In Black America; The United States Commission on Civil Rights

thank you for your time. I'm John Hanson. Join me this week on In Black America when we focus on the United States Civil Rights Commission. The commission was set up by law in 1957, Dwight Eisenhower, Republican President, recommended it to the Congress, and its purpose was to go out and investigate the state of civil rights. Civil Rights Commission this week on In Black America. This is In Black America, Reflections of the Black Experience in American Society.

When I was on my way into the banquet hall here, a young reporter came up to me and said that she would like to interview me afterwards to discuss my past experiences as a member of the Commission on Civil Rights before I was fired. I said to her and I said to you now that, yes, of course, she could interview me, but reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated. Dr. Mary Francis Berry is a former Assistant Secretary for Education in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and currently a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Dr. Berry was this year's W.E.V. Du Bois Lecture Luncheon Speaker at the 11th Annual Conference of the National Association of Black Journalists. I'm John Hanson and this week the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights with Dr. Mary Francis Berry in Black America.

There was a majority on a Senate Committee voting to confirm a man whose opinions in the last 15 years display a cramped view of the responsibility of a Democratic government to remedy wrongs it helped to create and whose memory is constantly be followed by an inability to remember important events in his life and whose background is littered with unresolved inconsistencies that everyone is too polite to call last. Dr. Mary Francis Berry is an eloquent advocate of education. From April of 1977 to January of 1980, she headed the largest union of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Dr. Berry was the chief education official in the federal government, directing 4,200 persons in 5 divisions and controlling an annual budget of $12.8 million. Born on February 17, 1938, Dr. Berry attended Howard University where she received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and a master's degree in history. She received a doctoral degree in constitutional law from the University of Michigan in 1966 and a doctoral degree in law from the University of Michigan in 1970. An Asheville-born native has always wanted to be a scholar, a teacher, and do research. Prior to serving with AGW, Dr. Berry was chancellor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Provost Division of Behavior and Social Science at the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Berry is written and published three books. In April of 1980, President Jimmy Carter nominated her to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At the present time, she has a professor of history and law in the Department of History

at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The Commission was set up by law in 1957, Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican president recommended it to the Congress, and its purpose was to go out and investigate the state of civil rights. At first, it was mainly in the South because of segregation and Jim Crow and the problems that were there, and to make recommendations to the president and to the Congress about what laws needed to be passed and what should be done about alleviating the civil rights problems that had been called to the nation's attention in a way that they could not be ignored by the whole civil rights movement. And the Commission followed that mandate. It held hearings and sometimes under very difficult circumstances in which commissioners will run out of communities and so on. And then over the years, its mandate has been expanded. And the laws were finally passed, which it recommended. It was given the responsibility for monitoring. The enforcement of those laws bowled to federal agencies that had been set up, like the EEOC

and Civil Rights Division's Justice Department. The idea was the Commission would recommend, it would appraise laws and policies, it would monitor, and then finally its jurisdiction was expanded to include discrimination against women, against people because of their age, against people because of their religion and the like. And the idea is that the Commission is supposed to be on the cutting edge of recommending to the country what else it needs to do to resolve the issues of civil rights and to create real equal opportunity in our society. Since President Reagan became president, what has the or how has the Commission focused different from its original intention? Well, Mr. Reagan, unlike presidents before, took it upon himself to try to destroy the existing Commission and to replace its independent mission, it was an independent agency all of those years as a watchdog on civil rights, with people who would regard themselves as part of his administration and who would look at the policies of cutting back on civil rights in forcements, such as these school desirrigation, voting rights, affirmative action and the like.

And that these people would use the Commission as a public relations platform and device to go out and tell people that what Mr. Reagan is doing is correct. And that they would concoct studies and reports that would try to affirm that what Mr. Reagan wants to do was right and it would be sort of a mouthpiece for the administration as another public relations, I used to call it an out-house public relations operation for the White House. They got one over in the White House and that so the whole purpose was distorted. In doing this, he needed to get rid of people who are already there who wouldn't go along with that, which is why he tried to fire me and some other Commissioners and we had to sue him in court and win. And the Congress then reauthorized a Commission but there was a compromise made because the Republicans control the Senate and they let their president have a piece of the action so it were. So he ended up appointing a majority of the people to the Commission and the Commission had since that time contrary to its original purposes gone about not monitoring the federal agencies.

Having done one single report on monitoring any federal agency about anything is done on civil rights since they took over in 1984 was when the final takeover took place. In addition, major problems have existed according to General Accounting Office with the way my colleagues and the majority and their staff to rate have spent the money that is available to the Commission. So now what we have is sort of like an abomination caricature of what the Commission is supposed to do. And there are some people who still don't understand that they think, well, we got this Commission and why are people saying we shouldn't have, because they haven't followed what it's doing. And they don't understand why some people would want to get rid of it. And others say, well, even though it's that bad, we ought to keep it for a while until Reagan is out as president. But the controversy has come about because of its failure to adhere to its mission of recommending what should be done to finally create equality of opportunity and to get rid of the burden of race and disadvantage on the basis of discrimination in our society. We are the illegally harvested first fruits of this new nation.

As such, it is our duty as a race to strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity, to the realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development. So black journalists, I say to you, have a major role to play as Americans and as black people, give them the political and social arrangements in our country and the world. But I'm not stupid and I'm aware that the role that black journalists play requires repeated acts of immense courage that each and every day, the best black journalists in the mainstream media are not required merely to engage in whatever international warfare, professionals, reporters and editors engage in when deciding what to cover and how it should be covered. The best black journalists are required to put their special knowledge and insights and their perspectives up against the often shallow, deeply held convictions of their editors.

You can go ahead and applaud your editors not looking. And even if he is, oh, somebody said you want a bet. Okay, well, don't applaud. They are required to have a broader perspective and black journalists do have a broader perspective whether they use it or not. If the editors are not black, they lack the angle of vision, born of experience of which I speak. If they are black, they have it, but have often felt required to suppress it to advance in their profession. Those who engage in the courageous struggle to bring to bear as much of their precious truth, not just about the black community, but about issues in general with an added range of vision are often in an unappreciated battle. And there have been too few black journalists with the courage combined with prosoppressionalism exhibited by people like Roger Wilkins or Les Payne or Earl Carwell or Marilyn Mooray

or Sheila Rule or Carol Simpson or Duane Wickham. They have been too many of the few there are who attempt to advance their careers by showing contempt for the black community and catering to whatever political wins of the moment are extent at their place of work. Others when they get promoted and have some hiring authority show as much contempt for hiring and advancing other black folks as their counterparts do. Now when I talk about the black community, do not respond by asking just who is the black community. There is no black community, don't respond like that. We know who the black community is. If you do not know, read the Joint Center for Political Studies polls which show a remarkable consistency of views among black people wherever they live and of whatever class background. I will read your own stories about black people and who they vote for and who they vote

against. And that will give you some idea in case you don't know. But there are too few black and other minority journalists good are bad. In the print media, the American Society of Newspapers editor survey reported this year that only 6.3% of the 54,000 person newsroom workforce were minorities. The highest figure since the survey began in 1978 when the percentage was 3.95. But out this figure, the number of black journalists seems to be decreasing, although there are some increases among Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans very slightly indeed. In broadcasting in 1985, the professional category included 4.8% black males, 3.3% black females, and even fewer other minorities. In 1986, the percentage of minorities in newspaper management positions rose to 12% while among white employees 20% held supervisory positions.

What you can see is that these statistics indicate that we are still in difficult situation in terms of trying to increase the number of minority journals. In addition, very bothersome statistic, I looked at indicated that the numbers and percentages of black journalists and other broadcast professionals seems to be declining every year. As they are in other professions, newspapers are going down and they seem to be going down in all areas of the profession. Demography alone and what I mean by demography is how many people are born and how many still live and therefore they are going to get grown, population figures. If you look at demography, that alone informs us that the United States population is becoming increasingly black, Hispanic, and Asian and that these groups will have to be utilized increasingly in the workforce and therefore these figures I just gave you about decreases seem absolutely ridiculous and out of sync with what is occurring in our population. The other thing I've noticed and talking to some people who are in the media is that blacks

who are hired very often find themselves shoved off into what becomes a minority ghetto. There was a major newspaper that somewhere near where I live that recently did an internal survey. I'm not going to tell you all what it is. To find out why it was losing the black journalists it hired, they discovered that on their paper most blacks had somehow been shoved off into the corner of a weekly insert for one of their suburban's constituencies. I won't tell you all what paper that was. Some of y'all seem to know, unfortunately all that I have to say about professionalism with courage seems often to be upwardly mobile journalists, that is the buppy. Not to be the root for advancement today, assuming that black professionals have about the same skills as similarly educated and trained persons of other races, it is curious that the fastest rising blacks in some media outlets seem to be those who demonstrate professional ineptness while showing the most disrespect for the views of the black community and what

they produce. I'll give you an example. Reporters who could have saved us from the excesses of Clarence Pendleton and Linda Chavez and the destruction of the Civil Rights Commission would not. They took information about his finances and about her management and neglect of the Commission's statutory role from staff members who gave it to them because they were concerned and simply stowed it away and didn't use it. The one black reporter who investigated it could not get any other major journalists and print a broadcast to publicize the story and make further inquiries. It took a white journalist three years later covering the same ground and writing the same story to pursue it and it was finally covered by white journalists in the major days by then it was too late and the Commission was seriously threatened with defunding so that the Commission on Civil Rights and institution that has been so valuable in our civil rights history and so important to our advancement has been sullied and most journalists have

not even told people what happened, how it happened, even if too late to all those people out there who rely on them for the news. They are still, for example, erroneously stating in the stories I read and listen to that the dispute at the Commission on Civil Rights was about busing and affirmative action quotas. That's the first line of every study, every article I read, busing and affirmative action quotas, that's what the fight was about. When in point of fact the Commission's major disputes with President Reagan were about voting rights his opposition to the 1982 Voting Rights Act reauthorization, Bob Jones and the giving of the tax exemptions to schools that are racist and the gross city cases and secondly the Commission before Reagan never, never took a broad position approving rigid quotas for unqualified people, that never happened and also those of us who are still on the Commission and who battle with the Reagan administration before Pendleton never even issued a report on school desegregation with or without busing, none of that ever happened

but yet we still see these stories and we can tell the journalists as often as we want to what the issue is and we still get this. Now there are other issues today which test the courage and perception of black journalists. For example every time you report that someone said that sanctions in South Africa will hurt the very people we're trying to help, it seems to me that a responsible journalist and especially a black journalist should ask the person if this is true then why did all the front line states, why did the Mandela's, why did Tutu, why did Bosa, why did everybody accept Gautia Boussa-Lazy who is the Mousa-Wayri of the South African freedom struggle, support sanctions and if you don't know who Mousa-Wayri is I don't have time to tell you now but his name is spelled M-U-C-O-R-E-W-A look him up he was the Gautia Boussa-Lazy of the Zimbabwean people struggle and we who were involved in those struggles know this but you should at least ask those questions also every time you cover some black or white person

who argues itself help can solve all problems of black people and the government has little any responsibility of role or role you should know it is true that the focus on this issue has probably given a much needed dose of reality about options to some people but at the same time you should ask the person who's saying this why are you advancing this agenda at this time you should not also at least pay attention to the fact that most black people have at least two ideas in their heads at the same time I mean some black people have been known to have three ideas in their head at the same time I occasionally have three but on this subject most black people have at least two ideas in their heads at the same time first they understand that the government sanctioned and enforced their deprivation and has a role to play just as it does in the case of any other major social issue in remedy that situation they also understand secondly that the appropriate uses of self help and

the need for community solidarity are relevant as Du Bois reiterated those to us long ago but they understand something else too how hard it is to have either governmental responsibility or community solidarity given the negative forces of crime drugs violence and poverty in the environment of the majority of black people so black people kind of intelligent most of us anyway and a black journalist who's report seriously that someone said the civil rights movement is dead or the need for civil rights enforcement is over without talking to somebody including himself who will remind him of Ed Mies and Brad Reynolds and the tremendous victories by the NAACP legal defense fund in the Supreme Court in these major cases this year that the members had to pay for instead of the justice department anybody who reports that way without asking these questions lacks courage and the lack perception a black journalist for example who writes that the court of appeals denied

the legal defense fund stay in the Norfolk school deserigation case and busing therefore is wiped out down there without writing that the appeal is unresolved and it may be heard by the Supreme Court because there is a conflict in the circuits on the issue any journalist who does that does a disservice a black journalist lacks intestinal fortitude that means goods who writes about the democratic party or the republican party moving to the left or the right on civil rights and governmental responsibility for the poor without noting that the Reagan Knights have dominated the debate over this issue since 1981 and that they essentially lost the debate a black journalist who reports on the cultural deficits of poor black people I'm always seeing articles about the cultural deficits of poor black people in cities but a journalist who does that but fails to report at the same time about the deficiencies of education the drugs in the community and the lack of effective law enforcement is wouldn't hit it so is one who writes about female heads of households without noting that

this is not a new issue and has long been known to be affected by black male jobless nests when black journalists show the kind of professionalism encourage of which I speak editors and managers have a responsibility to they must understand that these people are not just good black journalists they're good journalists and should be permitted to bring their talents and insights to bear on covering any subject without restrictions black journalists should not have to choose between studiously covering no black subjects or covering only black subjects they should be able to do both as issues arise in the last few years the difficulties involved in increasing opportunities for black journalists have been compounded as another feels by a lack of sense of self and historical memory on the part of young black professionals

most of all most young black professionals don't know any history about anything not just black history any history at all I think everything happened yesterday and maybe white folks can afford that but we can't everything didn't happen yesterday everything has a history the civil rights movement made it possible for blacks and journalism in every field to gain the expanded opportunities of the 1960s and 1970s many of the people who are working today in journalism got their start that way because the civil rights movement and affirmative action which is for qualified people brought them into the journalism field but today many young blacks are afraid to be extensions of their history into the future and the carriers of a tradition in the newsroom increasingly there are black journalists who announce themselves among the ranks of black reganites who call themselves conservatives now so that they have no mistake I believe conservatives should have platforms they should be able to make

arguments they should not be muscled they should be given every form possible because I like to see people make fools of themselves in public but the phenomenon the phenomenon reminds me of an essay this phenomenon reminds me of an essay written by Kelly Miller Kelly Miller was an outstanding black mathematician and sociologist and longtime professor at Howard University in the 1890s let's say I got to do it any and he oh and he call he write the essay in his call radicals and conservatives this was in the 1890s and here's what he said Miller reported that when a distinguished European was informed that some American Negroes are radical and some conservatives he could not restrain his laughter the idea of conservative Negroes was more than his responsibilities could endure what on earth he exclaimed with astonishment have they to conserve don't they know he said according to a strict use of terms a conservative

is one who is satisfied with existing conditions and advocates their continuance while a radical clamors for amelioration of conditions through change and then in words that unfortunately resonate now as then Miller concluded no thoughtful Negro is satisfied with the present status of his race every consideration of enlightened self respect impels him to unremittingly protest albeit the manner of protestation may be mild or pronounced according to the dictates of prunes now I say to you this audience finally that people did not march and go to jail and die in the civil rights movement so that as a black journalist you could spend your time solely promoting your own career by any means necessary.

I remind you and don't forget this that the journalism profession is by and large not a career for old men and women and you will be a journalist for some of your life but you will be who you off all of your life to whom more is given more is required you can see yourself as an atomized rootless

individual without a past and concerned only with your own narrow present and future as a bridge from one generation to another transmitting a long memory and lessons learned about how to cope with oppression and opportunity good times and bad times and helping to prepare the way for a brighter future for us all you can add to the measure of your professionalism how much you are willing to stand up for justice and truth and even to suffer for it if suffering must come or you can discard such notions of responsibility as the silly sentimentalities of an incurably romantic visionary the choice is yours I can only hope you will make it wisely and well thank you very much you mentioned a lack of coverage on the civil rights commission how can the average citizen find out what's going on in commission without

reading a newspaper or looking at their local television well it's hard because if you read anything the commission put out they would tell you that everything was fine so that the only way you can know is to follow the media to talk to your local NACP other civil rights organization that puts out updates on what's going on there's an organization in Washington called leadership conference on civil rights which is on Massachusetts Avenue Northwest it puts out a newsletter and sends out information on any area of civil rights so from all of those sources it is possible as well as the House subcommittee on constitutional rights of the judiciary committee which is chaired by Congressman Don Edwards and those are places to get information from you're involved with the free South African movement that's coming on any rapid pace yes I am and have been involved with the free South African movement since we organized it on the night before Thanksgiving in 1984 we have been to jail and several times in the cause of freedom there we think we have helped to raise

the consciousness of the American people about apartheid and the fact that they don't like it and about what's going on in South Africa stimulate media interest in it which led to widespread coverage of it including such landmarks as when major television shows went to South Africa and came back to show what was going on and stimulated finally the Congress to pass sanctions legislation and the president last year to come up with a week executive order with sanctions and this year we hope that there will be a strong sanctions bill there's a lot more work to be done the free South African movement we'll have to continue it as well the students on the campuses who are involved in this movement and people out in every community until the black people in South Africa are able to participate politically and get their freedom but we've come a long way from a time when before the movement started and the night before Thanksgiving in 1984 when most people didn't even know what apartheid was at least now they know what it is and they know they don't like it. Dr. Mary Francis Berry professor of law and history at Howard University and a member

of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights if you have a comment or would like to purchase a cassette capitalist program write us the address is in black America longhorn radio network UT Austin Austin Texas 787-12 for in black America's technical producer Cliff Hargrove I'm John Hanson join us next week. You've been listening to in black America reflections of the black experience in American society in black America is produced and distributed by the Center for Telecommunication Services at UT Austin and does not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Texas at Austin for this station. This is the longhorn radio network.