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Page 2 Portland Observer May 4, 1989
EDITORIAL
CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL
SAMSONS AND
DELILA: SLAVERY IN
GEORGIA
by Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.
To the shock and abhorrence of
thousands of persons throughout the
world, the unfolding situation in
Waynbesboro and Louisville, Georgia
where
Sam sons
and
D elila
Manufacturing Plants are located reveals
working conditions resemble abject
slavery. For the more than 650 workers,
most of whom are African American
women, the inhumane management
practices by the owner, S.Lichtenburg
and Company Inc., has led these workers
to cry out for help.
The headquarters and showroom of
S. Lichtenburg and Company, Inc. are
located on Filth Avenue in New York
City. It isestimated that the total annuai
sales of this company have now grown
to over S27 million. Since 1965, this
company has manufactured curtains and
draperies at the Samsons and Delila
plants located in rural Georgia.
Not only are the working conditions
intolerable, but racist policies are also
commonplace when the management
consistently promotes non-African
American persons to the few highest
paying jobs at the factories. In fact in
Louisville, Georgia where the Delila
plant is located, there is a Slave Market
in the middle of the town which serves
as a living monument to the era in
which Africans were sold as chattel.
Now the descendants of these African
slaves are receiving slave-like treatment
at the hands of up-South, modem slave
masters.
In response to the often brutal
atrocities committed against any of these
workers who would dare to speak out
against the exploitation at the Samsons
and Delila plants, the overwhelming
majority of these workers recently defied
the intimidation of the company by
voting to unionize. The workers voted
to join the amalgamated Clothing an
Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). On
January 19, 1988, they filed with the
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
to hold a union election. On April 15,
1988, workers at Samsons and Delila
voted 413 to 185 to join the union. It
was as great victory for the workers and
for the trade union and human rights
movement in this nation.
Now over a year after that election
the S. Lichtenburg and Company, Inc.
refuses to recognize the union in violation
of state and federal civil rights and
labor laws. Georgia Congressman John
Lewis, Michigan Congressman John
Conyers and many other members of
Congress have come forward to demand
justice for the workers of Samsons and
Delila.
We in the church and civil rights
community must not allow these workers
to stand alone. No form of slavery and
brutality should be tolerated. As we
prepare to begin the 1990’s, the situation
in Waynesboro and Louisville, Georgia
demands a national outcry and outpouring
of support and solidarity with our sisters
and brothers at the Samsons and Delila
plants.
We should join with the Amalgamated
Clothing and Testile Workers Union in
efforts to dismantle the drapes and
curtains that conceal the racism and
exploitation at these slave plantation
plants in Georgia. A victory for these
workers will be a victory for all who
struggle for justice, freedom and human
dignity.
ART, YOUNG PEOPLE AND BUSINESS
Submitted b) Tom tlumpson
The recent flap about spending money
for art instead of jail space in prisons
has raised questions about when art is
appropriate in public places and when it
is not. Cascade Business Center thinks
we have a place where art, and the kids
who make it, have a place. The halls of
Cascade Business Center Corporation
the small business incubator on Van­
couver Avenue is one of those places.
1 was looking at our high ceiling,
sunlit hall one day and thinking that it
would be a great place for art and for an
interior designed project. I had also
been looking for a way to involve the
youth of the neighborhood in our busi­
ness enterprise center. The hall, the art,
the youth all sort of came together and
presto! we had an idea. One call to
Sherry Brockman, art teachers at Jef­
ferson High School and we had our­
selves a project! Ms. Brockman jumped
at the chance to do an interior design
project with her art students. She also
volunteered to provide artwork for our
offices on a rotating display basis. It’s
good too. And believe me I had misgiv­
ings. But the students; talents arc de­
serving of the best places in town for
display.
We talked to Mr. David fox of a firm
called Zcphyrsmith which specializes
in interior design of large spaces. They
volunteered to provide Sherry with ideas
on hanging the design work.
Pacific Development Corporation,
has provided funds to Cascade for im­
provements to the building to attract
businesses. I called Randis Brewer, Mar­
keting Director at Pacific, and asked
her if she thought this m ight be a worthy
use of Pacific’s generous contributions.
She said it sounded like a great way to
attract business and link the community
through the schools into our center.
On May 5th, the tiny model which
was built by the art students as part of
the design process will be transformed
into interior art on a much larger scale,
Cascade is providing the materials to
hang the art work, the pizza and the
pop. Sherry and here Jefferson Students
will provide the creativity and the la­
bor. It should be a lot of fun. Drop by
and see the project in creation or come
later and gaze upon the finished prod­
uct.
This is a good example how busi­
ness, our schools, and our community
can get together for the benefit of all.
We look forward to fostering more
partnerships like this. Unfortunately,
the story has a downside. They are
cutting back the art program at Jeffer­
son so these kinds of projects may be as
hard to come by as art in jails. It’s too
bad. We havejustdiscovcredhowmuch
of an asset the Jefferson program can be
to us.
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O P IN IO N
BENNETT’S DC DRUG WAR
MISSES THE POINT
Recently President Bush’s National Drug Czar, William Bennett, an­
nounced a 100 million dollar multi-year program to rid the nation’s capital
of the drug trade. The struggle to control the lucrative profits from drugs has
erupted into open warfare in Washington, D.C. which has now emerged as
the new murder capital of America. Embarasscd by the sprectre of the
capital to the free world drowning in drugs and overwhelmed by crime and
violence, the Bush administration has sent forth its shining white knight,
William Bennett to save the day.
Bennett’s solution - hire massive numbers of new police officers, build
more prisons and lock up hundreds, even thousand o f n e n n le if n e e d h e in
improve the image of the nation’s capital. No doubt this approach meets
with the approval of nervous and anxious federal officials who don t want
the word out that the watchdog of democracy in the world cannot safeguard
the freedom of its own citizens in its own capital. Ordinary citizens in the
affected neighborhoods are also prone to see any program that can reduce
the terror in their lives as worthy of consideration.
All of us must certainly be concerned with stopping the scourge ol drugs
in Washington, D.C. and around the country. Cocaine, crack and heroine
are ripping apart the fabric of our communities. The greatest damage is
being done in Black and Latino neighborhoods. We should want and must
have the full and complete enforcement of the law to prosecute those who
are producing, peddling and profiting from drugs in our neighborhoods. To
sec more police, more prisons and more prisoners alone as the solution
misses the point.
According to data compiled by the American Friends Services Commit­
tee, in the last ten years the population in the United States increased by
10%. However the prison population during this same period however,
more than doubled. During a decade which has been hailed as the greatest
period of uninterrupted prosperity in American history, America also
experienced a boom in new prisoners and new prisons. Why has there been
such a dramatic explosion of drug use, crime and violence?
The Reagan era produced prosperity for some and misery, poverty and
prisons for large numbers of growing economic underclass in America. The
rich got richer and the poor got poorer. No matter how much policy-makers,
law enforcement officials and the public at large try to ignore it, poverty
breeds crime and violence. Cut of for diminish, legitimate opportunities lor
people to grow and develop and people will find alternative to grasp tor the
“ good life” .
Lawrence W. Sherman of the Crime Control Institute recently made the
following observation about the crisis in Washington D.C. "First the
affluent people who buy the drugs help to create the huge demand lor crack.
Second, there is such inequality that those in the underclass view selling
drugs as the only way to success.” .
America can build as many prisons as its “ prosperity” can alford and
lock-up countless numbers of new prisoners, but until the question of
meeting the needs of the dispossessed is addressed, America will be unable
to build enough prisons to contain the multitude that arc being criminalized
by the nation’s policies of neglect.
All of us must come to understand that only through a equitable sharing
of the wealth, resources and access to opportunity can we genuinely create
a safe and just society. Anything else will simply miss the point.
AMERICA GOES WILDING
The racial hatred that spews forth from every institution is the fuel that
drives America— backward. Everywhere we hear that Black people, in
particular young African American men, are less-lhan-human savages.
Listen to what is being said about Harlem teenagers who arc being
questioned regarding the rape and beating of the woman jogger in New York
City’s Central Park last week. “I don’t know if it was out of control for these
types of kids,” said the chief prosecutor for the Family Court Division ol the
city’s Law Department. “ I think that kids like this,: he said, ;givcn what I
would call their predatory nature, are people who, given the chance, would
do something like this again. There really isn’t any way to control them—
at least we haven’t found it in the juvenile justice system.”
Something very terrible happened in Central Park that night. But we
cannot let the senstionalizing salesmanship of the mass media and the pious
hypocrisy of the politicians trick us into using our outrage at the de­
humanization of this young woman as an excuse to dehumanize OTHER
HUMAN BEINGS who because they arc Black— arc violated and brutalized
every day of their lives.
This is not meant to condone in any way what happened on that terrible,
ugly night. But if we want to do something about it, we need to understand
how it is that people— young people like our children, like my children
come to prey on other people. How is it that we as a society, this country
called America, is producing young people who go “wilding”? Who
brutalize and terrorize to gel their kicks? or to prove their manhood.’
I don’t believe we can begin to address those questions until we
understand that it is not only young Black Men who go wilding. They are,
in fact, usually the victims of the institutionalized wilding of the racist
marauders. This is a wilding society. And wilding is a respectable activity—
when it is conducted by the while corporate owners of America.
W.E.B. DuBois has taught us that racism isn’t about having something
bad happen to you every day, or every week. Racism is living with the
possibility that something bad could happen to you just because you arc
Black—any time. Our young men are being driven crazy with rage and fear
by that knowledge.
Black and Latino young people have virtually no job prospects while
financial assistance for higher education is being cut to the bonc.People
don’t have homes to live in and have been shoved out onto the streets;
thousands arc dying of AIDS while diseases like tuberculosis— long be­
lieved to be eradicated— arc claiming new victims at a terrifying rate.
We must root out the bi-partisan corrupters who thrive personally and
politically on decadence and who hypocritically scream bloody murder
when their own policies come back to haunt them. Our lives, and the lives
of our children and grandchildren, arc what’s at stake.
Portland, Oregon 97208
(503) 288-0033 (Office)
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“ THE EDUCA­
TIONAL UNDER­
CLASS”
guages.
Approximately 80 percent of all ap­
plicants interviewed by Motorola, Inc.,
fail an entry-level examination which
requires seventh grade English.
Dr. Manning Marable Alone The
Thousands of people are applying for
Culvr Line
jobs as cashiers and bank tellers who
In the 1980s, sociologists have popu­ cannot do simple arithmetic. Thou­
larized a new term which describes the sands of high school students are un­
permanent poverty of millions of poorly able to read the simplest instructions.
trained and uneducated residents of the Meanwhile, the new jobs generated by
urban ghetto - the “ underclass.” This high technology increasingly demand
terminology suggests that millions of the ability to operate computers and to
poor people, mostly Blacks and Lati­ analyze complex data. The gap is stead­
nos, are so thoroughly marginalized by ily growing between the technical quali­
the lack o f , decent schools, health care fications and academic background
and other institutions that they become necessary for such jobs, and the actual
virtually irrelevant to the process of level of abilities for millions in the
educational underclass.
production. Many exist at minimum
Part of the solution would appear to
wages or less, or via semilegal or extra­
legal means, such as hustling, drugs and be the recruitment and retention of highly
petty crime. I have a number of reser­ motivated and excellent teachers in the
vations about the term “ underclass” , public school systems, especially in the
in part, because it tends to underesti­ sciences and mathematics. One fourth
mate the centrality and utility of racism of all public school instructors will re­
in perpetuating empoverished condi­ tire in the next 15 years, and a high
percentage of younger teachers who are
tions for people of color.
If an economic “ underclass” does discouraged by low pay and poor work­
exist, its perpetuation and expansion ing conditions will quit.
It won ’ t be long before a new form of
are largely guaranteed by the tragic
situation in our public schools. At a “ segregation” will exist to threaten the
lime when oureconomy is demanding a prospects of millions of Black youth.
higher level of technical ability, mathe­ There won’t be the Jim Crow signs of
matic and scientific skills for the labor “ white” and “ colored” to preserve
force, fewer young people are being job discrimination. Instead, the new
academically prepared. The Wall Street segregation of the twenty first century
Journal recently documented a scries of could be the division between the edu­
disturbing facts about the educational cated “ haves” and the uneducated “ have
nots.”
Those who lack scientific,
underclass.
In many states, the drop out rate for mathematical and computer skills are
nonwhite high school students 50 per­ already disproportionately nonwhite.
cent. Across the United States, 3,800 The struggle for expanded federal ex­
teenagers drop out of school every day. penditures for student grants and im­
And of those students who stay in schools, proved public schools is directly linked
millionsdon’t receive any serious train­ to the economic future of Black Amer­
ing in algebra, geometry, biology, English ica.
composition, history or foreign lan-
PERSPECTIVES
BLACK GENIUS-
WHITE COVER PART
IV
By McKinley Burt
The beauty, the cultural significance,
and the wisdom of African literature
has scarcely been touched in my writings
here. Throughout the ages it has been
immense, so I continue in hope that
many readers will follow up these leads.
May they find new reassurances of our
genius and, also, read the old classics
from a new perspective that is without
their white cover.
We must be able to answer readily
such ‘put downs’ as found in M ontet,
E ternal Egypt (P.220)! “ Egyptian
literature should not be made to appear
insignificant though being compared to
G reek literature. Egypt had no writers
to equal Hom er, P indar Sophocles or
Herodotus. ..and the style bare....no flow
of inspiration,” What a horrible, ugly
aspersion to be cast by a noted historian
who knew better, but it is quite ‘typical’.
Just last week I cited the Famous
white covers who acknowledged the
influence of two great African thinkers,
Esop (Esop’s Fables), and Lokm an
(the w riter honored by M oham m ed
The Prophet). These noted covers
ranged from Aristotle and Socrates to
Julius Caesar and Shakespeare. As we
continue here, remember the quote from
Encylopedia Britannica(1958 ed.,vol.l
p.131); “ It was not until the gods of
Egypt (and the Sudan) were accepted
by the G reeks that there appears any
ceremony which can truly be called
dramatic.” Well, Well, Well!
Keeping that in mind, we may refer
to two great African poets and dramatists
who have had a tremendous influence
upon the w orlds’ literature and
philosophy. The first is P indar, bom in
522 BC in Africa near the city of Thebes,
a place that Homer described as one of
tlx.' seven wonders of the ancient world.
Pindar’s writings and style had great
influence upon the Greeks who had
come to Africa for schooling-and who
took their learning home to set up schools
of their own. Pindar rejected all that
was crude and immoral in their primitive
ideas about God and Man, introducing
the idea that m an was the sinner (see
p.79 .Soper, The Religions of Mankind).
Our second African scholar and
playwright is Terence at the time of
Roman hegemony over Egypt and the
Sudan.His writings not only had great
influence during this early era, but
translations were brought to Renaissance
Europe by the culture-bearing M oors
from North Africa (along with science
and mathematics). His works were crucial
to this period of cultural enlightenment
which brought Europe out of its D ark
Ages. In 1564 Terence’s text was listed
in curricula for England’s schools (as
was the work of Esop.
T.W. Baldwin of the University of
Illinois (1947) tells us that the two main
European playwrights who were exposed
to and influenced by Terence
were” Shakespeare and Moliere” , and
that four Shakespearen plays were
influenced by his works: As you like it,
Love’s L abor Lost, The M erry Wives
of W indsor, and Othello. Again, did
they tell you that in school?
Dr. Edward L. Jones of the University
of Washington,a Black Scholar whose
articles have been published in the
Portland Oregonian, has to say in his
book Profiles In African Heritage.
“ Now is the time for Black scholars,
playwrights, actors and literary critics
to start their own research and’write
their own books about Terence.”
In a lighter vein, we quote this
interesting statement found next to a
photograph of an Egyptian wall painting.
(p.144, Ancient Egypt, Time-Life
Books): Comic strip art was popular in
the New Kingdom and included this
whimsical papyrus intended as a
hum orous com m entary on the
breakdowm in the old social order....art,
once reserved mainly for religious
purposes, came to be used also as an
instrum ent of social protest.” Well,
Well, 4000 years before Doonesbury!
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