tu g e n e , Oregon 97403
PORTLAND
Hill earns Human
E. Shelton Hill, former Executive
Director of the Urban League of
Portland, was presented the Third
Annual Russell A. Peyton Award today.
The award is presented by the M etro
politan Human Relations Commission and
is named for its first director.
The award was presented at a
ceremony at M artin Luther King Ele
mentary School, celebrating the birth
date of Dr. M artin Luther King.
Edwin Shelton Hill retired from his
position with the Urban Ix*ague on
December 31st, 1973, » W serving with
the organization for 27 years: fourteen
years as executive director and twelve
years as Director c. International Rela
tions.
Hill was born ir. the Caddo Indian
Reservation in Oklahcrcn. He graduated
from Western Universal/ in Quindaro,
Kansas and was accepted as a pre-medi
cal student. Because of insufficient funds,
he did not attend medical school but
OBSER/ER
Vol. 0 No. 9
Portland. Oregon
Thursday, January 15, 1975
lOr per copy
award
taught chemistry and physics at Gibbens
Senior High School in Paris, Texas.
During his years of teaching. Hill spent
summers in Portland working on the
railroad. A fter finishing, post graduate
work at Ohio State University, Hill
returned to Portland and committed
himself to do everything he could to
improve the human relations climate in
Portland.
Hill chose Portland for his
work because "I thought Portland had a
chance. Feelings were not crystalized in
Portland as they were in other places."
A t the time Hill began work with the
Urban league, Portland was in a slump
following World W ar II, and most Blacks
who had worked in the shipyards were
unemployed. Over 98 percent of Black
em ployees w orked on the ra ilro a d .
During his early days with the League
the first Black public school teachers,
elevator operators and retail clerks were
hired.
"White Only” stores were prevelant
downtown, and Blacks were excluded
from the social, political and economic life
of the community.
Hill saw much change in the city during
his years at the Urban League, with the
passage of state civil rights legislature
beginning in 1949 and an increase in
employment opportunities.
The Urban League also grew -- with its
staff expanding from five to 27. I t added
many programs: L E A P , for preparation
of opportunties; Project Star, assisting
(»rents of retarded children: the School
Community Program, to facilitate school
desegregation, and many others.
The Russell A. Peyton Human Rela
tions Award is presented to a citizen who
has made an outstanding contribution in
the interest of Human Rights.
Past
recipients are John A. Mills, the vice
president of the U.S. National Bank, and
Thomas J. Sloan Persosn«! Manager of
Tektronix, Incorporated.
M. L. King
birthday
forgotten
Carlene Bryant,
Imore an
Rozell Gilmore
High School students make up most of the
The Black students of Jackson High
School honored D r. M artin Luther King
by boycotting school on U.e date of his
birth. Nearly all of the t j Slack students
at the school remained home, and some of
those who went to school planned to leave
during the day.
The 47th birthdate of D r. M artin
Luther King's has beer nearly forgotten
this year in Portland.
The only pub!'r obsei ranee scheduled
was held by the Metropolitan Human
Relations Commission at X in t Elemen
tary School at 11:30 a.m.
The event
combined the commemoration of the
birthdate and the presentation of the
annual Russell A. Peytor Award.
Concordia College sche lu-ed a full day
symposium featuring K a g 's life and
philosophy.
Boise Elementary School annually
holds a special assembly, but this years
program was postponed due to illness.
Plans have been made to hold the
assembly later.
Closed for the day are the Portland
Metropolitan Steering Committee and
the Child Care Coordinating Council
(4C>-
Across the country observances are
being held.
Still at issue is pending
legislation that would make J. .nuary 15th
a national holiday.
work force at Rozell's Restaurant, where they learn the food
service business.
'Good food, cleanliness and courteous service'
One of the community's noted em
ployers of youth is Rozell Gilmore, owner
of "Rozell's". Rozell's currently employs
eleven high school students out of a total
staff of fourteen.
“One of the greatest needs is ex
perience and training of young people in
business." Gilmore said. "In some areas
young people are fortunate to have the
opportunity to see how businesses run.
Rut children in the ghetto
and Albina
has the culture of the ghetto - young
people do not often have the oppor
tunity."
Gilmore never turns down a young
applicant or asks for references. "I tell
them what they did before is not
important, it is how they perform the
job." The students learn to wait on
customers, rook, and learn some aspects
of management.
Gilmore attributes hts business success
to "good food, cleanliness and good
service" and this is how he trains his
young employees. The short order - fast
service restaurant is just as sparkling as
it was when it opened for business a year
and a half ago.
Gilmore has spent most of his life
working with young people. “I had never
thought about it, but recently I realized
that I have always been involved with
youngsters." Gilmore was director of the
Albina Neighborhood Service Center,
was summer coordinator for students
employees at Bonneville Power Admini
stration, and while pastor of Bernan
Baptist Church he established a youth
center and a child care program.
He
currently councils minority students at
Concordia College.
In his position as a businessman, he has
found another way to assist young people
prepare for their future.
Roy Wilkins announces pending retirement
Roy Wilkins, 74 year old executive
director of the N A ACP, has announced
his intention to retire at the end of 1978.
Wilkins has headed the N A A C P for 22
years.
Wilkins told the Board of Directors
that he is resigning “reluctantly, but with
good feeling and no pressure from the
board." Wilkins will remain on a $20,000,
salary as a consultant.
Ms. M argaret Rush Wilson, Chairman
of the Board, said Wilkins resignation
was not result of the organization’s
financial crisis.
Rumors of Wilkins' pending resigns
tion have been rampant for the past year.
Rumors spread during the July, 1975,
national convention that Wilkins would
announce his pending retirem ent and
that efforts to find a new director would
be made during the following year.
Wilkins, however, assured the mem
bership and the press that he had no
intention of retiring in the forseeable
future.
Dr. H. Claude Hudson, a long time
national board member had called for
Wilkins' resignation:
“I am convinced that Roy Wilkins has
passed his peak and should retire. I f you
doubt my statement about Roy's ability,
call the President of Fisk University and
find out what the faculty and students
thought of Roy's commencement address
to the graduation class of 1975. Here
was, aside from Morehouse (smile), the
most prestigious college we have, send
ing out young men and women to face this
cruel world and to pick up the torch
where you and I are about to drop it. In a
few minutes Roy's talk was over, leaving
the class cold. No effort had been made
to inspire them to continue to struggle
until victory had been won.
"1 love Roy and I've stood by him for
twenty-five yers. When the young Turks
wanted to put him out eight years ago, I
spent my money and time campaigning
for Roy. but that was eight years ago. H r
had vigor and the fight of a crusader
exuded from every nerve and a sparkle in
his eye. Today that sparkle is gone.
Everything wears out and Roy's day for
vigorous service is gone. The manage
ment in the National Office is loose and
weak, the bookkeeping is bad. There is
no sense of authority or loyalty to the
N A A C P by its members. We need to
clean it up!”
V
Z V
sd
Angolan doctor Ana examines students. Eastern Angola. 1968. Ana was trained in
East and West Germany, and in the Soviet Union. (Photo by Roy Harvey/1968) See
page 3.
Conyers hits labor statistics
Dr. Hudson recommended that Wilkins
be retained to w rite a history of the
N A A C P and of the Black struggle.
Dr. Nathan W right, Jr., columnist for a
number of Black newspapers, has called
for a change of position for Wilkins,
making him as "elder statesman" but
taking the administration and the policy
making of the organization out of his
hands.
"The last decade of his leadership,
though, has seemed to burnish much of
that previously bright image all of us
know his past leadership deserves."
The search for a new executive
director will be carried out by a fifteen
member committee headed by Dr.
Montague Cobb of Howard University,
who was elected President of the N A A C P
this week.
ROY W IL K IN S
Congressman John Conyers (D-Michi-
gan) has exposed the current unemploy
ment figures of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) as "grossly inaccurate ”
Conyers, in an op-ed column in the New
York Times said that real unemployment
in the United States is at least sixteen
percent - on the basis of his inclusion of
the “discouraged, unemployed and par
tially employed" workers in the poten
tially employed labor force. International
Press Service (IPS) notes that this is the
first challenge ever made by a public
government official "to the long-fraudu
lent BLS claims."
An IPS study
published two years ago, making use of a
meaningful definition of ‘employable
labor force' estimated that actual unem
ployment was nearly th irty percent.
The Bureau of Labor counts as
"employed", any person who works one
hour or more for profit or pay during the
three month quarter, and persons who
were not physically working on a job they
h o ld , b u t w e re a b s e n t d ue to
personal reasons, bad weather, strikes,
etc.
The Bureau includes as unemployed all
persons who are not employed and who
have made a specific effort to find a job
during the previous four weeks. Those
who are on layoff and those working to
start jobs within th irty days are also
counted as unemployed.
Labor Bureau statistics are also
"seasonally adjusted” to attempt to
account for seasonal periods of unem
ployment.
The Bureau of Labor unemployment
rate was 8.6 for October. The Urban
League's Hidden Unemployment Index,
which includes unemployment workers
who have stopped looking for work and
part-time workers who want full-time
jobs, estimates the unemployment rate at
about fifteen percent.
Which way for China: Maoism or capital intensive development?
by Roy Harvey
W ith Chou En-lai dead, the contest is
now going on in China over which way
the nation of 860 million people will go.
The last time the question emerged (in
ruling cirrisfe), in 1966, the Maoist
leadership decided for a quick right-turn
alliance with the U.S. and N A TO ,
blocking against the Soviet Union and the
C O M ECO N group.
Deputy Prem ier Teng Hsiao Peng is
identified as one of the seven most
important Chinese Communist Party
figures, and a likely candidate for the
number two (following the apparently
senile Mao Tse tung) position. Teng is
one of the founders of the Chinese Com
munist Party (1920), and was recently
“brought back from disgrace." The 'dis
grace' was that Teng balked at the inten
sification of Maoist ideology between
1981 and 1963.
Teng is linked in
vilification literature to Liu Shao-chi,
though it was apparently Teng's deter
mination to maximize economic growth
and political stability as opposed to the
so-called 'cultural revolution.'
The Ijondon Dally Telegraph declares
that Teng is a moderate, and that
economic growth is stressed at the
expense of Maoist ideological purity. IPS
notes that a new year's article in the
People’s Daily (CCP official newspaper)
praises the fart that “living standards
have been rising steadily." This is not
Maoist ideological language - Maoist
'thought' stresses only concern with
ideological purity, and attacks concern
with 'material things' as 'revisionist'.
l» s t month Red Flag. the theoretical
journal of the Chinese Communist Party,
noted that there “is widespread opposi
tion among Chinese educators to Maoist
educational policy.” Educators in China
have said (cautiously) that Maoist policy
has led to a destruction of education.
Another 'disgraced' but not 'rehabilitat
ed' figure, Liu Ping -- rector of Tsinghua
University, said in an open letter to Mao
that China's universities were turning
out graduates "unable to read a book."
It is Maoist policy to let only one
percent of all high school graduates into
college. Critics of such Maoist policy
charge that science and other subject
m atter
especially that which is of a
theoretical nature •• is diluted or reduced
to mechanistic practice.
The Maoist
slogan "practice theory practice" is in
fact, critics say, “practice practice prac
tice". Other university administrators
besides Liu Ping have been openly
critical of admitting students to universi
ties on the basis of their loyalty to “the
thoughts of Mao Tse-tung" with no
regard for academic attainment or
adequate preparation. These educators
urge that "intellectual training and
education" be placed above ideological
phrase mongering.
This discussion is
itself the most serious challenge to Mao's
rule since Lin Piao's attem pt to depage
Mao in 1971. Chinese education Minister
Chou Tung-hsin has been attacked from a
Maoist perspective, but has not been
removed, suggesting there is support at
the top for his cautious anti-Maoist
moves. The Red Flag article (referred to)
which noted the ‘widespread opposition*
to Maoist educational policy attempted to
defend Maoist policy by quoting from the
Red Book - a series of pathetic homilies
which are the very thing the educators
have attacked as being destructive of
thought.
Two weeks ago three Soviet helicopter
pilots held by the Chinese for 21 months
were released, and charges against them
were dropped. W hether this should be
interpreted as a move toward reconcilia
tion with the Soviets - or a warning to
Henry Kissinger
is not yet clear.
In 1965 Lin Piao advocated the official
policy of surrounding the industrial world
by the Third World. This 'city-country
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Prem ier Chow
En-lai drink a toast at Peking banquet in November. 1973.
side' scenario in effect wrote off the
advanced sector. By 1971 - preceding the
working Chinese group, some of the 850
being the Kissinger policy of provocation
peasant and the labor intensive backward
muder of Lin Piao - this policy had failed,
million Chinese people would survive
of the Soviets into a nuclear war. This
agricultural forma that predominated in
and the new Chou Mao line emerged:
that. Such 'thought' is known as
China before the'Chinese revolution. The
policy is clearly failing on all counts, so
block with the U.S. and N A T O forces
pragmatism' in China.
that in the industrial cities Chinese
alternative to this policy could have been
against the Warsaw Pact (Soviet COM E
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
workers are striking (and being sur-
to block with the CO M ECO N group for
CON) forces.
I f this policy led to a
since 1971 has manipulated the Sino-
pressed) for an appropriate standard of
capital intensive development of China.
nuclear war (which the Chinese said
Soviet split to a degree that U.S. and
living. In 1965. following the failure of
That is again the situation of China: more
recently was inevitable') between the
Chinese foreign policy are nearly identi Chinese foregin policy in Indonesia the
Maoist austerity or capital intensive
U.S. and the Soviet Union well says the
cal on almost all issues, with the ultimate
Chou-M ai leadership capitulated to the
development. *
I