Listen Here; Senator Beryl Cohen And Ellen Jackson: Political Dimensions Of The Urban Crisis

The growth of the American population has increased sharply. Several hundred thousand a year in the thirties to an average rise of approximately two and a half million people per year or two. Moreover the number of people in rural areas has been declining while metropolitan area growth has been booming each year the population of America's metropolitan areas grows by over three million. Some of our very lives cities. Under the impact of technical logical revolution in agriculture employment in rural and farming areas has dropped. To below two and a half million people between 1950 and 1066. Many of those who now seek their future in the cities are Negroes between 1940 and this year 1967 proximately 4000000 Negroes have moved from the south to the cities of the north and the West. The Department of Labor estimates that almost one and a half million negroes left the south between nine hundred fifty one

thousand sixty and that one 1.6 million negroes left the south between nine hundred forty one thousand fifty for the country as a whole. The proportion of negroes in city populations rose from less than 10 percent in 1940 to 20 percent in 1065. The negro migrants to the city in the past quarter of a century have brought with them a history of slavery segregation. Lack of education and frequently bore poor health. As well as suspicion of governmental authorities. And coming to the cities of the north. These Negroes have faced the discriminatory practices of these northern areas lack of adequate housing and the impact of upon automation of job opportunities and for the an educated and unskilled worker. The northern cities are suffering in part from the social ills in the delinquencies of the South including cover lines and private. State and Local Government employment backward standards of educational vocational

training and public welfare generally so that the social patterns in the north. Are used to enforce the dependency of both poor whites and negroes in ghetto areas in the cities about 10 percent of all adult men and about 40 percent. Of out of school teenagers are unemployed. In addition a recent Labor Department survey of slum areas in November of 1066 found that nearly 7 percent of those negroes with jobs who were employed were employed only part time although they wanted full time work and that 20 percent of those working full time earn less than $60 a week. America's urban crisis is a national complex of social problems rather than simple problems of individual communities. No city or state government can solve them in isolation and neither can private enterprise. Even with the promise of tax subsidies this solution requires nationwide social measures

with adequate federal funds and standards. Step by step we must begin immediately to rebuild America's cities and lift the living conditions of the American people. Instant adjustments and overnight solutions to the complex of problems are impossible gimmicks and slogans can achieve headlines but hardly any positive results. Gimmicks or slogans such as Black Power Bostonians can achieve headlines but hardly any positive results. Immediate measures are needed to provide jobs decent housing and adequate community facilities plan programs over the next decade or two are required to revitalize our metropolitan areas as centers of American civilization. We're going to need nearly a million new public service jobs for persons now unemployed or seriously underemployed. We're going to need approximately two and a half million new housing units public housing lower middle

income and moderate income housing open housing in the suburbs as well as in the cities is going to be an essential part of a meaningful effort to rebuild our metropolitan areas. Urban renewal can no longer be confined to commercial and expensive high rise construction. The focus instead is going to have to be upon homes in balanced neighborhoods with families displaced by some clearance given assistance in finding decent drawings at rents they can afford. The model cities program is going to have to be financed with adequate appropriation a substantially expanded Neighborhood Youth Corps program to help youngsters remain in school and to provide work and training for those who have dropped out of school is going to have to be continued. The opportunity for quality education can be met only by realizing the need to close the educational gap between the privileged and underprivileged schoolchildren of a nation by special incentives to teachers in slum areas federal and state subsidy of more step of effect of school type programs for use of school buildings for job

training adult education and community centers. Manpower training must be linked with job placement and training allowances must be increased so the trainees can afford to remain in the program. Public welfare assistance must be reconstructed with the program based on need a federal minimum standard of payments and adequate federal funds should be provided state work incentive program should enable welfare recipients to retain a substantial amount of their earnings on the principle that comprehensive social services are a matter of right to those in need. America's urban crisis did not come upon this nation without warning. It has been coming for a long time and the government has not been alert to its responsibilities. As to the negro and his particular problem in urban America I'm reminded of a poem by Langston Hughes which he wrote I swear to the Lord.

I still can't see why democracy means everybody but me. Negro American are in our cities. Is unwept. I know I don't. And unsung. In fact he is the invisible American. As recently as last February Senator Robert Kennedy stated on the floor of the Senate of United States that there are over 1 million Negro men who are lost who are census takers while lost to our Social Security system who do not exist. Statistically they cannot be found. So the question must be asked and answered. What of the future of the Negro American in urban America. Why have they not been found. What can we provide for them. Well first of all I think we're going to have to reconstruct our concept

of community a community demands a place where people can see and know each other. The community is not in the future to be defined merely by streets and blocks and ghettos. The whole history of the human race until recently has been the history of a community. The widening gap between the experience of a rapidly changing world as we can the ties of the family children grow up in a world of experience and culture their parents never knew the world beyond the neighborhood has become more impersonal and abstract. It is in its very poor concept that we are going to have to make changes. Long ago to talk till foreseeing the fate of people without a community a broad community wrote. That each of them living apart is a stranger to the fate of all the rest of his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens he is close to

them. But he sees them not. He touches them but he feels them not. He may be said at any rate to have lost his country. So we're going to have to broaden our concept of government not only in our city but in our state and in our nation concepts and attitudes. So the answer to the political dimensions of the urban crisis the ability of the College of Massachusetts to reconstruct recreation and road transportation programs. Along the lines of the Metropolitan District Commission along the lines of our recently enacted mental health legislation by which we no longer offer services for the mentally ill or retarded to specific communities of the 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth. But will we have created some 38 metropolitan service regions in areas where people

can cross the geographic lines where they can receive these services in a unified and dignified way. The same may be true and is said to be true in field of public welfare the most recently enacted public welfare reorganization is going to abolish and does in fact abolish the 270 local welfare offices in the 270 communities of Massachusetts that have been offering these services for the past 32 years. Just the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So we with a reconstructed welfare system we're going to have approximately 50 multiservice centers placed correspondingly to the long range view of population trends as assets to access to transportation. These are the new methods for the developing the new community for more human communities. And the solution to our very great urban problems in the 1980s in the

1980s. One of the great considerations for the political dimension and solving the problem of the Negro in particular in the urban crisis is a very definite failure of Negro leadership in the Negro community. It seems to me that within the past several years here in Boston in a Massachusetts the New York community has been compromised with the negro leadership that one spoke out so well and so eloquently has now become part of the white power structure now involving itself in the for pay and the Ojo programs and the leadership that formerly was relied upon to state the problem of the Negro in Boston and in Massachusetts is now no longer available I doubt very much whether or not there would be a response or whether or not the Negro community can raise a response in Boston Massachusetts at the present time because the leadership has vanished

and the problems of Negro leadership in government is one that is certainly going to have to be resolved in very short order. The lack of representation of the negroes by Negroes in our state and city government is one that is going to be brought home more and more to us more frequently in the coming months. We're going to have to consider very soon those who are interested in the dimensions of the urban crisis as it affects the negro. Going to have to consider supporting the 22 man watch the city council. I have to consider at least the concept of a an appointed school committee going to have to consider redistricting. The House and the Senate of the Massachusetts legislature in the light. Of this lack of representation in government by the Negroes themselves be. Possibility of following the lines

of a federal structure with Ojo funded programs with the concept of maximum participation feasible has not proven to be successful. The a pax the area citizen groups. Although required by law I have not proven at this point to be a method of giving adequate community representation to the negroes in the city of Boston. I'm going to have to consider Amendment and change the racial balance law because at this late date now two years after this very important legislation was signed into law. We find that for the most pot we've merely transferred the extent of the solution of the problem from 11 Beacon Street. If you are the boss the school committee the State Board of Education and so there are. A great many things that are going to have to be done.

We're going to have to have a serious discussion of the urban crisis in the present mayor ality campaign. The techniques the gimmicks the slogans are not going to be sufficient. We're not going to be able to fall back to do things the way we've always done them. And we're going to have to change the concept of political life in Massachusetts and in Boston Massachusetts. From that described perhaps by Lord Macaulay when he wrote and those behind cried forward and those in front cried back. So I suggest to you that there is a very basic need for citizen involvement for definition of the problem. The. Main question that I'd like to raise with you this afternoon. One that is going to have to be answered by each and every one who has attended this conference is where do we go from here. Where do we go from here in changing attitudes and bringing about these restructured communities and taking into account

the expected change in the nature of the population of the major cities of Boston Massachusetts in the coming years. I suggest to you that it is up to you as to the extent to which you will participate. It is easy and convenient to discuss these matters once each year. But I have these matters of concern to you individually each day and every year be aware of them but to do nothing. I'm reminded somewhat of the statement of a man named Kenneth knew who had committed a violent crime in New Orleans and in January 1935 Mr New was delivered to the hangman for the carrying out of the appropriate sentence after his having been found guilty by a court in New Orleans. Kenneth knew 1935. In answer to the response of. What his feelings were as he approached death by hanging. He said it's not the drop that's going to worry me it's the sudden

stop. And so it's not so much the distance that we have to travel it's not so much the involvement that the prospect of involvement of you and your neighbors or your families and your friends. It's when are we going to avoid the sudden stop. What are we going to stop defining the problem in our urban areas and to do something about them. This political action is something that all of us are involved in not just elected officials. And I look forward to the leadership of the intellectual class who. Who have a responsibility who are not educated beyond their intelligence who will not take part in the treason of the educated caste class and criticize. Be aware of this very deep human problem and not contribute to a solution. Thank you very much.

I'm sure there was much joy in those remarks to provoke questions and the floor is now open except that I'd like to take the chairman's prerogative to ask one out myself which would go something like this. There are great many specific proposals for legislative changes chiefly in Senator Cohen's remarks. I agreed with about 95 percent of them or more and I suspect most of you did too. And most of them were of a kind which really do not threaten any basic interest of middle class people which is not to say that they wouldn't be good and important but I wonder out and I would raise the question of whether or not some more fundamental change is not going to have to happen in this society before the things most

disturbing about the urban crisis will be stopped. And I would offer this argument very briefly that we've always had a lot of poor people in this country and life has been very very difficult for them. But there has always been considerable opportunity for upward mobility of individuals from the bottom. And secondly there has always been the presence of another group entering the society to be the new bottom. So there has been this psychological as well as social mobility. And I suggested a distinctive thing about the current urban crisis and specifically the situation of the urban Negro is that there is no group imaginable to come in to be the new bottom. And there is a second distinctive thing which is this that

to the extent to which negroes are not going to be assimilated socially in the way that earlier groups have been if that indeed is the case the extent to which they remain on the bottom there's one very special thing about their perceptions of the system which is that the earlier groups could always believe that their failure to rise was due to personal inadequacy. The old American dream of the justice of the system in the belief that those who who have got what it takes will rise. Now it's much harder for a black person who is not rising in the society to believe that it's his fault. And it's much easier and indeed largely correct for him to believe there's something wrong with the system which holds him down. And so I suggest that there may well come as a result of the politicization of the Negro in recent years. A kind of basic demand which has never been made on a large scale in America which is a demand for elimination of the bottom specifically in terms of income distribution.

There is no reason in principle why our society could not declare that the media in which I suppose now is around $6000 a year be the floor below which no American family be allowed to fall. So that instead of a diamond shaped income distribution with a few people at the very top broadening down to the middle. But then with another diamond at the bottom with a large number of people 20 30 percent who earn very very small fraction of the national income one might just eliminate the bottom part of the diamond. Now it seems to me that's a fundamental change which may be required and one which has some important implications for all of us because it means that we would then be required not only to offer our benevolent support but some of our cash that is this would mean that a significant fraction of the income of professionals earning 15 20 thousand dollars a

year might have to be taken away by the government to be redistributed in this faction. And I wonder one if I'm right in suggesting that this is a change which will be required in two if a many. Middle class people would be willing to accept that kind of radical change do they indeed care enough to be willing to pay in that way. The extent to which there is public support. Notice the public support. From my vantage point and as a member of one state legislature those who have public support for an increase in taxes in order to pay for spending programs primarily for the poor. There's very little public support. The recent efforts to have the welfare reorganization bill which primarily affects low income families and public welfare recipients

have that bill paid for by some 62 million dollars and a change in the sales tax distribution for me in Massachusetts met with no success at all. A large amount of money I'm going to be necessary just to pay for what we've got now. It is estimated that the Medicaid program by which medical needs of medically indigent persons in Massachusetts around the country will be paid for three fifths three six by the federal government and 3 6 by the state government it's estimated this one program alone will call go over one hundred and twenty million dollars a year for the next several years. So the as I suggest to you that large amounts of money are going to be necessary to pay for just what we have now to add to that. And a further consideration of a guaranteed annual income base the elimination of the bottom of the triangle as something that we have no evidence yet in public

life of any popular support whether or not in fact the taxpaying public will be willing to. Support such a program in addition to the traditional methods of paying our way out of poverty or in lieu of is something that they had not yet been any public discussion. The articulation of the negro leadership in the past several years has all but disappeared. That it is now involving itself and I could name names. I think that Mrs. Jackson now if she is with us and one who has remained unfettered is not a part of the power structure of the establishment. She is very familiar so my with at least a good dozen of two people who formally apparently have the respect of the white community that is the political white community who formally

articulated the needs of this community and who now are involving themselves as employees of. Federal and state agencies no longer free for this articulation is in that sense that I suggest that the Negro community has moved out. The leadership is changing over and that there are few people who have been initially involved in defining these needs who remain in the Boston area. Would you like to comment on that point Mrs. Jackson. No I'm fine. Actually there are two points in which I'd like to ask Senator Cohen a brief clarification because they're both provocative remarks and I suspect all of us would like to hear more about them one was the comment about the workings of the racial imbalance law comment. I wanted to ask Senator Cohen about two points which might be clarified one the

comment about the failure of the racial imbalance law simply transferring complicated problems from Beacon Street to the State Board of Education. I wonder if he might expand that and say whether in his estimation the law should just go or whether some modification is possible. And then secondly the comments about the failure of present arrangements to ensure maximum feasible participation of the poor the apex as they are called. I wondered again if if that was a specific criticism which might then ask for different methods of ensuring participation or if indeed he felt that the whole notion must go. Show you as one of the. Authors there are possibly six or eight authors of the racial balance bill as one of the six or eight I look back on that legislation as having had great promise

in August of 1955 it was hailed as a first of its kind of the first of its kind. To the extent to which it was written in the country may recall that just prior to the neck of the racial balance bill there was a great controversy great discussion and heat and dissatisfaction between the Negro community and the majority the Boston School Committee certain Negro leaders who involve themselves in the drafting of this racial balance bill were fearful then in 1065 that this legislation would just transfer the debate from Beacon Street to Newbury Street. And I might say two years later. That pretty is pretty much what has happened. If there is a plan that has been proved accepted by the state board that it is a go slow plan that it is in my WIR my opinion tokenism. That was rejected by the two negroes who sit on the State Board of Education. That the state of

education in fact has not been aggressive. In its performance of its duties under obligations under the racial balance bill and for those reasons. I am going to file legislation for the session 1068 to modify and amend change the racial balance bill so that we once again will present an opportunity to present a meaningful plan for desegregation of our schools in the city of Boston. Now as to the my prior comment as to the impacts and the fact that the. Representation of negroes upon and minority groups. Although in fact there is representation that it has not. Believe my comment are intended to be that it has not proved proven to be a major method of involving a strong voice. The minority groups and programs the apex and I believe the records would

bear it out. The election is to be a PACs have involved anywhere between 1 and 3 percent of the Africa population. You know if there is a PAC areas. So when you are having that small Patison patient that small a choice. The opportunity for those who are elected by such small amounts to influence realistically action community action I think follows. So the voice of the pack may hold some promise in the future. I think we have to look for greater responsibility greater involvement at least on the state legislation the State level of all state programs when they require and they all require community participation. I think that this is particularly true and will take place very shortly with the reorganization of the department public welfare. As of July 1st 1968. We found that a serving maid

last year by the Easton chapter of the National Association of Social Workers they made a study in Greater Boston of every existing social welfare private agency made the study of the boards of directors. The biography the background the color of the skin of the boards of the directors of the of all private welfare agencies in Greater Boston. They discover that as a result of the study in 1906 that less than 1 percent of the boards of the directors of the voluntary agencies in the social welfare field were nonwhite and were going to change that situation. The legislation would have to change the ruthless situation as affects private agencies but the legislation for reorganization of the pattern of Public Welfare requires. Citizen participation appointees by the Commissioner of Public Welfare and the governor of the users of the services. And that is a concept that has not been followed at any time in the past 30 years and Massachusetts is the reason for the

resistance by the most radical welfare. Their demonstration and their articulation of lack of involvement is something that it hopefully will be changed by next July so that involvement of citizens of minority groups and others the users of the services the elderly that those who need rehabilitation the very young something that has to take place. We have passed the stage in 1967. We continue to tell people what we think they want. Thank you. Well this might be an appropriate point of transition to our second speaker with the understanding that some of the questions which follow her remarks might extend to Senator Cohen as well. It's a great pleasure to introduce Mrs. Alan Jackson to you. I think most of us in this room already

know of her extraordinary career and her extraordinary leadership efforts. She serves as the executive director of Operation Exodus of course and as all of us know I think. This is really her inspiration. Her thing and it has been a remarkable achievement. Some of you may not know that her reputation has extended far beyond this city and that very recently she was accorded the signal honor of being named 967 woman of conscience of the National Council of Women of the United States. And that award is not surprising. Clearly she deserves it. It's very nice that one such award is highly deserved one. So with no further ado I will

introduce Mrs. Alan Jackson was with. Thank you very much. And I lead to redefining this way of just one moment because this is a this is something I don't know too much about. I have to admit. And from my letter it was stated that Senator Cohen was going to be coping. I will be speaking on the political in the Translate of action in coping with the problems of the central city whether metropolitan solutions can overcome the ability of course city to deal effectively with the issues. And I was to speak about the black community and how do we see access to political power in shaping these decisions which affect that community and how do I see ways in which people outside of the central city could do more work differently in creating a better educational situation housing and of course job environment. I feel as though there were people who would have been better qualified

to do that particular thing than I. So based on my what we I call an agonizing reappraisal of the situation. I took what little knowledge I have and coupled that with some papers that I had been reading and I like to start by quoting a moment from a passage in Kenneth Clarke's book Dark Ghetto which I think will provide a background drop for when I'm going to speak about it which is very brief. I quote stagnant ghettos are a mom monument to the dominance of forces which tend to perpetuate the status quo and resists constructive social change. If the ghettos are to be transformed then force is superior to those which resists change must be mobilized to counteract them. The problem of change in the ghetto is essentially that for a problem of power it confrontation and conflict between the power required for

change and the power of resistance to change. It is relevant to an understanding of the problems of disadvantage minority groups and their confinement within the ghettos. That's one of the meanings of the term power. Emphasizes the possession of control or command or authority over others. The form of power that is most significant in the understandings of social change is that combinations of energies required to determine and to translate goes into a desired social reality. It is my opinion that those few lines accurately sum up the emerging movement for power and control that is developing in black communities across the country. Having said those words as a beginning it is my intention not to refer anymore in my talk to the black community and the problems that exist within the black community. This seems to be a basis and I think that it was explicitly inaccurately quoted or

stated a few minutes ago that the black community is moving the black community is moving. What is the problem really as it was just stated by doing right. We stayed in these really found is the fact that someone isn't listening. And so therefore the subject about which I've been asked to speak is a highly complex one and I'm going to change it a little. There are social scientists and political scientists and economic economists who spend their entire lives investigating and experimenting questions that usually deal only with the problems in the black community. Hundreds more spend their lives dealing with the growing problems of urban living and in many interrelationships between the various components of our highly complicated society. Well I'm not a social scientist nor I'm a political scientist and I might be called a political activist and an active worker for social change and I'm also acutely aware of the almost total irrelevance of the social scientists and the political

scientists in any programs or movements that work to bring about real change in the power relationships that exist in this country. So I'm saying in other words I don't know I'm questioning whether or not the political aspect is really the core talking from it seems to me we have to find out just how much white communities are ready to change their structure so that the black community and the black political structure can become part of it. The mere fact that the federal government along with the various private foundations spend billions of dollars every year to support and create programs for social change and equality of opportunity and that these programs are almost totally disastrous failure is an incredible waste of public funds and a human scientist on Normally the design is of these programs. All of this speaks very clearly and pointedly to the gross failure of the human scientists to deal in real issues with real people and their real problems.

But we're going to talk about power and not black. We're going to talk about white power. Because black power is coming. And I don't think there's any question they are in the role of whites in the development of that power. And we all know now will have to be a secondary role and will have to be a role that becomes defined by blacks as we move ahead. About that I will only say that we need all of the resources in the black community that we can amass. But while we invite participation from without. We must begin to make it very clearly understood whether it's a rock a hollow him or ourselves side of Chicago these communities in Chan as I've said before to write their own agenda. Let's talk about real change and not social change and not political change but a basic change in the power relationships in this country.

And I have in front of me a paper which was written a research paper by Jack Minnes. It's a right social activist who was formerly worked with Snit. Enjoying his work with snake he wrote or he spent a lot of great time researching various parts of the underlying causes of poverty and inequality of opportunity and Southern segregation and Northern segregation. And I'm not certain whether any of you were really familiar with this last paper that he wrote or is not quite the last one. And it was called the Mississippi New York Boston axis. But I'd like to offer it now for a moment or two because it's very nice for me to be here at Radcliffe and as my friend Jonathan said on the other night on the other safe side of the chows. Want to talk a moment about the Mississippi Power and Light Company which is located in Jackson Mississippi. The Mississippi Power and Light Company has been designated by

Dr. Martin Luther King as one of the primary targets in the south for change. It segregates all of its facilities. It discriminates in its hiring. It pays different wages to most of its black and white workers in those ways it is very similar to the reason Anna Power and Light Company the Arkansas Power Light Company and other Southern electrical corporations of that kind. Mississippi Power Light is a public utility and is deeply time into the political structure of that particular state. The political structure which day is allowing if not fostering the outright starvation of hundreds of black people in Mississippi Delta the Mississippi Power and Light Company is wholly owned subsidiary of the middle southern utilities and corporation. According to Jack whose research is into such matters by the way has never been really refuted at least to my knowledge. Now the middle South utilities corporation is a giant holding company which also owns the ECMA Power and Light

in Arkansas Power and Light in the New Orleans public service and prosody electric company. All these are mammoth electrical public utilities in the south all of them are intimately tied also into the political and social systems in the southern states. And we here today are I think aware of the nature of those particular political and social systems. In addition Middle South utilities this enormous holding company is also partially responsible for the construction of a nuclear reactor in Fayetteville Arkansas. Working with the Atomic Energy Commission and the West German firm called Euro Tom now the way in which ministrations the power base of this enormous company from Mississippi to New York to Boston I found very very interesting. I think all of you should get copies of this paper. It's about 10 pages alone and you should really read it thoroughly. But the fact that interest me most in regard to my discussion is really the names of one of the single

largest stockholder in the middle middles South unity utilities company. The single largest stockholder of middles South utilities is of course Harvard College. With a total of five hundred forty three thousand seven hundred one thousand shares or a total of one point fifty one percent. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that paper. However I do think that it would produce very good readings for anyone. And the names of those people who are on it especially on the board. And it's an enormous complex corporation but it has some very interesting people. Let me just read what it does. And I'm only bringing this out because I really say again that if we're talking about political change for power change or any kind of social change in the black community we have to first feel that there is a demonstration of really

faith trust and goodwill from the white community to allow the change to take place where we can't and that's in the lodge lodge concerns in corporations etc. and companies that extend all across this country and we're not in their Mississippi Power Light is the principal utility in the company in the state of Mississippi and one of the largest employers according to Ted Seeber who is the executive director of the Michael Schwerner Memorial Fund. It's a community development agency in Jackson. The decisions made by this public utility eventually become the decisions made by the rest of the state. I think that's important we're talking about state change and its failure to failure to extend fair employment practices to Negroes has been a constant source of irritation both for the Mississippi negroes and to of course the civil rights workers. The search for finding levers for changing the policies of Mississippi Power and Light are not found exclusively in the

Mississippi community. However for the longer one looks for the power structure back in Mississippi Power and Light the further north he is forced to go. In fact curiously enough the research crosses Capitol lates the movement of the Underground Railroad a pre-civil war days both the slave and the researcher find themselves going further north to reach the end of the line. One hundred and thirty years ago slaves were being transferred from some south to north. Today money travels that same route and at the terminals of this mordant underground railroad of course is New York and Boston. The Jackson based public utility is a wholly owned subsidiary and is a giant holding company which also owns as I said before many many other particular concerns and the annual report for the middle South utilities provides a rather curious profile for the geographical distribution of its common stock. Not only in Boston but in New York State. These the

rest of the nation and having the largest percent of stockholders they have 15. No wonder that is then that this giant southern holding company has its headquarters in New York City. The profile also indicates that Massachusetts ranks second frozen percent of stockholders which is 11 and it shares that are only 19. And the Board of Directors again is very interesting I want to get from North Korea the names. I don't want to go on the reign of Mississippi but I think it's very important. And what I'm saying is I'm lost for words as to how to define best. The fact that the black community itself is really changing and it is changing within it's changing for various reasons mainly because it hasn't been listened to mainly because of its own lifestyle and its own environment mainly because it has tried your way and it hasn't seemed to do too much good.

However it is you know something that I'm quite sure we will continue to do and that is try what I'm interested in talking about really is the pathology of a political and economic system which allows men who operate and control to a great extent and utility such as the Mississippi Power and Light to continue to be guided as the shining example of white questioned culture. And I'm reminded about Gandhi's response when he was asked what he thought about the question civilization. And he said he thought it was a good idea. The power that black people are demanding in this country is the power now. 967 to disassociate themselves from a system such as the one that has been put together. It doesn't seem as though the entrenched interest is on making a lot of money and maintaining status and owning shares in the Mississippi Power Light and also donating to the Southern Christian Leadership

Foundation. The things you all. Consider to be or have seemed to consider to be important have seemed to be looked upon now as hypocritical by others. Now I myself and i'm say that many other black people from the Roxbury Community those who have had much more formal education I'm quite sure I guess this room is full of them have dedicated themselves to something. I have dedicated myself to do what I can to develop a black community in which I live and is from there that I fear oh. That I can then help to develop or make a change in the white community. But I must have or make sure there is a power base of human and moral and understanding black people in my own community first and then to Neha. I can begin to talk turkey with you as we say. Until then we are kidding ourselves when we talk about political change

in my own small limited opinion. And frankly there are too many homeless hungry people black and white in my community and in a lot of communities in this country. For us to continue to kid ourselves about where power really is and we must begin to change the trends of thinking and change our modes of operation to work toward making this country and the world in my opinion also a more humane place in which to live. Thank you.