New York Amsterdam News — 1963-00-00981

The Hot Foot You And The World The End Of The Diemocracy By MARCELLE FOUQUET It • N. Y AMSTERDAM NEWS, Sat, Nor. 10, IMS Amaierd C B. POWELL President tc Editor P. M. H. Sxvoav, Secy-Treat. - J. L. Hicks, Executive Editoi W. K. Beat. Ooapirattari K. A. Wan. Dtaptay AdvwU«M EMraatart ■r. City Editor; J?W WaSa. < Oava Published weekly by tne Powell-Savory OorporaUon at 3340 eighth Ave., N. Y. Telephone ACademy 3-7800. Brooklyn office, 1331 Bedford Avenue. Telephone Ulster 7-3300. Progress After many, many years of critical comment on the failure of American industry to provide equality of opportunity for Negroes in the mainstream of America, the AMSTERDAM NEWS would fail in its mission of presenting both sides of the story if it did not happily note the tremendous progress now being made by minority groups all over the nation. We have no intentions of failing in our mission. On the contrary’ It gives us a great deal of pleas­ ure now to report on the positive aspects of this sit­ uation where we once hammered away at the nega­ tive side of it. Something new is happening to the Negro in America. And what is happening to him offers not only a partial solution to the Negro’s greatest prob­ lem, but'it also provides a key to the solution of America’s greatest problem as well. For In spite of the Negro’s fight to be able to buy a cup of coffee wherever coffee is sold; In spite of his fight to be able to live in a hotel or a motel wherever he may travel; in spite of his fight to at­ tend, and be educated, in our great schools and universities — in spite of all this —this newspaper has long known that unless and until Negroes are able to earn the price of that cup of coffee, to be able to pay the check it those motels and hotels, to spend four years at Harvard studying during the day without working as a busboy half the night to pay his tuition — we have long known that the Negro could never really swim in the swift currents of Civic America until he Could stay afloat and tread water in Economic America. And this Is why we are so jubilant over this new birth of freedom in Industrial America. Once upon a time it was said that the Negro bought what he wanted and begged for what ho needed. Many enemies of the Negro used this catchy phrase to try to show that in the world of economics the Negro did not follow the same piths is other groups. In one respect this was true. The Negro has not generally followed other groups In the handling of his economic life. But any student of Negro affairs, as this news­ paper is proud to be, knows that this has been l fact, not because the Negro wanted to be different in his economic life, but because racial discrimina­ tion forced him to be so. Bom with the traditional American desire to enjoy all of the vicissitudes that this great country has to offer, but unable to actually partake of them because racial discrimination stultified his economic growth, the Negro more than anyone else, has been forced to become a “wheeler-and-dealer,” boldly asking for a whole loaf of bread on the one hand while being forced on the other hand to wonder whether he could make enough money to pay for it when and if it was sold to him. This is the position a race finds itself In when it faces the fact that it is the last to be hired and the first to be fired. And this is the hateful position which this new birth of freedom in America can abolish. We are proud to say that the lead is being taken Shggf Cleaning right hers in New York. Reports this week show that 115 of the nation’s top companies employing more than 5.5 million peo­ ple have enrolled under President Kennedy’s Vol­ untary Plans for Progress under which they have assured the President and the nation that they Will not discriminate against people in their hiring poli­ cies because of their race. The latest figures show that of 91,000 salaried jobs that opened up in these firms recently, 2,241 of these jobs were given to non-whites, representing an increase of 8.9 per cent of the jobs previously held by them. __ ' The plan is called “Plans for Progress” and w submit that it is definitely progressing. Actually the plan is nothing new. We had the blue print for such a plan under President Eisen­ hower which was headed by Vice-President Nixon. But President Kennedy and Vice-President John­ son who now head the committee, have taken the blue print off the drawing boards and boldly put it into the operation stage with the weight of their high 1 offices behind it. The result speaks for itself. We offer our warmest congratulations not only to the President and the Vice-President, but also to the 115 top business firms igho are cooperating with them. Sir: Although I am not Sow living in out area, lomehow i guess I just cas t forget the neighborhood completely. Your paper has always been able to keep the people thinking. 1 would like to ask you what can be done about the stre?t cleaning situation of lower Har­ lem? 1 am speaking of Eighth Avenue from 110th St. to 120th St Any morning early or even late at night the streets are a sight Where are those sweeper mschiaoa? If thdy ire eloaning that area once a day then they should be encouraged to sweep twice. When ears pass through this area rtally I am ashamed to call this a part of the city I know that I, moat of all an outsider, have no right to ques­ tion anyone on this subject, hut rtally It doesn't lettn as tlioulh anyone cares. Warren W. Johnson, 40 State 9t. North Babylon, L.I. Slate Povillion Sir: The newspaper article of Oct. S, IMS first lifted a corner of the curtain over the quality The plan is for progress and the progress is aad character of the work being toward a better America. Gall The unmitigated gall of the New York Uni­ versity educator in insisting that a 150,000 survey for the Board of Education be published with the word Negro uncapitalixed, and the acceptance of the report by the Board of Education is limply an­ other arrow pointing to the insensitivity of the ed­ ucators of this city toward the feelings of the Negro. There simply can be no excuse for allowing this men to get away with this insulting abuse and mis­ use of the taxpayers’ money. If he says tie didn’t know any better then we say he was incompetent to do the report lh the first place. If he says he deliberately ordered Negro spelled with a.small “n,” he is confessing to de­ liberately insulting Negroes. commissioned for the New York State Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. At a meeting of the Council of American Artiata Societies, with IS ohaptors all over tho country. so Oet. I, a resolution was passed to make known to all, the concern aad indignation felt by serioui artiata of both this «ate and the country, who be. lieve ia a creed of beauty, in­ tegrity and craftsmanship. How the mighty have fallen, when this splendid and largest par capita state ia ragmauted by huge absurdities.. .one of Mr. Johnson's performers tempered this mounting of the works to a "charm bracelet". The ‘Charms** to be idea will be 'a comic-strip redhead laughing her head off*, "a Times Square billboard", "smashed automobile Along This Way Tests For Our Children One of the toughest obstacles faced by the entire Negro com­ munity and especially by Negro children and young people has been the educational tost. Negro kids have been hounded out of school by , some of these tests and barred from continuing their education by other tests. They have been branded as morons or worse, relegated to -“ft- tarded” c 11 s fl e I, told they could not WHKiNi go to college, advised to abandon one goal and take up something else shunted hither and yon in the name of scientific selection. To these thousands of individual tragedies must be added the label­ ing of the whole race as inferior on the basis of the results of some tests given here and there, under God knows what circumstances, by testers who themselves should have been tested. This race label­ ing has been used, as everyone knows, to hamstring the entire race and damn it to second and third class citizenship. Now the ironic joke has come By ROY WILKINS out that Negro children are not the only ones who have been victimised. White parents art be­ ginning to discover and to protest on what a hundred different tests are doing to white boys and girls. All kinds of tests are involved: aptitude, personality, reading, col­ lage admissions, even sex. These are doing great harm to white boys and girls and, of course, have cast down and maimed many thousands of Negro children. One reading readiness test has not bean revised since 1942, yet it is widely used to determine whether a youngster is “ready” to begin learning to read. The popular Otis Self-Admini­ stering Tests on Mental Ability are used for grade placement In grade and high schools, yet they have not been revised since 1928. In that thirty-four year period many changes have taken place, populations and educational levels have shifted, yet the tests have remained the same. Another test widely used in the schools has just been revised after 19 years. Not only are the tests working against Negro children and smearing the whole Negro race. but the testers, many of whom lack the ability to interpret the answers, are aiding actively in the downgrading. High school graduates are being barred from college on the strength of tests. One of the great failures in the testing field has been in the mis­ taken use of tests with the nation’s deprived youth. Negro children, slum children of all races, Span­ ish-speaking children, and new white and Negro migrants from the South all bang their heads, their hearts and their hopes against tests that have no more relation to them than ice skating has to a walrus. We Negroes have been fighting rigged voting registrars, rigged employment offices, rigged real estate deals. Now come up the rigged educational tests that stake our children to the ground almost before they learn to stand up and walk and brand their elders as unfit to enjoy first class citizen­ ship. We are sure to win the big battle, but there is many a front facing many an enemy. We have to be concerned with wiping out head-whipping, but we must not neglect stamping out head-poison­ ing. Pulse Of New- York’s Public The Amsterdam News welcomes letters on either tide of any subject. It it preferred that letters not exceed 2M words and then must be signed. Names wM be withhold OS requ««t. No letters can be returned. Alt must be addressed to the Editor. ’ Drug Addiction parts;, "the W most wanted proftlt Wlgg’ men,* a green parachute*, "fragments of blown-up photo­ graphs of the Sisteen Chapel," "plaster reproductions of bal­ loons". "a bald eagle", "the Statue of Liberty," and "a group of formal black tuxedos made hard with resin" All these bur lcsquea on art must mean some­ thing neurotic; and the last group of fossilised clothing clutching at a horizontal ladder (imagin­ atively) could even have political interpretations. Sir: My hat is off to the,Com­ Sir; It has recently come to mittee for Racial Pride for regis­ my attention that a supposed new tering their protest against Ne­ breakthrough for the treatment groes who squander their hard- of narcotics addicts on an am­ earned money on such stupidities bulatory basis has been proposed as wigs and conked heads Con­ by the Queens District Attorney sidering that la excess of 170 mil and one of his colleagues. This is lion was spent in Harlem lastfnot a new breakthrough. This is y» ar for such purposes as groom log hair, their people should Be Commended, not condemned ancient history. It was tried beck in the IMO's and proved to be a dismal failure. In the pace of today's lawless­ ness and lack of discipline in every phase of life, together with table Justifications for every misdemeanor, we are striving to preserve our Amer­ ican heritage in the noblest sense of that word and protest most emphatically against depicting the people and the state in which we live as neurotic and ridicul­ ous. it is impossible to revere what we laugh at In derision and many people at the fair, our children, our visitors from abroad, will all laugh at these symbols of American creative art and equate them as the stand­ ard of art for all people of the state. FRANK 3. REILLY, President. Council of American Artist Societies Secondly. 1 shall attend the Na tkmallats meeting Sunday with a proposal (hat they consider a picket line at the Amsterdam News for permitting one of their reporters to attack the Commit­ tee for Racial Pride for their position against uascruputo js merchants In Hartem The time for mongrel-minded quedrooms and octoroons mak­ ing decisions and influencing black men thoughts Is over. A picket line will clearly show this. A Black Nationalist New York Owgtf Sir: With regard to "The ne­ gro versus Negro" issue, we have Harry Goldwater In "The Con- science of a Conservative" on page 30, discussing "negro chil­ dren". Timothy J. Cooney Director of Public Relations Department of Labor N Y. A program such as advanced by these gentlemen, both non­ medical authorities, would I feel throw this problem of drug ad­ diction beck another hundred years end would be an admission th< part of organ- lied medicine of its it eptnees at handling the situation. Thia, I emphatically state, is not our po­ sition. 1 conduct a narcotics clinic on an ambulatory basis at night from 3:00 PM until 3:00 or 4:00 AM and even on Saturdays and Sundays, If necessary, supplying with treatment and medication in­ cluding vitamins and visits free. This la done without uaing nar­ cotics and I have had some en ceu raging success in getting some of the boys end girls off the drug completely end back Into the com munity working on a Jet. On a CM radio Interview, 1 publicly asked the District At­ torney to enter a panel discus­ sion with me concerning narco­ tics addiction and. to this date, have not received a reply, Two men died. One hesitates to put all the blame on their failure as rulers. After all it is a question of the fate of two individual! rather than a regime that they inspired, symbolized and directed. It was an inefficient oli­ garchic system widely separated from the people they pretended to represent. It has survived many political mistakes, but finally destroyed itself by crashing headlong against a moral force, Budd­ hism. Amsterdam The Diem regime in Vietnam com­ mitted a sort of suicide. NF.WS When one tries to analyze the reas­ ons for the debacle of this dynasty, one must search them beyond the in­ tellectual mediocrity of the President, or his brother’s remarkable intelligence which five years of power poisoned with, cynicism. Not even the abuses of the arbitrary police machine can be in­ voked as the fundamental cause, and certainly not corruption which has never been the main character­ istic of the Ngo family. More than all that, the failure of the regime is due to a series of errors of orientation and under­ standing of the aspirations of the Vietnamese people. The big idea of the family was the creation of “strategic hamlets” in 1961. The rural population was moved into fortified villages to cut off the Com­ munist rebels from their rural support. By doing this, Mr. Nhu and his supporters were actually undermining the vary foundations of the Vietnamese society which ia attached to its ancestral traditions. The old tropical shacks had been the center of everything, and the realization of the "Harmony” which every member of Confucian so­ ciety holds as essential. Mr. Nhu upset that unity, and stimulated hatreds and the bitter resentment of the small rice planters and farmers against the ruling family. On the other hand, these frustrated peasants never regarded the Communist rebels as enemies, but rather as danger­ ous brothers. Apparently, the conflict between the Catholics and non-Cathalics remains the fatal issue. As Mr. Paul Mus, an expert on Vietnamese questions ob­ served, to be a Catholic in South Vietnam where the greatest tolerance prevails is not a problem. However, to practice a Catholic policy reduced to an obstinate anticommunism was to generate an impossible situation, especially since the majority of the people feel that they differ from the Catholic element, whose religion comes from the outside, and therefore is a bit suspect. Not Religious War The Ngo clan amplified the permanent risks of their Catholic policy by mixing elements of the Christian doctrine with a kind of Fascist program and organizations such as . Can Lao, a party both unique and secret. Hence the conflict between the government and Buddhism that became finally de­ cisive. As has often been said, the real issue has never been a religious war between a Catholic minority and a Buddhist majority. It remained a rivalry between the politico-military power and the Buddhist hier­ archy. More than anything else, the self-immolations of the eight monks ruined the power of the Ngos, be­ cause they horrified the entire world and particular­ ly the American public. As Washington had been searching for a long time for a divorce from the Diem regime because of Its inefficiency in the Communist war, it could not find a better reason than these holocausts that mo­ bilized American sensibilities from the women’s dubs to the fraternal organizations. No matter to what extent the United States Gov­ ernment became involved in the agony of the regime, the Ngo Government rested solely on American crutches. It crumbled as soon as they were removed. ** Now It is difficult to believe that the prestige of the United States has fallen into better hands. There Is, In fact, no alternative to a reunified Vietnam. It is reported that Mr. Nhu, who realized that he had no choice, was trying to make a deal with Hanoi. On the other hand, North Vietnam is presently the most Isolated country In the world, as well as one of the poorest. Its viability depends on the good will 1 of Red China. And Ho Chi Minh has no desire to prolong in--** definitely the sponsorship of the Chinese who had r previously, for twenty centuries, occupied Vietnam, e The conclusion is easy to draw when one cnnsld- r •rs the unwelcome presence in South Vietnam of the United States, and the equally undesirable influence / of the Chineae In North Vietnam. Tha end of the- “Dlemo$raey” will not bring any naw vigor into thr fight againat tha Communist!. InsUad, It might stlm- ulaU a ra-thinking of tha situation through which a reunification of the two parU of Vietnam could ba accomplished. ■ - . —....."1 1 ’fr* 11 6 Mnt, 4.00 II America's Largest Weekly" MW YO0K AMSTUDAM NIWS 2340 II0HTH AVL, MW TOM 27, N. Y. A Tel. AC 2-7S00 Hi AHOVI " PUAM INTO MY IVMCSIPTION TO TM H.Y. AMimDAM MWI POO tily ----- ttets (NIC*, 00 ill. MOMIY OOOCR ONlY of narcotics would not bo wel­ come because It would ba detri­ mental to the function of his or­ ganisation In other words, bo la willing to forage the health of anywhere from forty to fifty thousand addicts with Its impli­ cations upon tha community foi his own beneficial gains as chair­ man of an orgMisad machine Such political leadership New York City certainly cae'dispense with. We truly need dedicated men. f am rather dismayed at some of the political overtones in the recent publicity about the "new approach" to drug addiction since electiea . time is only weeks away, As chairman of the organi­ zation he heads, he will be having a dinner which falls two weeks before election. It seems to me a shame that the misfortune of hapless addicts must be used as stepping stones for political fains. Another interesting fact came about dui ing a meeting regarding the role of the doctor in politics. The comment was made that not I hope perhapa your paper caa enough doctors enter into poli­ be instrumental in bringing forth tics Howovor. when aid was ot­ enough enthusiasm for the dis­ tered to the chairman of the cussion of this problem of drug Democratic party of New York, addiction and Its possible solu­ ho said that help coming from tion Perhapa ytur readers will I a doctor like myself in the field demand a public forum, televi­ sion appearance, or whatever. I have had the got/d fortune to come In contact with some lead­ ers in our society who hove boon kind enough to help mo la an effort to get a program together. After running this narcotic* pro­ gram for years at night, it has gone beyond my capacity to han­ dle it aloae and the heartbreaks ! must turn down every night rests heavily with me.. Let us not go from narcotics to more narcotic* addicts. Lot us pre­ serve what moral fibre our American youth has now rather than destrap it completely Robert W. Baird. M.D Chairman. HAVEN FUND (Help Addicts Voluntarily End Narcotics) Untitled Document file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Administrator/Desktop/hello.html2/18/2007 11:01:03 AMThomas M. Tryniski 309 South 4th Street Fulton New York 13069 www.fultonhistory.com