Black Journal; 12

The As Salaam Alaykum, John Bow, good evening brothers and sisters. I'm Lou House with William Grieves bringing you another edition of Black Journal. Tonight we're going to focus on the current unrest among black students in the South. We're also going to see what the situation at Cornell University looks like from the inside of that trouble institution.

We also have an interview with Clifford Alexander, former chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The modeling descent coming from the black community and the attempts of federal, state, and local government to deal with this ferment brings in to focus the fact that May 19th was the birthday of one of our greatest leaders, Malcolm X. Or out as for America, the words of Brother Malcolm are more significant now than ever before. His words are razor sharp in their accuracy. My purpose here is to remind the African heads of the state that there are 22 million of us in America who are also of African descent and to remind them also that we are the victims of America's colonialism or American imperialism and that our problem is not an American problem, it's a human problem. It's not a Negro problem, it's a problem of humanity, it's not a problem of civil rights but a problem of human rights. And what do you hope for from this conference? Well we hope to bring pressure upon them, well rather we hope to impress upon them the

importance of their bringing pressure and world opinion upon the United States, take some meaningful efforts to solve our problem in America. We want them to help us get our problem before the United Nations and charge America with violating our human rights in the same way that South Africa is charged with violating the human rights of our people in that area. And what sort of reaction have you been getting from the African leaders? Well I've gotten a good reaction, a very sympathetic reaction and an understanding reaction. Many of them have been misinformed by the American government in the thinking that black people in America don't identify with Africa and therefore they've restrained themselves from voicing their interests in our problem but I've been pressed upon them that our problem is their problem, as well as their problems our problem. Through continuous struggle, North America tempted to unify the civil rights movement with black nationalism.

He speaks to students in some Alabama a few weeks before his death. Now, if the federal government does not find it within its power and ability to investigate a criminal organization such as the Klan, then you and I are within our rights to wire Secretary General Uthau of the United Nations and charge the federal government in this country behind Lyndon B. Johnson with being a rediralic in its duty to protect the human rights of 22 million black people in this country and in their failures to protect our human rights, they are violating the United Nations child and they are not qualified to continue to sit in their international body and talk about what human rights should be done in other countries on this earth. I have to say this and I'll sit down back to slavery when black people like me talk to the slaves, they didn't kill them, they sent some old house negro along behind him to undo

what he said. You have to read the history of slavery to understand this, there were two kinds of Negroes that old house negroes and the field negroes. And the house negroes always looked out for his master. When the field negroes got too much out of line, he held him back in check, he put him back on the plantation. The house negroes could afford to do that because he lived better than the field negroes. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house, he lived better next to his master in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food as master ate and wore his same clothes and he could cough just like his master master. Good addiction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself, that's why he didn't want his master hurt. The master got sick, he said, what's the matter, boss, we sick, he lived in sick enough. When the master's house caught a fire, he'd try and put the fire out, he didn't want

his master's house burnt. He never wanted his master's property threatened him and he was more defensive of it than the master was. That was the house negroes, but then you had some field negroes who lived in the house, he had nothing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes, they ate the worst food, and they caught hell, they felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes they did. If the master got sick, they'd forget the master's eyes. If the master's house caught a fire, they'd free for a strong wind to come along. This is where the difference between the two, and today you still have house negroes and field negroes. I'm a field negro.

If I can't live in the house as a human being, I'm praying for a wind to come along. If the master won't treat me right and he's sick, I'll tell the doctor to go in the other direction. But if all of us are going to live as human beings as brothers, then I'm for a society of human beings that can practice brotherhood. If the boy sits down, I want to thank you for listening to me. I hope I haven't put anybody on the spot. I'm not intending to try and stir you up and make you do something that you wouldn't have done anyway. I pray that God will bless you and everything that you do. I pray that you will grow intellectually so that you can understand the problems of the world and where you fit into in that world picture.

And I pray that all of us fear that has ever been in your heart will be taken out. And when you look at that man, if you know he's nothing but a coward, you won't fear it. If he wasn't a coward, he wouldn't gain up on it. He wouldn't need to take it out of it. This is how they function. They function in miles. That's a coward. They put on a sheet for you all know who they are. That's a coward. The plan will come when that sheet will be ripped off. If the federal government doesn't take it off, we'll take it off. Thank you. Tom Jones, one of the leaders of a black student seizure of a campus building at Cornell, claimed the campus and surrounding community of Ithaca, New York, continues to be an armed camp and he cited what he called a dangerous polarization of racial attitudes. The spokesman for Cornell University's black liberation front, formerly known as the Afro-American Student Association, declared that black students aren't about to disarm.

The black students show arms followed a yet unexplained cross-burning incident on the lawn of a dormitory housing black women. The mass media in America continues its tradition of distorting information coming from black America. This was no more clearly emphasized than the headlines which screened black student stage arm takeover of Cornell University student union and armed rebels occupy Cornell University building. These and other headlines served only to cloud an issue that has been brewing for years at this troubled New York state campus. For an in-depth picture of this drama, which has not been too clearly understood, we asked Gloria Joseph's Cornell's assistant dean of students for her assessment of the events that led up to the conflict at Cornell. In the words of Ms. Joseph's read from a transcript of her interview by Gene Phillips, here is a look at the troubles of Cornell from the inside. A panty raid at Cornell University by White's was considered a springtime prank, a necessary

release for tensions, but the white faculty and administration should ask at Cornell what would have been the reaction to a panty raid in a white dorm by a group of black males. The white community must face the fact that negative responses to actions of black students is largely a reaction to their blackness. The phrases black pride and black power have become more than simple rhetoric for the black students. These words now serve as a springboard for the development of a serious black ideology and philosophy. They participated in programs that attempted to point out the indignities being forced upon them by an insensitive community.

Programs designed to enlighten the white's, whites with whom they lived. But during this period, they also worked jointly with many concerned white organizations and groups on campus. But these attempts were not encouraged by the faculty or the administration. Students speak of being together, which is a psychological thing. It's like knowing or being aware of the overwhelming obstacles that white society has placed in the path of the black man. It doesn't matter that these obstacles have been placed there knowingly or unknowingly, the fact is that they exist and must be removed. Cornell has had a history of growing racism.

The black students pointed out this racism and tried to bring about changes. In other words, the racism is there, but white society is now being confronted on this issue by the black students. The changes that the students demand may seem radical, but they only seem so because racism has been so extreme. The black liberation front, the former Afro-American society, are together group. They are seriously attempting to bring about necessary changes in the institution which they are attending. One must also remember that, to date, the black students have not participated in any violent activities. This most recent issue where everyone focused upon guns, guns, guns, the black students were not the initiators.

Any violence of sorts was in self-defense, defending themselves from the attacks of white fraternity males. Most of the problems that the blacks have with the administration and the university at large go back to the simple fact that the universities were not planned or constituted with blacks in mind. In general, both black and white Americans have tended to lump the wave of campus disruptions under one classification. There is a wide range of reaction to college protests that goes from outright condemnation to open admiration and indeed the range of motivations behind the demonstrations are equally as wide. There are, however, two basic types of emergent student movements. One type is white oriented, usually initiated by SDS, that students for democratic society and the other is black oriented, inspired by the needs of black people as analyzed by our black youth.

The trend of the black students on both black and white campuses is toward making the courses relate to the needs of everyday life. The students feel that by restructuring the curriculum in this way, they can learn something that will be of use to the community. In white institutions such as Duke University and Durham, North Carolina, this attempted restructuring took the form of black students demand for an Afro-American program, thus taking one step toward a relevant education. I'll be very brief from to the point, here I have two statements that will tell where we stand now. Number one, we demand that the project committed be abolished because they have demonstrated their ineffectiveness and unwillingness to develop a meaningful program and in the process

have indicated and unwillingness to have black students involved in the decision-making process. It can therefore serve no practical purposes. Number two, that a supervisory committee be selected immediately to be composed of five black students and five faculty members which will work out the specific details relating to the departmental structure of the African Afro-American Studies program. The supervisory committee should be charged with developing an independent budget and should determine the relevancy of curriculum and professors to the African Afro-American Studies program. If positive action is not taken on this request by Monday, we have no choice but to seek additional means of affecting the changes we seek at noon. In the early part of the second semester, the group seized the administration building in an attempt to force the administration out of its opposition to negotiate.

The student take over the building, result in a police occupation of the campus and when the crowd of supporters must disperse with tear gas, several onlookers were injured by a police action. No program or nothing would be complete with black people involved unless we heard from our outside educator. So now I give you our local outside educator, brother Howard Fuller. One of the driving forces behind the black student's actions was a former Duke teacher, Howard Fuller, who acted as advisor to the group. You're going to look tired of talking to people in loud tone so that we can be heard and

trying to really, in essence, pour our guts out to people. We've reached the point where we feel that we're going to express our thing to you and we want to express it in very serious ways so that tonight what our seek more than applause is listening power. All we're saying is that if black people are going to survive, then we must have a program that has, as it's rationale, the development of black people who will move so that other black people might survive within this society. This is why we have to have an African studies program. We have to have a de-uncle Talmizer and that is what an Afro studies program is going to be. You know, the way that, you know, brother Howard was doing his last night, I was sort

of like, you know, like a job to see. The same year is that any time anything is happening in North Carolina and like on the ball, where, you know, quite false good into this thing, about how happy people were, you know, before I came to think. So then, you know, it gets to be this outside, and that, you know, for one foot outside of the agitator, you know, everything, be alright. So, you know, J.I. was really sort of, you know, jabbing about, you know, about that. When they talk about making courses relevant, you know, to them, so they can take it back to the black community and that sort of thing you sort of interested in, that could you sort of... Yeah, see, I don't think, I don't think so much making courses relevant so you can take it to the black community. I think what it is, is redefining what a course is and redefining what a curriculum is. And see, the meaning of curriculum is like a way of life. So all I'm saying is that if you, you know, like, you're going to be going to an educational process, then that educational process has to relate to your way of life and as far as

black people are concerned, and that means not only do the courses have to deal with, you know, who we are and what we're about, but also how we're going to read ourselves or the oppressor. And so that the time between a course and the real world, you know, becomes more obvious. We're at one step in the development of the revolution and that step is one of the educational process of black students. So whereas we might not at this moment be attempting to destroy the university, you know, as a place to learn what we are trying to do is to use the university, any other university, to develop a revolutionary mind in the students who are there so that one day we may in fact come back and destroy the university. The person who's sitting over and which is supposed to be a black base to begin with, he has absolutely no excuse for remaining in the way. My real hopes are that the black students who are within his black university is like

in North Carolina, who will be able to get some courage from what those decisions are doing on the window. The students at predominantly black St. Augustine College and nearby Raleigh feel that a black university has more potential than a white one for providing the tools of change necessary for our growth. In contrast to the black students at Duke, whose issues and activities center around the campus, the St. Augustine students are trying a new approach to make the campus of service to the community. It seems as if the college was trying to set itself apart and they just didn't associate with the people in the community and we're trying to break it down now so that we can have a college community and outside community so we can ban. We felt that one way too close to that really is to have students going out into the community and showing the community that we don't think that we are better than them because we

are able to go to college and like the talent to attend, we feel that we can communicate with them and so by showing this, by bringing them into the campus and having classes on dancing or if we just have them here just to know that we are still human that we are. We feel still identified with our brothers and sisters. In an effort to relate more closely to the surrounding black community, St. Augustine activists have been signing up to the community brothers and sisters for a black history course given on the campus at night. Next door you go to, you might have to do some kind of taxes and change you, your way. The link up with the black community has a high priority in the student movement on black

campuses and going beyond the campus and trying to get a power base in the surrounding neighborhood. The concerned students at Shaw University are trying to build a unified front to take on important issues. Such an issue is the case of Marie Hill, a 17-year-old local sister accused of murdering a white store owner. She was tried and convicted within three months and the Shaw students have mobilized on this case. The sister was charged with defense in October of 1968, but in January of 1969 the first month this year she was already sentenced to death during the state's gas chamber and now she's still in prison here in Raleigh, North Carolina and know what we all mean, all the

facts of the case, we don't think of it as fairly as they should have been mainly because she was black and she's still in prison in a lot of the information and we found information that she was not the murderer of this white store owner. The students are raising money for an appeal through a series of soul sessions, a program of poetry, dancing and drumming. Their group, the black expressions make appearances at colleges all over North Carolina.

Through these soul sessions at different colleges, the Shaw students hope to spread the word about the Marie Hill case and raise the level of black awareness about their African heritage to the messages of their grums, songs and poems. Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, there goes a black role in his story, German face, man, I'm going natural, tomorrow, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up when he walks down, waking up, wake up, wake up, wakeep up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up,

wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, should be no need for in the dirty black curricula is the home school should be based on studies as far as black people are concerned to help them and you know like when we graduate we should be totally prepared to go out and it shouldn't be a thing where we should incorporate courses the home school should be black it's a thing of morals of values you see a Negro a Negro with white values is gonna be a Negro but a black man with black values is a man. Paul and Betty Walker instructors at Shaw University wonder whether black studies programs on white campuses will help or hinder the development of a strong black community oriented educational institutions. Understanding white institutions if you look at realistically since I think essentially education is sort of geared to sustain a culture and also to prepare and put one with tools to involve oneself in

a nation or a culture. It's not likely in my way of saying that institutions which have this cultural control its racist is going to in fact remove itself from its own racism. My conception of what a black university ultimately should be. I don't think it will evolve out of any of the present day structures. I'm hoping that the black thing does not evolve on the white campus but of course this gets back to how do you define a black thing. Of course all the campuses if it means putting money and getting teachers you know develop in a curriculum of course but if it means something more basic something a species of out of black people something more revolutionary than this. Know how it can't do it. Shaw could. Black students on white campuses such as those at Duke University had to ask themselves this

question. Can any white university nurtured in a racist culture create a program that truly speaks to the needs of black people. At Duke the answer was no. The demand for an African-American studies program was rejected. At a rally and the black community of Durham the students announced their future course of action. The Afro-Americans in Duke are faced with three alternatives as to our future course of action. Why we could remain here the second alternative is for us to destroy the place. The third alternative is for us to withdraw from Duke and refuse to legitimate time at a legitimate system. We have children that are alternative and we will continue our education by establishing an institution which will speak to the needs of students and especially black

students. In this way we will put it into the construction of our humanity. The black students that are withdrawn are also gone to go to school. Malcolm X liberation university is going to open next Monday. Go to open next Monday and it's going to be a university that's going to speak to the needs of black people and we got money and we got space and we ain't job. It's going to open on Monday. I've been asked in order to as I normally do in order to close my speech or few words. I'd like to once again talk to you as Frederick Douglass talk to you.

No more time ago. No lot of us didn't even know about Frederick Douglass. He didn't even know that he was around. He was around at the same time that Lincoln was around and he already said that Lincoln was smart because he are study by the laws at night. Well Frederick Douglass was smarter than that. He started doing the daytime when he had all that stuff like that. Frederick Douglass made it crystal clear that if there is no struggle there is no progress and all of us will profess the favor of freedom but yet the appreciate agitation of men who was the cross without power of the ground. We want the rain without the thunder and light. We want the ocean without the humble roar of its many wives. This struggle may be a more one or maybe a

visible one or maybe both a more elephant or one. People are pressed because they allowed themselves to be oppressed. The limit of silence are prescribed by the interns of those whom they are pressed. Power to the people. Out of the heart of the nation's black belt rang a promise to make America work and not too surprisingly the words of those of Charles Ebbers, faith Mississippi's new mayor. It's the first time in nearly a century that a black man is one control of a city in the Magnolia state and he's not alone. All

five of the towns all the men seats were won by blacks on the Ebbers slate. In 40 communities throughout the state 176 blacks urged on by Ebbers sought an our seeking public office and what some observers describe as the first major ballot box challenged by blacks since the reconstruction period. 48 year old Ebbers, the brother of the slain civil rights advocate Medga Ebbers is the field director of the Mississippi NAACP. The strike by 500 black non-professional hospital workers in Charleston, South Carolina has attracted the support of big names and national labor organizations. But Governor Robert E. McNair continues to hold out. McNair, who used National Guardsmen to keep tickets away from the two state hospitals affected, refused to budge on a state law which bans municipal unions. In addition to union recognition, the striking hospital workers, most of whom are women, are seeking a wage higher than

$1.30 an hour and better fringe benefits. Mrs. Coretta King, widow of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, called the Charleston strike a test of national concern. James Foreman, former head of SNCC, demanded $500 million in reparations from American synagogues and churches, in payment for exploitation of the nation's black people. Foreman further threatened to enforce his demand by disrupting white religious institutions nationwide. Acting on the heels of a student sitting supportive of the manifesto, New York's Union Theological Seminary, Board of Directors pledged to invest in black Harlem enterprises. Last month, Black Journal reported the clash between GOP Senator Everett M. Darksen and the then chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Clifford Alexander. Subsequently, pressured into resigning his chairmanship but remaining a member of the commission, Mr. Alexander, grand of black journal and exclusive interview. Participating in the

discussion were Robert Maynard, National Correspondent for the Washington Post and James Booker, a freelance writer and for 20 years the political correspondent for the New York Amsterdam News. Black Journal asked Mr. Alexander or Democrat why he had chosen to remain on the commission in the face of antagonistic pressure from the Republican administration. I think that at least to the time being that it is important that somebody speak out since not many people within this administration seem to be on the deprivations of blacks have across this country and specifically that blacks and other minorities have in the job field. There's been something of a reticence to speak out. I'm very proud of the criticism I receive in the Congress because I'm proud of where it comes from. It comes from the Darksens. It comes from the Thurmond. It comes from the Fannens. It comes from the voices of backwardness in this country and I am happy to be known by my enemies in this instance. Mr. Alexander, you've said that there's been a crippling lack of support in the

fight against job discrimination and you've said that there's an emerging pattern from this Nixon administration that will relax to enforcement for civil rights. Do you see the nation or the civil rights movement going backwards during this period or do you see any signs at all by the Nixon administration which show encouragement? I think what we've seen is a reaction on the part of the new administration when there has been criticism from many sources within and without of the black community that say you're not doing the kind of job here that you ought to be. What this administration must realize is that when it comes to discrimination in employment that's the law of the land just like it's illegal to rob someone of their wallet and it comes down to exactly the same thing. When you deprive a black man or a black woman of an ability to work or move ahead or earn what they are entitled to earn it's the same as taking the wallet from them and that law should be enforced just the way other laws are enforced. We saw a crippling

lack of support and more importantly because this administration has not forcefully spoken out from the top down on the issues of equal opportunity the business community and the labor community says well let's go on back to the 30s I don't even think it's back to the 50s let's go back to the 30s and play plantation with the black folks in this country and let's forget about those laws that we all struggle so hard to get past and it is that impression I would hope it was an unintentional impression that the administration gave but the intention is quite clear and it's that kind of impression that that has been left and the business community my people are telling me now are feeling a little more cavalier when our people come in to ask questions up. We are in a unique position to speak of the relative economic standing of black people in the American economy. We have heard over the last several years about advances in this area more Negroes making over $15,000 a year etcetera but is that an

absolute numbers or a percentage? Are you able to say that economically in say the period from 1954 to the present that black Americans have advanced have stayed still or have retrograde? Well I think the advancement did take place it took place and its minimal advancement from about 1962 to 1969 and that is of white income versus black overall income but here's what the advancement was it was for every hundred white dollars that was earned in 1952 blacks were earning about $54 in 1968 it was up to about $61 to $62 so that's absolute advancement but I'm sure none of us want to tell our children that all you are going to get is $60 on the dollar for work that's equivalent to what a white man is getting 100 cents on the dollar. I think also what is perhaps the most depressing statistic of all and it flies in the face of what the PR people in

the corporate community tell us is that the black college graduate over 25 years old today on the median earns $1,040 less than less than the white high school graduate and the black college graduate earns less than the white who has dropped out of high school now that's a very sad statistic they can tell us we ought to get educated and prepared to do all these fancy jobs to work technical equipment to work computers to work on Wall Street but the fact seemed to be that when we get prepared we don't get the same kind of pay that our white brothers do. You were speaking of the hearings in the Los Angeles community that is in Hollywood really what was the main finding that you will arrive at. Well concerning the movie industry specifically we had a finding that I think was important to those who are producers of films as well

as 33 craft unions and what we found was a systematic exclusion of Mexican Americans and blacks by what are called skilled rosters the technique was really a sort of a father and son one on the surface everything looks good but then you get to the questions that the unions use and you say on the question it says what is your father do and on the question here it says who referred you to the union and on the question here it says where were you born well none of that has an awful lot to do with running those cameras or holding lights or a sound mixing no one did some of the requirements that the union stuck in such as 2100 hours of experience to be the top grade of lamp operator when it takes only 1500 hours to be a jet pilot as an example but the effect of all this is in one of the 33 crafts where we had over a thousand employees not a single black and Mexican American so by the testimony that we got on the record the commission recommended unanimously that the Justice

Department Institute of Patent or practice suit against the unions now nothing was done about that until I resign I'm happy to say now that the Justice Department is out on the West Coast with our people who are relatively investigating the movie industry it would be my sincere hope from the record that we found that investigation would be followed by legal action are you saying that your resignation may have brought about this justice to the president well let us say that before that the investigation was not apparent to the naked eye after the resignation it was was clear that they didn't move action one of the points I made was and my statements concerning my resignation was that I felt that if in any way my presence on the commission if it's important that you don't have a black Democrat sitting as chairman then let me move out of the way if that'll help them to do some of the things they ought to be doing well perhaps it has I hope it will help them to move forward and

introduce some cease and desist legislation that maintains the right of private suit as well there are a number of things that need to be done whether it was me getting out of the way and not I don't know but the basic point is and the basic hope I have is that this will be one of several suits around the nation that ought to be filed the movie industry is particularly unique I think it's unique because it helps to to set an image around the country it's unique because the gross underutilization within the industry itself where you look to company after company and you didn't see a black official in manager where you saw just one company that had any significant number of white column black employees now again they tell the American people what us blacks have on our mind what our role in society is what the whole society's doing and they're incompetent to do it the way they employ it they also as we saw it at the commission when operating with the craft unions were excluding us

from jobs and there are 20,000 jobs in the Los Angeles area alone in this industry and of course many many more is as the movie industry gets more into television and gets more into into New York City and and other cities around the country I think it's most significant and I think that it replies not only to blacks but to to to Mexican Americans on the west coast and to Puerto Ricans and orientals on both coast what you're describing is essentially a very slow and arduous process is it possible that it's in the end fruitless effort and that the black official and government attempting to change public policy is running into a stone wall or situation like syciphas with the rock that comes down hills and often as it goes off is it in the end worth it all well I think this made out it's only going to be worth it all if individual sea results it has been worth it all in a sense to me it's been been personally worth a great deal to be of some little significance in

this it ain't worth it to somebody who isn't getting the opportunity right now and it's never gonna be until the institutions themselves stop enveloping themselves and racism now you know that the one thing one criticism might have and I know Mr. Booker worked on this commission but it really isn't a criticism of the current Commission discussion of the current Commission report was it talked about individual racism a lot and it didn't get down to institutions and what is built into the system and it didn't get down to the changes that need to be made in the banks of the society in the insurance companies in the movie industry in the networks and sector of ways you go down the unions in the companies what is important today is if you have a rule in a company that says the only way you can get employees is by reference of an employee that you presently have and all the employees you now have a white likelihood is that no matter how good quote unquote the top management is the

only people are going to be referred in for jobs or whites I think that the private sector in this country always talks about what it would like to do how it would like to move the society well it cannot just move the society by talking about hiring the hardcore unemployed whatever hardcore means what it's got to do is open up everything monetarily from top to bottom it's got to open up the entry-level job and after that it's got to promote people and after that it's got to bring people in at high management jobs and after that it's got to put people on boards of directors and it would take just one day for the banks in this city to get Puerto Ricans and put them on the boards of directors one single day that's all just go and pick some of the very quote unquote qualified people take one day for the insurance companies in this city to put blacks on the board that's all Mr. Alexander you've been concentrating on the private sector business you know charge is early this year discrimination US civil service commission we stated that only for 118 super grades it's grade 15 and above the black well I think the implication that we can draw

unfortunately is that the federal government has not been the model employer President Johnson was in a sense of model employer but he wasn't the federal government those people he appointed he had a high percentage of blacks about 9% of presidential appointees high-level jobs but the ones you talk of those that are the two million eight hundred thousand people who work in the federal government not a single super grade black four out of 115 and the 15 category black and as this under Nixon administration or we also under John most administrations both under both administrations it's been true that the civil service commission has had this responsibility after resigning his chairman I made the suggestion since no longer would near to my benefit that this power be transferred to the equivalent of an opportunity commission where the staff that I had 49% black we have several super grades who are black we have several that are Spanish certainly Americans as well as a commissioner I think a we also know an awful lot about what constitutes discrimination I

think it would be quite relevant for the president of the United States to transfer that power from the civil service commission to the equivalent of an opportunity commission or the justice department any place other than where it is now it's it's clear under two administrations that that commission has not only a commitment no commitment as far as hiring blacks is concerned but they throw a lot of roadblocks to the promotion of blacks they also throw up a lot of roadblocks to hiring and in test procedures and setting up tests that are not job related we run out to the the private sector and say you ought to re-examine your tests and either eliminate them or make them job related it is irrelevant for a chicken pluck at a tank a one to lick test and have an eighth grade education is one of our cases shows but in the federal government gives a test that may have no relation to jobs those of us who used to administer in the federal government had a hard time often promoting people because you had to meet certain civil service criteria that basically was oriented to an

Anglo world a world where certain kinds of degrees in a certain kind of aptitude to take a certain kind of written test was far more relevant than how you did a job now what is relevant in corporate America or in government America is how you do a job not how you score a test speaking with corporate community Mr. Alexander about a year ago January 1968 you conducted hearings here in the city of New York on discrimination in the white color industries what if any progress report has been made and what has been the result of those hearings that your commission has found well we have sent out Mr. Booker a number of questionnaires and asked people who came to the hearings and some who did not what have you done in the past year some examples are quite interesting and quite revealing and in one ad agency as an example the number of black officials and managers has gone from 12 to over 40 in a period of year and another company over 1,000 blacks have been employed in the ad agency

field one company that didn't have a single black employee is an official manager not a single Puerto Rican is official and manager still doesn't have any a year later now they're competing the same way that the one that has 40 does for black talent in in the city in Puerto Rican talent but they're not making any effort which I think if I can make a plug for the importance of enforcement legislation one of the awful things about our commission is that it was gutted when it was originally set up from the ability to issue system the system in other words to stop the companies that don't hire anybody from doing that we have to operate now on word-of-mouth on conciliation on talk and that should not be in in this day and age and what we ought to be able to do is issue system disorders against those companies that fail to go out and not do anything extra for the black community is off lot to talk about reverse discrimination and that we're gonna have to make up for lost time it isn't a question of that it's question of doing the same thing if you're living a

segregated neighborhood and you spend 11 o'clock on Sunday in the segregated church and all your friends are in segregated white country clubs then you're gonna recruit your white workers from all of those contacts what has to happen now in corporate America and in union America is to reach out to the black neighborhoods or to those integrated neighborhoods that they are and grab that talented black talent that's around grab that that isn't talented yet and train it thank you very much Mr. Alexander for pairing with us today on black journal thanks very much haven the clip at Alexander Affair forces black people to wander to an even greater degree if the law and order the administration has been touting will ever include justice for all in its definition blue well Bill and brothers and sisters some folks are wondering where we're heading and what we're doing there are no simple answers to questions about where we're at but I was born Smith the black writer and actors put these questions into portic form let's take

are you listening to the music I am are you looking at the children I am and I see some of them in the cities and some of the towns just doing things they seem to cry out help me help me help me help me and you know that times when we haven't really given a much too to work with I'm nobody I'm just somebody who's trying to be a man just like you trying to love a woman just like you trying to watch sons and daughters grow

just like you trying to understand the earth just like you trying to form just like you trying to build and live and smile and work just like you so as it is just like you I don't know very much but I do see and I do hear and I do listen to people just like you I love the land I live in just like you and I feel ancient and I live in just like you my nations made up of hills and valleys and mountains and gold and

silver trees and rivers and people black and red and brown and white and yellow but people just like you and I love order and with water I make law just like you I've been black I've been red I've been white I've been poor I've been rich I've been cold I've been hungry and I've been strong just like you and I'm old and young and beautiful and I love and I'm strong is like you and my daddy and my

momma and my brother and the sisters and her cousins are just like you hey partner are we gonna live in this land hey partner are we gonna build in this land are you going to you are who

my Littin'! Littin'! Littin'!

Littin'! Littin'! Littin'! Littin'! Are you listening to the music? I am. Littin'! That's Black Junele for this month, brothers and sisters. We'll be back next month at the same time with our anniversary show. As of June, Black Junele will have been on the air across the nation for one solid year. So until then, I'm Lou House of William Grease. We're both on the case. One goes to gay, y'all. This is N-E-T, the public television network.

I'll be showing that work.