Maynard Jackson Backed in
Construction Plan Bid
The Atlanta Constitution (Thursday, April 1, 1971)
Metro Atlanta builders and unions took a verbal pasting at a federal
hearing Wednesday and Vice Mayor Maynard Jackson drew unexpected support
in a try to head off a federally imposed labor integration plan. The
hearings resume today. Jackson was questioned by the hearing chairman, Nathaniel Pierson, an
official of U.S. Labor department, who asked if it is still possible to
come up with a voluntary integration plan for the Atlanta construction
industry.
"Maybe," answered Jackson. "We should make one more
try" for a "home town agreement" with a short time limit,
the vice mayor answered. Jackson was one of the catalysts of a year-long attempt to get a
local agreement on minority hiring and avoid the federal hearings which
began Wednesday. The federal panel is gathering evidence which could result in an
order to Atlanta contractors to integrate their work forces by specific
percentages. The order is enforceable against any contractor who does
any federally supported work. Similar orders have been issued in
Washington and Philadelphia.
The Atlanta talks broke down after the so-called Black Coalition
refused to negotiate further. The Labor department moved in. The Black Coalition walkout came after its leaders accused unions of
refusing to be specific in the negotiations, refusing to say how many
blacks each trade would hire. Jackson testified Wednesday that there are black people available to
fill construction jobs in Atlanta but they "do not believe that the
unions mean business and why engage in a futile act" of applying
for union membership.
Either the labor movement continues as "one of America's few
recourses for the disposed," he said, or "it will become an
absurd and hypocritical caricature of meandering meaninglessness." But the 30-day negotiations failed, Pierson said, and the Labor
department imposed an order which demanded some unions become 43 per
cent black by 1974.
Harry Bexley of the Atlanta electrical workers and George Peterson of
the Atlanta chapter of the National Electrical Contractors Association
testified their groups would like to resume talks on an Atlanta plan for
construction integration. Bexley's union, with 1,206 members, includes
six blacks and two Indians. Peterson said the 33 firms in his group,
with 80 per cent of the union construction payroll in 43 Georgia
counties, hires only members of Bexley's union.
Harold O. Gray, the only white official of the local roofers union,
testified that he would support any effort to hire more black workers.
He said his union is about 98 per cent black now. [ed. note: The
temperature of the kettle that melts the asphalt used for roofing must
be maintained at 500 degrees to keep the asphalt melted.]
The hearings started with a series of federal official testifying on
the integration of workers on federally funded projects in Metro
Atlanta. The agreed:
1. About 2 per cent of the work force is black.
2. The top-pay unions send few minority workers to the jobsites,
sometime none.
3. Union contractors are afraid to hire anybody not sent by the union
because the union would strike.
4. Non-union contractors don't hire any more blacks, in percentages
than union contractors.
the only exception was the Federal Highway Administration which said
its contractors were employing blacks at an 'acceptable level' except
for men provided by the electrical union. Only white electricians are on
the job, the road agency said.
5. When blacks are union members, they are in the low-paid
crafts—especially common laborers.
There are very few Atlanta blacks in high-paying construction jobs,
the federal government says. There are plenty of Atlanta blacks willing to work but the
construction unions won't let them, the state contends. We would be glad to hire more blacks, but the unions won't send them
to us and would strike if we went out and hired them, the contractors
say. There are 37 black men in the five top-paying construction trade
unions in Atlanta. The same unions have 3,993 white members. This
although one-third of metro Atlanta citizens are blacks and blacks are
in the majority in Atlanta.
* * *
* *
Not Gone
With the Wind Voices of Slavery—Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.—9 February 2003—Unchained Memories,
an HBO documentary that makes its debut tomorrow
night, provides a powerful answer to that question.
It gives us, through the faces and voices of
African-American actors, an introduction to a vast
undertaking that took place in the 1930's: the
collection and preservation of the testimonies of
thousands of aged former slaves in an archive known
as the Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal
Writers' Project. This archive unlocked the brutal
secrets of slavery by using the voices of average
slaves as the key, exposing the everyday life of the
slave community. Rosa Starke, a slave from South
Carolina, for example, told of how class divisions
among the slaves were quite pronounced:
''Dere was just
two classes to de white folks, buckra slave owners
and poor white folks dat didn't own no slaves. Dere
was more classes 'mongst de slaves. De fust class
was de house servants. Dese was de butler, de maids,
de nurses, chambermaids, and de cooks. De nex' class
was de carriage drivers and de gardeners, de
carpenters, de barber and de stable men. Then come
de nex' class, de wheelwright, wagoners, blacksmiths
and slave foremen. De nex' class I members was de
cow men and de niggers dat have care of de dogs. All
dese have good houses and never have to work hard or
git a beatin'. Then come de cradlers of de wheat, de
threshers and de millers of de corn and de wheat,
and de feeders of de cotton gin. De lowest class was
de common field niggers.''—NYTimes
* * *
* *
* * * * *
 |
Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
* * * * *
|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
 |
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 27
May 2012
