PROBLEM 7 7 LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION From Ralph McGill's column - Detroit News (October 15, 1962), a businessman from Vicksburg, Mississippi writes as follows: "I agree completely that Mississippi's present dilemma is largely due to lack of leadership."14 It is recommended that you read the article. The excellent series on "Negro Leadership in Detroit" written by William C. Matney of the Detroit News state serious facts that should point the way to a more cohesive togetherness. "Negro leadership in Detroit seems in perpetual flux."15 I believe in the indestructibility of matter, and therefore the continuity of life. It should then follow as the night the day that those of us in leadership positions have a deep responsibility and serious obligation to provide leadership activities and wholesome outlets for our children. Nothing just happens. Things are planned. We, I mean adults, and leadership agencies, both professional and volunteer, both church and service — must carry on leadership clinics and other planned programs to capture the talents of our young people. There is a serious need to develop two-way communication outlets between all leadership. But most importantly, this leadership must generate a climate of trust, respect, acceptance, and full support. It is out of this needed and great reservoir of leadership that our community efforts when crucial and critical problems arise can be directed and from which positive forces can be marshalled. There is another side of this coin, and it is so very important. The metropolitan press, and all news media should and must report what is happening to Negroes on a day-by-day basis, and not treat news about Negroes as "of special interest." There is enough happening in the so-called "Negro Community" to make daily news. I check the Women's Section, the Social Section, the Fraternal Section, the Church Section, the Health Section, the Business 13Welfare-Detroit (Department of Public Welfare, 1961 An nual Report Table page 12, Race and Citizenship). 14 Ralph McGill's Column, Detroit News, p. 16B (October 15, 1962). 15"Detroit Negro Leadership" Article III, p. 1, Detroit News (October 16, 1962 issue), by William C. Matney. and Financial Section yes even the Obituary Section of Sunday dailies and find them woefully void of news about Negroes who comprise 29.9% or 30% of our population. There is one question with one word: "Why?" When are we going to change to a more representative way of reporting the news about Negroes in our dailies? When this happens, and I believe it will, we will improve the image of Detroit's Negro faster than anything else. This is sorely needed if good will, genuine understanding, and better race relations are to grow to full maturity. That we may have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is truly our aim, our goal, and our hope. But that God will give us strong, courageous, secure, fearless, and able men in times like these, is my constant prayer. May I put it this way We need men who will think right and straight; say it to the point and on time, and do the job with deliberate speed. To bring about Equality of Opportunity for every American is our duty. We must help with all our hearts, and with all of our human resources. By: FRANCIS A. KORNEGAY 208 Mack Avenue Wash. Post - 5/28/63 It is a testimonial to the forthrightness and efficacy with which the Civil Rights Commission has carried forward its different mission that there are those on Capitol Hill who would like to demolish it. They would also, for the most part, like to demolish civil rights. The Commission has operated in this area as an indefatigable jogger of the national conscience and as a trail blazer for those who would completely eradicate from American life every form of discrimination based upon race or ancestry. The Commission's lease on life comes to an end' on September 30. It has been a short lease be cause Congress has been unwilling to grant it extensions for more than two years at a time since it was established in 1957. President Kennedy has now asked for an extension of at least four years. It is perfectly plain that the Commission will be needed for a great deal longer than this; it ought to be given permanent status to help it hold a staff together and do its work efficiently. Under extremely tough-minded and realistic Commissioners and a staff director, Berl Bernhard, of exceptional drive and devotion, the Civil Rights Commission has won the confidence of Negro leaders and has rendered invaluable public service in exposing the inequities to which Negroes are subjected. It has a vital job to perform in coordinating the civil rights efforts of all organizations, public and private, Federal and local, and in focusing attention on dangerous trouble spots. The most important work of this valuable agency lies ahead of it. GREENSBORO DAILY NEWS Published Every Day in the Year by Greensboro News Company Prolong The Civil Rights Commission As expected, the U. S. Civil Rights Commission's April suggestion that President Kennedy consider withholding federal funds from Mississippi is being turned, in a Senate subcommittee hearing, against the Commission's very life. The commission, established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, expires this fall. Hearings on a bill to prolong its life four years (S-1117) opened this week in Senator Ervin's subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thus a North Carolina senator is a leading player in the drama. The first day's hearings witnessed an exchange between Senator Ervin, who called the commission's, April proposal "so unwise that it is almost beyond comprehension," and Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, who heartily approved of economic penalties for Mississippi. Senator Ervin would abolish the commission; Senator Hart would savor its every whim, however misguided. We think both positions are extreme and mistaken. Senator Ervin is certainly correct in saying that the Civil Rights Commission blundered when it sought economic reprisals for Mississippi. But it does not follow that a single lapse of decorum is any reason for abolishing what the senator calls "a life already too long." Senator Ervin, indeed, knows that all government agencies blunder occasionally; he knows, also, that the punishment should fit the crime. And we hope he realizes that abolition of the commission is not a fitting punishment. After all, it is not as if the Civil Rights Commission could penalize a stubborn state on its own motion. It has the power of recommendation and report alone; and the Mississippi recommendation, as a matter of fact, got very short shrift from both Mr. Kennedy and the Justice Department. Against April's windmill-tipping blunder, which was politically, economically and morally unthinkable, one must balance the service the commission renders through its state advisory committees. These committees have conscientiously laid bare the failures of the laws to protect citizens equally. Notable in this respect is the work of the North Carolina advisory group under Greensboro's McNeill Smith, which the assistant U. S. attorney general recently designated the best in any of the 50 states. In North Carolina, of all places, the Civil Rights Commission cannot be thought of as a loathesome abstraction, working at great distance from local affairs. It should be seen merely as the national publicity agent of a network of intensely local bodies, which in turn work to reveal areas in which "equal protection of the laws" can be improved in and by the states themselves. It might be called, with no great stretch of the imagination, the best friend states' rights have. For it is showing those states which are open-minded enough to listen where they can themselves improve their administration of laws. If Senator Ervin and other Southerners in the Senate seize at straws to try to kill off the Civil Rights Commission, it will be a sad end to a good story. The good story is that states like North Carolina can and will take mature and searching looks at their own shortcomings in justice, and throw remedial light on those shortcomings. To tear down this apparatus when its work has barely begun will be a shortsighted confession that North Carolina (and the other Southern states) can't j stand the glare. We don't know about Mississippi and Alabama; but we know this is not true of North Carolina. Mercy, senatorial executioners. do N. Y. Times - 5/27/63 The Civil Rights Commission has served as "a national civil rights clearing house providing information, advice and technical assistance to. any requesting agency, private or public." The definition of its task is President Kennedy's. For more than five years the commission has fulfilled its statutory mandate: investigating deprivations of voting rights and denials of equal protection of the laws in education, employment, housing and the administration of justice. Now the Administration asks that the commission's life be extended four years. We agree with some Republicans who would make it a permanent agency. The Civil Rights Commission deserves a separate, and at least equal, standing in the Federal Government with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. One is engaged in major and continuing studies with valid powers of investigation and persuasion; the other is charged with enforcement of the law. Both can and should work hand-in-hand to carry out the decisions of the courts. Both are essential in the struggles-moral and legal-that still lie aheadin the field of civil rights. |