The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Monday, we have four views of President Clinton's weekend speech on blacks and crime, a Newsmaker interview with Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and a Jim Fisher essay on the Oregon Trail. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: There was more NAFTA head counting today, two days before the House of Representatives votes on the issue. Both sides claimed converts. At least seven House members announced in favor of the trade agreement today, while at least four came out against. The vote is considered so close that the outcome will be determined by about 42 members currently listed as undecided. Two hundred eighteen are needed for passage. President Clinton began this week's NAFTA charge with a speech to a group representing small business. He spoke at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History in Washington this morning.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: There is no way any wealthy country in this world can increase jobs and incomes without increasing the number of people who buy that nation's products and services. There is simply no other way to do it. So why is the small business community in America overwhelmingly in support of NAFTA? Because you understand also the only way to sell more is to have more customers, and the only way to succeed is to compete and win, and you know something that everyone in America has to learn, that we cannot run from the forces of competition; we have to face them and overcome them and continue to change and grow. That is what America has always done.

MR. MacNeil: The anti-NAFTA forces held a noontime rally on the Capitol steps. It was attended by public employee union members. Among those who spoke against the agreement was House Democratic Whip David Bonior of Michigan.

REP. DAVID BONIOR, [D] Michigan: We know it's going to send our jobs South. We know it's going to reduce and drive the wages of working people down in this country. We know that because corporations interviewed by the Roper Organization for the Wall Street Journal told them -- 40 percent of the executives said that they will use this NAFTA to move jobs South, 55 percent of the large corporation executive corporations said they're going to use this NAFTA to take jobs South. 25 percent in that poll said they would use this NAFTA as a bargaining chip to keep our ages down. We know and the American people know that it will reduce our standard of living, and that's why I say, dump this NAFTA now.

MR. MacNeil: Industrial production grew .8 percent in October, spurred by a large increase in auto manufacturing. It was the fifth consecutive monthly jump, and the largest in 11 months. Industrial production represents the output of the nation's mines, factories, and utilities. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court today let stand Mississippi's parental consent abortion law. It did so without comment. The law requires written permission from both parents before a girl can receive an abortion when she is under 18, unmarried, and not supporting herself. It allows state judges to bypass the law under certain circumstances. Thirty-six states currently have parental notification or consent laws for abortions.

MR. MacNeil: Puerto Ricans voted yesterday to retain their U.S. Commonwealth status. The final vote was 48 percent for commonwealth to 46 percent for statehood. The statehood forces, led by the island's governor, said the closeness of the vote meant they would try again soon. Thirteen Cubans -- nine adults and four children - - fled their country before dawn today in a small crop duster plane stolen from the Cuban Agriculture Department. It was spotted on radar and escorted to an airport near Miami by a U.S. Customs plane. The refugees were interviewed by immigration officials and granted political asylum. Also today, 48 Haitian refugees waded ashore on islands off the Miami Coast. Officials believe they were dropped off by a ship sailing from the Bahamas. They were taken to a U.S. immigration holding center to face deportation proceedings.

MR. LEHRER: Ed Rollins will be questioned under oath about attempts to suppress the black vote in New Jersey. A federal judge granted a Democratic Party request today for such questioning. Rollins was Republican Governor-elect Christie Whitman's campaign manager. State Democrats want to ask him about his claim, now recanted, that the GOP paid $500,000 to discourage blacks from voting in her race against Democratic incumbent Jim Florio. Whitman won by about 26,000 votes on November 2nd. Other federal and state investigations into Rollins' initial claims are also under way.

MR. MacNeil: There was more violence in the Middle East today. In Lebanon, a military commander of Yasser Arafat's mainstream PLO faction was assassinated. And in the West Bank town of Hebron, a Jewish settler shot dead one of two Arabs who attacked him. The Palestinian struck the settler in the head with an axe and seriously wounded him. The unrest came as Palestinians and Israelis reopened talks in Cairo on Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and Jericho. President Clinton said he will send Sec. of State Christopher to the Middle East next month to help mediate remaining differences between the two sides. A State Department spokesman said Christopher will also try to break an impasse between Israel and Syria and finalize an Israeli agreement with Jordan. We'll have an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin later in the program.

MR. MacNeil: Iraq today freed an Oklahoma man held prisoner for almost seven months. Kenneth Beaty was let go after Oklahoma Sen. David Boren petitioned for his release, Beaty, an oil company official, strayed into Iraq by accident in April. He was captured and sentenced to eight years for trespassing. Boren sought Beaty's release on humanitarian grounds because he has a heart condition. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to crime among blacks, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin, and a Jim Fisher essay. FOCUS - TARNISHED DREAM

MR. MacNeil: Our major focus tonight is the speech President Clinton made on Saturday, calling on black church leaders to help fight a great crisis of the spirit in America and the violent crime it has produced. We are going to discuss his argument that it will take more than government action to repair the breakdown in family structure and community in American cities. First, we have extended excerpts from his comments. They were delivered to 5,000 black ministers from the same church pulpit in Memphis, Tennessee, from which Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke the night before he was assassinated 25 years ago.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I tell you unless we do something about crime and violence and drugs that is ravaging the community, we will not be able to repair this country. [applause] If Martin Luther King, who said, "Like Moses I am on the mountain top and I can see the promised land but I'm not going to be able to get there with you, but we will get there," If he were to reappear by my side today and give us a report card on the last 25 years, what would he say? He'd say, "You did a good job," he would say, "voting and electing people who formerly were not electable because of the color of their skin. You have more political power, and that is good. You did a good job," he would say, "letting people who have the ability to do so live wherever they want to live, go wherever they want to go in this great country. You did a good job," he would say, "elevating people of color into the ranks of the United States armed forces to the very top, or into the very top of our government. You did a very good job," he would say. He would say, "You did a good job creating a black middle class of people who really are doing well, and the middle class is growing more among African-Americans than among non-African-Americans. You did a good job. You did a good job in opening opportunity." But he would say, "I did not live and die to see the American family destroyed." [applause] "I did not live and die to see thirteen-year-old boys get automatic weapons and gun down nine-year-olds just for the kick of it." [applause] "I did not live and die to see young people destroy their own lives with drugs and then build fortunes, destroying the lives of others. That is not what I came here to do." [applause] "I fought for freedom," he would say, "but not for the freedom of people to kill each other with reckless abandon, not for the freedom of children to have children and the fathers of children to walk away from them and abandon them as if they don't amount to anything." [applause] "I fought for people to have the right to work but not to have whole communities of people abandoned. This is not what I lived and died for." My fellow Americans, he would say, "I fought to stop white people from being so filled with hate that they would reek violence on black people. I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon." [applause] The other day I was in California at a town meeting, and a handsome, young man stood up and said, "Mr. President, my brother and I, we don't belong to gangs, we don't have guns, we don't do drugs. We want to go to school. We want to be professionals. We want to work hard. We want to do well. We want to have families, and we changed our school because the school we were in was so dangerous, so when we showed up to the new school to register, my brother and I were standing in line, and somebody ran into the school and started shooting a gun, and my brother was shot down right in front of me at the safer school." The freedom to do that kind of thing is not what Martin Luther King lived and died for. [applause] Now when we read that foreign visitors come to our shores and are killed at random in our fine state of Florida, when we see our children planning their funerals, the American people are finally coming to grips with the accumulated weight of crime and violence and the breakdown of family and community and the increase in drugs and the decrease in jobs. I think finally we may be ready to do something about it. And there is something for each of us to do. There are changes we can make from the outside in. That's the job of the President and the congress and the Governors and the Mayors and the social service agencies. Then there are some changes we're going to have to make from the inside out, or the others won't matter. That's what that magnificent song was about, isn't it? Sometimes there are no answers from the outside in. Sometimes all the answers have to come from the values and the stirrings and the voices that speak to us from within. And so I say to you today, my fellow Americans, you gave me this job, and we're making progress on the things you hired me to do, but unless we deal with the ravages of crime and drug and violence, and unless we recognize that it's due to the breakdown of the family, the community and the disappearance of jobs, and unless we say some of this cannot be done by government because we have to reach deep inside to the values, the spirit, the soul, and the truth of human nature, none of the other things we seek to do will ever take us where we need to go. So in this pulpit, on this day, let me ask all of you in your heart to say, we will honor the life and the work of Martin Luther King. We will honor the meaning of our church. We will somehow, by God's grace, we will turn this around. We will give these children a future. We will take away their guns and give them books. We will take away their despair and give them hope. We will rebuild the families and the neighborhoods and the communities. We won't make all the work that has gone on here benefit just a few. We will do it together by the grace of God. Thank you. [applause]

MR. MacNeil: We hear four reactions to the President's speech now. The Rev. James Forbes is the senior administrator at the Riverside Church, an interdenominational church in New York City. The Rev. Donald Sharp is pastor of the Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church in Chicago. Stanley Crouch is a writer. He's the author of Notes of a Hanging Judge, a collection of essays on the black experience in the United States. Robert Woodson is the president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprises, a Washington, D.C., organization that helps black small businesses. Let's start with you, Rev. Forbes. Do you agree with the President, that violence cannot, in the innercities can't be solved by government alone, that it needs the spiritual leadership in the first case of the audience he was addressing directly, black spiritual and religious leaders?

REV. FORBES: Yes, I do agree with the President completely. My agreement is double though. He attacked, he attacked the issue of drugs and crime and the role that people need to play. But he also indicated that there was the crisis of the spirit. And to say that in that magnificent, shrine where Dr. King gave his speech means that the President has linked spiritual revitalization, internal recovery of values, and also has linked that to the role that the government has to play. I think that his ability to look at what must be done on the outside and then focusing on what must be done by religious leaders is stirring up a new quality of commitment and values on the outside. I think that is a very significant thing for the President of our nation to say. And if he can call us to bring our spiritual resources along with governmental resources, perhaps he has just identified the magic of what will move us forward in these very, very distressing times.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Crouch, do you think the President is right in saying sometimes there are no answers from the outside in?

MR. CROUCH: Well, I mean, I don't think in a democracy there are ever answers that travel down one lane, but I do think this, that what he's talking about is not something that's very new. I mean, it seems to me that it's new coming from the Oval Office. But I recall very distinctly when I was on the road with Jesse Jackson in 1988 whenever he spoke about babies -- babies making babies, the, uh, crime in the streets, the fact that older people weren't able to go out of their houses after dark, and the fact that the possibility of civilized living had to be brought back to community, that's when he got his largest hands. So obviously this is something that people in black communities have been thinking about for a long time. I think that the biggest problem that the black communities have had is that crime and race have been so fused that it's worked in favor of criminals, so that people are afraid to attack crime in black communities because a number of people have claimed that black criminals are always victims, rather than people who perpetrate crimes upon members of the community who are the real victims. And I think that we are now moving away from that, and we are beginning to just recognize that somebody is a criminal first and has a racial identity second. And I think that that's what's going to benefit the communities most.

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Sharp in Chicago, how did understand the President's message, and did you agree with it?

REV. SHARP: Oh, I thought it was a nice, emotional message, but it was lacking, from my perspective, a cohesive plan to say let's go out and do something.

MR. MacNeil: What kind of a plan?

REV. SHARP: How are we going to deal with the issue? Where do the guns come from? Well, first of all, let me say this: Violence is not the issue. It's symptoms of the causes, and we've got to deal with the causes which are very much ingrained in our communities, and I would like to have heard him talk about a think tank group or getting us together to sit down and discuss it, and then come out of there with some kind of a plan that's going to be corrective in nature.

MR. MacNeil: Do you feel as a black minister yourself, living in such a community, that -- did the President touch you with a sense of your responsibility as a black leader to try and improve the situation?

REV. SHARP: Well, what he talked about is I live with that. I've buried young men in our community. I know the young men in our community who have guns. I know the young men in our community who have drugs. I talk with them, so he didn't cut any new ground as far as I'm concerned because I live in there every day.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Woodson, do you feel the President cut new ground?

MR. WOODSON: Well, I did in that the President talked forthrightly about the problems being internal. When some of us tried to talk about these things a decade ago we were called conservatives. In fact, discussion about innovative approaches that deal with internal solutions have been held being the civil rights dam, and anyone who dared broach this subject was criticized, and I think that the President has opened new ground. The primary problems confronting the black community are internal, and unless we return to the policies and return to the commitment that we had prior to the 60's, all of these problems that we're talking about today have not always existed in the black community. Prior to 1959, less than 9 percent of black women had children where the mother never married the father. So many of these problems have occurred precisely at a time when we've had greatest political participation, civil rights gains, and voter participation.

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Sharp, do you want to come back to Mr. Woodson on that?

REV. SHARP: Well, again, as I said, I don't feel as though the President covered any new ground. I feel like what he was doing was going over things that we who live in the community feel, we felt, we know what's going on. And what I did not hear is a plan to say how we're going to get out of this. This is how we're going to get out of this.

MR. MacNeil: Did you see that it was new, Rev. Forbes, that the President was saying to the black community, "You've got the responsibility to, to try and solve these things from the inside out because there are a lot of things government can't do?" In other words, Mr. Sharp said there wasn't a plan, and the President was saying, "The plan's got to be yours as much as government's."

REV. FORBES: No.

MR. MacNeil: You don't hear him saying that?

REV. FORBES: I didn't hear him saying that the plan had to be ours. I heard the President saying, I know I have a responsibility as the President and my administration and the government to work together, we have a responsibility, but we cannot achieve success in addressing these problems unless we are joined in a partnership with people who are giving attention to the internal factors which contribute to crime and drugs, that kind of thing. That's -- that is not the same tone I've heard before. Often I'veheard blaming victims without a sense of governmental responsibility.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with Mr. Woodson that, that these, these social ills as an internal problem have been a taboo subject?

REV. FORBES: I think that it has been a taboo subject when people simply said, you've got a problem on the inside, get your insides right, and everything is going to be okay. What was a problem with that analysis was that internal medicine always asks for the causes. And some of those causes may be based on purely internal matters but always the internal conditions reflect the culture, the social policies, economic and government response to the problems that these people face. So internal medicine never turns it back - - its back on the environmental context and the social, economic, and political policies which have led to the particular ills we are looking at.

MR. WOODSON: I think --

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Crouch first and then I'll come back to you, Mr. Woodson.

MR. CROUCH: Well, I think that what big Bob is saying is very - -

MR. MacNeil: Big Bob is Mr. Woodson.

MR. CROUCH: Yes -- is very important in this respect, because, you know, we have a lot of fairness and stuff that's going around about the black community, about becoming more African, or going back to Africa, or rediscovering some kind of African past. So what he is talking about is very profound, because if we could get back to just the nature of the Afro-American community of say 1955 in which you had complete support from the entire community across all classes of hard work on the parts of students in terms of education that discouraged teenage pregnancy, I mean, teenage pregnant girls were not accepted, it was not acceptable behavior, those girls became pariahs. They also looked upon that kind of behavior as injurious to their own futures. They saw that they were the ones left holding the bag and if that meant that they had to abstain from sex, they did. The people who were thugs were not celebrated in popular music like they are in rap videos and all of that. They were looked at as what they are, scum who impede the possibility of progress, of just normal life in the community. And I think that -- and the police were not looked upon in some -- as some bogeymen who are some say fascists occupying arms of the government.

MR. MacNeil: Even though at that time the black community was politically and, and otherwise repressed by the white community. You're talking about the '50s.

MR. CROUCH: Well, see --

MR. MacNeil: And which was still largely a segregated society.

MR. CROUCH: But see, repressed, see, repressed, I think is a loaded word. The point I'm making is, is that you could in most Afro-American communities in this country after dark, if you were 60 years old, go to the corner store without being terrified. Now people all across the country now talk about the fact that they're imprisoned in their homes after dark. And what I'm saying is, is if those people who are committing those crimes today were, were members of the Aryan brotherhood say, and they rode up and down the streets with, with nine millimeters and automatic, you know, and uzies, shooting hundreds of people, they would not be allowed to do that.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Woodson, want to come in? Then I'll come back.

MR. WOODSON: Yes, please. This is a very interesting discussion because when Rev. Calvin Butts in New York challenged these gangster rap music. The black ministers throughout the country didn't rally to his defense. The civil rights leaders didn't join him, and that's because Rev. Butts was acting in the tradition of King and being morally consistent. Someone once said that our children believe very little of what we say but everything of what we do. And some of the leadership, themselves, have indulged and supported irresponsible behavior on the part of their peers and political officials, condoning judges who are taking bribes, and when they are challenged saying that they were targeted by white people, for public officials indulging in personal indiscretions. This would have never been permitted during the civil rights days of Dr. King. Dr. King. was morally consistent, even when he was targeted for personal indiscretions, Dr. King refused to recruit the civil rights movement to defend against his own personal indiscretions. Today, our young people are seeing traditional leaders defending themselves under the cloak of civil rights, and therefore, creating a moral malaise, and so our young people are confused, and so part of the blame, part of the change that must occur, must occur internally, but some of the leadership has to take some responsibility for sending mixed signals. How can you tell a child not to take drugs when you can defend a political figure who is caught on television smoking drugs? I mean, these are the kind of issues we need to be discussing.

MR. MacNeil: Okay.

REV. SHARP: But I think one of the things that we have to deal with --

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Sharp.

REV. SHARP: I think one of the things that we have to deal with is that we're talking about in the '50s. The kids today really can't relate to the '50s and the '60s, what we talk about. This is a new age, a new time. We're talking about new values. We're going through a whole change right before our very eyes. We've got to do some remodeling. We've got to do some rethinking. We've got to look at some new, maybe even paradigms when we talk about --

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask you -- Rev. Sharp, excuse me interrupting you, but let me ask you what -- about what Mr. Crouch said. He said, for example, in the '50s that a girl who became pregnant as a teenager and who wasn't married would be ostracized within the community. Now what, what has created the big change today to answer Mr. Crouch's point?

REV. SHARP: I --

MR. MacNeil: You have to deal with these people all the time.

REV. SHARP: Sure. I have them in my church. I have young girls in my church who are not married, but yet, by the same token, they're not ostracized, but, again, we get into a moral issue that we talk about love and what love means and the significance of that. Simple ostracizement did not solve the problem in the '50s. It created even more problems.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Crouch.

MR. CROUCH: Well, I'm not sure that's true, Reverend. I'm saying that, that people were looked upon themselves as having a responsibility for how they conducted themselves, and the point I'm making is that over the last twenty-five or thirty years, everything has been blamed. Government's been blamed for it. The history of racism in the country has been blamed for it, but, in fact, in the middle '50s, Afro-American communities had as high a quality of civilized life in the western world as people anywhere in the western world. They may not have had all of the economic or racial benefits, but within their own communities, and we were all there. This is not a fantasy that I'm making up.

REV. SHARP: Yeah. But I lived in the '50s, and the difference was that we had a vision. We wanted to go somewhere. We knew where we wanted to go. Kids today don't have any sense of direction of where they want to go.

MR. WOODSON: But why don't they have that vision? White people are not responsible for giving us a vision. Also --

REV. SHARP: I didn't say that.

MR. WOODSON: Also, white people are not responsible for picking us up. A lot of the young people watch Malcolm X. Malcolm X changed. White people didn't change. And as a consequence, he was able to act as, as a true leader. He was faithful to his wife after he changed. He was a person who was morally consistent. And so -- but we do not have leaders willing to discuss these things today. Solutions --

REV. SHARP: Well, I differ with you on that.

MR. MacNeil: Well, let me go to Rev. Forbes here who's been trying to get in. I'll come back to you.

REV. FORBES: Let's get down to it. Mature leaders, if they're talking about addressing our problems, should not engage in simplistic analysis and also simplistic responses. If we have chaos and confusion and crime in our community, we have to adjust and address that. But there is no reason to say that there is only one cause and that there is only one element in the cure. We've got the problem. It has been related to personal and community and societal and government forces. So when we start talking serious addressing of problems, let's deal with the fact that there are some things church leaders can do and other things politicians can do, and some things the black community can do, and some things the white community can do, and other things that we can only do if we do it together. This problem is too serious to be talking about some kind of simplistic notion that only black folks can do it. Every element in our community has got to pull together if we expect to address the issues of drugs and crimes. And this simplistic notion between liberals and conservatives and their particular political ideologies, that is a distortion of the problem. It's -- it's a holistic problematic, and it's going to take a holistic spirituality. And I think Clinton at least joined it in such a way that we don't have to play that game anymore.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Crouch.

MR. CROUCH: Well, I, I think you're right. I mean, everything in America is connected. I mean, we're all connected. We're connected from the federal government down to the individual person on the street. But the point I'm trying to make is, is what was said earlier, is that, see, we had a very high level of civilization. This cannot be forgotten. This is not a fantasy about African kingdoms or something. This is a fact. This was something that was forged in American society, a real way of civilized living. Now, a lot of that had to do with the fact that people had very high expectations of everything they came in contact with. They had high expectations of their ministers. They had high expectations of their teachers. They had high expectations of students. They had high expectations of merchants. People didn't just accept third-rate performance.

MR. MacNeil: How do you -- okay -- going back --

MR. WOODSON: May I have just one comment here?

MR. MacNeil: Just a moment, Mr. Woodson. Let's bring this back to Mr. Clinton's speech. How do you restore that? How do you restore that now in a society where even in the most successful middle class African-American or white American there are a lot looser standards than there were in the 1950s about a lot of things, including unmarried women becoming pregnant?

MR. CROUCH: Well, I think one of the things is that, is that adults have to stop being intimidated by the fits of children. I mean, you know, when I was coming up, adults knew that they were right, and I mean, there are certain things that don't change. Murder was always bad. Irresponsible sexual behavior was always bad. Sale of drugs was always bad. Those things haven't changed. And what I'm saying is, is that we have tried -- we have not seen enough focus on really raising the quality of public education for these kids. They have to get a good education. They have got to have education in a safe environment. They've got to have a community that does not accept terrible behavior from them. And the thing is the only reason that there's so much stuff now is these kids are armed. They're just armed, so they can intimidate people.

REV. FORBES: Well, I think part of the problem is that we are living in an advanced stage of secularity where this belief in some transcendent power that led us to develop values, that belief has been significantly eroded, so that we in the religious community have a responsibility to help people to discover what is that that calls you to a higher standard other than your own self-interest or other than your own material gains. We have to move in that direction of restoring some sense of values which transcend, values which create communities, and values which also hold us to account for law and also for ways that do not yield to chaos and confusion.

MR. MacNeil: Rev. Sharp.

REV. SHARP: Well, I think one of the things we have to look at is that when we talk about values, the values, we're going to have to talk in terms of what does work mean. Let me give you an example. Our church is trying very hard to do affordable housing here in the city, not just for people who are in the street, but also to help our young people understand what it means to work, because of the fact that work again gives us a sense of dignity. Now we're having a very difficult time going through the process of getting money to do affordable housing. But yet, there - - I believe there are still a lot of young men who come to me telling me, "I want a job. I want to work, because that would give me a sense of dignity." But yet, by the same token, the system says something else. We're building more prisons and putting more of our young men in prison than we are creating jobs. So I think we've got to go back to talk about how do we develop some value systems which begins with a whole work ethic. We've got to deal with that.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Woodson, what kinds of things do you think the African-American community could do to make changes from the inside out, to use the President's phrase?

MR. WOODSON: Well, the first thing is we've got to avoid these generalities where you make the problem so large that it becomes somebody else. The first thing we can do is begin to stop studying our failure and begin to examine success. We need to look at low income neighborhoods and ask ourselves how and why are some families able to raise children who are not becoming pregnant, on drugs, and out of jail, and what is it that they are doing that serves as an antibody for everyone else. The second thing we can do is begin to take resources away from middle income interest groups, black and white, they have a proprietary interest in the perpetuation of poverty and give the lion's share of whatever money's available directly to these grassroots groups. The third thing we need to do is hold anyone in a position of leadership to a common moral standard, and we need to stop celebrating those or exempting those from responsibility because they happen to be well- educated and popular. In other words, leadership exist at the grassroots level, and we need to go back to identify who they are. They are the Tony Mackowaynes in Detroit, Michigan, who changed 1500 people, houses in her block and dramatically reduced crime, but because she doesn't have college education, she is not eligible to receive help, let alone support. So we really have to engage in a kind of, of a self-help effort that engages the black community to heal itself.

MR. MacNeil: Does that make sense to you?

REV. FORBES: It makes sense to begin with self-help efforts, but, remember, this speech took place in a church. That's where king left us. this society has to decide that for better or worse religious institutions can make a difference, and if we take seriously their effort to inculcate human values, courtesy, character-building activity, that's good. Also, athletes, people, am I a role model, not only athletes but entertainers, business people, everybody in this community has got to begin to take on the role. We are all role models, and we've got to take responsibility for our children, how are we joined with them? For an example, the Children's Defense Fund has a large gathering of people who are trying to say each one of us must lift some kid by a direct relationship of uplift.

MR. MacNeil: Obviously, gentlemen, we could carry on a very long time with this but I have to end it for this evening. Thank you all four. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the prime minister of Israel, and Jim Fisher on the Oregon Trail. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now a Newsmaker interview with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He's been in Washington for the past few days talking to President Clinton and other administration officials. This morning he talked with Margaret Warner. She asked him about Israel's goals in the talks with the PLO that resumed today in Cairo.

YITZHAK RABIN, Prime Minister, Israel: In the interim agreement that we signed with the PLO, the Palestinians, we have to try to create new realities in which there is a mixing of life of Palestinians and Israelis. It's not a division of lines. It's more a division of functions. Who will be responsible for what? In essence, the Palestinians will be in power for the first time in their history to run their own lives, but not in clear-cut, defined areas. Israel, at the same time, will remain responsible for the Israelis, the settlements, the Israelis that moved in the areas, through the Arab towns and villages. How to create this new reality, bearing in mind the backlog of suspicion, animosity, and even more so the fact that there are considerable elements among the Palestinians who in their opposition to the agreement are ready to carry out terrible, violent activities. And I'm not saying that on the Israeli side everybody supported it. We have our own opposition. Once they are provoked by such a nation, they react in a way that we have to control them, but I cannot deny that these kind of reactions take place. It makes reaching agreement complicated.

MS. WARNER: Yasser Arafat, the head of the PLO, did denounce the killing of the Israeli settler, the one blamed on members of Fatah, but according to a news report last night this group, which calls itself the Black 13th of September Group, vows more killings. Do you think there's anything Yasser Arafat can do to stop this?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: Well, I believe that the best way to do something that will reduce the tension is to move ahead in the negotiations to reach an agreement, and to start to implement it. At the present, I believe that Mr. Arafat has no powerwhatsoever over those who belong to the Hamas, the extreme Islamic movement, the Islamic Jihad, the ten rejectionist Palestinian organizations that their headquarters are in Damascus who came out publicly against the agreement, and they are calling for continuation of violence.

MS. WARNER: How about those who are members of Fatah, his wing of the PLO?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: On this issue we find him responsible not only to condemn, as he wrote in the letter to me that brought about the mutual recognition, he has to discipline them to the extent that he can do, but I believe at this stage the most important part is to reach the agreement and to try to implement it.

MS. WARNER: And do you think you'll make the December 13th deadline for reaching this?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: We will try our best. It depends on the negotiations of today and tomorrow in Cairo. We found that the big meetings under the coverage of all the media of the world did not help. I can't recall any breakthrough that brought about agreement between Arab country or Arab party and Israel unless it was done out of the limelight, out of the knowledge of the public and many governments.

MS. WARNER: Recent polls show that the Israeli public is no longer as supportive of this agreement as when you first signed it. Why do you think that is?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: Well, I believe that at the beginning such a breakthrough, historic breakthrough in the history, the long 100 years of bloodshed, violence between the Palestinians and us brought hope, maybe a euphoric hope, without realization how much it will be difficult to implement it. It doesn't come to me as a surprise. I knew that there would be difficulties. I knew that there would be many crises. I knew that there will be deep differences of the interpretation and the declaration of principles, but I believe at the same time, as I said on Friday here on the lawns of the White House, we have passed a point of no return on our way to reach that agreement.

MS. WARNER: Of course, the Syrians feel they are being left behind in all of this. You told President Clinton, I believe, in September that you were serious about pursuing peace with Syria but that you needed more time. How much time?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: Well, what I did say, and I say today, the most important element today if we want to move ahead with the peace process to negotiate agreements with other Arab partners is to prove that once agreement was reached it was not put aside.

MS. WARNER: So you're really saying then that the Gaza and Jericho part of the PLO agreement really has to be not just finalized but implemented, actually carried out on the ground, before you're really ready to move on with Syria?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: We are ready to continue negotiations. We expect from the Syrians also to show that they are interested in peace, not only to get back the Golan Heights, the people of Israel would like to see that the leadership of Syria really means change of the whole setup of relations. We don't expect President Assad to do what President Sadat did. When President Sadat came in November '77 to Israel, he convinced the people of Israel, here is a leader who wants peace, therefore, the terms for peace were far reaching on the part of Israel. President Assad has not done 1 percent of what President Sadat did to convince the people of Israel that he wants peace.

MS. WARNER: So what specifically should he do?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: I don't want to, to argue. We want to have peace with Syria. Peace with Egypt and peace with Syria change the strategic situation of Israel much more than with the Palestinians. With the Palestinians, it's political, psychological, but with Syria and Egypt, first with Egypt, then with Syria, it's a strategic change.

MS. WARNER: Now the foreign minister of Syria just on Friday said I think trying to send a signal to Israel that for Syria peace was a strategic option. What do you think he meant by that?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: I would say that we want peace with Syria as we want with Jordan and Lebanon. We want to continue with the Palestinians to focus on the implementation. I believe peace with Syria is strategic advantage to both of us.

MS. WARNER: And what has Syria's reaction been to your call for secret talks?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: So far, they answer no.

MS. WARNER: Let me ask you finally a little bit about your talks with the Jordanians. When would you expect to sign this understanding that you've been working on?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: I don't believe that I am in a position to set a date, and what will be achieved. We signed on the 14th of September an agreed agenda between Jordan and Israel here in Washington. I believe it can be pursued. The less it will be leaked, the less it will be publicized, as unfortunately happened lately, there will be a possibility to move ahead. How far will we be able to reach a peace treaty in the coming two or three months only the future will tell us. I would prefer not to repeat agreement of declaration of principles. I would prefer that the Arab countries to achieve the goal of the negotiations, and the goal with the three neighboring Arab countries, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, is to sign peace treaties.

MS. WARNER: Let me just close by asking you briefly about the Pollard case. You have asked President Clinton to reduce the sentence being served by Jonathan Pollard, an American citizen who spied for Israel on America. Why?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: I believe that we are in a period that, for example, because of the interim agreement with the Palestinians so far we released six to seven hundred prisoners. It might be that in the process we will release many, many. It's a time of reconciliation, a time of being more lenient to what happened under different circumstances, in this context of more reconciliation, reduction of tension in the region between countries, between superpowers of the past, time to be more lenient.

MS. WARNER: And can you guarantee to the American people that there are no other American citizens spying for Israel?

PRIME MINISTER RABIN: Well, the government of Israel then made it clear that even this case was a mistake by someone, but no doubt, no spies whatsoever.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you, very much Mr. Prime Minister. Thanks for being with us. ESSAY - END OF THE TRAIL

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Star remembers the 150th anniversary of the Oregon Trail.

JIM FISHER: Their faces, even after a century and a half, are arresting, unsmiling, frozen in front of the studio photographer's camera. Amelia Stewart Knight, Iowa; Tabitha Brown, Massachusetts; Rachel Joy Fisher Mills, Indiana. Sometime around the Civil War, the three women sat for their portraits, the camera giving no hint what they were, survivors of the long trek up the Oregon Trail, six months of dust and heat, endless horizons of desert and sagebrush, disease and death, and always the continual, often frantic search for good water, lifeblood of the trail. Now, in the fall, as the leaves turned and the weary immigrants came footsore and ragged to what seemedlike the greenest place in the world, there was water everywhere: cascading waterfalls, their mist adding to the perpetually fog-shrouded land; the Columbia River, broader, deeper, bluer, swifter, and, before dams made them calm, waters more treacherous than anything they'd seen since leaving the muddy Missouri in the spring; and scores of streams rushing pell mell along the small valleys, betwixt tall trees which grew where no trees were supposed to grow, where gloom now replaced the bright, sunlit land they had walked so long across. They were in Oregon, their destination, only 100 miles from the famed Willamette Valley, the land of milk and honey where two crops a year could be planted and 640 acres of land was free for the taking. There was a problem. They had to get around or over this, what we now call Mount Hood and the Cascade Range of Mountains. "Impassible," those already in Oregon said. A float down the Columbia River, despite its rapids and numerous drownings, was the only way to make the last leg to Willamette. Along came this man, Samuel Kimbrough Barlow, his countenance straight out of the Old Testament and a man with smoldering anger at the exorbitant rates boatmen were charging immigrants to get down the river. "God never made a mountain that had no place to go over or around it," declared Barlow, who then did a very American thing: He built the road that you can still see, a tunnel cut, slashed, and burned through what was thought to be an impenetrable tangle of forest, brush, and fallen logs. This trace through the pines named for its builder, old Sam Barlow, was the last lap. For the women, it was probably the hardest part. They had come so far, suffered so much, and now were so close. Accounts then tell of women looking at the fearsome hills ahead, sitting down beside the road, and weeping, but they went. The women always went. And unlike most of the men, they wrote down what they experienced in their diaries, journals, and letters, creating a legacy of this trail whose sesquicentennial is now ending. Eleanor Allen, writing in 1852:

WOMAN READING LETTER: "I've thought of home, the dear ones there, while we are among the cruel mountains, in the most dreary place, nearly out of provisions, and our stock famishing. All those things together almost shake the faith, but it must not be so."

JIM FISHER: And then there was this place, deceptively called Laurel Hill, about two thirds of the way along the Barlow Road. Imagine, tying a rope to the back of a wagon, snubbing it around a stout tree, and then inching the whole outfit down what essentially was a 60 degree incline, or cutting down a tree, tying it to the back of the wagon, and using it as a brake, and taking as long as 12 hours to descend a half a mile. This was not work for the fainthearted. There were few such on the trail. Rachel Joy Fisher Mills headed West with her husband in 1847. He died 900 miles out, and she continued on with her child. Tabitha Brown, a widow, loaded her children in a wagon and came without a man. She was later called "the mother of Oregon." Eventually, most made it to the Willamette, that valley that would hold their futures. But not all. There is this, halfway along the Barlow Road: a pile of stones that mark the grave of a pioneer woman, unknown, one who would never steel herself in front of a studio camera in her later years, yet one who would be cherished by sprays of flowers and rough sticks tied in the form of crosses, left by strangers even to this day. I'm Jim Fisher. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the major story of thisMonday, with the crucial vote just two days away, seven members of the House of Representatives declared their support for the NAFTA Treaty, while four others said they would oppose it. And the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that forces an unmarried minor to get parental permission for an abortion. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with our own congressional debate about NAFTA. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.