Life Expectancy and School Experience: Some Findings in North Carolina

By Betty H. Landsberger

Vol. 1, No. 1, 1978, pp. 18-19

Editor’s Note: In the mid 1970’s, a difference of at least 15 years in life expectancy was found to exist between White females and Black males in the population of the United States. This finding led Dr. Betty H. Landsberger, a member of the School of Nursing a the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to do some research into the possible contributing causes for this significant difference in life expectancy rates. What she found is that school experience may be one of the contributing causes. A condensation of her research follows.

Increasing attention is being paid to the fact that males ao not perform as well as females in school and to the emotional consequences which this situation causes for them, consequences which have in fact been equated with the concept stress. Also, for several years, concern has been expressed regarding the consequences of Black and minority groups performing poorly in school.

These variations in school performance among the four race/sex groups–White female, White male, non-White female, non-White male–are possibly related to their health conditions, and thus to their different life expectancy rates. The concept of stress provides the linkage between school experiences and life expectancy.

Writing about different health conditions, Dr. Robert Wilson gives a perceptive description of the extent of the problem for individuals living in disadvantageous circumstances in our society:

…various states of ill health in the most disadvantaged sectors of the population rest not only on the obvious defects of nutrition, housing, preventive medical care, and so on, but also on a syndrome of social psychological insufficiency …A damaged sense of identity and a damaged sense of competence may themselves be viewed as intrinsic “dis-eases” of the total psychosocial equilibrium of the individual. In turn, these deficits may provide a necessary, if not sufficient, casual strand in the production of a range of illnesses.

A number of scholarly investigators have hypothesized linkages between life experiences and several of the leading causes of death: various heart diseases, lung cancer, and alcoholism, as well as accidents and homicide.

Figures regarding vital statistics for North Carolina for 1975 demonstrate two facts about these illnesses: 1) they were indeed prominent as causes of death for all ages for the total population; 2) when figures for the race/sex group are given separately, rates for these causes (as well as total death rates) were found to be particularly high for Black males, usually followed by White males–at one age group, and for some causes, by non-White females–while rates for White females were almost always far lower than the other groups.

Life Expectancy

The story of life expectancy differences among the four race/sex groups of North Carolina during the past half-century follows the same pattern. Females of both races have made dramatic increases in years of life expected at the point of birth. Meanwhile, the story of males of both races is a different one. While life expectancy for all males increased by about ten years between 1925 and 1950, the gain did not continue after 1950 for males of either race. Though all four groups had a longer life expectancy in 1970 than in 1925, their averages were much farther apart by 1970.

In 1970, the difference in life expectancy between White females and Black males was 17 years. The White females’ life expectancy of 76 years was eight years more than the figure for Black females, and nine years more than the 67 years for White men.

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While these statistics are the result of several probable causes,anunlikely place where the issue of life and death may be heavily influenced is the school. A review of a recent study in North Carolina shows the connection.

School Experience in North Carolina

A group of children who began kindergarten in 1970 and finished third grade in 1974 were tested and their development assessed in a variety of ways at the beginning of kindergarten and the end of the first year and again at the end of third grade. The 800 children involved at the beginning were the kindergarteners in a network of 18 early childhood demonstration centers across the state. In the schools making up the network, there was a representative balance of rural and urban, poor and not-so-poor, and Black and White populations.

The findings were examined to compare the four race/sex grol/ps to decide the extent to which their school experience, as reflected in primary school performance, correlated to life expectancy.

From the testing it is clear that in school the White female group did fare best of the four race/sex groups. The performance of this group was high, from beginning kindergarten to end of third grade. Interestingly, White males began kindergarten performing higher than White females; however, their performance declined from that point and fell far below the females by the end of third grade. The figure for poor White boys was below poor White females as well at the end of third grade.

Differences between White boys and girls at the end of third grade were tested to see whether they were statistically significant. This was done with two achievement tests, and with social-emotional tests. Girls excelled over boys on all tests.

On a comparison by race, the study showed the performance of non-Whites of both sexes to be substantially lower than the Whites of both sexes.

Thus, White females, whose life expectancy rates are highest by far, did very well in school, with achievement levels in all subjects, social-emotional measures and cognitive ability at the top of the four groups. White males, on the other hand, experienced a decline from kindergarten entrance, where their performance was slightly higher than White females.

Most striking, the performance of Black children of both sexes was considerably lower than Whites at kindergarten entrance, in fact the percentiles of measurement were almost 2 to 1 for Whites over Blacks.

Undoubtedly, much frustration and little gratification is experienced by individuals performing at or near the bottom in their experiences day after day in class rooms. The difference in life expectancy between the sexes for Blacks is far greater than is indicated by the school experience differences. Poverty is another risk factor. There is proportionately so much more poverty in minority racial groups that the already noted differences in death rates by racial groups inevitably reflect the influence of poverty.

Mortality and Illnesses

It is admittedly a long way from the third graders at nine years old to the ages at which death rates for lung cancer are high. Yet, surprisingly similar correlations for these same groups appear in data on the health status of children in the same ages.

While the possibility of damage from poor school experience may be felt over the long haul of 50-60 years, it also appears that the mortality rates for youth are consistent with the differences among the sex /race groups which the in-school study shows, and the more years in school, the greater these differences become. The death rates for the age groups 5-9 years, 1014 years and 1519 years for races and sex/race groups separately are as follows:

White

Age Group (in years)	Both Sexes	Male	Female
5-9	33.6	34.1	27.5
10-14	34.1	43.3	24.4
15-19	99.1	144.5	52.4

Non-White

Age Group (in years)	Both Sexes	Male	Female
5-9	46.3	55.9	36.6
10-14	44.6	57.4	31.6
15-19	114.8	164.3	65.4

Morbidity, or what is better understood as frequency of illness, is another measurement of health status. The literature regarding child health in the past few years from Great Britain as well as the United States has contained many reports giving substantial attention to a ‘new morbidity.” Put very simply, in the

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wake of the great successes in virtually eliminating illnesses which were so common until a few years ago–measles is an example of a recent ‘conquest–other forms of disorder and poor health have come to take their plares. Prominent among these are failure to thrive” among ntants, and “learning disabilities,” “emotionally tur1ed behavior,” and “hyperactivity” among presch:J; and school-aged children.

Some studies indicate that the new morbidity” is of special concern among the poor, minority-group cnikiren, those in innercity neighborhoods, and among males more than females. One researcher also found both poor achievement and emotional disturbance to occur frequently in his sample, where children were mostly inner-city, minority-group members He found a higher incidence of both problems among m-les. Hence, the higher incidence of the “new morbidity” seems to match roughly the groups for whom school experience will probably cause the most stress.

By the studies already done, there appears to be little doubt that school experience takes a toll on the health status of the same groups and in particular that the 15 years less in life expectancy of poor Black males in our nation is an outcome predictable from that picture. This is especially the case when the differences of careers and economic well-being (that often follows poor achievement in school) are taken into account.

Certainly, more research needs to be done, especially in carefully examining through educational and psychological testing school achievements and experiences of children in terms of race/sex groupings. Also, health professionals must give increased attention in their research and practice to the effects of the school experience and to begin to identify ways to address the problems of present and future health as related to the school experience.

Most important, everyone, including school administrators and policymakers, must begin to recognize that much more than functional literacy and academic achievement is at stake when our children enter the portals of our schools for the first time.

To do poorly in school is bad enough in its immediate and short-run consequences. It is even more serious if it does indeed contribute to stress-related illness and to “earlier than necessary” death for some of the groups in the population. There seems to be a clear need for “affirmative action” programs to benefit those grc.ups at highest risk in their school experience, beginning at the kindergarten level or earlier. Surely public education should play the role of minimizing rather than maximizing the health risks of well over half the population it is designed to serve.

Southern Women

By Staff

Vol. 1, No. 1, 1978, p. 25

A group of individuals gathered in Atlanta recently with Karen Nussbaum of the Working Women Organization Project (WWOP) to discuss the problems of Southern working women in the office place. This meeting represented the Project’s first attempt to. start new organizations of women office workers in the Southern region.

Ms. Nussbaum, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said, “Women earn .56 to every dollar a man earns on the average. When it comes to expenses, however, women have to pay a full dollar for every dollar a man pays.” She further stated, “Discrimination is not found only in your paycheck.. working women are often treated unfairly when it comes to lob descriptions, working conditions,promotions and respect, as well.”

The WWOP was started in 1973 arid now has over 10,000 members in 18 cities around the country. The group provides training, resource materials, and also organizational and technical support to women interested in organizing in their office for better working conditions.

Although there are laws protecting women against discrimination in employment, these laws often do not protect women against lob segregation, or patterns of work and sex discrimination. To further complicate the problem, often times there are no men with whom to compare salaries and benefits doing the lobs that women are assigned to do. Particulary active around National Secretaries Week, the group launched a program calling for “raises not roses” in an effort to emphasize the wage disparities currently existing in the workplace.

While the group stresses its good working relationship with organized labor, the majority of the members of WWOP groups are working in small offices where unionization is not frequently an effective solution. One of the most useful aspects of WWOP is that it is not necessary for an entire staff to participate. Individuals can loin and benefit from the training and materials as well as members of a larger staff. Group negotiation is one of the many tactics used by WWOP in their problem solving tactics.

Women interested in finding out more about the Working Women Organizing Project and their plans for activities in the South should contact the group at 1258 Euclid Avenue, Room 206, Cleveland, Ohio, 44115 or telephone (216)566-8511.

THE CHAINS THAT BIND: ERA and the Southern Black Woman

By Sylvia Crudup Cole

Vol. 1, No. 2, 1978, pp. 19-21

Congress voted recently to extend -the- period for the states to ratify the ERA until June 30, 1982. This action, however, did not have support of many Southern Congressmen. They showed the same hostility to the amendment already shown by Southern state legislators, whose lack of support has so far helped block ratification. Since 1972, 35 states have ratified the proposed federal constitutional amendment and only three are needed for ERA to become law. Of the 15 states left to ratify, 10 of them, astoundingly, are Southern.

Yet, not all the blame for the status of the ERA can be placed on the male-dominated Southern Congressional delegates and legislators. Ironically, Black women in the South, who suffer greater discrimination than their White counterparts because of both racism and sexism and who probably would be one of the prime beneficiaries of a ratified ERA, have done little to support it.

Their lack of support for the ERA is difficult to understand in light of their extremely disadvantaged position. Recent studies show that a great disparity still exists in the salaries of Southern minority employees and nonminority employees in both the public and private sectors. According to a study prepared by the Southern Regional Council which examined the employment practices in

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city government in 16 medium-sized Southern cities, Black women were found to be the lowest on the totem pole in all instances. In fact, in 1975 no Black women earned more than $13,000 per year and in all 16 cities combined only 62 earned more than $8,000 per year.

The Southern Black woman is indeed at the bottom of the socio-economic scale. Besides low earnings, she is more likely than her White counterpart to work in menial, back-breaking service occupations. Atop that, she is more often the breadwinner in the household. For minority families, one in three homes are headed by a woman, as compared with one out of eight for White women. Among married women, two out of three work because of pressing economic need. However, their annual median income is only $7,831 as compared to $8,376 for White females. This compares to a median income of $10,222 for Black men and $14,272 for White men.

The ERA is supposed to be a tool, as the Civil Rights legislation is a tool, for insuring the rights of groups facing both social and institutionalized racism. If ratified, it could help insure equal fringe benefits in employment, like equal chances for advancement, improved maternity leaves, free and adequate child care and safe and legal abortions, all areas of major concern and significance to Black women. Why then doesn’t the Southern Black woman actively support the movement to ratify the ERA?

According to research collected from indepth conversations with numerous Black women and men, Black women’s lack of support for the ERA is not due to unconcern for their plight, but rather to three deep-seated myths that they are still struggling with about themselves.

They are (1) the myth of Black matriarchy; (2) the notion that Black women are emasculators of Black men; and (3) that they have always been liberated. A fourth factor that comes into play is the fact that the Women’s Movement is often viewed as a White, middle-class issue.

The first myth derived from the fact that a significant number of minority homes were headed by women, especially in the South where Black men found it even more difficult than Black women to provide for families. The idea developed that these female-headed households were deliberately created and perpetuated by the Black woman, and that it was indicative of the domination of females in the Black culture.

This myth has caused many Black women to work hard at freeing themselves of the matriarchial figure by limiting themselves to the traditional role of homemaker. They feel they should not be out front changing people’s lives and attitudes. These women, therefore, will claim limited interest of show outright resistance to women’s rights. The adverse effects of the myth of the Black matriarchy are so deeply ingrained that some Black women fail to even see the need to change their own lives.

Some women fear that rights for minority men will be diminished at the expense of minority women. This fear is even more highly expressed in areas like the South where only recently minority males have begun to gain access to positions of power in greater numbers. (An SRC study on the employment practices in Atlanta city government revealed that Black males in significant numbers have moved into the kind of government jobs that historically were held only by White males, but Black women were again left behind in low-status, lowsalaried positions).

As Women’s groups have often pointed out, there is a direct correlation between what women are trying to achieve and what minorities are trying to accomplish. Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment could promote relationships based on equal partnership without the need for establishing any dominant party based on irrelevant criteria such as one’s sex. This could thus bring minority women and men closer together freeing them to work on other priority issues.

However, minority women concerned about their plight express the fear that equal rights for women may cause conflict between them and their men. Some outright reject the Movement on this basis alone. One prominent minority woman concerned about unity of her race declared recently that she was Black first and female second. It is unfortunate that minority women should have to feel that they must identify first as a minority and second as a woman. Discussions of this type cause some minority women to feel they should not aspire to high achievement as women in non-traditional areas. The effect on some others is that they should not aspire to high achievement even in traditional areas.

The result of this kind of thinking in Black women is not only a denial of their own competence, submerging their ability and their own real need to aspire, but also promotes a decrease in the availability of minorities who could move into higher level positions. In effect, it contributes directly to limited opportunities for the race.

Thus, unwittingly and unknowingly, minority men and women contribute to the shrinking of the minority resource pool which ultimately decreases opportunities for both. They may inadvertently reinforce the concept of male supremacy for the minority male while trying to promote racial unity.

The other issue which has caused some women a source of conflict is the belief that Black women have always been liberated simply because they enjoyed greater access to the majority culture than Black men. This access was due mainly to the fact that Black women held positions as domestic workers in White homes. The role of being breadwinner for their families caused many Blacks, even Black women themselves, to feel that they were already liberated, thus having little need to press for women’s rights.

The fallacy here comes from a misinterpretation of what liberation really is. Liberation is freedom to choose

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– the right to set limits for oneself and not have those limits set by others. It means having the right to choose and to enjoy job and career opportunities. When a woman is forced to work out of economic necessity, she should have equal access to training, education and jobs that allow her to become what she wishes for herself.

The clear mandate which would be provided by the Equal Rights Amendment is critically needed by the Black woman in the South. We need to look at equal opportunity in the South in employment, housing, child care, health care and credit and educational opportunities. Black women in the South are especially vulnerable to discriminatory practices prevalent in the job market. The South can ill afford to avoid or oppose the issue of equal rights. ERA can be a valuable tool for equality on all fronts and it is a movement which the Southern Black woman must join and embrace fully.

Sylvia Crudup Cole is an education consultant with the State Department of Public Instruction in Raleigh, North Carolina.

United Steelworkers vs. Weber: Affirmative Action on Trial

By Laughlin McDonald

Vol. 1, No. 9, 1979, pp. 14-17

United Steelworkers of America v. Brian F. Weber, known familiarly asWeber because of the enormous interest the case has generated, was argued in the Supreme Court on March 29, 1979, before a standing-room-only crowd of spectators. Weber will decide whether a quota for Blacks in on-the-job training for skilled craft jobs adopted by Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation and the United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO unlawfully discriminates against Whites. Both the district court in Louisiana and a majority of a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit have held that it does. If the Supreme Court agrees, the case could scuttle all voluntary affirmative action for racial minorities in the nation’s work force.

Weber involves Kaiser’s hiring practices in its plant at Gramercy, Louisiana, a small town of approximately 2,000 people, 25 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Kaiser opened the Gramercy plant in 1958. At that time racial discrimination in employment was commonplace in southern Louisiana, and indeed, throughout the country. Given the employment practices of the times, it is not surprising that for the first ten years of its operation, the Gramercy plant employed less than 10 percent of Blacks. Had race not been a factor in hiring, one would have expected to see nearly four times that many Blacks on the plant’s payroll, for St. James Parish, in which Gramercy is located, and the adjacent parish of St. John the Baptist, contain a labor force that is approximately 39 percent Black.

In 1969, yielding to pressure from the federal government, Kaiser adopted a policy of hiring “at the gate” on a one-to-one Black to White ratio. This new policy increased the number of Blacks on the payroll, but only to 14.8 percent, still substantially below the number of Blacks in the labor force of the surrounding community.

The employment of Blacks in skilled craft positions was even more disproportionately low. Prior to 1974, only five of approximately 290 skilled craftsmen at the Gramercy plant were Black. One of the reasons for this poor showing was because Kaiser hired only experienced craft workers from outside the plant, and required all applicants for its limited in-house crafts training program to have prior craft experience. Because of the history of exclusion of Blacks from craft positions and the lack of opportunity for unskilled workers to gain craft experience or training on the job the inevitable consequence of Kaiser’s hiring policy was to insure that its skilled craft work force was almost exclusively White.

In 1974 Kaiser and the United Steelworkers, whose function is to champion the rights of union members and influence management during labor negotiations, entered into a voluntary pact known as the 1974 Labor Agreement. The purpose of the agreement was to correct racial imbalance in the work force and insure that a proportionate number of Blacks entered skilled craft jobs in the Gramercy plant. The agreement not only specified wages, hours of work, employment conditions, etc., but contained a provision that “[a]s apprentice and craft jobs are to be filled … at a minimum, not less than one minority employee will enter for every non-minority employee entering until the goal [of 39 percent minority representation in each craft family] is reached unless at a particular time there are insufficient available qualified minority candidates.” The goal of 39 percent was established because it was the percent of Blacks in the surrounding labor force from which the great majority of Gramercy’s employees were hired.

Shortly after the 1974 Labor Agreement was implemented, Kaiser opened bids for on-the-job training in the craft families of instrument repairman, electrician and general repairman. The terms of the agreement were faithfully followed and for each craft family at least half of those chosen as trainees were Black. But inevitably, in

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each instance, White applicants who had more seniority than the Blacks selected were passed over. One of those who missed out was Brian Weber.

Weber, a White man in his early thirties, went to work at the Gramercy plant in 1969. His present job is that of an unskilled laboratory technician. Like many others at the Gramercy plant, Black and White, he would like to improve his job and income by participating in one of the company’s on-the-job training programs for skilled craftsmen. When his application was rejected, he and other excluded Whites filed a lawsuit against Kaiser and the Steelworkers. They contend that the 1974 Labor Agreement establishes an unlawful racial quota and discriminates against Whites.

Weber’s specific charge is that the minority quota contained in the 1974 agreement violates the nondiscrimination provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of the Act prohibits in broad and general terms all employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin in industries affecting interstate commerce. More particularly, the Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race against any person in any apprentice or training program.

It shall be an unlawful employment practice for any employer, labor organization, or joint labor-management committee controlling apprenticeship or other training or retraining, including on-the-job training programs to discriminate against any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in admission to, or employment in, any program established to provide apprenticeship or other training.

The company and the union argue that affirmative action is not unlawful discrimination and that federal laws, including Title VII and Executive Order No. 11246, either require or permit employers to take voluntary measures to insure that Blacks are adequately utilized in the work force. The 1974 Labor Agreement, they say, is nothing more than an attempt to live up to their obligations under the law.

Kaiser had every reason to believe it had not been living up to the law in the past. Its underemployment of Blacks as skilled workers – 5 of 290 – coupled with the fact that the total work force at Gramercy prior to 1974 was only 14.8 percent minority, was enough standing alone to establish a prima facie case of discrimination. In addition, the hiring procedure in effect at Gramercy with its prior experience requirement was the same one in effect at the company’s nearby plant at Chalmette. The Chalmette procedure was challenged by Blacks in 1966 and was eventually held by the Fifth Circuit to be racially discriminatory in effect. Under the circumstances, Kaiser was well aware that it was sitting on an employment discrimination suit just waiting to be brought.

Kaiser was also aware of how expensive an employment discrimination case could be, especially if it was lost. A third Kaiser plant in Baton Rouge was sued by minority workers in 1967. The suit was eventually settled by a consent decree, but it cost Kaiser more than a quarter of a million dollars in back pay to various class members.

Aside from suits from its own employees, Kaiser feared reprisals from the federal governinent, with whom it was doing business. Executive Order No. 11246 requires all applicants for federal contracts to refrain from employment discrimination and to “take affirmative action to insure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” The order empowers the Office of Federal Contract Compliance (OFCC) to cancel or suspend all of a non-conforming company’s government contracts, and to require all federal agencies to refrain from entering into future contracts with any company found to be “nonresponsible.”

Termination of federal contracts was not a vague, unfounded fear of Kaiser’s. In 1971 OFCC undertook a full scale review of the company and made general findings of discrimination in the hiring of craft workers at the Gramercy plant. OFCC at that time recommended that Kaiser establish a training program in which half of the trainees would be minority workers. These findings were confirmed two years later in a subsequent report by OFCC in which it found that Kaiser had engaged in discrimination by waiving its prior craft experience requirement for Whites, but not for minorities.

Kaiser knew too that the federal government was investigating claims of racial discrimination by nine major steel producers in the United States. Following intensive negotiations, the government eventually filed suit against the Steelworkers union and the producers. At the same

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time, two consent decrees were filed which provided for one-to-one hiring basically similar to the plan adopted at the Gramercy plant. The consent decrees did not come cheaply. The price tag to the nine steel companies was a back fund for minority employees of more than $30 million. From Kaiser’s perspective, doing everything it could to head off employment discrimination charges and the loss of lucrative government contracts was more than good business. It was economic survival.

The lower federal courts ruled against Kaiser and the Steelworkers because they found, incredibly enough, that no discrimination had been practiced at the Gramercy plant. As a consequence, the “racial quota,” said the Court of Appeals, “loses its character as an equitable remedy and must be banned as an unlawful racial preference prohibited by Title VII.- The Court also found it beyond the power of the company and the union to use affirmative action to correct discrimination practiced by society at large. “it is appropriate to draw the line for application of restorative justice at the Gramercy plant, rather than at the larger universe of all Kaiser operations or indeed about society at large.”

How could the courts have found no discrimination by Kaiser at the Gramercy plant in view of the OFCC investigations and reports, the statistical disparities between Kaiser’s work force and the community labor pool, and the adverse impact of the company’s procedures for hiring skilled craftsmen? Quite simply, because most of that evidence was based on the testimony of two of Kaiser’s own personnel officers. They said the company did not discriminate.

One of the ironies of Weber, given its potential impact upon racial minorities, is that it is essentially a collusive suit between Whites. The suit is collusive, not because it was fraudulently brought, but because none of the parties to it adequately represented minority interests.

Weber, of course, has never wanted to prove discrimination by Kaiser, since to do so would. undercut his very argument that the preferential hiring system is arbitrary and unnecessary. The company, in view of its liability under Title VII and its concern over loss of federal contracts, had no reason at all to admit that it discriminated on the basis of race at the Gramercy plant.

The union, which has the duty of representing all workers, including of course minority workers, had no interest in proving racial discrimination for fear of exposing itself to liability for breach of its duty of fair representation.

Thus, each of the parties to the lawsuit had good reasons not only not to prove racial discrimination, but to deny that it ever existed at all. Predictably, the courts found “no discrimination” and no justification for the affirmative action plan.

The kind of non-adversary fact finding on the question of racial discrimination that took place in Weber, regardless of the motives of the parties in that case, is an open invitation to manipulation of anti-discrimination laws. Employers facing employment discrimination difficulties might be tempted to promulgate voluntary plans with the hope that they would be challenged by White workers. In such a challenge, since no party would be motivated to offer proof of discrimination which occurred, the court would, as happened in Weber, enter a finding of “no discrimination.” It would be difficult, if not impossible, for any minority worker thereafter successfully to challenge the employer’s discriminatory policies. To allow employers, unions, and White workers thus to adjudicate the interests of Blacks totally in the tatter’s absence raises serious questions about the integrity and reliability of the judicial process.

If the Supreme Court nonetheless affirms in Weber, and concludes that affirmative action depends upon an express finding of past discrimination, as opposed to the reasonable apprehension of an emplover that it is vulnerable to charges of discrimination, then it will have dealt a crippling blow to voluntary compliance with employment discrimination laws. If the remedial plan is less than it should be, employers will still be liable to minorities in private lawsuits and to the federal government in pattern and practice suits and enforcement proceedings brought by OFCC. If, however, the remedy provides too much, then the employer will be liable in Weber-type suits to White employees who contend that the remedial action is in reality an unlawful preference. Unless the employer hits precisely upon a plan which would be approved by a federal court, it proceeds with affirmative action at its peril. Under the circumstances, most employers will do nothing but sit back and wait to be sued. The result will be less, much less, elimination of discrimination in employment.

The Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the lawfulness of racial quotas in employment, but it has generally approved of color conscious relief, either taken voluntarily or pursuant to a judicial finding of discrimination. It has routinely used Black-White student “ratios” in formulating remedies for school segregation; has allowed states and their political subdivisions voluntarily to take race into account in drawing district voting lines to insure minority participation in politics and to remedy the continuing effect of past discrimination; and in 1976, ruled that granting fictional seniority to minority victims of employment discrimination did not discriminate against White workers.

In the latter case, the court held that even though the economic expectations of arguably innocent Whites might be diminished by the grant of seniority, to allow that fact to defeat relief would undermine the central purposes of employment discrimination legislation to

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eliminate the continuing effects of discrimination. As for the lower federal courts, they have widely approved quota remedies for employment discrimination, including those voluntarily adopted pursuant to Executive Order No. 11246.

The most recent case from the Supreme Court involving racially conscious remedial action is that of Allan Bakke, a White male whose application to the medical school of the University of California at Davis had been rejected. Bakke claimed that the medical school’s voluntary, special admissions program, which set aside 16 of 100 entering seats for “disadvantaged,” non-White students was reverse discrimination against him on the basis of race and was unconstitutional and in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Court announced its opinion on June 28, 1978, the last day of the term. The decision was both complex and narrow, and left unanswered as much as it decided. A major problem in interpreting Bakke is that there were six separate opinions.

The justices fell generally into two camps. Brennan, Marshall, White and Blackmun voted to uphold the special admissions program under both the Constitution and Title VI on the grounds that race may be taken into account, not to demean or insult a racial group, but to remedy disadvantages caused by past racial prejudice.

Four other justices – Burger, Stewart, Rehnquist, and Stephens – voted to strike down the California plan. They believed that race could never be the basis of excluding anyone from participating in a federally funded program under Title VI, but refused to consider whether or not the Constitution ever permitted affirmative action.

The deadlock on the Court was broken by Justice Powell. He agreed with the Brennan wing that race could properly be taken into account under the Constitution and Title VI in remedying past discrimination. But he also agreed with the Burger wing that the California plan was unlawful because it imposed a rigid quota system that excluded applicants solely because of race. As a consequence of the various opinions, the special admissions program was invalidated, Bakke was ordered admitted to medical school and the University of California was allowed to devise a new admissions program “properly … involving the competitive consideration of race and ethnic origin.”

How Bakke will affect Weber remains to be seen. One thing, however, is clear. Weber will not be decided by the full Court. Only seven of the nine justices participated in oral argument and based upon the practice of the Court, only that seven will participate in the decision making.Justice Powell, the balance of of power in Bakke, was recovering from surgery. Justice Stevens, who voted with the Burger wing, absented himself because he had represented Kaiser when he was in private practice. Regardless of the outcome in Weber, because it will be a decision of only seven members of the Court, its value as precedent for future cases will be open to serious challenge.

Judge John Minor Wisdom, the author of many seminal civil rights opinions of the Fifth Circuit and one of that court’s most highly respected members, dissented in Weber. His dissent may well become the basis for the Supreme Court’s decision.

Judge Wisdom argued that the 1974 Labor Agreement should be analyzed, not on the basis of a judicial or other “finding” of actual discrimination, but whether it was a reasonable response of the company and the union to their employment problems. Applying that test, the affirmative action plan would surely be lawful. It was negotiated through the union, which has the obligation in good faith to represent the interests of all workers. Thus, Whites and Blacks were both considered in the bargaining process. As importantly, the agreement had a minimum adverse impact upon Whites. It did not deprive any White worker of a job. Instead, it created entirely new job opportunities for minorities as well as White incumbents. As Judge Wisdom concluded:

[T]he 1974 Agreement was a reasonable response to the situation. The defendants were faced with arguable violations of Title VII, federal government pressure, and the impending steel industry settlement. They created an affirmative action plan which aided all Kaiser employees while particularly assisting minority group members. We should not upset their efforts.

Voluntary compliance is essential to removing discrimination on the job. Neither the government nor private parties have the resources to cure the problem. The court which approved the settlement between the Steelworkers Union and the nine major steel companies, involving some 250 individual plants, estimated that it would have required ten years alone simply to try the liability issue in that case, and that resolution of the remedial issues would have involved over 28 years of trial time.

The Supreme Court has often said that voluntary compliance is the preferred means for achieving nondiscrimination in employment. And indeed it is. Voluntary compliance will eliminate the need for everexpanding state and federal enforcement agencies and reduce demands on the limited resources of the judiciary. It will allow employers and unions to examine and evaluate their own employment practices and take responsible, timely action to correct what remains one of the worst vestiges of our racial past.

Laughlin McDonald is the Southern director of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.

Minorities in Southern Television: Visibility But Little Control

By Faye McDonald Smith

Vol. 1, No. 10, 1979, pp. 3,26-29

The days are over – pretty much – when Black people would do a double take when they turned on the television set and saw one of their own as a news reporter. They may have squinted their eyes and perked up their ears to look and listen a bit more intently. They were, after all, “checking out” the new personality, and they wanted to make sure that every hair was in place and every word in syntax. For what that person said and did, how he or she looked and acted, was somewhat representative of Black people in general. If the reporter flubbed it, there was a collective sigh of embarrassment; if he or she performed favorably, there was that communal sense of pride, right-on and a job well done.

Those days are over pretty much. Now, Black news reporters and anchor people are not an uncommon lot; and while there are still some television stations which have yet to embark upon this new frontier, in recent years there has been a significant increase in on-air Black talent.

Due largely to FCC and EEOC rulings, local television stations have hired more minority reporters, anchor people and program hosts, some of whom have brought strong personalities and higher ratings to the stations. But the old adage “strength in numbers” does not apply here. The increased minority participation amounts to higher visibility on the screen, but little managerial input in the board room – or elsewhere.

A 1977 report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights entitled Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television, made this finding:

“In comparison with their presence in the work force in general, a relatively high proportion of minority females (and to a lesser extent minority males) are employed in visible positions as on-the-air talent. Increased visibility on the screen without comparable representation in decision making positions suggests that, minorities and women serve merely as window dressing.”

In making its report, the Commission used data from 40 major market commercial and public television stations. As a follow-up to that initial report, the Commission released more current data in January of this year in Window Dressing on the Set: an Update. That report cited “no significant increase in the percentages of minorities and women employed as officials and managers in the 40 station sample.” The report further stated that the vast majority of the official and manager positions at the stations were held by White males, and in contrast, “the percentages of Black male and Black female officials and managers are significantly lower than the overall percentages of Black employment.” The percentage

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breakdown of all officials and managers at the stations was defined as such: White males, 64.9%; White females, 21.3%; Black males, 5.2%; Black females, 4.4%; Hispanic males, 1.7%; Hispanic females, 0.8%; other minorities, less than 1.7%.

Another finding from Window Dressing is perhaps even more indicative of the under representation of Blacks in managerial positions. The report cites that although many minorities and women had impressive job titles, their low salaries and locations on organizational charts implied an artificially inflated job status.

Hattie Jackson can attest to that. As program coordinator at WXIATV, the ABC affiliate in Atlanta, Jackson acts as the liaison between the network, the syndicators, and her station.

“In my opinion, sixty percent of Blacks in broadcasting are FCC commitments. My title is, I think. Supposedly, I’m a woman in management, but in essence, I’m considered a secretary. Regardless of how much (Black) people want to believe it, who may say to me ‘you run the programming department,’ I do not have any policy-making power.”

Jackson says she does the majority of the work in the programming department, and that at times her opinion is sought; however, her requests to sit in on department head meetings have been denied. She says she can’t categorically claim racism, because her White counterpart at another Atlanta station has the same problem. Racism or sexism – take your choice. The reluctance on the part of management to afford minorities and women decision making opportunities seems prevalent.

“I know where I want to get in TV,” says Jackson, who states confidently that she will be a program director. “I have a timetable and I know that you cannot change people’s hearts or heads. You must know where you want to go and if it means leaving – then go. I think you have to take a stand; you have to take a risk.”

Black women working in television in the South are making gains in the broadcasting industry, according to a recent study by the Radio and Television News Directors Association. The study indicated that television was far ahead of radio in employment of minority news staffers, and that most of the progress has been made in the South, where minority employment is highest.

The RTNDA study found that seventy-one percent of all television stations reported minority employment, compared to only twenty percent of radio stations. In the South, the statistics were higher, with eighty-three percent of the television stations having minorities on staff, compared to thirty-one percent of the radio outlets. Nearly twenty-five percent of the women working in television news were members of minority groups, and the study applauded “impressive gains” by Black women among the news staffs of the nation’s broadcast stations.

A close look at the job classifications, however, clearly indicates that while Black women are increasing in numbers on broadcast news staffs, they remain far behind in managerial positions. Of the 26,547 employees classified as officials and managers in the RTNDA study, 1,975 are minorities. Of that total, 643 are Black males; 388 Black females.

“It’s true that Black women are hired more often (than Black men), but in terms of moving into managerial positions, perhaps Black men are getting the better shake. However, the situation is so bleak overall, that the difference is miniscule. Less than one half of one percent of Blacks are in real decision making jobs.”

Such is the assessment of William Dilday, general manager of WLBT, the NBC affiliate in Jackson, Miss. The only Black general manager of a VHF station in the U.S., Dilday categorizes “decision making jobs” into three major levels: a) general manager, general sales manager, program director; b) news director, chief engineer, production manager; c) promotion manager, programming manager, news assignment director.

“These people usually control what you see and hear, who’s hired and fired, what vendors are used in the disbursement of funds,” says Dilday.

At WLBT, which has a viewing audience of one million, Dilday has appointed a Black production manager, public service director, children’s program director, and assistant news director. He says he looks for people who are trainable and that if someone’s a good administrator in education, that person could adapt to television administration, or if someone is a good salesperson, then he or she could adapt to television sales.

“With a forty percent Black staff,

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there’s no way all those people were qualified when they walked in the door at WLBT. But they were qualifiable, and that must be considered.”

Dilday attributes the paucity of Blacks in policy making positions to the lack of a true commitment by television management to open up such jobs. He also faults what he calls institutionalized racism.

“We’re fighting against the good ol’ boy network, where Joe Jones will call up Jim Smith to recommend somebody. There’re so few of us in the industry getting those calls and able to refer.”

Perhaps another reason for the dragging of feet by top management to include more Blacks in their ranks is due to a rather nasty and prevalent human trait – greed. People in power tend to hold on to it, are often obsessed by it, and don’t like to share it. In addition, the possibility of younger, aggressive professionals who could take over, and perhaps perform more efficiently, looks as a not-so-distant threat to many television executives. To their way of thinking, it is simply best to restrict the numbers of qualified applicants. The fewer, the better.

And when there are qualified minority applicants to move into managerial positions, the rules of the game often change. In one instance at a television station in a large Southeastern market, the program director left, and the Black woman who had worked as his assistant would have been next in line for the job. She didn’t get it. Instead, the entire programming department was revamped, a former engineer was brought in, and titles and responsibilities switched around.

“I think most of us agree that there ought to be more Black program managers,” says A.R. Van Cantfort, president of the National Association of Television Program Managers and program director of WSB-TV, the NBC Atlanta affiliate.

“We’ve discussed this a number of times at our meetings, and we certainly need to encourage more in that area. However, becoming a program manager just doesn’t happen overnight. I don’t want to overplay the job, but in addition to programming responsibilities, there are many other facets involved, like negotiating contracts, license renewal, handling temperamental talent.”

Ed Jones, newly appointed Black program manager at WDVM Channel 9 in Washington, D.C., agrees with VanCantfort.

“A person must know station operations. He can’t just walk in and say, ‘I want to be a program manager,’ and expect to be trained for it.”

Jones worked at the Washington, D.C., CBS affiliate as an assistant program manager at WSSB-TV in Hartford, Conn. He is one of only two Black program managers in commercial television. John Robinson at WTEV in New Bedford, Mass., is the other.

“We’re lacking Black program managers for the same reason so few minorities are at influential levels in other aspects of business,” says Jones. “There’s a lack of sensitivity to seek out such people and hire them at that level. The entire industry is bad.”

The case for more Black television managers is certainly evident, but at the same time, the positions of those Blacks who do have high visibility – the on-air reporters and anchor persons – should not be taken for granted. Often, a station believes it has met its “minority commitment” with the hiring of one Black personality.

Diana Fallis has worked as a reporter for nearly five years at KTRK, the ABC affiliate in Houston. For the past two years, she has also worked as the week-end anchor.

“I was one of the first Blacks to do so in the Houston market,” says Fallis, and that’s just .week-end. There are no Black anchors in Houston aside from week-end, and Houston has a Black population of well over 400,000.”

The situation in New Orleans does not appear much better, according to Lester Soublat, continuity director for WYES, the city’s public television station.

“New Orleans has a history of old money tied very much to the social scene in the city, and while that doesn’t necessarily dominate politics (as evidenced by a Black mayor), for a city with a 40 percent Black population, we are woefully underrepresented.”

Soublat is responsible for all on air promotion and public service an-

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nouncements, and he says if Black organizations and activities are not getting enough coverage on the commercial stations, he tries to compensate by running their spots more frequently. He says that Blacks need to pool their resources together because “in this city, Blacks don’t have significant management positions or visibility.”

As in many other cities, Black broadcasters in New Orleans have tried to organize to share information on employment opportunities in the industry, and to provide workshops, seminars, and mutual support. Some of these groups, such as NOBIC (New Orleans Blacks in Communications) were proven to have some impact. When it was rumored that one of the local stations wanted to fire a Black newscaster, NOBIC ran a discreet campaign to let the station management know that the newscaster had strong support in the community, and consequently, NOBIC has been credited with helping to secure the broadcaster’s job.

On-air positions, while not managerial, still need to be maintained and increased, believes Phil Evans, host of a public television program on WYES.

“In a city such as New Orleans with a large Black population, you’d expect to see a reflection of this on the air. Management would argue that while it’s true the city proper is predominantly Black, when you consider the signal range of the television station, Whites make up the majority of the viewing audience. And they believe this justifies low minority representation.”

In addition to his role as a host, Evans is also the producer and project director of “Schools: Insight” a $120,000 federally funded program which provides information to help Louisiana parents and public school systems adjust to desegregation.

Evans says he likes working in public television, and that even though it doesn’t compete with commercial salaries or shatter the ratings books, he thinks public television offers him more of an outlet to expand his talents.

Few may argue that public television provides more creative flexibility than commercial television, but in turn, does public television also offer greater upward mobility for minorities?

“No,” believes Ed Jones of Washington, D.C.’s WDVM. “Once you get beyond the layers of bureaucracy, and really look into the ranks of broadcasting, you’ll find that public television is probably worse. It doesn’t have as much visibility and therefore can get away with more, and just like Congress, the biggest offenders of affirmative action are often those agencies which are supposed to regulate it.”

Current information from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting indicates the paucity of Blacks and other minorities in management positions at public television stations in the Southeast. Based on full time employment data as of March of this year, the CPB survey shows that Whites make up an overwhelming 93.4 percent of all officials and managers. The breakdown by sex and race is as follows: White males, 69.4%; White females, 24%; Black males, 1.9%; Black females, 2.6%; Hispanic males, 1.3%; Hispanic females, 0.4%; other minorities, 0.4%.*

While William Dilday of WLBT is the lone Black general manager of a commercial VHF station in the continental U.S., public television has no Black general manager among its 250-plus stations. And the only minority general manager in public television is John Siqueiros, who heads KCOS in El Paso, a Texas city with a 60 percent Hispanic population.

While commercial television can boast of all of two Black program managers, public television’s record is scarcely better, with only a handful of Black program managers nationwide. In the Southeast, there is only one – Ray Dennell at WLRN, the smaller of the two public television stations in Miami.

Wayne Godwin, director of station relations for PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service, readily admits of the need for Blacks in top station management jobs. But he says that in monitoring minority representation, one should also look at the national policy making boards which govern the local stations. In this instance, PBS can point to Stanley Evans, a Black member of the Board of Regents of the University System of Maine, who is currently head of the PBS Programming Committee.

Godwin also mentions the significant role of the local program producers such as those who work in the area of minority or community affairs.

“I was once a program director,” says Godwin, “and relied heavily on producers for local programmatic content. Although they are removed from station policy, their input in their programs reflects their sensitivity to their audience and we shouldn’t downplay their importance.”

According to Godwin, there’s a “keen sensitivity” in PBS to the need for more minority participation, but that sensitivity has yet to translate itself into more jobs for minorities among the hierarchy. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting recently funded a Minority Task Force Report which was highly critical of public broadcasting’s role in the hiring

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and promotion of minorities. The major conclusion was that minority programming was seriously deficient due to an inadequate number of minorities employed in the system, especially in decision making positions.

Efforts are being made, albeit slowly, to improve the minority employment picture in public broadcasting. The National Association of Educational Broadcasters has set up a personnel service to help minorities in career placements. Last year, the program, known as PACT (People and Careers in Telecommunications) placed 158 individuals, of which thirteen percent were minorities. Most of the jobs were in the midlevel range, from executive program producers to camera operators and other technicians, positions which PACT director Joe Schubert defines as “the working guts of the system.”

The NAEB is also proposing the development of an executive recruitment program which would identify qualified minorities for top managerial positions.

Commercial television is trying to make its thrust towards increased minority ownership, an area which could certainly stand an extra boost. The Storer Broadcasting Company has established a minority ownership fund and Allbritton Communications has had a program in operation since July ’78 which is designed to advise minority groups in purchasing broadcast stations.

While these programs get an E for effort, they don’t measure up as a panacea of any sort. Commercial broadcasters can well afford to transfer some of their obsessive zeal for ratings into initiating fair promotion practices which would move minorities onto the management level – allowing them to fully use their talent and skills.

On the governmental front, the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a policy which permits broadcasters whose licenses have been designated for revocation or renewal the right to sell their properties at a “distress sale” price to parties with significant minority ownership interest. Also the Small Business Administration recently changed its policy to, allow for loan guarantees by banks at up to ninety percent for the purchase of broadcast stations and cable systems. Seven of the first thirty-two loans went to minority applicants.

But these recent and, some may argue, half-hearted efforts should not be considered as compensatory pay back. More sustained and far reaching mechanisms are needed to reverse the years of stone-walling which have blocked qualified minorities from climbing up the managerial ladder.

*Summary information was based on 13 Southeastern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.

Television producer Faye McDonald Smith works at WETV, Channel Thirty, in Atlanta.

The South: Its Attitudes and Changes, Its People

By Bettie Green Stokes

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 10-11

It seems to be a national concensus that the South has come into its own and is now a part of the nation. Through the social revolution and the death of Jim Crowism (1950s and ’60s), a new image appears in full bloom. The majority population of the South has ridded itself of deep feelings of guilt and the largest minority population has raised its head from a cringing posture. The smog of bigotry is lifting, and on a clear day some see broad horizons for the South.

Southern politicians, officials, and other concerned citizens are campaigning and speaking out in a forthright St atesmanship (or stateswomanship) manner. Coming out of Alabama, “the heart of Dixie,” are officials ushering in a new rhetoric, declaring that the state of Alabama has long since dropped the racial issue. There is now a call for “a new beginning” from Alabama Gov. Fob James, and for “the brotherhood of man” from Sen. Howell Heflin.

We cannot declare, however, that 300 or more years of attitudes and customs have been swept away, leaving no residuals, no reprecussions. There remains much in racial attitudes which could prove explosive.

The South is a multi-racial area, much like the nation and there are some characteristics common to the region:

-The racial distribution is consistently spread throughout the Southern states;

– According to 1975 statistics, there is notable poverty among all races;

– Each race has its own special interest group in addition to those that exist in support of numerous causes.

Despite the common traits, there is a separate struggle of the races, so intense that every group

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in the region has its special racial interest group.

For Whites, there are two groups: The Nazi Party, that declares all Black Americans are inferior, and seeks to purify the nation by purging it of Blacks and Jews; and the Ku Klux Klan, which unfurls a somewhat different banner today, deemphasizing its “white supremacy” creed of the past, but demonstrating that same philosophy through its vigilant stance for law and order. Organized to the hilt, Blacks are seeking and often arrogantly demanding, “all that Blacks are due and have been deprived of over the centuries.” At the same time, there are other special interest groups throughout the population organized for a special cause: ERA, abortion, gay rights, prisoner’s rights, and environmental protection to name a very few

Each wages with a degree of zeal that shows no caring for others and leaves the impression of concern only for its own isolated interest, thereby developing an opposing hostile group. This fragmenting eventually creates something like the game of tug-of-war where there is little object other than to pull against in order to hold the line.

It is significant to note that the racial special interest groups serve to emphasize separatism. Attitudes which each fosters continue to accept racial separatism. The separatism jargon of all groups keeps aglow that old image of segregation. It opposes progress, in that it encourages clannishness and isolation.

While cause groups unite and form successful coalitions around “causes”, they have made little dent in the wall of racial separation that is being built.

To redirect the trend, techniques should be developed that will foster negotiation. These should involve communication across racial lines, providing a means of getting to know and appreciate one another. Such communication would promote an opportunity for individuals to know the worth of each other and to salute the human dignity of one another. If this kind of interpersonal relationship could begin to develop, such an approach could move attitudes from the present racial separatism towards wholistic citizenship responsibility.

Any organization concerned about the welfare of its constituency would do well to direct considerable organizational know-how toward involving its grass roots members in interracial communication. It takes intelligent action by all the people for real progress. The greatest good any organization can perform is to objectively try to inspire and insure a high level of literacy, information, and self-esteem, not just among its “leaders”, but right down to the grass roots. This is a crucial time, and “leaders” would do well to reevaluate their techniques, attitudes, and reactions toward other racial groups. It is incumbent upon all racial groups to create a more fulfilling future through knowledge of ourselves and our country’s history.

Formerly the president of the Alabama Women’s Political Caucus, Bettie Green Stokes is a Black woman who has been involved in organizations supporting the civil rights movement, women’s rights and civil liberties.

Affirmative Inaction in Blackbelt Governments

By Marge Manderson

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 16-18

On the roads of the rural Southern Blackbelt you are likely to almost as many Blacks as Whites. Nearly one of every four people you meet will be a Black woman. But in the region’s courthouses and municipal offices, it is likely that you will never encounter a Black person behind a desk, a counter, or a typewriter as an employee of local government.

The odds are considerably higher that you will not see a Black woman in such a position. And some rural Blackbelt governments, if you should search diligently you will not find a permanent, full time Black female employee – not even in traditionally Black menial jobs or traditionally female clerical jobs. In many large rural Blackbelt government workforces, you will find, at the most, a total of only three or four Black female employees.

More than 2.4 million Blacks live in rural counties in the area sociologists have named the Blackbelt, the old plantation and slavery counties that stretch in a crescent from Virginia to Texas. Once, 300 of these counties had more Blacks than Whites. Even now, rural counties that lie along the old Blackbelt are at least 30 percent Black. In all such counties, 44 percent of the aggregate population is Black. Black women number 1.3 million. They are 23 percent of the aggregate population.

Rural Blackbelt governments have shunned this vast reservoir of human potential when jobs were filled. A current Southern Regional Council survey clearly demonstrates that where Blacks do not control county commissions or hold powerful city office, the Black share of public jobs is small and most Black public employees are in menial job categories. Analysis of 1978 workforce patterns of 14 rural Blackbelt governments in three Deep South states reveals only the slightest broadening of employment opportunity. Token numbers of Black men have entered traditionally White but low status blue collar Protective Service and Skilled Crafts jobs, token numbers of Black women have entered Office/Clerical jobs. in most kinds of jobs, however, time has stood still, frozen since the era when Blacks were unwelcome visitors in the seats of local government.

The sharpest exclusion

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from public employment falls on those who are both Black and female. Of 14 governments examined by the Southern Regional Council, a total of five employed f4wer than five Black women on a full time, permanent basis. One government employed no Black women at all -not even in the clean-up job that is the traditional lot of Southern Black women. Although the average number of permanent, full time employees in the 14 governments is 131, the average number of Black female employees is seven – one in 19.

The survey shows one change has affected Black women since the fall of racial segregation: they have edged into traditionally White fem ale Office/Clerical jobs. Yet, they hold these jobs in scarcely token numbers. In 14 governments, fewer than one in five of all permanent, full time Office/Clerical workers is a Black woman, while nearly three of four of these jobs are held by White women. The number of Black women in non-menial, non-clerical jobs is miniscule: their overall total can literally be counted on the fingers. They hold one in 73 of all such jobs. Not surprisingly, in light of the low status jobs to which they are relegated, Black women are far more likely than other race/sex groups to earn low salaries. They are not to be found at higher salary levels.

Does a low turnover rate in these relatively small governments necessitate their slow Affirmative Action progress? It appears not. There were in the 14 governments substantial numbers of “New Hires” in 1978, but when opening jobs were filled, existing disparities were reinforced. For every one job filled by a Black woman, 11 jobs were filled by other races or sexes. For every Black woman hired in either the traditionally Black Service/Maintenance category or the traditionally female Office/Clerical category, 52 such jobs were filled by other faces or sexes.

During the decades of the Fifties and Sixties, rural Blackbelt county and city governments were the centers and symbols of Southern resistance to desegregation and Black citizenship rights. Among these tradition dominated governments, a slow rate of compliance with the national mandate for equal employment opportunity should, perhaps, come as no surprise. But the degree of their intransigence, as revealed by the Council’s survey, is nothing short of astounding. At the present rate of change, the target date for full employment participation of Blacks in local, rural governments will be several hundred years hence, and, for Black women, even beyond.

Public employers who have not moved to correct the effects of past discrimination through suitable Affirmative Actions are subject to findings of illegal discrimination. To comply with

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the law, when a reasonable basis exists for determining that Affirmative Action is appropriate, employers must institute specific, appropriate personnel actions to remedy past or present discrimination. Under clear and specific guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, substantial under representation of Blacks and women in individual job categories, when revealed by statistical analysis, constitutes a “reasonable basis” for Affirmative Action changes in personnel practices or policies.

When, for example, the pool of qualified, experienced minorities and women is limited because of historic restrictions on their employment, it is the responsibility of employers to take Affirmative Action to expand the qualified applicant pool. It is the employer’s responsibility to establish training plans and programs, including on-the-job training, which provide Blacks and women with the opportunity, skill, and experience necessary to perform in responsible public jobs. It seems clear that Blackbelt governments that complain they cannot locate qualified Blacks and women must face up to their own responsibility to expand the applicant pool.

The employment record of governments such as those surveyed by SRC can and must be reversed. It cannot be permitted to harden into a deliberate act of defiance of national law and policy, a posture of affirmative inaction. The full forces of the national government and the forces of local community pressure must be mobilized toward that end. Two and a half million Black constituents of rural Blackbelt governments can no longer be denied equal participation in local public employment.

Some of the statistical findings that show the shocking under representation of Black women in rural Blackbelt governments are highlighted below Statistical data were taken from official reports for the year 1978 for eight county and six small city governments in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina (Public school employees and certain appointed officials are not included in the data governments must report.) Data are for full time, permanent employees.

Black women are substantially under represented in overall employment. They are more than one in five of the relevant population areas, but only one in 16 (68 of a total of 1056) of all county employees and one in 27 (29 of a total of 772) of all city employees.

Jobs of responsibility and status, or even low status blue collar jobs, are rarely held by Black women. Of an overall total of 871 non-clerical, non-service maintenance jobs, Black women hold only 12 jobs, or one in 73.

Black women now hold a token number of traditionally White female Office/Clerical jobs, but they are outnumbered by White females four to one. Eighteen percent (58 of 315) of all such jobs are held by Black women and 73 percent (231 of 315) are held by White women.

Black women earn low salaries more often than other groups. They do not hold higher salaried jobs. Nearly one in two (45 percent) of all Black females earns less than $6,000 a year. Fewer than one in seven (15 percent) of all other race/sex groups earns less than $6,000.

Black women were substantially underrepresented among New Hires for 1978. One in 12 (37 of a total of 455) of all New Hires was of a Black female. A total of 158 employees were hired in the non-menial, non-clerical job opportunities of Officials/Administrators, Professionals, Technicians, Paraprofessionals, Protective Service workers, and Skilled Crafts workers. Only three of them were Black women (one Technician, one Professional, and one Protective Service worker).

The complete study of employment patterns of Black men and Black women, entitled “Affirmative Inaction: Public Employment in the Rural Blackbelt”, may be ordered by sending $5.00 ($4.00 plus $1 handling cost) to the Southern Regional Council, 75 Marietta Street, Atlanta, Georgia 30303.

Marge Manderson is a program officer for the Southern Regional Council.

ERA and the South

By Betsy Brinson

Vol. 2, No. 5, 1980, pp. 24-25

Early ERA advocate Crystal Eastman suggested in 1923 that “To blot out of every law book in the land, to sweep out of every dusty courtroom, to erase from every judge’s mind that centuries old precedent as to women’s inferiority and dependence and need for protection; to substitute for it at one blow the simple new precedent of equality, that is a fight worth making, if it takes ten years.”

Fifty-seven years later the goal of equal rights for women is still not yet realized within our system of law.

After years of almost no movement, significant gain was realized in the last decade. In 1972,Congress voted to send the resolution to the states to secure the required 38 state votes needed to make ERA the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Thirty-five states have voted “aye” but three additional states are needed to succeed.

But the last few years seem to have produced a stalemate for the campaign. No state has ratified since 1977. Of those 13 states yet to endorse, not surprisingly the Southern states represent a major block to be persuaded. Indeed only Tennessee and Kentucky have ratified. Tennessee has since rescinded; Kentucky’s legislative attempt to rescind was vetoed by the acting governor Thelma Stovall.

The opposition has not only increased its legislative lobbying effort, but it has expanded its attack to the court system itself with challenges aimed toward disenfranchising state legislative votes supporting ERA. These lawsuits unfortunately require ERA proponents to divert needed energy and funds from the legislative forum.

Who opposes ERA? Increasingly we witness the opposition of economic interests in insurance and banking which

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see the passage of ERA as a major threat to the restructuring of benefits and credit mechanisms. It comes as no surprise that such wealthy entrepreneurs will undermine basic human values especially in a period of economic instability.

Equally significant is the opposition rising from fundamental religious factions who fear that ERA will undermine the more traditional male and female stereotypes. The r e c e n t M or in on excommunication of Sonia Johnson who was found guilty of defying church authority for espousing ERA support is only one example. What is even more disturbing than Ms. Johnson’s “trial” and ouster is the Mormons’ callous disregard for the basic American adherence to free speech and due process values in order to preserve their own authority.

The anti-ERA takeover of the Virginia meeting to elect delegates to the national Conference on the Family is another example. Ironically it was Alice Paul’s desire to strengthen the family and to improve the future of American children which motivated her to first write the ERA in 1923.

Proponents are unwilling to publicly concede that securing three more states may not be possible by March, 1982 given the political realities of the times. But, in the spirit of their feminist foremothers, ERA strategists are now laying the groundwork for a long-term campaign designed to secure eventual success – whether it takes two years ot twenty. That strategy has already begun to move into the political arena.

Witness the state of Virginia in last fall’s legislative elections. Careful analysis preceded the targeting of several races for funds and volunteers on behalf of pro-ERA candidates. Telephone banks were set up in which calls to every registered voter in selected districts were conducted in order to identify the pro-ERA voters. A follow-up contact by telephone or mail was made to each pro-ERA voter to insure their support at the polls for the preferred candidate. In all targeted races, pro-ERA candidates were successful.

In other Virginia campaign activity, pro-ERA petition drives were conducted in legislative districts where key anti-leaders will stand for re-election in 1982. The purpose of the petition drives was to identify pro-ERA voters for lobbying and to identify voters ‘who can lay the groundwork now for anti-legislators’ defeat in the next elections.

Similar targeting is now taking place in states that will hold legislative elections in 1981. These include the Southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.

The second movement which gives rise to encouragement is the increased coalition-building currently taking place. New constituencies among homemakers and religious groups are committing themselves to the struggle. Expanded efforts of labor unions toward education and advocacy of their membership offer hope too for the campaign. One specific example is in Virginia where the Virginia Education Association and the United Food and Commercial Workers’ leadership spearheaded the recent rally where thousands of workers joined together at the Virginia General Assembly to support ERA. Similar organizing efforts are planned for other unratified states.

The influx of minority women and civil rights groups is also significant. Increasingly we see evidence of shared communication and cooperation which did not previously exist in support of ERA among racial and ethnic minorities. There is clearly a growing recognition by minority women themselves to the same pronouncement expressed by Essence editor Marcia Ann Gillespie when she said, “I did not stand up for my rights as a Black person in America to be told that I have to sit down because I’ma woman”.

And in conclusion, let us not forget that the idea of equal rights is still a revolutionary concept. As sociologist Jessie Bernard so aptly reminds us: “Women’s revolutions, unlike men’s, are not apocalyptic. Women do not expect Armageddon. We are accustomed to a relatively slow pace.” Over the years, we have had our successes; we will succeed too with ERA.

Betsy Brinson is the founding director of ACLU s Southern Women’s Rights Project. She was recently selected as one of Ms. magazine’s “Women to Watch in the 80’s.”

Economic Development Women’s Earnings: A Ten Year Review

Janet L. Norwood and Elizabeth Waidman

Vol. 2, No. 6, 1980, pp. 23, 25

The old saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” seems to apply to women’s earnings in relation to men’s no matter which earnings are examined. In 1939, median earnings for women who worked year round, full time in the experienced labor force were $788, or 58 percent of the median for men. Similar figures for 1977, the latest period for which earnings over an entire year are available, show median earnings of about $8,800 for women, or 59 percent of the median for men.

In the 10 years since the Census Bureau began to collect weekly earnings data, the ratio of women’s to men’s usual earnings has shown about the same pattern in May 1978, just as in May 1967, women full time workers still had median earnings that were only a little over 60 percent (61-62 percent) of the median earnings for men.

By occupation, these data show that, although the male-female earnings ratio has varied considerably over the years, the median for women is usually substantially lower than the median for men. For example, in sales occupations, where a large proportion of women are employed in retail stores while a large proportion of men sell cars, machinery,and insurance, women’s earnings in the second quarter of 1979 were about half of men’s earnings. In the professional technical area, where proportionately more women than men are in the lower paying occupations, i.e., nurses rather than physicians, women’s earnings were approximately 70 percent of men’s. In the clerical field, women’s wages were about 63 percent of men’s wages.

Almost all secretaries are women, as are 97 percent of all nurses, 86 percent of all file clerks, and 85 percent of librarians. On the other hand, only 9 percent of the industrial engineers are women, 9 1/2 percent of all lawyers and judges, 11 percent of all doctors, and 30 percent of all accountants.

These more detailed ouional statistics demonstrate that, on the average, employed women are working primarily in jobs at the low end of the pay scale. Even in a generally less traditional industry sector for women such as manufacturing, women are concentrated in such industry as clothing or electrical equipment where wages are lower than in many other types of factories.

The overall female-male earnings gap needs to be interpreted with care. Occupational and industry differences and the extent of labor force activity are, obviously, not the only factors involved. The fact that

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married women constitute the largest proportion of women workers may also play a large role in the female-male wage differential. Some analysts believe that many married women may put convenience of location or flexibility of hours above earnings or that they may not be as able as men to accept a promotion to a job with heavier responsibilities or a job which requires a great deal of overtime. Others believe that women have not, yet gained the self-confidence needed to seek aggressively the opportunities taken by men.

Whether these analysts are correct in their interpretations or not, we should not overlook discrimination. Many of the court settlements over equal pay in recent years have been based on findings of discrimination. Proof of discrimination, however, must go much farther than sample survey data. But these statistics can continue to provide guidelines as to what the earnings situation is for women and men in similar circumstances.

Obviously no one can predict the future with certainty. No one knows the extent to which working women will move out of the traditional occupations; or the degree to which women will gain earnings parity with men; or if their recent labor force gains will moderate. Whatever the scenario, however, women are likely to remain a permanent and important part of the work force.

Taken from the publication, Women in the Labor Force: Some New Data Series written by Janet L. Norwood and Elizabeth Waidman.

Equal Rights

By Chuck Morgan

Vol. 2, No. 8, 1980, pp. 4-8

In our bureaucratic “work together” pragmatic society, I plead guilty to a conviction that the Constitution and the country are better off when the three branches of the federal government, the separated federal, state and local governments, private citizens and governments, private corporations and governments stand upon principles and struggle for their differing beliefs.

The genius of American democracy is its capacity for conflict and confrontation. I have a deep and abiding belief in the Constitution, in the people who live under it, and in the equal application of the law. To these beliefs I plead guilty.

We too often ascribe to ourselves, to our own times. and to our own purposes, historical imperatives. As articulate liberals, we coin phrases such as “manifest destiny,” “make the world safe for democracy,” and “democratize the military.” With these phrases we justified empire, wars and peacetime conscription.

We complicate. We refuse to see or admit that the causes of and solutions for complex problems are almost always very simple. Two such simple causes are the cotton gin and the Pill. When we search for causes our minds rebel at anything so simple as the Pill and the cotton gin. Yet, the gin made cotton king and locked Blacks into a slave system which was harsher than any other slave system in the history of the Western world. On the other hand, smaller than a cotton seed, the Pill freed women from the fear of pregnancies.

Each of these technologies, one enslaving, one liberating, provides the myths of yesterday and the mores of tomorrow. Each altered our lives. Each had and has an economic effect upon the concept of equality.

During the last half century, as we have governmentalized our lives, we have undermined the institutions of community. We have transferred to government the obligations and advantages of the family system. We have continued to consign Native Americans to reservations, prisoners and the mentally ill to out-of-sight, out-of-mind institutions, browns to barrios and Blacks to central cities. Liberals seek governmental-funded daycare centers while conservatives who state their favor of the family systems simultaneously seek to end aid for dependent children.

To the extent that liberalism is allied with governmentalism, liberalism contravenes civil liberty. All bureaucracies are self-protective. In private life, they grow until they are destroyed by leadership or by themselves. In government, they grow until they destroy all leadership and all incentives. I believe that government sits astride the back of every private citizen, extracting from each taxes under the guise of distributing the wealth. In a democratic society, that redistribution should take place in a democratic way.

It should be derived from debate, not deficits. It is this lack of debate which has allowed the new government class to transfer wealth not to the underclass but to the new government class.

Today Washington is Rome. Imperialism having failed abroad, we have moved it to the fifty pro-

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vinces. About one in every five employed in America now works for one government or another.

The common weal is in the hands, indeed, the grip of the new American upper class—government employees—the top level of the 15 to 20 percent of our employed citizens who live off taxes extracted from their fellow citizens.

They work closely with our liberal community which is salaried from tax deductible and foundation funds and draws upon inherited wealth in the public interest. They associate themselves with one hundred senators, a quarter of whom are millionaires; they identify themselves with organizations which compete for government grants.

The question is not whether capitalism can survive. The question is whether democracy can survive. Can it survive “reform” and its results, including the uncivil civil service?

Long before benign liberalism kills capitalism, it will have so crippled it that it will buckle under the sheer weight of nonproductive bureaucracy. To survive, all economic systems must produce something of value, of quality, of need. Yet in the city where I now live—one of the world’s largest company towns—the number one manufacturing industry is printing. Like the cotton gin and the Pill, the printing press enriched our liberal lives, but you can’t eat food stamps. Someone must produce, package and distribute food.

During the Vietnam War, many more young men were eligible for the draft than were needed by it. The Report of the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service was entitled In Pursuit of Equity: Who Serves When Not All Serve? (1967).

Parallel questions are posed by the economics of scarcity: Who will get less and who will get more? Who will get work when not all can? Who, if anyone, should we discriminate for?

Today, we have a society dedicated to the proposition that all women and minorities are created equal and with all men and majorities they are equally endowed by their creator with the inalienable right to share equally in the non-productive services, shortages, and inflation created by the government and the government class.

Almost everyone, rich or poor, male or female, majority or minority, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or Polish- American, Catholic, Jew or Gentile, Ivy League, state university or “hardknocks” graduate, with or without a distinctive accent, style or manner, can recall a time when he or she was discriminated against or for, on a basis other than merit or worth.

To combat this, bureaucracies which enforce rights encourage affirmative action plans which down-play merit and design court decrees which would transfer to private life the worst aspects of the civil service system. Simultaneously, they advertise discrimination and encourage dissatisfaction and lawsuits. Widespread, individualized perceptions of discrimination force employees and employers to the courthouse, while, according to all public opinion surveys, racial and sexual prejudice has declined.

In 1970, there were 334 employment discrimination cases filed in federal districts courts. In 1978 alone, 5,504 employment discrimination cases were filed in federal courts.

Since 1954, Black male employment has declined 14 percent. White female employment has risen 15 percent. During the last 30 years, the unemployment rate among Black men has remained twice that of White men. That could be cut in half if only 400,000 minority males could find jobs. Four hundred thousand employed minority males is two percent of the almost 17 million White women who have found work since 1954. That number, 400,000, is less than five percent of the number of working wives whose husbands also are employed.

A basic truth known to all of us in the American Civil Liberties Union is that we belong to an organization which is more overwhelmingly White in its membership than is any public college or university in the South; membership in this organization and attendance at those institutions is equally voluntary. It does cost more to attend those institutions than it does to join the ACLU and liberal organizations equally dedicated to women’s rights, the rights of the elderly, and the rights of other protected groups. We should also note that there are few major business corporations which have lower percentages of Black employees than do our liberal organizations.

Despite that, we White liberals favor the total integration of American life. So do many Blacks and those in government

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agencies. Many of us even see venality in the struggle of some Blacks to retain or to find a separate identity or, to use the title of Alex Haley’s best-seller, to find Roots.

Yet, from the times of Lincoln there has been a recurrent theme of separate development within the Black community. How to compete was a principle problem. In 1929, Robert Russa Moton, a recipient of the NAACP’s coveted Springarn Medal, wrote: “Except for a few state legislatures, the Supreme Court of the United States is still all that stands in a legal way between the Negro and civil political extinction.” In 1935, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, then the radical young Chairman of the Political Science Department of Howard University, wrote of… “the fact,…that the Negro in the United States is a special ward of the Supreme Court… It is only inadvertently that the courts like the legislatures, fail to reflect the dominant mass opinion. It must be futile, then, to erect these agencies of government to afford the Negro protection for rights which are denied to him by the popular will.”

The patron saint of Black faith has been the Supreme Court. Yet, it was that institution—of which Blacks were “wards” to use the word of Dr. Bunche—which had continued the slavery of Dred Scott, the segregation of Homer Adolph Plessy, and, after it had sanctioned segregation for five decades, had provided limited relief for Oliver Brown’s daughter Lucinda.

Then came the acts of Congress which exhibited both the high purpose of “sectional concern” and the Southern “scape goatism” which is so necessary when seeking the assistance of benign liberals. As a provincial White Southerner I welcomed these civil rights acts. It was in the South that I believed that change would come.

I wrote in A Time to Speak, in 1964… “How much easier it is to worry over Birmingham than over New York …. And while you … debate … what to do about Birmingham will you also worry over your own employees and co-workers, your schools and neighbors and that ghetto on the other side of town?” I knew the answer. Yet I also knew that minds—Dr. Bunche’s “popular will”—can be changed.

Cameras carried the message of segregation into the living rooms and thereby confronted White middle-Americans. They made essential, individual decisions in democracy’s favor. A White majority forced a reluctant White Congress to pass the new civil rights laws. Those were White Presidents who proposed them and White judges who upheld them. Once Blacks confronted the system, non-violently and within the Christian tradition, the tide turned and the popular will ran with them. Yet the words “equal protection” and “regardless of race, creed, color, sex, or national origin” merely echoed the language of Mr. Justice Bradley. Blacks are not to be “the special favorite of the laws.” The laws eliminated “special favorites.” They transformed majorities into “minorities.” The vestiges of slavery would remain.

History conspires with chance, fact with fiction, until crowded back from the threshold of a fair chance in a free society, Blacks wait in line to enter doors marked “equal.” Once in the door, they have to be able to produce equally. Many, many Blacks know that many of them are not equipped to compete on an equal basis with most Whites.

In mid-March of 1979, the Washington Post made a front page discovery. The headline read “Rules to Protect Minorities’ Rights Guard Majority,” but that was no surprise because it was the end sought by Washington’s liberal community.

Blacks who do not yet fully understand the politics of dilution, or who are themselves immune from its application, march to the cadence of coalition America. They join with everyone who has been discriminated against. In this parade in an economy of scarcity and limited jobs, the Black population inexorably and irrefutably is destined to join ranks in the rear, to struggle, stumble, and be left behind.

Coalitions may be necessary to pass bills, but the receipt of benefits by coalitions means that those who need them least will

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get the most. Unfortunately, that is true with much “affirmative action.” Those most capable of making it without preferences received the preferences. Those who are least able to compete get the least. Between 1967 and 1974, for example, the employment of wives whose husbands earned more than $30 thousand per year rose by 38 percent. Compare that to the 11 percent increase in employment of wives whose husbands earn less than $6 thousand per year.

Understanding full well that there has been and continues to be discrimination on the basis of sex, national origin, religion and, other than Black race in this country, I submit to you the question of whether that discrimination has been different in kind, degree, and extent from the discrimination against Blacks? The vestiges and longlasting economic, political, and social effects of pre-Pill America are quite different from the vestiges of the slave system.

I do not care whether others—Black or non-Black—agree with those judgments for I have had opportunities to learn that Tom Paine was right when he wrote: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the result soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason….”

So let me state it simply. Times and minds do change but the vestiges of slavery and feudalism remain. I believe that because the Black population of the United States is an American population, only solutions provided by American traditions will work for it. Because much of Black America is no longer a total ward of the Supreme Court, but remains a ward of federal bureaucratic structures; because it is poor and, as such, is as conservative and fearful of change as are most impoverished groups; and because I believe that government and the concept of “equal” as “in separate but” continue to undercut Black progress, we must turn to the better aspects of the American past.

For years I have defended whatever tools were available for desegregation. I still do. Those tools include numerically-based affirmative action, school busing, federally funded training programs and welfare. I, too, am an integrationist, an assimilationist. Yet, we all know that Whites will not forever put their money into schools to which their children do not go. They will not for long accept the fearsomeness of night-time walks on big city streets. They will not for long continue to subject themselves to the negative end of affirmative action and fairness by compulsion and court orders.

No one bused their ancestors from Boston to Nebraska. As a child, my father made ten cents a day shoving logs off a creek bank and into the mainstream so that the logs would travel to downstream lumbermills and from there to the construction of the nation. My father was a “Southern Mountain White” who fought his way out of the “intellectual, spiritual and material impoverishment” which Black scholar Franklin Frazier urged Blacks to avoid. My father really did have one pair of shoes a year, a miles-long walk to and from a one-room school, and a much longer trek out of the mountains of Kentucky and into the American middle class.

We know of the limited aspirations of many Black Americans, of the dead-end which many Blacks do face; of the negative incentives provided Black citizens; and of the rationalizations for failure in the minds of their young.

The American Dream was based upon hope. Most Blacks, especially those who reside beyond the South, have little hope.

As Whites we know that once there really was a pot of gold at the end of the American rainbow, yonder in California, in Alaska. “Go West Young Man,” said Horace Greeley. That was good land offered under the Homestead Act. Yet, for Blacks, there weren’t 40 acres or even a mule. As in the time of McGuffey’s Reader and the Blue Back Speller, which made White America “one nation…indivisible,” today’s pot of gold, today’s homestead, today’s 40 acres, is education. It is a weapon, an instrument of power and self defense.

We must dream again the American Dream. We must devise new ways based upon our traditions to defeat the cynicism of young fogeys. Of course some Blacks, like some Whites, won’t work. Some Whites, like some Blacks, have no more ambition for their children than they have for themselves. Of course all God’s children won’t make it to the top in either a capitalistic or socialistic society. But to raise the level of the society, we must work and we must compete. Much to the chagrin of bureaucracy and pa-

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ternal, benign liberalism, work and competition are central to the American Dream.

How many bold ideas are there which might work? In Cincinnati, Ohio, school board member John S. Rue had one. He proposed that the city set aside funds to provide a college education for every Black child who, on his or her own, voluntarily travelled to and graduated from a majority White high school.

I, too, believe that to set aside the vestiges of slavery, Black children, merely because of their skin color, should be guaranteed that kind of opportunity. That is but one idea. There must be countless others which may work if grounded in the vestiges of our better traditions.

The ancestors of Blacks, unlike the ancestors of each of the rest of us, did not come to this land of their own free will. They will, however, be freed from the institution of slavery only by the free exercise of their own will. It is in the nature of governments, even benignly liberal governments, to oppress. It is in the nature of a free people to resist.

As the poet James Oppenheim wrote: They set the slave free, striking off his chains. Then he was as much of a slave as ever. He was still chained to servility, He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, He was still bound by fear and superstition, By ignorance, suspicion, and savagery… His slavery was not in the chains. But in himself… They can only set free men free. And there is no need of that: Free men set themselves free.

Charles Morgan, Jr. worked as an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] for a number of years and is now in private practice in Washington, D.C. This article is adapted from a speech given by Morgan at the Second Janet Pollak Civil Liberties Lecture sponsored by the ACLU of Illinois last year.