action and put the White majority in unrestricted control.

Like fever blisters hinting of disease seething below, Klan groups are spreading and infecting this country.

Realizing how well the young, like the well educated Ricco and Duke, are being indoctrinated with the Klan mentality, it’s difficult to see an immediate reversal of the Klan activities and Klan-related trends.

Aggravated by the inevitable scrabble among all special interest groups in this country to get a bit of the dwindling American pie, those blisters may one day burst.

And in light of the Klan’s history of hatred and violence, more people will die.

Vanessa J. Galiman is an editor for the Charlotte Observer.

Southern Politics

By Mullen, Patric

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 22

By most press accounts the 1979 session of the North Carolina General Assembly was lack luster, if not dull. While North Carolina’s deliberative body met for 108 legislative days and considered 2,480 bills, which resulted in 1,077 new laws, the mood in the legislative building was decidedly anti-growth in government. Governor Hunt presented a very modest legislative program with few new initiatives. Even before the session began in early January, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House were both talking about adjournment at the earliest possible date.

From the perspective of the state press, the entire session might well be characterized as a slow news day. After all, North Carolinians can only stand so much public debate on the new state rock (granite) or the new state reptile (the box turtle). Having passed the seemingly obligatory resolution calling upon the U.S. Congress to submit a constitutional amendment to the states which would require a balanced federal budget (despite the fact that one out of every four dollars in the state budget comes from the feds), the General Assembly settled down to a sessionlong debate on rewriting the state bingo laws.

Midway through the session, having dispatched the Equal Rights Amendment to an early grave, it looked as if the predictions of a short legislative session would come true. Then the HEW University of North Carolina dispute over desegregating and funding of the predominately Black UNC institutions became the subject of legislative debate, along with questions of teacher pay raises and the size and nature of a tax cut. All this served to prolong the session and, perhaps, heightened its newsworthiness.

Before the opening gavel of the 1979 session, Legal Services of North Carolina, Inc. (LSNC) had met with a large and diverse number of clients across the state to determine client problems and interests which should be represented in the state legislature. Following a series of issue meetings between clients and Legal Services staff at the local program level, some sixty clients and staff members gathered in Raleigh to hammer out a 14-point legislative agenda. This agenda included five basic substantive areas to be pursued in the 1979 session: consumer, domestic, housing, benefits and employment.

LSNC also structured a legislative coordinating committee composed of a client and a staff member from each of the ten local programs to implement the LSNC legislative agenda.

Once the General Assembly convened in January 1979, it became clear that the LSNC legislative unit would have to follow a two-track approach: one defensive, to protect clients from damaging legislative proposals, and the other offensive, to promote client supported legislation. LSNC was able to do both with relative success.

During the five-month long session, acting on behalf of clients statewide, LSNC was able to substantially rewrite the state’s landlord tenant laws to make them among the most progressive in the nation; enact a moderately progressive statute covering domestic violence; est ablish in workers compensation law the principle of retaliatory discharge; eliminate the practice of spousal deeming; relieve parents of financial responsibility for severely disabled adult children; and defeat legislative attempts to establish wage garnishment for the collection of money judgments, to limit the statute of limitations on civil rights cases, and to require a bond to stay execution of judgments on appeal.

Properly viewed these legislative accomplishments, these improvements in North Carolina public policy, are the result of competent and aggressive representation of clients. They are the product of important public policy debates conducted on behalf of clients by Legal Services staff and clients throughout the state.

LSNC was by no means successful one-hundred percent of the time. A legislative proposal to require statewide implementation of the federal school breakfast program was killed, as were client supported proposals to repeal the state sales tax on food and to repeal the 1977 enabling legislation which allows utility companies to add to the rate base the cost of construction work in progress.

Yet the message of the 1979 session suggests that client interests can be properly represented in the General Assembly; that LSNC can make a responsible contribution to the formulation of state public policy. This message is hardly a revelation and it most certainly will not make headlines but it does add credence to the proposition that client interests can be protected and advanced through the legislative process.

Patric Mullen is a staff member of the Legal Services of North Carolina.

Urban and Rural Development

By Harold Moon

Vol. 2, No. 1, 1979, pp. 23

The status of equal opportunity in housing will be greatly influenced by two contrasting changes presently underway in Washington. One endangers the reporting of vital information needed to test compliance with civil rights laws and the other proposes to enlarge the enforcement effects of the government to insure fair housing.

The first change involves the decision by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to no longer require recipients of its Community Development Block grants to submit data on race and sex in their progress reports on federally funded projects. In its effort to reduce paperwork at the request of the Office of Management and Budget, HUD has drawn heated objections from civil rights organizations because of its “abdication of the agency’s responsibility” to evaluate and determine the actual equal opportunity performance of a project.

The deletion of the Grantee Performance Report (GPR), a major document to evaluate exactly how a local community has allocated its grant funds, would deeply cripple the enforcement ability of HUD and side-step the Civil Rights Act of 1968. The GRP closely monitors and indicates by demographics if minorities and females are sharing in the fruits of the program. Although a grantee is required to comply with civil rights laws and regulations, the elimination of supportive data of race and sex will not provide HUD with sufficient information.

“We do not believe that the mandate to reduce paperwork was ever intended to be at the expense of the national commitment to assure non-discrimination and equal opportunity,” said the Housing Task Force of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Furthermore, LCCR’s Housing Task Force argued that the elimination of the required information violates HUD’s own regulations and manuals as well as the provision of the civil rights laws.

The second change – this one only proposed – would amend Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which makes it unlawful in the sale, rental or financing of housing to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex. The current statute has been hard to enforce and the proponents are attempting to strengthen the legislation in light of recent evidence of non-enforcement.

A survey of 3,000 brokers and rental agents in 40 metropolitan areas recently found that a Black person stands a 62 percent chance of encountering discrimination when seeking to buy a house and a 75 percent chance when seeking to rent. The Department of Justice has assigned merely 13 attorneys to assist HUD in investigating all of the nation’s housing discrimination practices.

Outgoing HUD Secretary Patricia Harris recently told Congress, “The lack of adequate enforcement power has been the most serious obstacle to the development of an effective fair housing program within HUD.

Our present authority is limited to a purely voluntary process of conference, conciliation and persuasion.”

Proponents are attempting to amend the 1968 Act with the Fair Housing Amendment of 1979 which calls for an additional 2.6 million dollars for enforcement and changes in the law’s coverage.

The amendment would give HUD the authority to conduct hearings, present evidence and issue binding orders – such as the cease and desist orders. The charges would also include the handicapped among those protected from discrimination and eliminate some exemptions now allowed.

In his January 1979 State of the Union message, President Jimmy Carter added his support to urge increasing HUD’s authority, “Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 remains largely an empty promise because of the lack of adequate enforcement mechanisms,” remarked the President. “We need to amend the Fair Housing Act to remove the burden and expense of enforcing the law from the shoulders of the poor victims of housing discrimination.”

Unfortunately, unless momentum is gained, Washington observers expect the reporting requirements to be revised and the fair housing amendment to fail. For more information, write: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 2027 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036.