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NAACP newsletters, Fort Madison Branch, Fort Madison, Iowa, 1967
Page 007
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--7-- interpreted as intended, and not as the white press has chosen to distort it, the term Black Power has only meant an upgrading of the living level of the Negro in the mainstream of American life. Those involved in the fight for civil rights are growing in numbers... and contrary to the hope of racists, there is not the rift between the various groups whose efforts are concentrated in this area. The goals are the same... and so is the determination. "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make ourselves do the thing we have to do when it ought to be done, whether we like it or not" VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED... NOW... FOR THE COMMUNITY ACTION HEAD START PROGRAM: People to work in the Center Store (also clothes and other items which might be useful to sell) People to help in the classrooms Carpenters Plumbers There are many other items which are needed, also, and since this is a very worthwhile project, certainly the members of this community should make an all out effort to make sure that we are granted the necessary federal funds to keep it in this area. This can be done only if we give volunteer time as well as material contributions. This is another of the responsibilities of first-class citizenship .... let us do our part! Contact Mrs. Lois Fuertes - 372-3072 or call the Center for HEAD START 372-4471 "... The despair which spawns the violence of the American ghettos is nourished as much by the apathy of white society as by the abominable conditions of ghetto existence. The despair of urban Negro citizens is as profound as the apathy of white citizens is obstinate. No more appropriate symbols of the apathy of the American white establishment exist than in the ncumbent political administrations of principal Northern cities. Warned of impending trouble in Watts in the spring of 1965, Mayor Yorty of Los Angeles refused assistance from federal trouble shooters, which had been offered by representatives of the war on poverty. Mayor Daley, shortly before the first Chicago riot in 1964, publicly boasted that there were no ghettos in Chicago. In Boston a militant racist, Mrs. Louise Hicks, has fashioned a promising political career by her skillful manipulation of the apathy and latent racism of white parents, thereby entrenching her personal power in the school committee and evidencing her availability for the mayoralty office. ... If the promises of white people are regarded by Negro citizens as not only empty but perhaps calculated deceptions, and if the white mayors and other public representatives are thought to b somewhat shrewd, if not very subtle cynics, more than any other single thing it is the complacency of white society and the City Halls they still dominate which is responsible. For the secret premise, the hidden assumption, the unstated commitment , the unconscious sentiment of most earnest, well-intentioned, law-abiding church-going, peace-loving, 'moderate' white citizens is that the circumstances of life within the black ghettos should be improved, somehow, but that the ghettoization of society will indefinitely remain. Most white citizens are, as yet, not pathological in their attitudes toward Negroes. The are not vulgar and vicious racists, but they have been reared in an ethos of white supremacy for so long that ghettoization is assumed as normative. They have the idea that the racial unrest in society is due to an insufficient degree of white paternalism, not yet realizing that paternalism is itself a form of racism. What most whites who are not militant racists envision when they hear the words "integration" or "civil rights" is a time when a significant empirical betterment of places like Harlem and Woodlawn and Watts will have been achieved. They entertain images of black ghettos becoming decent and pleasant habitations. University of Iowa Libraries. Iowa Women's Archives
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--7-- interpreted as intended, and not as the white press has chosen to distort it, the term Black Power has only meant an upgrading of the living level of the Negro in the mainstream of American life. Those involved in the fight for civil rights are growing in numbers... and contrary to the hope of racists, there is not the rift between the various groups whose efforts are concentrated in this area. The goals are the same... and so is the determination. "Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make ourselves do the thing we have to do when it ought to be done, whether we like it or not" VOLUNTEERS ARE NEEDED... NOW... FOR THE COMMUNITY ACTION HEAD START PROGRAM: People to work in the Center Store (also clothes and other items which might be useful to sell) People to help in the classrooms Carpenters Plumbers There are many other items which are needed, also, and since this is a very worthwhile project, certainly the members of this community should make an all out effort to make sure that we are granted the necessary federal funds to keep it in this area. This can be done only if we give volunteer time as well as material contributions. This is another of the responsibilities of first-class citizenship .... let us do our part! Contact Mrs. Lois Fuertes - 372-3072 or call the Center for HEAD START 372-4471 "... The despair which spawns the violence of the American ghettos is nourished as much by the apathy of white society as by the abominable conditions of ghetto existence. The despair of urban Negro citizens is as profound as the apathy of white citizens is obstinate. No more appropriate symbols of the apathy of the American white establishment exist than in the ncumbent political administrations of principal Northern cities. Warned of impending trouble in Watts in the spring of 1965, Mayor Yorty of Los Angeles refused assistance from federal trouble shooters, which had been offered by representatives of the war on poverty. Mayor Daley, shortly before the first Chicago riot in 1964, publicly boasted that there were no ghettos in Chicago. In Boston a militant racist, Mrs. Louise Hicks, has fashioned a promising political career by her skillful manipulation of the apathy and latent racism of white parents, thereby entrenching her personal power in the school committee and evidencing her availability for the mayoralty office. ... If the promises of white people are regarded by Negro citizens as not only empty but perhaps calculated deceptions, and if the white mayors and other public representatives are thought to b somewhat shrewd, if not very subtle cynics, more than any other single thing it is the complacency of white society and the City Halls they still dominate which is responsible. For the secret premise, the hidden assumption, the unstated commitment , the unconscious sentiment of most earnest, well-intentioned, law-abiding church-going, peace-loving, 'moderate' white citizens is that the circumstances of life within the black ghettos should be improved, somehow, but that the ghettoization of society will indefinitely remain. Most white citizens are, as yet, not pathological in their attitudes toward Negroes. The are not vulgar and vicious racists, but they have been reared in an ethos of white supremacy for so long that ghettoization is assumed as normative. They have the idea that the racial unrest in society is due to an insufficient degree of white paternalism, not yet realizing that paternalism is itself a form of racism. What most whites who are not militant racists envision when they hear the words "integration" or "civil rights" is a time when a significant empirical betterment of places like Harlem and Woodlawn and Watts will have been achieved. They entertain images of black ghettos becoming decent and pleasant habitations. University of Iowa Libraries. Iowa Women's Archives
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