Page 2
Civil Rights
Commission
raps N ixon
Justice Denied
MUET WORK TOMTHFRFOR FULL
ANO EQUAL EMPLOYMENT.
Portland/Observer Thursday, Nov. 25, 1971
The Northwest's Best W eekly
A Black Ow ned Publication
Published every Thursday by Exit Publis
N. Killingsworth Portland. Oegon 97217.
Subscription rates: 40 cents per month by carrier, $5. 00 per
year;$5.25 per year by mail in Tri-County area:?6.00 per
year elsewhere.
Phone 283-2486
ALFRED LEE HENDERSON, Publisher Editor
V erna L . H enderson
Asst. Publisher/Business manager
the Editor’s Desk
Black
need support
The Bank of Finance, the only black-owned and operated bank
m Los Angeles, has celebrated its seventh anniversary. The
hank was founJed in 1904 to serve the needs of residents of the
Black community.
The bank has made over 100 Small Business Loans in
the community to help promote black business. The Mortgage
Investment Department is currently servicing approximately
800 real estate loans. The current assets are $28 m illio n , a
growth of $11 m illion in the last year.
Bank Presxient, Edward E . T illm o n , said. “ The fir s t five
years of any business ate extremely d iffic u lt, and fo r a black
txisiness they are absolutely c ru c ia l. F o r the black business,
especially a bank, community acceptance is always slow.
Obtaining and maintaining qualified personnel is another ma
jo r problem that plagues all banks, and, as we all know, without
good, qualified help no bank can provxie the type of service its
customers want and deserve.
He attributes the bank's success to two factors. Many of Am
e rica 's la rger corporations are becoming aware of th e ir obli
gations to place funds in minority-owned banks so this money
can be channeled into the black community. Also there is a
growing awareness in the community that the only wav black
people w ill have a voice in the system is through the economic
support and promotion of th e ir own business.
Many black-owned businesses in Portland are having a d iffi
cu lt time financially. They often have higher overhead such as
insurance costs, which are higher in the area where black bus
inesses operate. They often are training their employees be
cause blacks have not had educational and employment exper
ience. They also are located in an area where many of th e ir
potential customers are unemployed or underemployed.
Black owned businesses could be helped through the tenuous
firs t few years of operation by the investments and purchasing
power of the large corporations and government, which could
buy goods and services from them. They also could benefit from
the interest and concern of customers who a re w illin g to change
their shopping habits to include black businesses, both those
custom ir s who are residents of the community and those from
other parts of Portland who would go a little out of their way to
help a new business get started.
3
Still ’ ------
life
x
•He
i^forT^nT issues
Ax
a C uj 10
voters ?
Last March President Nixon «aid justice delayed was not only justice
denied but that it also was ‘ justice circumvented, justice mocked and the
system of justice undermined." For eighteen months now we have
patiently borne the emotional torment of losing our children to Ohio
Nat onal Guard gunfire and witnessing the circumvention of justice by
the attorneys general of the United States and Ohio.
This indefensible mockery of our judicial svatem by those charred
with upholding the law has forced us to assume the distressinn role d
F ^ H n Th’ s ^ f iZ 'ia l'r ‘* h u f ° / ° Ur de' r ch,ldren's constitutional rights
«r
' “ »"«»H y costly forum justice has been denied bv the dia-
N e t T . il,
complaints under the ancient doctrine of sovereign immunity
Nevertheless, we retain our faith in the judiciary. The denials, circumven
tion and mockery that justice has suffered in the "inexcusable" killing
c f our sons and daughters is not a reflection of any inadequacy in the
ideologySV,tem bUt ° f *** bro* dening *ntrus,on into that system of political
Just last month our faith was justified by the 8th District Court of
Appeals in Ohio when it upheld, in a 2-1 landmark decision. Arthur
Krause ' apjieal against the dismissal of his suit charging the state with
M i^ n 'h é íV .h rr -the Wrongful de,th" ° f h,s daughter The majority
opmion he Id that sovereign immunity cannot be supported in Ohio.” and
that denial of responsibility -fo r the tortious conduct" of the state's
authorized agents "is unjust, arbitrary and unreasonable."
Despite the torment of the past year and a half we have managed
to recognize a very human failing which, for too long, divided us and
compounded our gnef The actions of our children on May 4th spanned
the spectrum of student dissent from disinterest to involvement and we
foolishly allowed ourselves to distinguish between walking to class and
shouting an obscenity in terms of innocence and guilt, a failing we believe
far too many Americans have revealed in their need to justify the killing
or our children.
Helen Hendrix
Personnel and Production Manager
--------------------_
Thi. órnele was written by Doris Krou.se. Sarah Seheuer. Florence
Schroed,.r and tla.ne Miller. the mothers of the /our Kent State students
killed by National Guardsmen May 4. 1970.
Observer’s
Intercom
Mississippi Black,
fa il to gain control
M ississippi's grass-roots
black political movement fell
fa r short of its goals in the
Nov. 2 g e n e r a l election.
Blacks failed to bring a single
M ississippi county under their
control, to increase signifi
cantly the number of black lo
cal o fficia ls, or toadd to their
token representation in the
state legislature.
Of 284 blacks who sought of
fice on the local level, only44
were successful, on the basis
of incomplete returns.Twenty-
nine of those candidates beat
white opponents, while 15 were
unopposed fo r such offices as
constable and justice of the
peace. Blacks won only a hand
ful of countywide offices.
Among the defeated were ci
v il rights leaders Aaron Henry
and Fannie Lou Hamer, and in
cumbent Claiborne County-
Chancery C lerk Geneva Col
lin s. Among the few winners
in the generally abysmal elec
tion were Robert C lark, the
only black member of the state
legislature, a black tax asses
sor and c irc u it clerk in C lai
borne County, and a black cor
oner in m ajority-w hite Clay
County.
A t this tim e, it is impossible
to explain fu lly the lack of suc
cess, ixit a number of contri
buting factors may be cited:
The white pvw..
power 3uuciure
structure
ran scared, campaigned hard
e r than ever before in a gen
eral election, and turned out a
larger percentage of the white
vote than in any previous gen
eral election.
• Blacks were subjected to
physical and economic in tim i
dation, both before and during
the election.
• Black candidates were de
nied certain rights and p r i
vileges, such as adequate
number of poll watchers and
challenges on election day.
• Many local slates of black
candidates suffered from bad
ly organized, under-financed
campaigns.
• In some counties, such
basic items as sample ballots
listing the names of black of
fice-seekers were not avail
able.
• The campaign strategy
that projected Charles Ever's
candidacy as a mechanism for
pulling out the black vote was
unsuccessful.
Immediately after the elec
tion, Evers, and c iv il rights
attorneys began investigating
alleged abridgements of the
rights of black voters and can
didates in several m a jo rity-
black counties, with aneyeto
ward challenging those elec
tions. The focus of the inves
tigations is on Humphreys
(continued p. 6 col 1)
...
o
Urban Homestead
Fifteen Black Muslim p ris
oners at McNeil Island Fed
eral Penitentury have filed
suit, charging discrim inatory
religious treatment and im
proper
methods of judging
alleged in-prison violations.
• • •
W illiam T. King, who has
raised hundreds of thousands
of dollars fo r Nixon and other
Republican card dates, w ill
Join the Democratic party and
support Senator Edmund Mu s-
kie for the presdency.
M r. King sa d , " I f I were to
sum up in one word my rea
son fo r supporting the senator
from Maine as opposed to the
President of the United States
that one word would be C liar-
acter. M r. Muskie has it,M r .
Nixon does not."
M r. King said the " la s t
stra w " leading to his defec
tion was M r. Nixon's propo
sal of M ildred LU lle and H er-
schel Friday for the Supreme
C ourt, both ot whom were
found inadequate by the Amer
ican Bar Association.
• • •
The Fisk Jubilee Singers,
who are celebrating their one-
hundredth anniversary, w ill
perform at the John F. Ken
nedy Center of Performing
A rts on December 2nd. The
consert w ill be sponsored by
the A fro A m srlca n Music Op
portunities Association
of
Minneapolis.
more of their own homes and
Sol M . Linowitz, Chairman
C iting a report by the L’JS.
of the National Urban Coali
neighborhoods."
Department of Housing and
tion, called today fo r the c te -
Urban Development that itw U l
"T h e abandonment of p ri
ation of an Urban Homestead
take a quarter of a m illio n new
vately ownad housing in the in
A ct that would give the people
ner city, much of it basically Jobs to provide minimum pro
of A m erica's inner cities the
sound, relects the disintegra perty management services in
opportunity to create decent
tion of this sector of our eco public housing that now exists
communities fo r themselves.
nomic system,”
Linowitz o r is under construction,
In an address presented be
said. "Y e t, as a nation, we Linowitz called fo r converting
fore a dinner session at the
sit idly by, almost paralyzed problems into opportunities by
Hotel Madison of the annual
by the speed of a cancer-like such means as property man
convention of the PublicR ela-
disease eating away the core of agement courses in tie public
tions Society of Am erica, Lin
our citie s. With clear evi schools that would train young
owitz called the inner c ity the
dence that private money is inner city residents for new
nation's new fro n tie r.
c a re e rs.
fleeing the central city, it is
" I see the people living
disturbing to see that public
there as our real pioneers —
resources are dwindling at
brave, determined, angry men
precisely the point when they
This winter you can learn to
and women . . . who want to
are most needed to slow, if not
ski
at Tlm berllne Lodge
make out of the m aterial of
reverse, this tide.
through a program offered
their destiny a place of self-
“ In some cities we simply
through the YMCA, It was an
respect, a home, a Job, a
wait to take title to the aban
nounced by Ray Grogan of the
neighborhood, a community.”
doned property years later in
North
Portland YMCA, at
Linowitz, form er Chairman
an e ffo rt to liquidate thedelln-
Moore
and
Killingsworth
of Xerox Corporation andLJS.
quent taxes. By that time the
streets. The package Includes
Ambassador to the Organiza
property is hopelessly vanda
one d ry land lesson at the John
tion of American States, said
lized and sold to the highest
that:
R. Leach YMCA, 6036 SJ2.
bidder, thereby throwing it
Foster Road, and four ski les
"O v e r a century ago we pas
once again onto the speculative sons at Tlm berlne on four con
sed the Homestead A ct to help
land market.
open up new lands in the West
"C le a rly , something must secutive Saturdays or Sun
days, with two lessons each
by offering 160 acres or more
be done to haltthlsdepresslng
day, morning and afternoon.
of unoccupied land to those
cycle of deterioration and
w illin g to work it . . . I think
speculation. C learly, this is And there's plenty of time to
a
practice between lessons.The
the time has come to offer a
going to require investment in
whole package costs Just $42
modern urban homestead oj>-
much
improved municipal
portunity to the pioneers of our
services, new home financing with transportation probldod
by Trallw ays, or $25 If you
inner c itie s .”
and
property maintenance
provide your own transpoi ra
He said the prime objective
tools and new forms of owner
tion.
of an Urban Homestead Act
ship that w ill give residents a
Ray Grogan at the
would be to show the people of
new stake and confidence in the cell
the nation's inner citie s "th a t
North
Portland
YMCA, 282-
via b ility of their neighbor
5517.
they can have a stake in carv
hoods," Linowitz said.
ing Communities to r them
selves out of theurban w ilder
ness, and that we all have a
Let PEPI S BOTTLE SHOP be your headquarters fo r
very large stake in encourag
champagne, wines, m ixers. . At the lowest prices
ing them to do so."
town
He noted the growing de
mands by public housing ten
ants foi a greater voice in the
management of public housing
Lloyd Center
N ext to the Liquor Store
pi ejects and called It impera
7
J PERI'S One end O nly Store
tive that the nation begin to
Open 9 30 a m to 9 0 0 p m Daily
meet these demands " in the
»
Sunday« Noon to 4 0 0 p m
only practical way possible —
by enabling public housing
tenants to take over more arxl
a Shape up for the holidays *
<
n
PRPI’S BOTTLE SHOP
!«?•
SHAPING STUDIO
2 8 5 -0 4 9 5
4940
N . L o m b a rd
lhe U.S. C ivil Rights Com
mission said President Nixon
"has tailed to develop and
communicate to the public a
sense of urgency over the need
to eixl disci lminatton.**
A 1970 suiveylounJdepart
ment headsand lessei govern
ment off leal s slow In starting
c iv il rights programs in their
own offices and weak on en
forcement of c iv il rights pol
icies.
In a follow-up study, the
Commission fount) several
federal agencies making pro
gress hut their over-all per
formance Is lacking.
I lf the 27 offices, agencies
and departments surveyed,
none was rated adequate, only
15 were "m a rg in a l” ami 13,
including the White House, the
Justice D epartm ent'sLawEn-
forcement Assistance Admin
istration, the Internal Revenue
Service ami the Veteran's Ad
m inistration,
are doing a
" p o o r" Job.
The commission
stated
"T h e ultimate source for pol
icy guxlance . . . is the Pres-
kient White firm and unequi
vocal policy direction . . . Is no
guarantee of effective unit
rights enforcement It Is an es
sential precondlton to vig
o ro u s . . Action.”
The "n e t-e ffe ct” of the
President's statement during
the last six months - on hous
ing, school busing and m inor
ity enterprise - "has not been
to provide clear policy d ire c
tio n ."
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