The Politics Behind Georgia’s Fair Employment Practices Law

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 1, No. 1, 1978, pp. 21-23

In an election year, bill-signing ceremonies become as fine an occasion to judge the issues of an incumbent governor’s campaign as a speech at a barbecue picnic in Southwest Georgia. When Governor George Busbee signed the 1978 Georgia Fair Employment Practices Act into law in March, he spoke highly of the new law which could not have existed anywhere in the South 15 years ago. He called the bill “one of the most significant pieces of legislation to pass the general assembly in many years.”

Busbee made it clear to the press and other observers, however, that equal opportunity in employment would be brought to Georgia “through the type of working relationship already established and because our people want to do what is right.” Echoing the strident words shouted in the past to resist such changes, the New South governor employed the old rhetoric about the way change effectively occurs. He said that fairness in state jobs won’t come through threats, coercion, unruly demonstrations or nuisance court actions.”

The mixed symbols of the old and new politics of Georgia with which Busbee enacted the new legislation and campaigned for reelection explain much of the background behind the new law. The governor was campaigning for votes when he said that equal opportunity for a state job will now be afforded all applicants because officials want to do right.” Honorable intentions did not cause any appreciable difference in Black employment after Busbee issued an executive order in July 1976, encouraging state agencies to hire and promote more Blacks and women. Eighteen months later he was admitting privately that the executive order had failed.

It was not goodwill, but the methods Busbee dismissed as ineffective that led the general assembly to pass a law this year prohibiting discrimination in state employment. The threats of expensive lawsuits and the possible resulting coercion of a federal court order on state hiring convinced legislators to adopt a bill attempting to correct a problem rather than wait for a judge to impose an unwanted solution.

An expanded version of the Fair Employment Practices Act had originally been introduced 10 years ago. Two Black Georgia state legislators offered the bill again in 1976 and 1977. It was assigned to the Human Relations Committee where it remained until Busbee became directly involved by introducing similar legislation last February.

No magic caused the bill to pass, says a special assistant to the governor, Chuck Pierce. He attributes its enactment to the culmination of three years of work. This year the focus of the bill was narrowed to discrimination in public employment, and groups advocating equal opportunity for the handicapped, women, and Blacks were encouraged to lobby their legislators, he said.

Members of the Black legislative caucus emphasize different reasons for the support of the governor and the general assembly. ‘The pressure from complaints that might have resulted in class action suits which would have cost thousands of dollars to defend” was a major impetus, says Rep. Clint Deveaux. The two-term Atlanta legislator and lawyer said Busbee decided to support the bill as soon as it became apparent that the federal government was seriously investigating complaints which state employees had filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Some political pressure exerted by Black leaders probably encouraged Busbee to support the bill. Busbee received a large percentage of the Black vote in his election as governor and the support of the Black caucus for his legislative programs during the past four years. Therefore, when the caucus near the beginning of the 1978 legislative session publicly criticized Busbee and demanded to know how he planned to increase the numbers and salaries of Blacks in state government, the governor was willing to meet with caucus members to discuss their grievances. Agreeing that a racial imbalance among employees’ salaries existed, Busbee told the caucus he would introduce legislation to handle employment discrimination in state government.

The Black caucus exerted direct pressure on Busbee and the general assembly members in other ways. Rep. Mildred Glover of Atlanta, chairperson of the state merit system overview committee within the caucus, introduced a resolution seeking the support of House members for a petition of Black caucus to EEOC “to proceed with dispatch in its review and investigation of the charges of employment discrimination in Georgia state government.”

“We were in the process of creating turmoil within the general assembly,” says Rep. J.E. (Billy) McKinney, who filed complaints with EEOC against 11 departments in 1974 for their small percentage of Black employees. A roll-call vote on the resolution was to be requested to create particular pressure on White legislators representing predominantly Black districts. Five members of the caucus also traveled to Washington to ask the Department of Justice to review McKinney’s complaint about job discrimination and consider filing suit against the state. After Busbee’s bill was introduced, Black legislators canceled the House vote on the resolution and requested a further delay in EEOC investigations.

Most persuasive with fellow legislators, Rep. J.C. Daugherty said, was the cost of defending the state during investigations. Work production was lowered when staff had to respond to requests for information from EEOC, the Office of Civil Rights and the Office of Revenue Sharing, said Pierce, the governor’s assistant. We pointed out that we can either develop within the state the mechanism to address the charges or face answering those charges in investigations or court.”

The bill’s supporters cited cases against Alabama and Mississippi which had resulted in federal judges governing the process of hiring state troopers and other state employees. Daugherty reflected, ‘We dian’t think Georgia, being an enlightened state, that we needed to have a federal judge controlling our hiring.”

On March 9, 1978, the signature of George Busbee rflade the bill law. Unlike their counterparts to the west, Georgia elected officials, with their “enlightened” self-image, decided not to fight in the courts. Fearing what the “feds” might do, the state finally took affirmative action. It was politics as usual in the South.

During noon-time ceremonies on “Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials Day,” the day the Fair Employment Practices Act passed the House of Representatives, the governor called the legislation “a landmark declaration that affirmative

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action is the official policy of state government.” While unprecedented in the state of Georgia, the anti-discrimination bill is neither bold nor landmark legislation. It is not even unusual in the South, just late. Every state once belonging to the Confederacy, with the exceptions of Alabama and Mississippi, has some version of an equal employment opportunity office. A couple are more expansive in both their coverage and enforcement powers.

The Georgia law prohibits discrimination in state employment on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, handicap, or aoe (between 45 and 65 years). It provides for an administrator and a nine-member advisory board selected by the governor. Attorneys appointed to hear charges not settled through conciliation may order the hiring, reinstatement, or :ronotion of employees who are victims of discrimination. The Lw’s enforcement sections allow the imposition of $1000 fines if the Office of Fair Employment Practices (OFEP) makes public, v,thout permission, information obtained during investigations; 1 an employer retaliates against a person filing a charge; or if an ridividual files a frivolous charge against the state.

The law is limited because it deals only with state agencies, departments, and commissions. We cannot touch the private sector” or local governments, says G. Duke Beasley, the deputy regional director of EEOC who Busbee appointed in June to direct the OFEP. Beasley plans to push for amendments in the general assembly which would give the new office enforcement powers over private employers. “If I represented the state, why would I want the federal government to look at anything that happens in this state without my having an opportunity to correct it myself?” he asks to illustrate why he thinks the general assembly members will approve expanded authority for his office.

Other Southern states, like Florida and Tennessee, have state agencies which enforce antidiscririunation laws in public and private employment. North Carolina’s commission has authority only for voliJnta)i activity. The South Carolina Human Affairs Commission, created in 1972, has enforcement powers only in public employment but has handled disputes in private employment when employers request the state agency to consider a case. Reports that EEOC was planning to open an office in South Carolina to deal with employment practices in the textile industry led state legislators to introduce a bill giving the Human Affairs Commission power of enforcement in private industry.

In the Georgia law the compromises made to gain its passage may further reduce its effectiveness. In the House provisions for private attorneys designated to represent complainants during administrative hearings were deleted, although the law does allow the attorney general to represent the complaining party. The Senate reduced the life of the agency to two years unless the legislature votes to extend it.

More fundamentally, senators changed the tone of the bill by adding a provision fining persons $1 000 for frivolous charges,” an ominous sign to potential complainants, and expanding the sections disallowing “preferential treatment.” The law reads,”Quotas because of imbalances in employee ratios shall not be permitted” nor can employers hire or promote someone on the basis of their race, sex, age or handicap.

While the laws covers the handicapped, the state senate attempted to exclude them. Senators were moved by “confusion and fear–fear that they would have to hire every wino off the street,” says Tobiane Schwartz, an EEO specialist with the Army who lobbied to keep handicapped persons covered under the law. Their concern remains evident in the act’s definition of the “mentally handicapped” person. While the physically handicapped must prove their handicap does not interfere with job performance, the mentally handicapped must prove with medical evidence that their impairment has been “removed.” As Schwartz points out, “What does mental impairment mean? Does that include epilepsy or mental retardation? You will never be able to show that a mental impairment has been removed.”

For several weeks this spring, applicants for the job of director were submitting resumes to the governor’s office. More than 100 were received. Members of the Black legislative caucus, other legislators supporting the bill, women’s groups, and Black groups were asked to submit recommendations. Gov. Busbee interviewed six people for the job, including Tobiane Schwartz, former state Sen. Leroy Johnson and Sharon Adams, the head of the state Commission on the Status of Women. The person chosen, Duke Beasley, had not applied for the job.

There is some irony in the process by which the director was hired and he, in turn, hired people for the five staff positions. The agency charged with making certain that state goverment hires on the basis of merit rather than patronage did not widely publicize its job openings. While the selections were legally made, they clearly did not follow the spirit of the law. No written notices announcing the search for staff were circulated. Chuck Pierce, the governor’s aide who coordinated the hiring process, said solicitationsfor a director and staff were unnecessary because qualified applicants across the country were seeking the jobs.

Duke Beasley was selected as director because of his experience, says Pierce. “We could not afford to orient someone. Ve needed someone who could move in day one.” As deputy

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regional director of EEOC since 1972, Beasley had both administrative and compliance responsibilities for eight states in the Southeast. During 1975 and 1976, he served as regional acting director. He is on loan to the state for one year, which can be extended, during which time the federal government will continue to pay his salary.

The experience which impressed Busbee enough to hire Beasley had an opposite effect on some members of the Black caucus. The chairman of the caucus, Rep. Bobby hill of Savannah, called Beasley a “tired bureaucrat” shortly after his appointment, explaining, “I’m not interested in paperwork and memos.” Rep. McKinney said he was “not overly impressed because the director came from EEOC, and EEOC has a record of total, absolute failure.”

The lawmakers’ criticism illustrates the challenge of the director’s job. EEOC has a backlog of 400 to 500 complaints against the state which will be deferred to OFEP. Since EEOC has been unable to eliminate the backlog, it will be a difficult task for Beasley’s new staff to achieve in two years.

Such difficulties do not daunt Beasley. He is proud of the staff of EEOC specialists he inherited from the state merit system, which has been under contract with EEOC to investigate charges of state employees ‘I predict within 60 days that we will be the most viable agency in the state because of my own personality and how I manage,’ he said in an interview at the end of his first week as director.

Sitting in his partitioned corner office, no larger than an elevator, the 56 year-old administrator was separated from his stiff by a glass wall which allowed him to survey the room. He w scheduled to use a spacious executive’s office, he said, but requested instead to work in the same crowded, temporary offices as his 14-member staff. Since he feels a manager is only as good as his staff, Beasley hopes to guide them by example and discipline to be hardworking, fair, and beneficial. The father of seven frequently refers to his philosophy of child-rearing to explain his management style. On a first-name bris with his employees he hopes each will treat every complaining party walking through the door “the same as they would the governor.”

Beasley and his staff began working on July 3, a day when many workers chose to take a holiday. One of their firt jobs has been the clearing of 131 EEOC complaints assigned to the state By disposing of those cases this summer the staff will be ready to begin work on the complaints which EEOC will release to OFEP when it gains “deferral” status. Deferral status means that EEOC defers investigatory powers to the local or state agency which by law has authority to investigate and enforce antidiscrimination laws.

Although enthusiastic and confident about the potential impact of his office, Beasley did express concern about getting state employees to know their rights and to view his agency as the place to exercise those rights. At the same time, his emphasis focuses on settling complaints through conciliation. “Much can be done depending on the attitude of department heads. If one thing is necessary to bring about job opportunity, it is that the head of a department must be receptive to change. If thuy don’t change, there will be an unnecessary expenditure of money to respond to lawsuits.”

Along with his staff, Beasley has a difficult job ahead. He has a year to end a backlog of complaints which the federal agency he helped run has been unable to eliminate. He must inspire a staff with a reputation for slowness in investigating complaints already contracted to the state. He must try to gain the respect of employees dissatisfied with their treatment at work and employees mistrustful of any interference in the administration of their department while trying to alter the views of both groups. Finally, he must deal with the political pressure from legislators who want state employment to reflect the percentage of Blacks in the state’s population.

The Black caucus plans to monitor his work. “We will want a quantitative accounting of complaints of discrimination settled and in whose favor,” says Rep. Glover. “We want Duke Beasley to be accountable so we will be looking closely.” Rep Deveaux predicts the 1978 act will turn state government upside down, but not without time and controversy. “It will take a long time.”

It is too early to tell if OFEP will be able to bring equal opportunity to Georgia state government. Like the executive order before it, the Fair Employment Practices Act has forestalled any federal intervention for at least two more years. Hopefully, it will be more effective in transforming attitudes of employees, employers and elected officials about what is “right” in state government. Gov. Busbee may then claim that “working relationships alreadyestabIished- were responsible for bringing equal opportunity to state government. Most likely, the law’s effect will grow slowly following the same circuitous evolution that has moved Southern politics unwillingly in the past fifteen years from the talk of diehard, vehement hatred to the language–if not the deeds–of self-serving enlightenment.

Economic Development

By Staff

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

An order which was issued recently by the Secretary of Transportation, is expected to substantially increase opportunities for minority owned firms. However, the order has sparked a controversy in Atlanta over the definition of who is a minority.

The order, which is now being prepared as a guideline for state highway departments, will require that each state establish specific goals for using minorityowned businesses as contractors and subcontractors. The regulation is expected to require that state transportation departments appoint a compliance officer and staff to implement the goals. A policy statement expressing “a commitment to utilize minority business enterprises in all aspects of procurement to the maximum extent feasible” will be required of all recipients of federal DOT grants. Because of the size and priority that transportation department budgets usually receive, the order could open numerous opportunities for minority contractors.

The problem with the order is that a minority” company is defined as one 51%, or more owned and controlled by racial minorities, or by women, regardless of race. A coalition of civil rights and feminist leaders have vowed to have a “head-on tight” with the federal government over this definition.

In spite of the obvious uod in tentions of including women as minorities, many people feel that it will have a negative impact. Aside from pitting women against minorities in competition for contracting opportunities, the definition also permits the spirit and intent of the order to be violated while carrying out the letter of the law. An established contractor, by signing 51% interest in his firm over to his wife or daughter could become an “instant minority-owned firm,” thus thwarting the efforts being made to assist fledgling Black and other minority owned businesses.

At this point the order is still in the process of implementation by the operating elements of the Department of Transportation. The Department is still open to comment about the regulation for aid recipients, interested groups, and the general public. Comments should be addressed to Gary Gayton, Special Assistant to the Secretary for Minority Business Enterprise, Department of Transportation, Washington, DC.

The Atlanta group, known as the “Coalition on Minority and Female Participation in Government Contracts,” is composed of more than 25 civil rights and feminist groups. They are proposing that DOT issue two sets of regulations, one setting goals for racial minorities, and another setting goals for women, with neither group being forced to compete against the other. Surely this regulation can be adjusted in some way so that it will accomplish what was intended and prevent abuse by greedy contractors looking for loopholes. Again public comment is the means by which this will happen; write the Transportation Department and let then’ know what you think.

Despite the possible flaws in the order, this new regulation is an important ruling that warrants one’s full attention. The order allows DOT to terminate or deny federal funding to recipients who fail to carry out “an adequate minority business enterprise affirmative action program.” The order also requires that recipients (state transportation departments and others) must inform their contractors and subcontractors that failure to carry out this program may constitute a breach of contract which could result in termination.

Because the order has only recently been issued. implementation by state departments of transportation has not yet begun. However, several states, including Georgia, are now actively seeking minority firms to prequalify and list as contractors and subcontractors. As is the case with most government projects, the prequalifying, bidding and contracting process can be complex and demanding. Companies wishing to take advantage of contracting opportunities should start now to familiarize themselves with the process. P copy of the order as issued by Secretary Brock Adams can be obtained from the Department of Transportation, Office of the Secretary, Washington, DC. Ask for DOT Order #4000.7A, dated March 3, 1978.

The Courtesy of Becoming a Federal Judge

By Steve Suitts

Vol. 1, No. 2, 1978, pp. 6, 7, 23

As a moderate segregationist governor of Mississippi, James P. Coleman once advised his supporters resisting integration that “any legislature can pass an act faster than the Supreme Court can erase it.” As time showed, the strategy was partially effective since racial integration began to seep into Mississippi only after being confronted with civil rights legislation, an angry president, and federal court decisions. The governor’s own course, however, may have had a more lasting effect. He retired from office, was appointed to a federal judgeship, and now sits on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Coleman and his brethren on the Fifth Circuit will soon be joined by several others when the president announces the appointment of the 60 district and circuit judges who will be added to the federal bench in the South. Because of recent legislation, more than 150 new federal judges will be appointed throughout the nation. Never before have so many federal judges been appointed at one time.

Although no one, including the president, knows exactly who will fill all these positions, there is clearly a moral obligation for him to appoint a large number of qualified Blacks and women. As a recent report of the Southern Regional Council revealed, the federal court system in the South has only one Black federal judge out of more than 130. Only one Black is a U.S. attorney and only three are U.S. marshals in Southern states. No Black is a full-time magistrate or chief clerk. Overall, no more than six percent of the entire personnel of the federal courts in the South is Black – an increase of only four percentage points since 1965.

While women are represented in large numbers, mostly in secretarial and clerical positions, they hold few positions of responsibility. Only one woman is a federal judge in the South. There is no female U.S. attorney or U.S. marshal and in all professional positions in the Southern district courts, women hold only 9 percent of them.

These facts alone ought to insure that a large number of Blacks and women will be appointed; however, the same moral imperatives and striking facts existed in 1965, when not a year after signing the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson submitted the name of James P. Coleman to be a federal judge.

Judge Coleman’s appointment angered almost every civil rights activist, many of whom testified against his appointment before the U.S. Senate committee. In opposing Coleman’s nomination, Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed his own puzzlement about how the president could nominate a man who was “the architect of the Mississippi plan to circumvent the orders of the very court to which he now seeks appointment.” Despite their anger, most Southern civil rights lawyers were not surprised. They knew of that peculiar process now, in gentlemanly terms, as “senatorial courtesy.”

Despite the Constitutional provision that the president shall appoint and the Senate shall confirm nominees to the federal bench, the process usually works with the roles reversed. One or two senators from a state select the nominee, the president confirms him, and the Senate seals the bargain. Thus, in reality, it was the powerful senators from Mississippi – not Lyndon Johnson – who made Coleman a federal judge.

The process of judicial selection is pure patronage and works like this: a senator from the state where the nominee will serve selects the person and informs the president. After a background check by the F.B.I. and review by the Bar Association’s committee, the president usually submits the name of the nominee to the Senate. The Senate Judiciary Committee, in turn, returns the name to the senator asking permission, in effect, to conduct hearings. If the nominee is the same person the senator originally nominated, the committee holds hearings and votes on whether to confirm. If the senator’s selection was not forwarded by the president, he usually has an opportunity to kill the nomination.

While the process varies from time to time, the motivating element in the selection is always political favoritism and was recently described by Attorney General Bell, who became a federal judge of the Fifth Circuit in the Kennedy administration. “Becoming a federal judge wasn’t very, difficult,” Bell says. “I managed John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in Georgia. Two of my oldest friends were the two senators from Georgia. And I was campaign manager and special, unpaid counsel for the governor.”

Under this system, it is obviously easier to explain an appointment to the federal bench by looking at the local politics and the state’s two U. S. senators than by reading the president’s announcement of the nomination. Certainly, it would have been hard otherwise to figure out how President Kennedy appointed Harold Cox, a vocal segregationist who after taking office once referred to Blacks as “chimpanzees,” and how President Johnson could have come up with Coleman as his first choice.

As the system has always operated, the further a judgeship is removed

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from one particular state, the less senatorial courtesy is observed. The appointment of district courts judges whose jurisdiction is confined to one state have always been viewed as the exclusive property of the U. S. senators from that state. While the same process applies to judgeships of the circuit courts (since retiring judges are usually replaced by someone from the same state), a president has greater opportunity to exercise his own judgment on these. Positions on the Supreme Court have never been subject to the usual senatorial courtesy although many Supreme Court justices sat on lower courts and were selected to those positions by the usual process.

Like others, this system of patronage works efficiently-just not fairly. For Southern Blacks and women, the process is as exclusionary as some of the most disingenuous Jim Crow laws.

Most Southern Black lawyers have been involved since their days in law school with supporting legal battles against local state and White politicians. They’ve opposed in court most of the important legislation and political chicanery which Southern Whites attempted to maintain for their own survival. Obviously, these lawyers are seldom the individuals who are first in line for patronage from the South’s delegation to the U. S. Senate.

Many women lawyers, also, have fought hard against local White politicians in the South, and just as often others simply are not counted as vital for any political support. In both, few women lawyers have claim to enough political patronage.

Unfortunately, the system has not opened up even when the old patricians of Southern life have been replaced with more progressive Southerners. Often, the usual course of least resistance for these newer senators has been to avoid local opposition to the appointment of a Black or a woman. Usually concerned not to show themselves as “too liberal” these senators prefer less visible means of supporting Black and women constituents.

The only Black federal judge in the South, Robert Collins, who was appointed in July to a Louisiana district court, has the necessary training and experience to be a federal judge. He also had the real qualifications! He was very active and influential in successful campaigns for Louisiana’s statewide officeholders. Few of his Black colleagues in the bar across the South hold such a unique position.

The political power of Blacks simply isn’t strong enough to influence many appointments. In no Southern state has a Black been able to be elected to a major statewide office. While Black voters are significant in some statewide races, they don’t have the numbers or the political clout in any one state to demand that Black lawyers be well represented in that line of people waiting for their political dole. With emerging voting patterns where Blacks no longer vote solidly for only one White candidate in Southern statewide elections, chances of Black leaders competing successfully for their fair share of patronage will decline.

Two years ago another former governor from the South, Jimmy Carter, ran for president and pledged to rid the selection of federal judges of political patronage and to make appointments only on the basis of merit. While the president has not attempted to alter the process of selecting district judges, the heart of the patronage system, he has established for each appeals court a commission which gathers nominations and make recommendations. There are also other proposals presently before Congress which would break up the old system. Some already operate in such places as Florida where the state’s senators agreed voluntarily to alter senatorial courtesy. Although each plan differs, all have a “bi-partisan commission” which makes recommendations to the president and the senators.

It is not clear how far these new procedures move the selection away from patronage. For instance, there is little difference between the selection of a judge by a commission filled with the political cronies of a U. S. senator and the senator’s own selection. Also, there’s evidence that some of the commissions include a Black or woman in their several recommendations merely for appearance, knowing that someone else will always be selected. In any event, none of these commissions operating in the South has produced a Black or woman judge.

The standard set by these bi-partisan commissions may also have the same effect as the patronage system. For instance, some commissions have been requiring that a person have 15 years trial experience as a lawyer to be eligible for consideration. Although justified in the name of competence, the standard simply excludes an overwhelming number of Black and women lawyers in the South.

Fifteen years ago when Southern governors were fighting to keep Blacks out of state schools, including law schools, Blacks had to travel north to get a legal education and afterwards few could practice in Southern states since they were largely excluded from the bar associations. A requirement for 15 years’ trial experience as a lawyer is as exclusionary for Southern Blacks as the rule, once enforced in the South, that graduates from the state law school, where Blacks were prohibited, can automatically qualify to practice law.

Women in the South and elsewhere have faced similar obstacles. Because of social standards and law school admission practices, few women became lawyers before the 1960’s. Those who did graduate found it difficult as a lawyer to get actual trial experience. Judges, lawyers, and even clients often held the view that women could not competently handle a trial, and in large law firms women were seldom assigned to trial work. While she may be brilliant, she usually doesn’t have much trial experience.

By patronage or sham professionalism, the system of appointing judges

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must not be allowed to exclude Blacks and women from the federal bench and to deny litigants the benefit of their additional experience, insight, and knowledge. The President and the Senate not only must abandon the system of patronage but also must recognize the unique opportunity in which the federal courts of the South and the nation can now be integrated. There probably will not be another chance in the next century to redress so well the many years of denied opportunities.

Yet, the old ways of patronage will not be withdrawn easily. In 1965, when civil rights had its greatest force in the U. S. Congress, judge Coleman’s appointment was opposed by no more than eight U. S. senators- a number which did not include many liberals such as Robert Kennedy. More recently, president Carter, has also been unwilling to confront the Senate’s patronage of appointments for district judges or to insure that the selection process includes Blacks and women.

Unless Southerners of good will devote time and energy to make the changes happen, Blacks and women in large numbers will continue to be denied this one “courtesy” and in future years we may all be searching desperately for even a compromised strategy which can do half as well as the one which suited Governor Coleman and his supporters years ago.

South Carolina Vendetta

By Marion Wright

Vol. 1, No. 4, 1979, pp. 4-7

Editor’s Note: “In recent years scholars have increasingly been turning their attention to Southern history. Tome after tome offers learned discourse on the profitability of slavery, the nature of the Black family, the causes and consequences of the Civil War, the reality of the New South, or the history of race relations in Dixie. Of growing interest is the story of the Southern White liberal. Who were the remarkable men and women who braved insults, suffered ostracism, risked losing their jobs and, in some cases, faced mobs to promote equal justice for all? Who sought to foster the climate of tolerance that would hasten the day when Dixie truly rejoined the Union? One such man is Marion Allen Wright, author of the speeches compiled in this book.”

This is the opening paragraph in the book Human Rights Odyssey by Wright and Arnold Shankman. Wright was the president of the Southern Regional Council during some of the most turbulent years of the 1950s. His speeches often received very cool receptions. The speech excerpted here is about Federal Judge J. Waties Waring, a White Southern liberal like Wright, but who, unlike Wright, was ostracized because of his rulings on controversial issues. In many instances, these issues are still sources of controversy today.

Introduction

Probably no Southerner was more vilified because of his liberal racial stand than was J. Waties Waring of Charleston, South Carolina, federal judge for the Eastern District of South Carolina. It fell to Judge Waring’s lot to write decisions equalizing teachers’ salaries; requiring South Carolina to admit Negro students to the University of South Carolina law school unless a separate but completely equal law school was established; opening the Democratic primary to Negro voters, and, in dissent, striking down segregation in the public schools.

Waring’s decisions aroused hostility among a great majority of White South Carolinians, whose reaction was vocal, bitter and, in many instances, obscene. Unruly mobs vandalized their house and verbally abused the judge and his wife.

Sadly, Wright was one of very few South Carolinians to speak out in behalf of the Warings. Charleston society ostracized the couple. Evidently the so-called better elements of the city could not forgive the apostasy of a native Charlestonian of distinguished ancestry. Waring, however, would not modify his views. He once explained to a reporter that “by being a judge I have gradually acquired a passion for justice.”

While the school desegregation case was pending before the United States Supreme Court Marion Wright visited the Waring home and wrote this impressionistic report of J. Waties Waring, man and judge. One year later, on November 6, 1954, Wright was the principal speaker at a testimonial dinner given by the state NAACP for the then expatriated judge and his wife.

“It is time for South Carolina to rejoin the Union.”

So wrote United States District Judge J. Waties Waring of Charleston, S.C., in an opinion filed July 12, 1947. These words, directed at one phase of South Carolina’s segregation policy, touched the state upon an exposed nerve. The decision struck down the system the state had set up to deprive its Negro citizens of any effective participation in politics, and, hence, in government, a system devised by “the best legal brains in the state.” The judicial condemnation of the morals behind this effort was apparently not so much resented as was the reflection upon the lack of shrewdness of its authors.

Some years ago Governor Olin D. Johnston, now senator, purpled upon reading a decision of the United States Supreme Court in a case from Texas. That decision held that the plaintiff, a Negro, was entitled to vote in a Democratic primary even though for

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bidden by the party rules. Negroes were so forbidden by party rules in South Carolina. In Texas there were statutes regulating conduct of primaries. There were such statutes in South Carolina. There was language in the decision which aroused belief in Governor Johnston that a different result might have been achieved in Texas if the state had had no such statutes but had left political parties entirely free to make their own rules. That seemed the way out for South Carolina. Certainly, if the situation in South Carolina could not be distinguished from the situation in Texas, Negroes of the Palmetto state would, upon a proper case, be granted the right of participation in primaries. In that state, of course, this means the Democratic primary.

Governor Johnston thereupon convened an extraordinary session of the legislature. There was nothing Oriental or disingenuous about the call for the session. “It now becomes absolutely necessary that we repeal all laws pertaining to primaries in order to maintain White supremacy . . . White supremacy will be maintained in our primaries. Let the chips fall where they may.”

So the legislature ripped approximately 150 statutes out of the books. The state convention of the party eliminated from its rules all references to statutes. When George Elmore, Negro, stood before Judge Waring, asking that he be permitted to enroll in the Democratic party and to vote despite its rules against Negro participation, the party was able to say with engaging innocence that its status was exactly the same as a private social club. Judge Waring was unimpressed. “Racial distinction,” he wrote, “cannot exist in the machinery that selects the officers and lawmakers of the United States; and all citizens of this state and country are entitled to cast a free and untrammeled ballot in our elections. If the only material and realistic elections are clothed with the name ‘primary,’ they are equally entitled to vote there … The primary held by it (the Democratic party) is the only practical place where one can express a choice in selecting federal and other officials.”

And so, the Negroes voted in South Carolina ….

It might have been naively assumed by those who did not know the masters of the Democratic party in South Carolina that the decision in the Elmore v. Rice case, unanimously affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals (composed, by the way, of three White Southern judges) and the Supreme Court of the United States, would have put an end to efforts to exclude the Negro from the Democratic primary. Not so. Like John Paul Jones in a worthier cause, the party had just begun to light. The Democratic convention on May 19, 1948, almost a year after Judge Waring’s decision in the Elmore case, adopted new rules. These limited membership in the Democratic clubs to Whit persons and required of all those seeking to vote in the primary an oath which provided, among other things, that the prospective voter believes in and will support the “social, religious and educational separation of races,” in “the principle of States Rights” and “is opposed to proposed federal so-called F.E.P.C. law.” A rather neat little device for rendering completely nugatory the former decision of Judge Waring.

David Brown, a Negro from Beaufort, brought suit against officials of the party, seeking an order granting him membership in one of the Democratic clubs and enjoining the requirement of the oath as a prerequisite to voting in the primary. In addition to the permanent injunction, a temporary injunction was sought relating to the then imminent primary.

Judge Waring, native born and lifelong resident of Charleston, with eight generations of Southern ancestry behind him, with Confederate and slave owning antecedents, always a Democrat, heard the motion for the temporary injunction.

“It is important,” his order read, “that once and for all the members of this party be made to understand and that is the purpose of this opinion – that they will be required to obey and carry out the orders of this court, not only in the technical respects but in the true spirit and meaning of the same . It is time that either the present officials of the party, or such as may be in the future chosen, realize that the people of the United States expect them to follow the American way of elections … It becomes the duty of this court to say to the party officials that they will have to obey the true intent of the law … and that no excuse or evasion in the future will be tolerated … Any violation of the terms of the order, or of the law as set forth in this opinion … will be considered a contempt and will be proceeded against and punished.” From the bench he announced that punishment would not be a mere line but would be imprisonment.

Under the aegis of this order 35,000 South Carolina Negroes voted in the Democratic primary of 1948 without disorder or incident.

Later, on November 26, 1948, the injunction was made permanent. The Circuit Court of Appeals again unanimously sustained the action of the lower court. The appellate court was asked to hold that Judge Waring should have disqualified himself because of “personal bias” against the defendants. This contention was overruled with the observation, “A judge cannot be disqualified merely because he believes in upholding the law, even though he says so with vehemence.”

While Judge Waring had one of the election cases under consideration, a defender of public morals dropped a suggestion into the mails:

“You must realize the fearful racial hatred that will follow any adverse

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decision that you may render in the present case under your consideration against the White people of your own state.

“We again trust that we will have your co-operation in a favorable decision for the White people which will in the end do more justice to the Negroes themselves than the past decisions that you have been making.”

The signature -Knights of the Ku Klux Klan – was in red ink.

In a case from Clarendon County, South Carolina, the Judge on June 21, 1951, wrote a dissenting opinion repudiating the doctrine that a state acts within the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States when it provides separate but equal school facilities for Negro and White pupils. The case is the first to attack segregation per se on the elementary school level. After reviewing the testimony of certain witnesses for plaintiffs, Judge Waring wrote:

“From their testimony it was clearly apparent, as it should he to any thoughtful person, irrespective of having such expert testimony, that segregation in education can never produce equality and that it is an evil that must he eradicated … I am of the opinion that all of the legal guideposts, expert testimony, common sense and reason point unerringly to the conclusion that the system of segregation in education adopted and practiced in the state of South Carolina must go and must go now.”

“Segregation is per se inequality.”

The other two judges of the three judge court, John J. Parker and George Bell Timmerman, upheld the separate but equal doctrine. An appeal from their decision is now before the Supreme Court.

This would be a badly distorted picture if the impression should be created that hatred of Judge Waring approaches being unanimous in South Carolina. Far from it. The press of the state generally has not taken up the hue and cry regarding his decisions as being inevitable and correct statements of the law. Outside of ancient Charleston and environs, if one may judge from the letters and telegrams (these not wearing the mask of anonymity) there is a substantial body of White opinion which applauds the judge’s course. From outside the state there have come literally thousands of commendatory messages.

The Negro people, of course, both at home and abroad, have elevated him to sainthood, a role for which he is ill-adapted and which gives him acute discomfort.

“After all, I have done nothing except perform very plain duties. For merely doing his duty a man is not entitled to anything approaching adulation.”

But wherever he goes throughout the country Negro men and women – bell hops, red caps, college students, teachers – come forward to press his hand and voice the gratitude of their race.

“Of course,” the judge admitted, “it does appeal to the ego which I guess we all have. And a few words like theirs make up for a lot of those anonymous letters,” pointing to the drawer which contains that literary collection.

I asked Judge Waring if any White Charlestonian had publicly given him support.

“Not a one.”

“What about the Churches?”

“You know,” he replied with evident feelings. “that has been the most disappointing feature of the whole matter. I am unable to understand how ministers who Sunday after Sunday utter the ancient cliches about brotherhood never translate them into action, apply them to specific local situations. untouchahility in India and the Ghetto in Germany draw fire but segregation here at home does not.

I asked the judge about the penalties he had endured, he replied:

“For merely thinking and talking differently from your fellows, you are marked as being queer and unfriendly. For putting those thoughts into action, as I have tried to do, you are put down as a traitor to your class and state.

“As a result I have been completely abandoned by many friends and acquaintances. Probably the most serious phase of this abandonment is loss of contact with lawyers. They physically evade me and dodge around corners in order to avoid the business, political or other consequences if the impression should be created that they were friendly to me.

“I knew some pleasant and amusing people whose very frivolity was attractive. They left me.

“Then there is the discomfort of living in an atmosphere of tenseness and ill will. There is a feeling of being on guard. I do not mean physically, though threats of violence are not uncommon, but rather, of watching every word and act to be sure that they are not subject to misconstruction.

“All of those things, of course, detract from normal and happy living.” What was the other side of the ledger, what compensations to offset these penalties?

“There have been plenty of compensations,” he began. “They more than off-set the penalties.

“Of course the first great gain is the complete knowledge that one’s actions have been right, not only right because, in the matter of court decisions, there have been affirmances and complete approval nationally, but right because the conscience of the world approves of these actions, and right because one’s own conscience says so, and that is the greatest gain there is ….

“Another gain has been the outside contacts. We both (wife) have a considerable correspondence with people all around the country and even some outside, and when we go away, we now have the opportunity of meeting people throughout this country who are worthwhile, not because of achievements of prominence, but because they have inquiring minds. We have met literally hundreds of people with whom we would have never had any contact and whom we would have never had any contact and whom we never would have met and many we never would have heard of but for the fact that South Carolina has chosen to advertise its :i Americans and humanitarians and opposed to oppression. Too, it

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came as agreat surprise to find out ho many individual thinkers there were who wanted to know more about these things.

“I feel that this ostracism here has allowed me to take part in what might be termed a true crusading movement in which many hundreds and thousands of good people in this country are enlisted and performing various parts. But for this alignment, I would never have had such an opportunity.

“Some day the civil rights battle will be won. I hope I may be pardoned a sense of pride in the thought that I shall have had some small part in the victory.”

Since the Judge was in this selfrevealing mood and there was still a quarter-hour before dinner, I asked if he felt that Charleston would ever soften its attitude toward him, come to think a little more kindly of the work he had done. There was a long pause. Finally:

“In my lifetime, no.”

A native South Carolinian, my mind turned to the career of James Louis Pettigru, brilliant and courageous lawyer of Charleston, who opposed nullification and secession when those fevers ran high. As a result he was Charleston’s loneliest man in the decades before Fort Sumter was shelled and during the war which that shelling announced until his death in 1863. He lies buried in St. Michael’s churchyard in Charleston. As a boy Waties Waring absorbed the epitaph, from which the following extract may be pertinent:

“In the great Civil War he withstood his People for his Country but his People did homage to the Man who held his conscience higher than their praise and his Country heaped her honors on the grave of the Patriot, to whom living his own righteous self-respect sufficed alike for Motive and Reward.”

Charleston may do it again.

Aftermath of the Decision

No one development more signified and quickened the pace of the New Reconstruction than did the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision of May 17, 1954, against segregation in the public schools. The separate-but-equal doctrine, which dated from the decision in 1896 in Plessv v. Ferguson, had been under steady attack for two decades before 1954; a number of the Supreme Court’s decisions from 1938 on, largely in the realm of state-supported higher education, had sharply limited and nibbled away at the PIessy formula. But the Court in 1954 met the issue head-on and, speaking with an impressive unanimity and moral authority, buried the legal fiction of separate-but-equal once and for all.

Marion Wright had correctly anticipated this momentous development. Yet, as he admitted in later years, he and many other liberal observers underestimated the depth and amount of Southern opposition to desegregation. This aspect of the New Reconstruction became manifest only gradually and after White extremist groups and politicians had moved into action.

The Supreme Court’s decision in 1954, and its decree a year later implementing the decision, forced Southern whites to decide: would they actively assist, passively accept, or bitterly oppose the greatest tide of racial change since the years immediately after the Civil War? The gradualists, Southerns who looked to changes at some far-off, unspecified date, were especially confronted with the dilemma of deciding. In his speeches and written essays, Wright often dealt with the fallacies of gradualism and the obligations of the Southerner.

It was Wright’s goal to transform Southern society into one that did not dwarf its men but rather encouraged their growth into giants. The ability to grow, he realized, could come only with a truly new South, one that came to grips with the Confederacy realistically, recognizing that the Civil War in the South had been waged to defend an ignoble institution. Dixie had fought gallantly for a cause that should have been lost, and now one hundred years later it was time to turn away from the past and to educate the young, Black and White, to treat one another as brothers and sisters.

Wright was aware that the process of integrating the schools would be hard for both races and would reveal hidden antagonisms. When addressing Southerners sometimes Wright told of an elderly Negro woman in New Orleans, her hands bleached from the washtub. Shortly after school riots in that city she sadly confided, “I washed for those people for thirty years and I wouldn’t have believed if I hadn’t seen it that they would run in the house and pull down the shades while that crowd threw rocks at my grandchild.”

It was precisely because such incidents did occur, Wright argued, that integration of schools was necessary, for this would foster democracy and would prove more beneficial to Whites than to Blacks. In February 1971, he noted:

It is as damaging to the personality to be shut in as to be shut out. Whites create ghettos for themselves. It is more important that the White Southerner know the black than that he know the European. Whites and blacks here are neighbors and neighbors must know each other if they are to get along and build a better society. Such knowledge begins in the schools.

Delay, gradualism would not work, for all the world, even the peoples of Latin America, Africa and Asia, were “aware of the shabby and fradulent tricks used to deny rights to people of color in the South, aware of burnings, boycotts, and bombings.”

You know a man can secure a reputation for wisdom merely by saying, Lets not move too rapidly. He can secure a reputation for goodness merely by saying, This thing is wrong and some day we must get rid of it.’ Such men are the meanly wise, the feebly good. Bigotry takes many forms. In none is it more detestable than in the assertion that mere procrastination will accomplish the results which all good men seek.

These words, spoken by Wright before the Men’s Club of Trinity Episcopal Church in Buffalo, New York, on May 6, 1952, set forth a theme to which he often recurred. That theme was in response to the plea for gradualism in re-adjusting Southern race relations. Gradualism was another term for non-action.

Human Rights Odyssey was published by Moore Publishing Company in 1978, Price $9.95.

Legal Workers Battle for poor in Mississippi

By Joseph Delaney

Vol. 1, No. 4, 1979, pp.17-19

They came during an unusual time of the year to discuss an important issue at an uncommon location. Many did not expect a crowd of legal workers from across the nation to assemble for a conference the day after Thanksgiving in Oxford, Mississippi, a town made famous during the 1960s by its resistance to the integration of its University, to discuss the First Amendment rights of legal workers.

But they came. For as one observer put it, conditions had become much too critical to stay away. The issues discussed went well beyond the problems the host, North Mississippi Rural Legal Services (NMRLS), a legal program offering services to the poor in 32 northern Mississippi counties, and its lawyers were facing because of their aggressive advocacy on behalf of the poor. It became a question of First Amendment rights of all lawyers, paralegals and legal workers who worked for legal services programs throughout the nation. Did they have a right to argue a claim on behalf of a poor client free from federal laws and restrictions’? Did these restrictions affect the quality of service that could be provided a client? These questions had to be answered.

The issue was important to Mrs. Carlenna Pegues and residents of the Molly Barr Road section of Oxford, Mississippi. They had lived for years without municipal ser

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vices that many of us have come to expect and enjoy. They have lived on an unpaved dirt road called a street. They have lived in houses with no running water. They have lived on a street with no fire hydrants or city lights. Garbage hasn’t been picked up in their neighborhood. When it rains, the community becomes covered with water. The water remains for long periods of time because there isn’t any place for it to go.

The story is illustrated very vividly in an affidavit attached to a suit (Carlenna Pegues, et. al. v. John Leslie, et. al.) filed by Pegues, an elementary school teacher with a modest income. It said: “Residents of the Molly Barr area must either collect rain water or haul their water, resort to dumping garbage in holes, ditches or otherwise hauling it to other places, build and use outside toilets and when it rains, cars must be parked long distances from their homes or at least owners must be prepared to wade in mud because of the road…”

The issue was clear to Pegues. It was a question of survival. She knew the names of the people and the organization which had successfully defended the rights of citizens who had called out for help (a Consent Decree was recently entered in the case. City officials agreed to provide residents in the Molly Barr area with water and sewer services).

So when she was asked to participate in a discussion group to discuss how restrictions on legal services workers would affect the quality of services provided clients, her reaction was predictable. She stood proudly and proclaimed: “Legal services must be supported by people who are fair minded and who want to live a better life.”

This view is one that is shared by many poor citizens who have come to depend on legal organizations like NMRLS throughout the years.

To many of them, this type of assistance is their only resort. This may explain why they are willing to fight for the survival of legal services. This may explain also why these citizens have no problems with their lawyers being aggressive on their behalf.

The harsh realities of the situation are familiar to Lewis Myers Jr., an aggressive and skillful people’s advocate. For several years while employed as an attorney with North Mississippi Rural Legal Services, he has represented community groups and citizens involved in the elimination of poverty and injustice in America. Myers is only 30-years-old and already a veteran legal practitioner.

His work has not been easy, he reports. Allegations and innuendoes have been filed against him by various local and national agencies and against several other individuals connected with the legal agency.

The content of the script reads like a chapter from a spy novel. It’s revealing and represents a pattern of harassment:

– During the height of a boycott in Byhalia, Mississippi in 1974, Myers and several other legal workers were investigated by the Community Relations Service (CRS),a domestic intelligence branch of the U.S. Justice Department. CRS members claimed they were in Byhalia protecting the interest of elderly citizens who were allegedly being harassed by representatives of the United League of Mississippi. League officials charged, on the other hand, that CRS operatives were spying on the Black community. They said that the CRS was seeking to destroy the effectiveness of an economic boycott, which was being conducted by them. The boycott was initiated following an alleged killing of a Black youth by two White policemen. It represented one of the first intensive protest efforts by the League, a highly successful grassroot community group.

-Shortly after the CRS scenario, records were made public which connected the Governor’s Office of Human Resources with using illegal surveillance methods in connection with North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. An exhaustive document, including several exhibits and newspaper clippings, was filed by this agency with NMRLS’ funding sources in Washington. The document contained an extensive list of charges against the program; ranging from an allegation that the program was representing several Byhalia citizens who didn’t meet federal income guidelines which made them eligible for assistance, to charges that NMRLS staff members were very deeply involved in boycott activities. NMRLS officials quickly responded to these charges. They were later discarded after the state failed to prove its allegations.

-There are current violations pending against Lewis Myers Jr. He is accused of violating Legal Services Corporation guidelines by his representation of clients who are members of the United League of Mississippi. These charges were filed by officials of the City of Tupelo, a northeastern Mississippi trade center which has been the center of present demonstrations, conducted by the League, since March of 1978. Charges have also been filed against Deborah Jackson and Sentwali Aiyetoro, two other attorneys.

Myers and the other lawyers cited above are not the only

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victims of this legacy of harassment. They are descendants of lawyers like Michael Trister, George Strickler and John Brittain. Each at one time or the other has worked for NMRLS. Each has been treated harshly because of their aggressive advocacy on behalf of the poor.

In 1968, Trister and Strickler, who we re then professors at the University of Mississippi Law School, were fired because of their connections with NMRLS. They were later reinstated after a successful legal challenge. But both of them decided to work elsewhere. Trister became executive director of NMRLS; Strickler moved to another location.

During a recent interview, Trister, who is now a Washington attorney, said he and Strickler were dismissed from the law faculty because of NMRLS’ filing of two controversial lawsuits, one involving integration of a local school system and another challenging a state residence requirement for welfare recipients.

The case against John Brittain was different from the Trister-Strickler affair. He was arrested by police officers in Oxford, Mississippi in 1969 reportedly for practicing law without a license. This was an amusing thought to some for Brittain, a young Black lawyer from Connecticut, never really represented himself as a member of the Mississippi Bar. He had come to NMRLS as part of the Reginald Heber Smith Program, an internship for lawyers working in legal services programs. He was studying to pass the state bar. But he was arrested nonetheless for illegally practicing law. In the minds of many of his supporters, he was arrested because of his vigorous legal efforts on behalf of the poor. Brittain is now a Connecticut law professor.

Many of these people’s advocates, from days gone by, have left North Mississippi but the issues remain. The oppression still remains: people lawyers are still oppressed because of their representation of the poor.

Advocates like Lennox Hinds, former national director of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, says there are some difficult days ahead. He says that people lawyers can expect increased attack. The attacks, he says, will come “through the Bar Associations and within the courtrooms.” What about progressive groups like the United League of Mississippi which must depend on legal services lawyers to represent their interest? How do they stand? “The picture for them is even gloomier,” says Hinds. “They can expect increased attacks on the leadership which may range from arrests on trumped-up charges to vilification in the press.”

The ordeal of NMRLS is not a blues story, however. Neither is the concern of the supporters who see this struggle as part of a national effort to protect First Amendment rights of lawyers and insure quality services for the poor and oppressed. It’s a battle for justice that committed warriors are willing to wage, Myers says. The struggle is just beginning.

Joseph Delaney is the coordinator of information for the Northern Mississippi Rural Legal Services and editor of the monthly publication.

National Advisory Committee for Women and the ‘Friday Afternoon Massacre’

By Lenora Reese

Vol. 1, No. 5, 1979, pp. 18-20

A month ago, a random poll of the American people would probably have indicated few, if any, had ever heard of the National Advisory Committee for Women.

The 40-member committee had not publicly trumpeted its existence since a presidential executive order signed it into being last April. Informal sessions had been held and issues batted back and forth. A staff was set up in Washington, D.C., and duties assigned.

But it wasn’t until January 12, the day some are calling the “Friday afternoon massacre,” that the once obscure group got the recognition it deserved. And it came at the expense of its outspoken co-chair, Bella Abzug, who was fired by President Carter after White House officials learned of a press release critical of Carter’s economic and social policies.

Enraged over the dismissal, more than half the committee resigned. As this issue went to press, the count stood at 24 resigned, 16 remaining.

Of the eight members from the Southern states, the majority, six, including honorary chairperson Judy Carter, chose to stay on the panel, while two left. Of the three Southern Black members, two remained, and one left. Of the two men on the committee, one stayed and other resigned. (A third original male member, Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO, had resigned earlier over an unrelated matter.)

There was apparently no evident cohesiveness among the “Southern coalition” on the committee, and after the split, there seemed to be even less consensus of opinion on the reasons for the firing, the committee’s original purpose and its uncertain future.

Still smarting over Abzug’s dismissal in late January was Brownie Ledbetter, founding member of the Arkansas Women’s Political Caucus and state legislative chairman, a member of the Executive Committee of the Southern Regional Council, Business and Professional Women’s Clubs and Church Women United. She and Jefflyn Johnson, of Falls Church, Va., were the only two Southerners to step down.

Ledbetter, like many other feminists, believes Carter used Abzug merely as a scapegoat for the rest of the committee which he felt had gone beyond the call of duty in criticizing his position on the economy, including proposed cuts for the federal budget. Issues such as social security cutbacks and postponement of national health insurance were of vital concern to women, committee members felt, and needed to be brought to the president’s attention.

According to the committee’s guidelines, set up after the 1977 Houston International Women’s Year conference, the panel was to gather and disseminate information concerning women’s issues and advise the president on how the government would implement the National Plan of Action adopted in Houston.

The press release, which summarized a lengthy report compiled by the committee and its staff for Carter, warned the president that his “anti-inflation program will impose additional burdens upon women in increased unemployment, cutbacks in social programs, postponement of comprehensive national health insurance and deferred action on programs and addressing poverty and assistance to cities where the majority of women live.”

The release also criticized an administration proposal to increase the Defense budget by 10 percent and called on Carter to appoint a committee to investigate “military extravagance.”

Press reports have indicated that White House staffers, upon learning the release’s contents, abruptly decided Abzug should be canned. Staffers were said to be already miffed that the committee had cancelled its December meeting with Carter. According to members, a majority of the committee voted to cancel the session, although Abzug opposed such a move, because they felt the 15 minutes allotted was clearly not enough time for a meaningful dialogue.

Ledbetter, however, believes neither the press release nor the cancelled meeting were the real reasons for the dismissal. Rather, they were an excuse for the Carter administration to dispose of someone who wouldn’t toe the party line. The firing, she said, was indicative of the administration’s view of women.

“We were never taken seriously to begin with,” she said. “We were just shunted aside.”

The committee had been given a $300,000 budget and a staff to work with, but Ledbetter said Abzug and co-chair Carmen Delgado Votaw “did all the work.” Little cooperation was received from White House staffers, she said, and “it has been a constant hassle.”

“I think it’s essentially the president’s fault. I don’t think he’s without compassion for women, but it’s compassion for us as wives and mothers. He didn’t treat us as equals. He wouldn’t have treated a committee of men that way.”

Carter, meanwhile, defended his firing of Abzug at a press conference five days after the episode. The group’s criticism of him was “not part of it at all,” he said. His ap-

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pointment of Abzug just “didn’t work out well. The committee has never been well organized; their functions have never been clearly expressed to me. There’s not been good cooperation between the committee and the Cabinet members or my advisors, or me.”

Carter said he understood the group’s function was “to work with me, hopefully in harmony, to achieve mutual goals – goals of enhanced opportunities for women, for the elimination of any discrimination against women, to assure that every decision made by the government, and the executive branch or Congress, has at least one factor to be considered: how we can best meet the needs of women and to overcome the suffering that they have experienced because of past legal and other discriminatory actions.”

Carter, feminists say, obviously would have preferred the panel stick to strict “women’s” issues such as abortion rights or the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. “But we did something really far out,” said Ledbetter, with a trace of sarcasm. “We were talking about fiscal policy.”

Ledbetter said those who resigned did not see themselves as taking a critical direction, as Carter had implied in his meeting with the committee before Abzug was given her pink slip.

“We saw it as our right to tell our various constituencies what the administration was doing in areas that affect women,” she said. “I don’t feel Bella lead us down a leftist, liberal path.”

Ledbetter was backed in her resignation by the Southern Coalition for Educational Equity, a group of Southern feminists formed recently to focus on issues of sexism and racism in secondary and elementary education.

While she believes Abzug’s firing and the resulting resignations were unfortunate, Ledbetter says publicity generated by the entire episode may have actually helped the cause.

“It was unfair to Bella, but in a sense it was good because somebody heard us say, ‘the economy is a women’s issue.’ That’s clearly what we wanted to do in the first place.”

What happens now, however, will probably be up to the remaining members and whomever Carter appoints to replace those who do not return. Whatever the outcome, Ledbetter and other feminists believe Carter has been hurt by the incident and will feel the repercussions come 1980. “He misjudged us,” she said. “And her strength.”

Among the stalwarts who stayed are six Southerners, including Memphis attorney Richard Rossie, the only remaining man; Owanah Anderson of Texas, member of the Health, Education and Welfare Committee on Rights and Responsibility of Women; Dr. Elizabeth Koontz, assistant state superintendent of education for North Carolina; Judy Carter, the president’s daughter-in-law; Brenda Parker, national president, Future Homemakers of America, another Texan; and Ann Richards, Travis County, Texas commissioner, and president of the Texas Association of Elected Women.

Rossie, founding member of the Women’s Resources Center of Memphis, blames Abzug and co-chair Votaw for the “totally negative” press release and the “foul-up,” and feels it was not the committee’s function to question the president’s economic policy.

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“The president’s policy has been that excessive government spending leads to inflation, and we were implicitly rejecting that statement,” Rossie said.

And while Abzug was not personally involved in the preparation of the press release, Rossie says the staff who did prepare it “were her people. She chose them. I’m going to hold her responsible.”

The first version of the committee report, he charged, “clearly reflected her thinking and style,” which he termed “confrontational,” and he felt the committee staff had “gone wild” with it. Even after it had been redone to soften some of the more critical points, Rossie said “it reads Bella all over.”

Rossie, the only Southern member contacted to applaud Abzug’s firing, accused the former co-chair of “lecturing” Carter on the committee’s role during the group’s session with him. “Bella had the opportunity to say the press release was done without her approval and say thanks,” Rossie said, “but she didn’t.” Instead, she lectured the president on the role of the committee and how the committee viewed its role.”

Carter reportedly informed panel members of a few things he’d had on his mind about their function, namely that they weren’t being supportive enough of him.

Although feminists have said Carter’s firing of Abzug was a politically naive move, Rossie says Abzug’s treatment of the president made it the other way around. “I was horrified.”

Rossie, chairman of the Shelby County, Tenn., Democratic Committee, remains on the committee but is ambiguous about its future. Taking a more optimistic outlook were Koontz and Richards.

Koontz, former president of the National Education Association and director of the Women’s Bureau for the U.S.

Department of Labor, said she agreed to be on the committee because she believed in its purpose: ‘To further the goals of the Houston women’s agenda and have an impact at national, state and local levels. That has not been achieved,” she said.

“The war has not been won. I don’t want to give up. I hope we can be a stronger force for what has happened. There must be someone there to negotiate.”

Koontz said she had been contacted by another committee member who had resigned and asked why she had not done so as well. “I wouldn’t regard it as pressure,” she said, “but I basically operate on the premise that we set out to do a job … and I think it’s still possible to do that job.”

The chairman of the National Committee on Working Women, Koontz predicted some members may come back if they could do so “without turning their backs on Bella.” If they do not, however, Carter will more than likely have to appoint replacements from the same organizations whose representatives resigned.

For Ann Richards, whose political commitments in Texas keep her busy year-round, resigning from the committee would have meant turning her back on a decision she made last year to join the group in spite of other commitments.

Though she said she would not pass judgment on those who resigned in protest, Richards said, “Women need to progress to the point where we’re stateswomen, not merely reacting to changes because we don’t agree.”

“From my own conversations with Sarah Weddington (Carter’s special assistant for women’s affairs), my impression is that the White House wants it to continue. There was never any concrete definition of what we were going or where we were going. I hope out of this will come a better understanding of the whole thing. Time will tell.”

Lenora Reese is on the staff at the Alabama Journal in Montgomery.

The Role of Law in the South

By Leslie Dunbar

Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, pp. 6-8

[Introduction]

Twenty-Five years ago, the Supreme Court was just weeks away from a landmark decision that would give hope of civil rights workers struggling to inure equality in education for Blacks. The 1954Brown vs. Board of Education ruling struck down the ‘separate but equal” laws stating that separate segregated schools were inherently unequal.

Later, the 1964 Civil Rights Acts asured every citizen in the U.S., regardless of race, creed, color, religion or national origin, equal rights education, government programs; employment and access to places of public accommodation.

Despite the legislation, the South had its own laws to live by. Laws of conduct that were meant specifically to keep Blacks “in their place.” Laws that denied Blacks their human rights. Anyone dishonoring the sacred laws was treated in the same manner as Blacks.

“The Role of Law in the South” was one of the topics of discussion in a panel session during the SRC Annual Meeting. The panel consisted offormer SRC director Leslie Dunbar, Julius Chambers, the current SRC president, and attorney Charles Morgan Jr.

The panelists basically agreed that the laws are made and enforced by the people – not necessarily by the courts. “Most of the social progress in the history of the country arose not from judges, but from juries and not from bar association lawyers but from social activists,” said Morgan. Chambers added that we must go further than training more lawyers. Instead, we must find a way of meshing law with people who believe in equality.”

Leslie Dunbar’s views on “The Role of Law in the South” as presented at the Annual Meeting follow in their entirety.

Jean Jones

The right role of law in the South is what it is everywhere. It is to represent the difference between a society organized and held together by mere force, and one that is organized in behalf of people living at peace nd trust with each other.

The purport of this panel’s questions is, however, more specialized. It asks whether law continues to have practical importance as an instrument of Southern social and political reform. In our minds as we think on that question is the absolutely indispensable role that the decisions of federal courts have played in Southern racial change since 1954, and, indeed, since about 1940.

But in a broader sense, what we so gratefully saw then was not only “reform” of the political order but the law’s own rediscovery of itself, its own, much belated, reassertion of the “role of law.” Because law had been used in the South, and the judges and lawyers who are the law’s housekeepers had allowed it to be used, in the service of a violent society, its primary task had been to keep the Blacks down, keep them “in their place.” In this regard, there was no essential difference of function from county sheriffs and jailors to “leaders of the bar” and on to state and federal appellate courts: all alike served ultimately to control the Blacks. That is what the phrase “law and order” meant.

Moderates seized hold of that phrase during the days of “massive resistance” to give it a different meaning, that of obeying the Supreme Court. But that was only a brief interlude in the term’s steady history, and Nixon and friends put it back, on a national scale, to its traditional Southern significance. The fact that they did, and still do, cannot, however, be allowed to blind us to the fact that “order” is indeed precious, for without it, there can be no social peace.

The newspaper in my Westchester County (N.Y.) town recently exclaimed editorially, in the wake of a scattering of local burglaries, that “fear of the stranger must become our way of life.” That is truly a horrible thought and sentiment, and that editor ought to be gagged and pilloried – if not horse whipped through the streets. But we ignore at our peril the need all societies have for discipline, for the habit of obedience, for respect for other’s liberties and property. I am sure that here in the South as well as elsewhere, law has a necessary role to play, both in requiring discipline and in making of the rules and rulers of society something that all can respect.

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Thinking about the right role of law in the South suggests to me four more concerns that ought to be basic. First, when one looks at the prison figures one has to suspect that the law is still at its traditional work, that of controlling the Blacks. Generally speaking, until quite recently – when the examples of persons such as Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, Elbert Tuttle, Chuck Morgan, and Julius Chambers came to be felt – Blacks in the South very clearly saw “the law” as the enemy. Many, perhaps most, still do, as do Chicanos of the Southwest and western Indians.

The bulging prison population, the longer and still longer average sentences, the plans for prison expansion, the steady accumulation of persons on death row with 80 percent of all of them in the nation being here in the South – all are indicators of a deformed spirit of law, one intent on control and vengeance. Unless a miracle or two occurs, by the time the Southern Regional Council holds its next annual meeting, the South you represent will have killed by process of law maybe ten or twelve persons, a long reactionary step into the past. The Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons have all fought bravely and well, but the tide has been too great.

But no courtroom victory of the Legal Defense Fund should bring it more honor than its noble defeats here. The Fifth Circuit’s decision of last August in the Spenkelink case may have been, for the present, the final cutting blow. I have read Judge Robert A. Ainsworth Jr.’s opinion in that case. It seemed to me masterfully accomplished, the kind of analysis which should earn a top grade for a law student. But from a court which once so grandly stood between the South and its basest passions, there was spoken not a word of commitment to those once prized qualities of equality and compassion. When the Fifth Circuit, of all courts, can rule as it did that the disproportionate numbers of Blacks and poor on death row that are convicted of murdering Whites, are not “in and of themselves” evidence of discrimination, nor will deign even to examine the disproportionate numbers of the poor, then the role that the South’s law is playing seems to me once again laden with fright.

Second, although the signs abound that popular and political interest in some of the great civil rights causes has declined, the law’s interest ought not. We do not need to litigate every conceivable point, and lawyers most surely have no business pursuing litigation issues of interest to them but of little to their clients, the Black communities. But when all that has been said, the law must still be called upon to stand guard over what was so painfully won, and to move on to occupy those fields of equal opportunity not yet cleared.

I don’t envy today’s civil rights lawyers. Theirs will not likely be the brilliant, heady victories of a decade or two ago. Their names may consequently not become, as we say, household words, and babies may not be named for them. But they have a tremendously important job to do, holding the line against the Supreme Court and other federal courts which are no longer their assured friends; and, one might add, educating the 152 new district judges Carter is appointing.

This Supreme Court’s opinion in the hard social cases reaching it are jumbled and instable; given the mediocrity of this Court we can welcome that, for such rulings can hardly be longlasting precedents. In the capital punishment cases, the members were scattered in nearly every conceivable direction. In the Bakke case, for another example, important though it was, only Justice Lewis Powell agreed with the whole ruling, which he wrote. (As the only Southerner on this Court, perhaps he has some of those superior regional insights into racial problems we sometimes brag about.)

There is a saying in the West Virginia coal fields that there will be no peace in West Virginia until there is justice in West Virginia, and of course that is true nationallyas well, though we may have interludes of social peace without justice. It is true in the South. There is as yet too much racial injustice, too much poverty, for there to be lasting social peace. There is too much exploitation, too many officeholders leaving office richer by far than when they came in, too great and an ever growing inequality of wealth and income. Lawmakers – that

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is, judges, legislators, administrators – are almost by definition members of the elite; and elites are those who have profited. Is it then too much to ask that law, law which they make, can bring about that justice in our land and in this region that will end exploitation and poverty?

The question will have to stay unanswered. The right role of law in the South, as everywhere and always, is to enshrine liberty, and liberty’s offspring, equality and justice. When law instead upholds relations that are intrinsically unjust – such as sending the poor to prisons and even to execution in numbers that defy fairness law has betrayed its mission.

When law stood for segregation and overt racial discrimination, or when now it denies equal school funds to all children or equal access to medical help to all women or perpetuates regressive taxes, law betrays its mission to provide equal treatment.

And when law puts the pretended security interests of the state ahead of the citizen’s liberty and even ahead of its own dignity, law becomes a whore. And if you stop to think about it, a male whore at that.

Leslie Dunbar is director of the Field Foundation (presently on a leave of absence) and a former director of the Southern Regional Council. His articles and essays on political affairs and civil rights are widely published and his book, A Republic of Equals, has received much acclaim.

SOUTHERN POLITICS: Judge Robert Collins Speaks

By Robert Morris

Vol. 1, No. 7, 1979, pp. 26

“Without a pool of competent attorneys who can focus on pressing the legitimate claims of minorities, those rights will be neglected, eroded, and perhaps eventually destroyed,” said Judge Robert F. Collins, speaking to luncheon guests of the SRC Annual Meeting recently. President Carter’s appointee to the U.S. District Court in New Orleans and the South’s only Black federal judge in this century, Collins spoke of his own experiences in capsuling three decades of civil rights activity in the South. Collins’ own education began as a court case. It took a lawsuit to open the doors for him and two other Blacks to enter the Louisiana State University Law School. After graduation, he worked on local counsel in Louisiana for the Congress of Racial Equality and cooperated with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

During the 60s, Collins argued eight civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, including ones involving a student march on the Baton Rouge courthouse, Black students reading books in a Clinton, LA., library and sit-in protests in the streets.

With the help of the Voter Education Project, Blacks worked for ten years in New Orleans to raise the number of registered Black voters from 20 to 45 percent, Collins said. “Because of similar effort, the state now has the highest percentage of Black elected officials in the United States.” Although many are in minor positions, it is a start, he said. “Upon that base a lot can be built … the number is still infinitesimal,” Collins noted, referring to the fact that the number of Black elected officials in the United States is less than 2 percent.

Since the 60s, a “civic malaise” has slowed the rate of progress and “some have come to be complacent or satisfied,” Collins said. “But we still have significant numbers of the population who live in poverty and ignorance,” and have not seen the effects of change.”

Another threat to the progress of civil rights is the rise of special interest groups, Collins said. They are disproportionately powerful. “Politicians feel that they can maintain themselves in power as long as they can keep the interests of these groups. Then they can ignore the interests of Blacks and other minorities.” Only a lifetime of persisting work, he emphasized, can insure that the gains of civil rights are not lost in the next generation.

Robert Morris is a student at Georgia State University.

Update: Aftermath of G. Duke Beasley’s Appointment

By Ginny Looney

Vol. 1, No. 8, 1979, pp. 20-21

The appointment of G. Duke Beasley last summer as the first administrator of the Georgia Office of Fair Employment Practices had appeared a safe choice for Gov. George Busbee. Yet, with surprising swiftness the director fell into disfavor and has now endangered the future of the state fair employment office.

Beasley’s experience as deputy director of the Atlanta office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, touted as the main reason for his selection, had shown that conciliation rather than litigation would be his way of settling discrimination complaints. In an interview last July, Beasley portrayed himself as a hardworking, God-fearing family man who possessed a moralistic fervor for his mission of providing equal job opportunities for minorities and women in state government. He did not lack confidence. “I predict that within 60 days we will be the most viable staff that the state has because of my own personality and how I manage,” he said. A few people did criticize him as simply a tired bureaucrat,” but most were pleased with his selection.

The praises of Duke Beasley, however, have ended. Widespread dissatisfaction with his work has caused supporters of the fair employment office to look forward to his return in July to the federal government, which had given him a year’s leave of absence with pay to set up the state organization. Beasley had offended state department heads, for example, with his cavalier attitude. In sending a questionnaire to them requesting information on minority employment, Beasley had ordered the material returned by a certain date, a deadline which the governor’s office postponed because not enough time was allowed for collection of the statistics.

Busbee has privately been critical of Beasley’s efforts to expand the scope of the fair employment office beyond its legal responsibilities. While the agency is empowered to prevent discrimination in employment in state government, Beasley has attempted to exert authority over employment discrimination by local governments, state licensing boards, state contractors and private business.

State legislators were incensed over the annual report the agency issued in February. Several Black legislators were upset because the report did not adequately deal with discrimination in state government. One White legislator introduced a resolution reprimanding Beasley for publishing the report because it was a “complete and utter waste of taxpayers’ money.” The resolution was withdrawn only upon the request of the governor’s office.

Legislators objected to the report’s many photographs unrelated to the work of the office; had they read the document closely, they might have been more angered by the sermonic messages aimed at them. “The General Assembly, it would appear, is obligated to put an end to this intentional procrastination,” the report says about the delayed response of state agencies charged with discrimination, “by giving the GOFEP perpetual life.”

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The report’s poor format, garbled language and preachy tone lend credence to the complaints about the administrator’s style and performance. Rather than presenting persuasive arguments for a prolonged and expanded Georgia Office of Fair Employment Practices, as was intended, the report obscures the problem of discrimination and diverts attention from the issue of equal opportunity. If, as one legislator said, the 72-page report (plus a 16-page preface) “looks like a high school annual,” its writing reflects the style of the senior voted

“Most School Spirit.” Under the heading “Something To Think About . . .” inspirational quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy and Vince Lombardi were dispersed throughout the agency’s 18-page affirmative action plan, which was presented “in a ‘can do’ spirit and format.”

The lack of modesty is equaled only by the absence of information in a readable form about the office’s work. Personal histories and the families of staff have more space in the document than the charges processed through the office. In a section entitled “Behind the Scene: Youth in Limbo Reaching Out,” there are nine pages of photographs of the staff’s children, including one page devoted to a photograph and description of Beasley’s daughter. “Like her Texas born mother, Kristy is a very proud, highly intelligent and beautiful lady,” says the report. Also scattered through it are seven pages of pictures and biographies of staff members.

In contrast, only five pages of charts list the 153 complaints filed with the office and the disposition of 130 of those. The charts are not explained in the text, although several pages describing the compliance process do disclose that only one case has not been resolved through conciliation.

More attention is given to the plans and recommendations of the agency for the future than in detailing its past accomplishments. The report attempts to justify the expansion of the agency into nine additional cities, a move which would cost more than twice the present budget. This “appropriation package” has apparently gone unheeded since no additional funds were allocated.

Essays, letters and photographs from activists for the handicapped, aged and Hispanics about the need for the fair employment office fill II pages; full-page photographs with adjoining congratulatory letters from state officials were found on eight pages; six pages of letters are reproduced to illustrate that the state office attempted to establish cooperative agreements with federal agencies. Still unclear is the purpose of a three-page letter from the Ohio Civil Rights Commission which analyzes the Georgia law.

A self-serving image presented in the document (“With the innate ability of foresight and vision, the Administrator has outlined an improvement package…”)is matched by the report’s high-handed tone. “The exemption of certain public employees (of elected officials) from the benefit of the Law, appears on its facade to be arbitrary and capricious, therefore, should be invalidated.” On another subject, the report said, “Undoubtedly this grave conflict must not be tolerated by the General Assembly.”

Such commandments tend to lessen the credibility of legitimate recommendations for amending and enforcing the law. The fair employment office requests that it be a!lowed to hire outside counsel or establish its own legal department to eliminate the conflict of interest created when the attorney general represents both an individual filing a complaint and the agency being challenged in a hearing. The conflict arose when Artis Heard and the Human Resources Department could not agree on a negotiated settlement to Heard’s complaint. During the administrative hearing on the case, “(t)he attorney general’s office immediately began to attack the position that the Administrator had taken” in its defense of the state agency, the report says, pointing out that state attorneys would have to adopt “a Solomon-like posture” in violation of their code of ethics in representing both sides at a hearing.

While remaining silent on the subject of conflicts of interest, the attorney general issued an opinion in March stating that the fair employment office could not conduct a study on discrimination in hiring and promotions in state government and must limit itself to responding only to individual complaints filed with the office. The opinion effectively restricts any affirmative work on overall problems of discrimination. As a result, the Black legislative caucus has announced that it will challenge the opinion in court.

Although the law calls for a nine-member advisory board, Busbee has not yet appointed anyone to the position. The legislation creating the Office of Fair Employment Practices expires in 1980, and at this point it will take more than mere advice to restore the agency’s credibility. Moving quickly to expand its authority even before proving its competency, the agency may have told too much about itself when the report concluded that “Until equal employment opportunity becomes a shared reality in this state … Blacks, other minorities, and females must maintain their unyielding faith in God!”

Ginny Looney, a former newspaper reporter, is now a researcher in Atlanta.

Action Patterns: Third Party Complaints

By Staff

Vol. 1, No. 9, 1979, pp. 21

When she and her friend made up their minds to challenge their South Georgia employer’s separate seniority lines, the first thing they did was to ask their union shop steward for help. They were told to go complain to the OEO in Savannah. But they were not fooled. They filled a proper job discrimination complaint with the EEOC. That was eight years ago, and it was only beginning.

In the ensuing years they faced obstacle after obstacle; misadvice; inaction by the EEOC; irresponsible action by unscrupulous attourneys; a long search for a responsible attorney who was willing to accept a job discrimination case; the astronomical cost of litigation; resistance from others all the way.

But hardest to take was the hostility and harrassment on the job, from their employer, their coworkers, and their fellow union members alinke. She took it for five years, then quit, unable to endure. Her friend is still working for the same company. “It was unreal,” said the friend. “You can’t afford to say anything that will give them an excuse to fire you, so I just smiled and kept on going. For eight years it was just like I was in a bad dream.”

This year, their litigation finally brought results: a financial settlement and an end to the dual seniority lines. Such happy endings may or may not result when Blacks and women exercize their lawful right to seek redress of race and sex discrmination. But the obstacles aren’t uncommon, and the hostility and harassment the two women faced on the job are inevitable, the side effects of entering a job discrimination complaint. Knowing this, many victims of discrimination forego their rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and other equal employment opportunity laws.

There is, however, a complaint mechanism that community organizations can use to lessen the burden on job discrimination victims: the “Third Party” complaint. By law, organizations, persons, or agencies can file a complaint or take action “on behalf” of individuals or classes who have suffered job discrimination because of their race or sex. When Third Party Complaints are entered, the name of the true victim of job discrimination need not be revealed. Protection is thus provided for individuals who are unwilling to come forward publicly because of a fear that a public charge would result in the loss of their job, on-job harrassment, or some other form of reprisal.

Both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and Executive Order 11246 permit race and sex discrimination complaints to be brought by Third Parties. And when such a complaint has been filed but satisfactory action by the federal enforcement agency is not forthcoming within a reasonable time, Third Parties– just as aggrieved parties– may take legal action. They may enter a civil suit against the employer, employment agency, or union that is charged with illegal discrimination.

Third Party Complaints and court suits may be filed on behalf of individuals or they may be class actions. There is one exception: when the federal government is the employer, neither Third Party Complaints nor Third Party suits may be brought as class actions.

When community organizations, agencies, or individuals enter such surrogate complaiints, the procedures are almost identical to procedures that must be followed by aggrieved parties. A complaint must first be filed. If it is resolved by the enforcement agency in the way that is unsatisfactory to the complaint, or left unresolved by the enfocement agency durin a prescribed period of time, a court suit can then be filed by the complaint.

A community group, agency, or individual needs only the permission of a victim of employment discrimination in order to file a Third Party complaint. The name of the invdividual on whose behalf it has been filed does not have to be invluded in the complaint; however, the aggrieved person’s name must be given, along with their address and telephone number, to the enforcement agency. During its investigation the enforcement agency will verifythat the named individual did in fact request that a charge be filed on his or her behalf. It should be clearly indicated that the complaint is a Third Party Complaint. If confidentiality for the aggrieved party is desired, it should be requested, in writing, in the complaint. A request for confidentiality will be honored by the enforcement agency. From the time the complaint has been filed until the time of its resolution, it is the responsibility of the aggrieved party to keep this enforcement agency aprised of his or her current address. A Third Party may not withdraw a charge that has been filed with the EEOC; only the aggrieved party may do so.

Several private civil rights organizations inthe Southern region routinely accepted and filed Third Party complaints during recent years. The NAACP is a notable example. In addition, when financial resources have permitted, that organization has brought Third Party court actions if they were appropriate. The role of community organizations in handling surrogate actions is important to the fight for equal job opportunity for Blacks and women, for, as in the South Georgia example above, the economic and psychological burden on aggrieved individuals who challenge job discrimination is almost unbearable. Activist organizations can make important contributions to the fight against job discrimination by soliciting complaints and bringing them to resolution, as Third Parties.