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UD 013 834
Good, Paul
Cairo, Illinois: Racism at Floodtide. Clearinghouse
Publication Number 44.
Commission on Civil Rights, Washington, C.C.
Oct 73
85p.

MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29
*City Problems; Civil Rights; Economic Opportunities;
*Employment Opportunities; Ghettos; Government
Employees; *Housing Opportunities; Income; Inner
City; Public Housing; Race Relations; *Racial
Discrimination; Racial Segregation; *Racism
Cairo; Illinois

ABSTRACT

This publication largely is based upon the testimony
given at the hearing held by the Commission on Civil Rights in Cairo,
Illinois, in March 1972. Half of the families in the Cairo area have
poverty incomes, according to federal standards. Unemployment at 9
percent is nearly double the national averaae. About a third of the
city--county population gets some kind of public assistance. More
than one half of Cairo's dwellings are classified as deteriorating or
dilapidated. How did Cairo get that way? Certainly uncontrollable
economic developments contributed to the material decline. But
disastrous race relations have blighted human resources essential to
progress. Testimony before the Commission show that over the decades,
blacks have comprised roughly 30 percent of the county and 40 percent
of the city population. But no black had ever served on the county
Housing Authority, the Cairo Public Utility Commission, Building
Commission or Library Board. There were blacks in city cffice jobs.
Admittedly, many American "people" are borad with race as a topic.
But what color are these "people?" In Cairo, is their median family
income 6400 dollars (white) or 2800 dollars (black)? Do they live in
big-city ghettoes where jobs are always in short supply but drugs are
plentiful? Do residents of Cairo's segregated public housing feel
that the topic of racism has been exhausted? And the imposing body of
civil rights law, how well does it work to change the quality of
lives. These are some of the questions that brought the Commission to
Cairo. (Author/JM)

 0111110,1

I

J.S. Commission on Civil Rights

I

RACISM AT FLOODTIDE
by Paul Good October 1973
Clearinghouse Publication No. 4.4

U S DEPARTMEN F OF HEALTH
EbUCAI ION A NELF ARE
NATIONAL INS ITUTE OF
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FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY

 t..I,S. COMMISSION. ON CIVIL RIGEITO

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is a temporary,-ipclependent,
bipartisan Agency established by Congress in 1957 and directed to
Investigate complaints alleging that citizens are being deprived
of thtir right to vote by reason of their race, color,: religion, sex
or national ori&in, of by reason of fraudulent practices;
,
Study and collect information concerning legal developments con.
stituting a denial of equal protection of the laws under the
Constitution;
4ppraise Federal lawsc an4 polipie$ wit respect to equal protection
of the laws;
serve as a national' clearinghouse for information in respect to
denials of equal protection of the laws; and
Submit reports; finding, and recommendations to the President and
the Congress.
Members of the Commission:
Stephen Horn, Vice Chairman
Frankie M. Freezanan
Maurice B. Mitchell
Robert S. Rankin
Maduel kluiz., Jr.John A. Buggs, Staff Director

 TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 PREFACE
2 INTRODUCTION
11 HISTORY
.

15

I.

IL

Prelude to Confrontation
The Battle is Joined

.

24 PREAMBLE: "WE HAVE COME TO CAl130
26. LAW AND ORDER
37 IN CAMELOT
49 SOME PAINFUL REALITIES
56 THE. HOUSES OF CAIRO
65 "IF WE COULD WORK TOGETHER .
75 PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
75
I.
.. A Hearing Ends
II. ... The Life of a City, A Nation
66
Continues

 1

PREFACE
This publication largely is based upon the testimony given at the hearing held by the U.S. Commis-

sion on Civil Rights in Cairo, Illinois, in Ma :ch,
1972.

The report includes other material from historical
sources, contemporary news accounts, the files of the
Commission, and personal interviews conducted by
the author. While all quoted material from the hear-

ing transcript was produced under oath, quotations
and other accounts from books and newspapers or
from interviews are not part of the official record of
the Commission.

This report was written by Paul Good, author and

journalist, who has covered civil rights news for
many years. The views of Mr. Good are not necessarily those of the Commission.
It has been said that Cairo is unique, and so it is,
as every community is unique. But Cairo's problems
are not uniqueonly their configuration. The report
is published in the belief that opening windows and
letting in light and fresh air may help the citizens,
community leaders and public officials of Cairo, Illinois and of other "Cairos" move ahead on an agenda

leading to a more democratic society, one more
closely fulfilling the American promise.

 2

INTRODUCTION
This is about a small American city named Cairo
that raises large American questions. The city occupies the southernmost tip of Illinois, thrusting a
northern root deep into the South at a point where

the nation's two greatest rivers and its two most
turbulent streams of history merge. The Ohio and
Mississippi Rivers meet not far from Cairo's main
street which is more southerly than Richmond, Virginia, their waters bonding into one indivisible feature of the American landscape. But the merging
streams of history are not so compatible. From the
South of slavery, Cairo has inherited racial attitudes

that are alienin theory, at leastto the free State
of Illinois that nurtured Abraham Lincoln.
These incompatible elements of racism and constitutional democracy for decades have created individ-

ual grief and social turmoil in the United States
and in this mid-century they produced the modern
civil rights Movement. During the late 1960's and
into the 1970's the Movement contended in the
streets of Cairo with white forces seeking to maintain

a racial status quo that blacks rejected. The violent
drama that ensued seemed to follow a dog-eared
script from an American morality play that by then
had been witnessed in Birmingham in 1963, St. Augustine in

1964,

Selma in

1965.

.

.

But long after the evangelical Movement parade

had gone by in most of the South, long after the
drums were muffled and brave choruses of "We
Shall Overcome" no longer echoed as people moved
on to political consolidation of gains won by spirit,
rights i i Cairo remained inchoate. Blacks
marched, boycotted and fought pitched battles with

civil

white vigilantes, and the city experienced a long
night of shooting, burning and disorder unmatched in
its duration anywhere else in the country. That night
stilLhas not ended. Newspaper headlines accumulat-

ing over the years sketch in short, bold strokes the
outline of the Cairo story:

 -V 4
"Guardsmen Patrol in Cairo, Ill. After 3 Nights
of Violence"
N.Y. Times July 20. 1967

"Police Brutality

.

Damned, Defended and

.

Denied"

Metro East Chicago Journal June 3. 1968

the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights are long and
detailed. It's interesting that the first story in the file
is also the shortest of all. Dating from early 1967,
before Cairo became synonymous nation wide with
racial violence with a northern accent, and setting
the stage for all that followed, it reads in its entirety:
"CAIRO, Ill., Feb. 28 (UPI)-Negroes making

Employed Blacks"

their most concerted drive in history at the polls in

Washi4\ n Post June 17, 1969

this capital of the Illinois cotton belt nominated
three of eight candidates picked in the City Com-

"Fire Razes Cairo Firm

"Troopers Replace Cairo Vigilantes"
Washington Post June 19, 1969

"[Black] United Front Plans Expansion of Boycott"
Cairo Citizen June 26, 1969

"Cairo Mayor, Chief Resign; Latter Predicts
Violence Soon"

UPI Sept. 16, 1969

"Gunfire Erupts at Negro Housing Project in
Cairo"

N.Y. Times Sept. 17, 1969

"Cairo, Ill. at War With Itself"
Washington Post Sept 21, 1969
"Black Leaders Seized in Cairo"
Washington Star Oct. 5, 1969

"White Citizens Council Gains Strength in
Cairo"

St. Louis Post Dispatch Dec. 10, 1969
"Cairo Police Dept. Being Studied"

Cairo Citizen Feb. 13, 1970
"Cairo Study Critical of Police"
Southern Illinoisan Dec. 2, 1970
"Federal Group Urges Task Force in Cairo"
Southern Illinoisan March 23, 1970

missioner primary election Tuesday."

All the candidates were defeated after one was
threatened with death. But was it accidental that
black political assertion in 1967 signalled the beginning of Cairo's ordeal, after a century when no black
held elective offi e there? Five years after that election, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights came to

Cairo in March, 1972, to hold hearings that might
answer that question and others. The Commission
has conducted hearings all over the country for 15
years but it has rarely met under such tense circumstances. The police refuse to answer any preliminary

questions and a dozen federal marshals carefully
search everyone entering the hearing room in a federal courthouse from which a judge has barred radio
and TV coverage. But unintimidated witnesses come
to make their record and among the first to testify is
the Rev. John I. Cobb, a black minister. He is asked

whether he considers Detroit and Chicagoalong
with Cairoto be "southern cities."
"I think," The Rev. Mr. Cobb replies, "That
`South' has moved all over the country."

If he is correctand current northern reaction to
school busing in Detroit, and to intr!Irated suburban
housing in Chicago, and to black student transfers to

white neighborhood schools in New York do not
contradict himthen Cairo is different from other
northern cities in the degree of its white resistance to
change, but not in the essence. And so a hearing that

"Polaroid Funding United Front: FBI"
UPI June 13, 1971

will document the inabilityor reluctance--of state

"Shooting Starts Again in Cairo"
The Monitor August 3, 1972

provide a small example of a broader, deeper goy-

Many of these stories from the extensive files of

and federal governments to move civil rights law out
of the books and into the lives of Cairo citizens may
ernmental failure.

Certainly, no one who has been to Cairo would

 5
I.

argue that it is typical of Illinois or any other area
north of the Mason-Dixon line. On warm lanuid
days the scent of blooming magnolia drifts over
neighborhoods of small, wooden houses on pinched
lots with here and there a refurbished steamboat
Victorian mansion recalling a limited past glory, the
19th century days when Ulysses S. Grant slept in one
of them. Some of the houses in the all-black public

housing project called Pyramid Courts are bullet-

vigorous residents to escape is this one: i the last
six years 350 dilapidated housing units ave been
torn down, but in the last ten years only 11 private

homes have been built. The newest, handsomest
town is Riverview Apartmenis, six modbuilding
ern stories faced with pretty red, green/ and yellow
ern

tiles rising over the Ohio levee.it-vbas built with
federal money to house the indigent aged who sit on
airy balconies, watching the ttow of their own dimin-

pocked from 20th century violence; so is the front of
the police station. The great levers buttressed with

ishing river of time.

thick cement landing aprons are more stark than
picturesque, and few of the barges towed in placid
file up and down the Ohio and Mississippi turn in

What Happened to/Cairo's Promise?

from !heir channels to unload their cargo as they did
in thc past. Despite the fact that these great rivers of
commerce flow alongside, the city is an economic
backwater. Dozens of juke joint bars flourish a block
from the Ohio, their neon signs brightening Commer-

cial Street for a few gaudy hours each night. But
other dozens of small businesses are boarded-up,

2

How did Cairo g/Ft that way? Why should a community be dying on its feet in a spoi :;o geographibelieved the city would
cally favored that once it
rival Chicago? Thile are questiOns that no /ingle ==
nt
simple answer can',satisfy. ,,ertain uncontrollable
economic developmes conspired in the material decline. But beyondthem,one:senses a poverty of the
spirit with the rectilrecnt= el&nent of disastrous race

their windows staring blankeyed at cavernous warehouses once crammed with river cargo and now padlocked and empty.

relations shadowing past and present, blighting
human resources essential to progress.

A sign on a cafe wall says: "CairoLove It or
Leave it." In the last 50 years, black and white
residentsthe vast majority younghave been

and banker whose grandfather wrote Cairo's official

doing just that. Cairo and Alexander County have
lost half their population in just two decades. Most

of those who remain behind exist in the kind of
deadening poverty that may not produce hunger but
starves ambition, saps hope. Cairo "leads" all comparably-sized Illinois cities in the number of families
living below accepted subsistence levels; half the area
families have poverty incomes, according to federal
standards. Unemployment at 9 percent is nearly double the national average with black joblesness two and

one hale times the white. About a third of the citycounty population gets some kind of public assistance-2200 out of 6000 persons unable to make it
without help. More than half of Cairo's dwellings are
classified as deteriorating or dilapidated, placing

Cairo second in this unenviable Illinois category.

Perhaps the single set of statiltics that tells most
about Cairo's economic fatigue and the flight of still

Robert Landsden, a 62-year-old white attorney

history and has a park named in his honor, says:
"There are a lot of white people who would sooner

see Cairo float down the Mississippi than give a
black man a break."
Testimony before the Commission on Civil Rights
will add dimension to this assertion. It will develop
that over the decades, blacks have comprised roughly
30 percent of the county and 40 percent of the city
population, percentages that remain remarkably con-

sistent. But as of the Commission's appearance in

March, 1972, no black had ever served on the
county Housing Authority. No black had ever served
on the Cairo Public Utility Commission. Nor on the
Building Commission or Library Board. There were
no blacks in city office jobs although 13 of 14 garbage workers were black. The fourteenth was a white

supervisor. There had been one black fireman in
Cairo's history, named during demonstrations, and
one black City Councilman sworn in during the same

period. No black ever sat on the County Welfare

 6
Commission but if the Commission was off -limits to
nonwhites, easy access to poverty was never denied.

With median county income for white families at
56400 and 52800 for blacks, it followed that the
number of blacks receiving public assistance was
double the number of whites.
Statistics tell a story but never the story, Individu-

als like Anthony Patterson who has lived all his 19
years in Cairo does not have to add up all the numbers to know how they affected his past and circumscribed his future. He was eight when Cairo's only

swimming pool closed rather than integrate: through

quiet hot summers, he watched weeds grow until
they choked the pool. Patterson erew up in segregated public housing, and when schools were forced
to integrate, he watched former white classmates ride
on public school buses to an all-white private school.
He says: "This town is so far behind and backwards,

its really a shame. You don't think about staying
and looking for a job. You can't even work as a
bagboy in a supermarket. You just think about going
away all the time."

1

 7
But white attorney John Holland, a contemporary
of attorney Landsden, does not feel that black youth
like Patterson are victimized by race.

mission on Civil Rights roil up apparently calm waters, reviving and agitating through its inquiry issues

his professional capacity, he represents the
dominant while majority in numerous civil rights

rights law has already been passed to paper the Su-

cases and he offers this insight into solutions for the
discontent of blacks like young Patterson.

death of racial debate? There is a certain logic to this

"Build a lot of athletic facilities," he tells me.

questioned closely. Does quiet in the street mean that
racial injustices have been eliminated, or that movements, like the men and women in them, have

In

"Stick up 15 basketball posts and bring in first-class
men to teach 'em."
Mr. Holland ridicules the notion that historic
white dominance and black inability to exert proportionate political and economic authority have exacted
an inevitable toll on the community. Others, how-

no longer contended in the streets? Enough (
preme Court chambers and aren't people tired to
complaint so long as certain assumptions are not

flagged in energy or have moved on to other less
spectacular activities? To put i. another way, is it
possible to convince some whites that hard racial

ensuing racial confrontations make headlines and
fear of violence moves in to stay. Then, a kind of
municipal fatalism sets in, a fatalism like a man

problems exist only by taking to the streets?
Admittedly, many American "people" are bored
with race as a television and newspaper topic. They
would prefer ecology, unisex or whatever particular
concern is currently "in." But what color are these
"people?" In Cairo, is their median family income

watching flood waters lap over a levee but too

$6400 (white) or $2800 (black)? Do they live in

stunned or stubborn to save himself by taking action.

big-city ghettos where jobs are always in short supply
but drugs are plentiful? Do residents of Cairo's seg-

ever, feel that divided community spirit that can
close a swimming pool can also close a factory when

When the hearings have detailed all the woes a divided Cairo faces, the present mayor, Joseph Walder,
is asked whether the city can continue on the way it
has been.

"Well, yes, I guess we can," the mayor testifies,
"We have continued this long."

And later, when the hearings have ended, Cairo
newspaper editor David Cain challenges the good
faith of the Commission in holding the hearings after
the worst of violence had died down and the city was

regated public housing feel that the topic of racism
has been exhausted, that all is really both said and
done?

And this imposing body of law, how well does it
work to change the quality of lives? After decades of
political rhetoric and legislation, why can't a govern-

ment capable of the effort required to land men on
the moon effectively end racism and poverty in one
small midwestern city?

"calm." Mr. Cain, a serious man in his 30's who
employs some black office workers on the staff of his
Cairo Citizen, says when interviewed:
"I don't think the Civil Rights Commission wanted
to listen to anything good. It doesn't understand how
a community like this functions. We have an aggressi\ .2 Chamber of Commerce that was doing real well
until the hearings flared things up again. I think the
Commission just wanted to castigate us."

Mr. Cain, who comes from Baltimore, reflects a
prevailing

white sentimentin Cairo and other

places. Why do agencies like the United States Com-

Does it really want to?
These are some of the questions that brought the
Commission on Civil Rights to Cairo. The answers
have implications for all America. Both questions

and answers will first be placed in some historic
context before the hearings are explored in these
pages. And much of the historyeven allowing for
Cairo's idiosyncracieswill re-tell an oft-told American racial story. But there is no understanding the
present without the past, and if Cairo's present is
troubled, its past has been little short of disastrous.

 HISTORY
I

Prelude to Confrontation

"The tongue of land
which separates the two
ri ;'ers, was, Lke the whole of the country covered
with rich woods which were partly cleared, and a few
houses erected, with an i;41 and store, and the dwelling of a planter, where we took in wood. In this store
we saw, among heaps of skins, that of a black bear,
lately killed
Prince Alexander Philip
Maximilian of Aintria, 1832

"Welcotne to Cairo, deep in the southland where
magnolia vies with the mimosa
(in Thebes) you
will see sitting serenely the third Courthouse of Alexander County
Made of native sandstone, with
four tall front pillars, its dungeon cell once imprisoned Dred Scott, in his search for freedom."
Pesent-day pamphlet of the Cairo Chamber of Congress

History has not bcen kind to Cairo. Its chronicle
is one of great expectations unfulfilled, of adversity
dogging generations until the flanking Ohio and Mississippi Rivers no longer seemed routes to prosperity
but more like the closing jaws of a vise squeezing
civic enterprise out of the community. Perhaps because the rivers always promised so much there was
a correspondent lack of creative output in the history
of the people living between them.
No one, of course, should hold people today responsible for their history and it is fruitless to specu-

late on what Cairo would be in 1973 if historical
circumstance were altered. If river-borne prosperity

had taken the meanness out of existence over the
years, would a more open-handed, open-hearted L3ciety have developed there? If no African slaves had
ever been hauled to the southern United States and

then made their way to Cairo as "free Negroes,"
would the prevailing white characterfor better or
worsebe different?
That kind of speculation is less significant than
examining how people deal with their history as it is,

 what they choose to find meaningful in it and to
perpetuate, and what they reject as unworthy for
themselves. For example, the days when cottonif
not kingt.ias at least a northern prince in Alexander County, are long gone. Where 4000 and more
'ores used to be harvested, the acreage now is 500
and declining. But today's postcards greeting visitors

in England as a mine of Golden Hope, and specu-

lated in, on the faith of monstrous representations to 'irony people's ruin. A dismal swamp, on
which the half-built houses rot away; cleared here
and there for the space of a few yards; and teeming, then, with rank and unwholesome vegetation
in whose baleful shade the wretched wanderers

at motel desks feature scenes of cotton fields with
blac!'s bent low, trailing gunny sacks, dark fingers
reaching for white bolls. The postcards, ottensive to
40 percent of Cairo's citizens in their recollection of
black exploitation, are au anachronism. Yet con-

who are tempted hither droop and die and lay
their bones; the hateful Mississippi circling and

sciously or subconsciously, they present a self-image
with which the white Cairo majority is comfortable.
But postcards and other surface impressions at best
are only footnotes to history. If the experience of the
Commission in its 1972 hearings is to provide a true
measure of today's racial problems in Cairo and tomorrow's possibilities, that experience mast be scaled
against the deep, broad background of the near and
distant past.

uncheered by any gleam of promise; a place without one single quality, in each or air or water, to
commend it: such is this dismal Cairo."

eddying before it, and turning off upon its southern course, a slimy monster hideous to behold; a

hotbed of disease, an ugly sepulchure, a grave

Dickens may have been excessive but from the
beginning, the portents were bad. The British involvement in the boom-and-bust apparently was res-

ponsible for the area's Alexandrian nomenclature
which persists today. The southern tip of Illinois is
nicknamed "Little Egypt." There is Thebes in Alex-

Early Cairo
The first dwellings built in the Cairo wilderness of
the early 19th century were constructed by Missouri

plantation slaves ferried across the Mississippi by
their white owner. The sweat of slavery, the taint
from men paying lip service to freedom while hold-

ander County where Dred Scott unsuccessfully
sought freedom. Interestingly, the all-black public

housing projectPyramid Courtsderives its name
from the Afro-Egyptian "heritage." But the all-white

project bears the All-American name Elmwood
Courts.

ing other men as chattel was early in the soil. And in

Cairo began a comeback during the Civil War

the air by 1838 was the boosterism of fast-buck
land speculators who reported to potential British

when it was a Union staging area for the midwestern
armies of General U.S. Grant. Merchants prospered

and American investors:

on war trade and the Sisters of the Holy Cross

"There is not in any quarter of the globe a situation so commanding and replete with every kind
of produce and material to promote the prosperity
of the merchant, the skill of the mechanic, and the
growth of a great city."

Four years later, Cairo's land boom had burst,
bankrupting investors in New York and London.
Charles Dickens floated by on the Mississippi in
1842 and observed in his "American Notes:"

"At the junction of the two rivers on ground so
flat and low and marshy, that at certain seasons of
the year. it is inundated to the house-tops, lies a
breeding place of fever, ague and death; vaunted

founded St. Mary's Hospital to care for wounded
soldiers, the hospital enduring to this day. After the
war, Cairo seemed about to fulfill its promise as a
great rivertrade center. When the upper Mississippi
and Ohio froze in winter, wood-hulled barges could
not penetrate the ice, but Cairo, ice-free, prospered
as the trans-shipment link between river and railroad
carriers. It became a city of warehouses, great barns
of commerce busy with the movement of bales of
produce in and out.
Later Developments

There is not space in this report to detail all that

 11
subsequently occurred. But the time came when the

development of steel-hulled barges that could cut
through ice allowed Cairo to be bypassed; always
there was a new bar on which to founder around
each bend of time. Technology built a multimillion
dollar levee system that kept floodwaters out and
encouraged railroads to come in, making Cairo a
bustling rail hub. Then, that same technology laid
down superhighways that diffused transport and minimized the importance of Cairo's geographical loca-

tion. The city existed on transit but over the years
the only dependable traveller was the Canadian
goose faithfully wintering there as it does today.,
While economic fortunes ebbed and flowed, Cairo
stuck fast racially. Like Missouri just across the Mississippi and Kentucky just across the Ohio, it
adopted many Deep South laws and mores to create

a separate but unequal society for blacks. In this
intent, of course, it was not unique among northern
cities. The southern Post-Reconstruction period that
produced Jim Crow and lynch laws had its counterpart in the North . . . less savage, more hypocritical
and ultimately designed, as Post-Reconstruction was,
to assure a race neither slave nor free.
Both versions mingled in Cairo. Blacks could vote.
But to insure white political control where a potential 40 percent of the vote was black. Cairo would by
law run all candidates at large. This prevented (and
still prevents) a black candidate for city council from
running from a black district which might give him a
majority. The city's numerically superior white vote
could always win in an at-large election. Political

control and economic control worked in tandem.
Without legal access to the chambers where economic decisions were made, and lacking alternate
forms of organized pressure, blacks took what they
were given. And by the mid 1900's, there was not
very much to give.
End of a Dream

It is said by some veteran observers, white and
black, that the Cairo power structure (the phrase
may be too grand for the ramshackle edifice it describes) discerned in this century that the city was
never going to make it big. Many of the vast ware-

houses along the Ohio levee once burgeoning with
goods in transit among river, road or rail lay empty,
padlocked. The bulk of industry coming in was runaway, lured by the promise of cheap, tractable, nonunion labor that included unskilled and impoverished
men off broken-down farms on the far side of both
rivers. A desperate competition among whites for
jobs guaranteed their continuing solidarity against
blacks who, in turn, could be had for next-to-nothing

to do whatever dirty or menial work whites disdained. Black men with paralyzed earning power
meant black women on the market as full-time domestics at $20 or $25 for a week's work and this
meant that white families with modest incomes could
enjoy the racial fringe benefit of cooks, laundresses,

nursemaids and scrub-ups. All these elements, according to observers like former Cairo newspaper
publisher Martin Brown, persuaded white men of
authority to run the city as a limited fief, resisting
change that might challenge their entrenched position, reaping the fruits of stagnation.
Brown told a Washington Post interviewer that a
caste system existed which was "probably worse than
the racial problem. You are born into your station of

life here and can't rise except by marriage, but you
can fall lower. This is the system that has maintained

the establishment and driven away many of the
young people, the potential leaders of the community.

"And," he continued, "We didn't get this way
overnight. The state has treated us like an orphan
child riding in the rumble seat of a car during a
snowstorm." *
Lieutenant Governor Paul Simo i would later add
official weight to publisher Brown': observations in a

report on Cairo that said in part:
"Decades of state indifference have not only
existed for the economic problems but for racial,
educational and other problems also. But thos:
far from the scene, who over the years have shared
responsibility for what has happened, do not have
to live with the tensions whip h smother this com*For stating such opinions publicly, Brown 'lad the windows of his newspaper demolished and advertisers stopped
advertising. He sold out and left Cairo.

 12
munity."

By this mid-century, it looked as if the status quo
might last forever. Outsiders reading the Texaco

Touring Atlas by Rand McNally to plan a drive
through southern Illinois were not apprised of gathering tensions. They learned instead that ". . riverside streets have a steamboat atmosphere. On side
streets at night, Negro jug bands still play." And in
the city, black and white played at an historic charade described by Hattie Kendrick, a leader of the
Cairo NAACP: "Too long have the two races stood
grinning in each other's faces, while they carry the
fires of resentment and hate in their hearts, and with
.

"We once had a Little League team [that] was all
black," Wood relates. "And they had a white Little
League team. We used to try to play them but they
never would play us . . . When I [would] go to
approach them about playing them, their schedule
was always made up. So one timenext year I tried
to fool them. I approached them early in August but
they told me they had got together in March. So then
I asked them next year about merging the teams. And
they said, 'Okay, we'll do this.' "

"So we had a meeting . . , [then] I received a
letter from the Egyptian League which is the white
league, [which] said, 'In order to merge we'd have

their hands hid behind their backs they carry the

to have $600, 50 percent white, 50 percent black

unsheathed sword."

players, and umpires and managers will have to be of

Starting in the '60s

get a hundred black and they didn't get but 25

The grins had frozen by the early 1960's. They
would soon disappear for good. There were small,
sporadic boycotts by blacks trying to force desegregation of public accomodations, and answering violence from whites. In 1962, the city's only swimming
pool, which had been operated by the Rotary Club,
integrated for two weeks after blacks complained to
state officials, then closed for good. From that day

whites, then I got 75 black kids that were not doing
anything. So they wanted 50 percent black, 50 per-

reputable character'whatever that mean. [But] if I

until now, the young people of Cairo during the
scorching southern Illinois summers have had to
drive 30 miles to swim in a pool or risk the Mississippi currents where some have died.
The Rotary Club was all-white and still is. So were
Kiwanis, the VFW, the _Knights of Columbus and so

they are today. Fred Wood, a witness at the 1972
hearing, tells some stories. "One time I went to the
Elks Club. I was just joking. And I went to the Elks

Club to try to join and I was talking to a friend of
mine. He was a white friend. And I asked him how
about joining the club? He said, 'No, no, it's for
white only.' They call me Crawdad [and] he said,
`You know one thing, Crawdad. They even got on
their license Caucasian only.' I never seen this but I
mean that's what they said they got on their license."

Children learned the score from adults early.
There was a white Boy Scout troop but no black one
learning how to "Be Prepared." The color line had
long been broken in pro ball but not in Cairo.

cent white, $600 to merge. I mean this wasn't a
request. This was a demand . . . and I couldn't meet
their demand."
At the roller skating rink, there was no bargaining.

When blacks in 1964 picketed to gain admission,
vigilantes were waiting with clubs and chains.
Among t lose beaten was a 16-year-old named

Charles Koen who was destined to become a minister
and leader among the blacks, and a living symbol to
whites of criminal anarchy seeking to destroy the old
order.
Illinois State Advisory Committee

In June, 1966, the Illinois State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held

an open meeting in Cairo. The 489 pages of transcript for the first time opened a window on the city
and county to the world outside. Again, this limited
report cannot review what was said in all its illumi-

nating detail. But the words of some participants
draw such an indelible civic portrait that they must

be set down. Words of other participantswhen
ranged against the Commission's 1972 hearingwill
provide perspective on how the Federal government
has discharged its obligation to enforce civil rights
law in one small American city.

 13
The Reverend M.F. Traylor spoke at the 1966

substandard wages or lose their welfare rights.*

meeting, a black minister so well regarded that white
ministers occasionally hold services in his AME

Since local plantsincluding government contractors

Ward Chapelalthough they respectfully decline to
invite him to worship with their all-white congregations. His black man's view of things coincides remarkably with that of white man Brown:

"In the city of Cairo," says Rev. Traylor, "We
keep industry out, we limit ourselves to little because
we are afraid the other fellow will get something and
he will eventuany be bigger than we are and we shall

ultimately serve him. We don't want to serve all

would not hire black seamstresses, one welfare
mother with five children had to travel 50 miles a
day to work, arising at 3 a.m. to feed and dress the
children before carrying them to a sitter. When eventually she could find no one to mind them, she lost
their welfare allotments.
It is placed on record that, despite all the integration laws affecting federally - subsidized housing, Cai-

ro's Pyramid Courts remained all black, Elmwood
Place all white. It had been that way since 1939.

together collectively."
"You ask the question xvl-ly have they [blacks] not
used the facili+Ies of the F,Iir Employment Practices
Commission?* Why, they are afraid. Why have they
not spoken out? These people are afraid to speak out

Mrs. Gesta de Berry, mother of two children, tells of
unsuccessful efforts by her and her husband to get

There are a few folk here in the city can order

the de Berrys had a place in Pyramid Courts. James

some of my members to throw stones at my windows

S. Johnson, Executive Director of the Alexander
County Housing Authority, is asked at the open
meeting whether he is working on a desegregation

.

.

.

and break them out, throw stones at me. It has
existed for many years and has become an obsession.
It part of their thinking that they have to bow and
cringe to the powers that be."
"I don't know who the brain trustees are but there

are people here that the police are afraid of, the
mayor is afraid, the teachers are afraid, and our
whole system has someone that wields [such] a
strong arm of influence over them that they are
afraid to do anything in defense of what they think is
right."
Rev. Traylor then speaks words that within a year
would prove prophetic: "We cannot build Cairo up

until the image is changed, until we are all for one
and one for all, until we see that we have to live
together and forget a man's color. We are going to
have unemployment, we are going to have riots, we
are going to have trouble here in Cairo."
Other witnesses describe endemic job diserimina;ion by private and governmental employers.

In
1966, only seven years ago, two blacks were employed

in all of Cairo's retail and banking establishments;
the U.S. Post Office had no black regular carriers;
three plants with federal contracts employed no
black office help. When jobless blacks went on welfare, they were forced to pick cotton in season at

into Pyramid Courts. After months of frustration,
Mrs. de Berry says, she told officials she was going
to apply for all-white Elmwood. Within four days,

plan. He replies on June 11, 1966: "I am not work-

ing on that plan but I shall be happy to take it up
with my Board at the next meeting."

Federally-funded anti-poverty programs are discovered to be among the worst discriminators. Probing the private sector, the hearing asks Robert Lay-

ton, Executive Director of the Cairo Chamber of
Commerce, whether the lack of jobs for blacks
sounded like a problem. He replies:
"Yes it does . . . and I think with proper meetings held with the business people and the leaders of
the Negro population, I am sure that these problems
can be resolved."

(But Mr. Layton, however optimistic, does not
call the shots on the Chamber of Commerce. Later,
*Illinois was one of the fast nolthcrr. industrial states to
adopt an FEPC.
"There is evidence of collusion between .. large farmers,
the public aid department and the Illinois State Employment
Service to keep the Negroes in a form of slavery by paying

them slave wages. When workers return to welfare rolls
after the cotton-picking season, they are put on general
assistance which pays less than regular welf.ire payments."
Advisory Comm. member William H. Robinson, E. St. Louis
M. E. Journal, July 20, 1967.

 14
after Cairo's troubles have begun in earnest and no
black jobs have developed, a Washington Post reporter, curious about black participation in the community, seeks out Chamber President Harry Bolen, a

leave Cairo as soon as possible".

retired army general. The reporter asks whether
blacks, representing 40 percent of the population,

26

deserve more voice in Cairo government. Mr. Bolen

l 'plies: "Sh.")
The effect of the Cairo atmosphere on black youth
might be imagined but those who spoke at the open
meeting spell it out. In 1966, de facto segregation
persisted in the schools although legal pressure had
forced officials to loosen up.* A sprinkling of blacks
from Cairo's segregated Sumner High School had

entered Cairo High School. One quick result was
that the annual senior class trip inevitably (pointedly) taken in the Deep South and much enjoyed by
white students was ended.

But beyond such acts of rpinor meanness, witnesses tell of Federal 1 itle I remedial programs
sorely needed in a place where the median number
of school years completed by all males was 9, for all
females 9.4; by black males 6.7 and black females

7.9unfairly administered to blacks. John Joiner, a
Sumner guidance couns.:lor, told how his low-income
students anticipated Neighborhood Youth Corps
summer jobs. But the school board rejected the fed-

eral program in 1966 because it would be "an invasion of privacy" for applicants to reveal family income under the law. Blacks, it goes without saying,
were not consulted on their "invasion" preferences.
Mr. Joiner adds that in counseling some 800 black
students . . . ". . . I have never heard a single student express an interest in living in Cairo when they
became adults . . . in fact, the Negro youngsters

have expressed a positive desire to graduate and
*Loosening up classroom mix, however, left white control
tight as ever. In 1966, when the all black Booker T. Wash-

ington elementary school was integrated, the name' was
changed. Instead of memorializing the famed Negro leader,
the school was renamed for a former white teacher, Francis
Bennett.

Then Mr. Joiner lays out the statistics of exodus:

Class of 1960one graduate still in town out of
Class of 1961one out of 34
Class of 1962two out of 33
Class of 1963six out of 35
Class of 1964two out of 37
Class of 1965nine out of 55
After the State Advisory Committee meeting an
unpublished report by the State Advisory Committee
catalogues the many failures of federal programs to

remedy abuses of civil rights law. The report concludes with a summation that will invite comparison
with findings of the Commission hearing six years
later:
ft

not one federal official who appeared at the

meeting indicated that his office had working
knowledge of the problems mentioned in this report. Not one official testified that his office had
visited the area since the passage of the applicable
civil rights legislation to review the situation .
When informed of the abuses, federal officials al-

though shocked, defended their ignorance
Generally, they seemed to feel that pro-forma
compliance activities, when thwarted by circumstantial, programmatic or business necessity, were
sufficient to meet their obligations under civil
rights law. Thus, they joined hands in the vicious
circle."

Mrs. Rose Bryant, an 84-year-old welfare recipient so poor that she and her husband had to mortgage their mule, has a more down-to-earth summation of things. When asked at the 1966 meeting what
civil rights law had done for her. "Listen," she says,

"I don't see a bit of difference now than I did way

back in '51 and '52 in the civil

rights.

It hasn't

reached us. I reckon it's on its way, but it ain't got
here yet."

 15

HISTORY
II

The Battle Joined

"We, the people of the United Front, have taken a
giant step toward rebuilding a community that has
been dying under the white administration. The
dying has taken place because of their systematic
neglect of not only the Black community but the
white community as well. It isn't necessary to reiterate that life here in Cairo is in fact volatile; but what

is necessary is that such a state not be allowed to
prevail in human depravation."
United Front Statement of Purpose-1970

"We were having no troubleand no occasion for
trouble. Our people were happy until the militants
came along. They did it in Detroit. They did it in
Washington. It's all part of the same picture. It's all
a part of the same conspiracy
We've got socalled hot-headed white people, too. (But) we can
keep 'em in line."
General Harry Bolen, tomer Chamber 01 Commerce President-1970

During the night of July 15th, 1967, a 19-year-old

AWOL black soldier named Robert L. Hunt, Jr.
died ir, his cell at the Cairo police station. Police said

hr, had hanged himself with his T-shirt but many
blacks were suspicious axed charged police brutality.

The body was whisked off for embalming before
dawn, there was no autopsy, and to this day the
death is shrouded in controversy.* However he died,
Private Hunt's tragedy marked the beginning of sustained public violence that was to put the city on the

map in a way the Chamber of Commerce never
envisioned. There were three days of black protest
*Hunt had been arrested while riding with 5 others in a
car stopped b.:, police for a defective taillight. Police said
Hunt had become verbally abusive and they charged him
with disorderly conduct. An inquest held 2 months later
ruled the death a suicide. Immediately after the inquest a
coroner together with the 2 policemen who allegedly discovered Hunt's hanging body, resigned.

 16
and white retaliation, white homes and shops burned,

There were two reactions to Ewing's view of Cairo

black protestors beaten and arrested. The National
Guard was sent in to maintain order by state officials
who previously had permitted Cairo to founder in
racial and economic disorder. Reforms were quickly

reality. A 7-point agreement was reached by black
leaders like Ewing and the Reverend Charles Koen,
Mayor Stenzel and State officials.* It promised an
overhaul of the Cairo Police Department that included hiring of more black patrolmen, and application to the Justice Department for a grant to begin a
program of police-community relations. The allwhite Fire Department was to get its first black and

promised and just as quickly forgotten.

This account cannot describe all the violent episodes or all the charges and counter-charges that
would follow in the months and years to come. Details are obscured by the smoke of battle, smudged
by the distance in time. Peoplc contradict each other,
and the line separating truth, partisan distortion and
outright lying is not always clear. Racism, at heart,
seems a simple emotion based on fear and rejection
of what is different. But if the emotion is simple, the
complexities associated with it are not. Beyond cries

of "nigger" and "honky" in Cairo, lay lifetimes of
economic, political and social relationships largely
but not exclusively determined by the fact of race. A
book is required to sort them all out, maybe even a
shelf of books to grasp the total reality of this one

small American city. These pages can only try to
sketch the significant developments and revealing
statements that mark the course of events, and to
trace the role of governmental agencies that preceded

the 1972 arrival of the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights in Cairo.
In the Wake of Disorder

In the immediate wake of disorder, 67-year-old
Mayor Lee P. Stenzel cautioned fellow-whites who
were threatening to revert to the "old way" of keeping blacks in line. He said he had b en present at the

bloody East St. Louis riots

in

1917. 'I saw the

slaughter and destructio5," the mayor said. "East St.
Louis hasn't amounted to a damned thing since. If it
happens here like it happened there, we won't have
industry here for 25 years."

But Preston swing, a young TV repairman and
president of the Cairo NAACP chapter, stressed a
different note. Charging rampant police misbehavior, he told the mayor: "Your most important
problem is not industry; it's race. I'm telling you, if
you don't solve the racial problem you aren't ever
going to get industry here."

efforts to provide more city and retail jobs were
promised.

The other reaction was the formation cf an armed
all-white group called the Committee for Ten Million

but soon dubbed the White Hats in recognition of
the headgear it adopted along with other para-military trappings.** Its chief was a wealthy lawyer
named Peyton Berbling, one of the most powerful
men in Alexander County who had been and was
destined to become again the county's state attorney.

He told reporters that the White Hats were armed
with "whatever weapons they haveshotgun, rifles,
pistols" and boasted that within ten minutes they
could "stop everything that moves in Cairo. If they
can't move, they can't firebomb." A so-called truth
squad of General Bolen's Chamber of Commerce
was later to describe its formation this way:
*Mayor Stenzel paid quickly for advocating even limited
racial reforms. Whites turned on him a he resigned. His
resignation statement, delivered as he wept openly, said in
part: "I've lived in this town 47 years and everything I own
is tied up here. When people you've, known all these years
ar.LI whom you believe are your friends turn against you,
curse you and turn their backs, it's just not worth it."

"Blacks charged that the white hats, along with other
equipment came from the stores of the Cairo civil defense
organization which has no black members. The NAACP's
Ewing protested this alleged discrimination to Illinois Civil
Defense Director Val Oshel whose office receives federal
funding. On June 26, 1970, Mr. Oshel wrote Ewing that
the Cairo unit did not receive any federal funds or equipment. "Civil Defense," he wrote, "in the final analysis is
the normal government of the community or county plan-

ning for action and then acting during a disaster or a
nuclear attack. So long as the city government of Cairo
prepares for these contingencies without requesting federal
funds or equipment, this Agency has no means of control
of either the organization, its activities, or its equipment."

 17
"In July of 1967, a number of fire-bombings occurred in our city
Following this outburst of
violence, neighborhood Inen
formed them-

not even open up jobs like bag boy in the local

selves into watchmen in the event more fire-bombings resulted. The group adopted President Eisen-

determination that old priorities would not change,
that if anybody were hired he would not be black.
Aggravating the economic rasp on the black commu-

hower's article entitled the COMMITTEE OF
TEN MILLION in the Reader's Digest, (August,
1967) as the rule for and the pattern of this organization. Its purpose is protective, not punitive;
nor is it racist, inasmuch as Negroes were invited
to join."

None did. But every white man in the area who
was anybody and many who were notsome 600 in
allenlisted. Among them were a dapper, youthful
Baptist minister named Larry Potts, a well-to-do
warehouse owner named Tom Madra, and businessmen Allen E. Moss and Jimmy Dale, all of whom
would subsequently play interesting roles in the

supermarket. Clearly, there were not enough jobs in

Cairo for everybody. Just as clear was the white

nity was the presence of the White Hats on semi-offipatrol. When their leader, Peyton Berbling.

cial

again became county attorney, the d:stinetion betw(.m vigilantism and officialdomif it ever had existcdseemed to vanish.
Primed for Fresh Violence

By 1969, old grievances and new tensions had
primed Cairo for fresh violence. When it came, many
wh:tes blamed a newly-arrived white Catholic priest
named Father Gerald Montroy. On March 23, 1969,

he was quoted in a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story
which began:

Cairo story.

"Police dogs, shotguns and an armed vigilante

The White Hats claimed credit for the abatement
of widespread violence in 1968. It was, at any rate, a

group known as the 'White Hats' are being used to
keep the black people of Cairo, Ill. 'in line;
Father Gerald Montroy charged yesterd3y

year of surface quiet when blacks watched to see
whether white promises would be redeemed. Portents

were not good. On July 30, the Reverend Larry
Potts used a baseball bat to beat to death a 73-year-

old black man he said was attempting to rape his
wife. A coroner's jury absolved him of any guilt and
Potts continued his efforts to organize a private elementary and high school to be called Camelot. Cairo

schools a year before had been forced to integrate
under HEW pressure. But federal desegrcgat:on law
was powerless to break the color line in Cairo's Lit-

tle League. Sooner than integrate the teams in the
city's ballpark, the League was disbanded. Like the
swimming pool abandoned in 1962, the diamond
soon was reclaimed by weeds and areas where black
and white might mingle were further diminished.
A few black patrolmen were added to the Police
Department and a Neighborhood Youth Corps program took some of the edge off youthful black unemployment. But a 575,000 police-community relations

"'White people in some communities fear the
blacks, but in Cairo the opposite is true,' Father
Montroy said.
the blacks in Cairo are afraid
of the whites and are terribly oppressed by them.
Cairo is a keg of racial dynamite.' "

The Chamber of Commercewhich had little or
no luck in improving Cairo's economic picture but
enjoyed considerable success in rallying white support around racial issuescalled Father Montroy an
"irreverent and irresponsible priest." It deplored his
"vicious and slanderous" attack on Cairo's image. A
fellow Catholic priest in Cairo, Father Hugh Kilfoil,
a conservative pastor of St. Patrick's Church, joined
in the criticism of Father Montroy, calling the White
Hats "a good thing."
"Its purpose is to protect property," he said. "We

can't have militants throwing bombs

.

.

.

We're

remained virtually all-white while blacks complained

making real progress in race relations in Cairo. The
schools are integrated, the hospital is integrated.
There is no place in the city that is not integrated.
\\ hen you change from segregation to integration

that local merchants accepting their dollars would

you arc going to have some grow:ng pains."

grant in late 1969 went unused. And civic offices

 18
The Chamber of Commerce blamed Father Montroy for fomenting an upheaval that began on March
31st when a 21/2 hour gun battle ensued around

Pyramid Courts. Earlier that same day, shots had
been fired into a car used by the black leader, Reverend Koen.

Intermittently over the next three years, Cairo
would hear gunfire, live with fear. Two of its mayors
would resign, four police chiefs would either resign

or be fired (one discovered to be possessed of a
felony record), and hundreds of citizensthe vast
majority blackwould be jailed as an outgrowth of
demonstrations. During the next 11 months alone,
there would be at least 80 separate shooting incidents, most centered around the all-black Pyramid
Courts where sonic residents took to sleeping in
bathtubs at night to escape fusillades that pierced
walls and windows. There was not a single arrest
made by the Police Department in these shootings
nor, for that matter, in a pitched battle where the
Police Headquarters itself came under fire, the facade bullet-chipped to this day.* Many of the arrests
resulted from an anti-picketing ordinance passed by
the City Council and later ruled unconstitutional.

Could the actions of one Catholic priest (who
even some civil rights advocates conceded might
have made judgmental errors out of naivete and dismay at racial conditions he found incompatible with
the prevailing Christian ethic) account for all this
civic chaos? It could if one subscribed to the theory
some -would call it mythof the "outside agitator"
who roils calm waters and sets race against race
where before they had coexisted in harmony. But the
theory requires that history be dismissed or rewritten, and present racial relationships denied.
*For all the violence, there were remarkably few fatalities. A former black policeman told me that, in the beginning at least, blacks and whites who .knew each other
deliberately aimed high. A white man named Trapley struck
by a brick during an interracial brawl died. In April, 1969,

The United Front of Cairo wa:. forme6 by blacks,

mostly Protestant, as the tempo of conflict quickened. On April 3, 1969, the White Hats offered their
entire 600 membi.r force as volunteer deputies to the
city and county. Already, score, of individual mem-

bers of the White Hats had been deputized sonic
expert estimates range as high as 450and blacks
charged they roamed freely, armed and agressive,
intimidating the 1-11-ick community.

"I could get my dog deputized in this town," said
white businessman Philip D. Marsden, a deputy himself,*

A Show of State Musclq
A Commission on Civil Rights attorney, was sent

to Cairo in May, 1969, and learned that deputizing
of the White Hats was imminent, On June 17, the
Commission's warning was sent to Governor Oglivie
by the Illinois State Advisory Committee. One week
later, under the threat of an injunction from State
Attorney General William J. Scott, the White Hats
were officially disbanded and the promiscuous deputizing of whites brought under control.** Apart from
calling in the National Guard, it was the first show of
state muscle in the Cairo crises and it raised the
*Deputy status did not save for Marsden his business,
Cairo Wood Products, Inc. "A wood products firm that
hired many hard-core unemployed, some considered militants, from Cairo's Negro population was destroyed by fire
tonight . ." Washington Post, 6/16/69.
.

**The White Hats were promptly superseded by the
United Citizens for Community Action. a group that affiliated with the white Citizens Council in the Deep South.
On Nov, 5, 1969, UCCA officials went to Jackson, Mississippi to confer with Citizens' Council leaders. The next
month, UCCA formally joined the Jackson group, in a
move that the Citizens Council said added 2,000 members.
Council field director Gordon Baum told the St. Louis Post
Dispatch on Dec. 10, 1969: "The white people of Cairo
learned they could not sit down at a table and work out

a

differences because the black side had a stacked deck, which

First Missionary Church . .. Wiley Anderson, 21, died later
from four bullet wounds.

local group." Among UCCA officials were Rev. Potts and
Capt. Jerry Lebo, commander of the Illinois National Guard
unit in Cairo.

black man, Floyd Parker, 56, was found dead after
Pyramid Courts came under fire. On Nov. 18, 1970, a
black soldier home on leave was wounded by shots fired
from ambush as he walked with his clergyman from the

was that if they didn't get what they wanted they could
bring out side pressure because the UCCA was a lonely

 A

19
. .
what had outside authority, in Springth.._1 and Washington, been doing while conditions
deteriorated?
It is perhaps significant that one week after the
United Front on April 7, 1969, began a downtown
boycott that immediately hurt white business, Illinois
Lt. Gov. Paul Simon made an investigatory visit to
Cairo. His recommendations, made in a report a few
weeks later, were couched in the cautious style of a
politician juggling a racial hot potato.
"Not surprisingly," it said at the outset, "Cairo has
many evidences of southern culture, most of them
community assets. But the racial attitudes of the Old
South have also been part of the Cairo tradition. As

questir a

.

in the South, there is a growing awareness of the
dangers and inadequacies of such attitudes, but as in
the South, the changes in attitude will not come
overnight. But many of those who would today be in

the 25-34 age group who could be the leaders in
changing community attitudes have left. Fortunately,
there is still much enlightened leadership around
which the community can rally."

Later, the report observed: "The White Hats or
Committee of Ten Million have become a source of
fear for the black community. This fear appears to
be largely unwarranted. This is not to suggest that
there are not extremists within the organization.

Cairo has its share of extremists, black and white
Simon appeared to be making an old and shopworn equation wherein white racism is somehow balanced by black militants pressing for constitutional
rights, as in Mississippi and Alabama it had been
popular to equate SNCC with the Ku Klux Klan. But
he did suggest that the White Hats disband. He also
called for the appointment of a "fair" police chief,

the naming of blacks to various city offices, and
bi-racial business hiring practices.*
*While Simon was criticized either for going too far or
not far enough in his report he also was praised by many
blacks and whites for having the courage to come to Cairo

and make a public report at a time when most Illinois
politicians at all levels were afraid to take any stand that
might hurt their careers.

Two months later, a special committee of the Illinois House of Representatives, issued a rather bland

critique of Cairo. Unlike Simon, it found that the
White Hats "appears to be a vigilante group." Like
Simon, it suggested more job integration and favored

enforcement of civil rights law. But it stressed the
racial polarization of Cairo as if it were a new phenomenon in a city that had relegated blacks to an
inferior status for more than a century.

"The ultimate solution to all of these problems
will be a reasonable sharing of economic and political opportunity among all facets of the community
and the mutual prosperity of blacks and whites in the
area," it said, and after presenting this stunning insight the committee retired from the field.

The role of Gov. Ogilvie in Cairo is difficult to
characterize. He helped to pressure the White Hats
out of existence, as noted earlier, and then moved
against vigilanteism in general, sending state police
into Cairo to bolster crumbling local law enforce-

ment. The governor said at the time that "white
citizens, deputized by the sheriff and coroner, were
patrolling the streets, stopping people and causing a
serious probiem for regular constituted law enforcement officials." But the cynical might wonder at the
timing of things and question the impetus to action.
A black boycott is begun in April. Two months later
in June, white businessmen are howling. On one day,
Governor Ogilvie forces the vigilantes to disband. On
the next, his attorney general William J. Scott says to

the black community: "Now is the time for the
blacks to show their good faith by lifting the boycott."

That is, since the state has moved against illegal
vigilantes threatening the public order, blacks should

end their legal protestusing the weapon of boycott
against an establishment it feels is exploiting it in
defiance of civil rights law and democratic principles.
The state police, initially praised by many blacks for

even-handed law enforcement, eventually provoke
bitter condemnation for raids on Pyramid Court.
With the exception of the levees, nothing positive
ever seems to survive long in "Little Egypt."
Governor Ogilvie, following demonstrations outside his office in which dozens are arrested including

 20
two white nuns, announced in July, 1969, a $5 million low income housing program for Cairo which

would produce 250 apartments (Four years later,
the program had not produced a single unit). United
Front leader, the Reverend Charles Koen, denounced

the proposal as "trickery" with no guarantee that
anything more than an initial $290,000 grant would
be forthcoming. And he called on the governor to
recall his personal representative in Cairo, Paul Wisner. Mr. Wisner, destined to become Executive
Director of the Illinois Human Resources Commission, is said by Rev. Koen to have "a complete lack
of understanding and ability to work with blacks."

Later, Governor Ogilvie's black aide, Leon N.

answers, at least Springfield was demonstrating concern that Cairo remain in the latter half of the 20th

century rather than retreat in disarray toward the
past. But the Federal governmentexcept for alarms
sounded by the Commission on Civil Rights and its
Illinois affiliateswas doing virtually nothing. A
,:mg public record existed of citizen cola, nt that
c.vil rights law was disregarded in Cairo. Complaint
does ilot automatically constitute a valid charge. But
one looked in vain ':or Justice Department intervention to weigh the charges during those critical years
when the ..1-vful and orderly p ocesses of American
government we, e ::ing riddled by gunfire.

In 1970 ai;,d 1971, a self - styled Federal "task

Perry, lashes back at Rev. Koen after asserting that
"Cairo's problems are basically economic rather than
racial". "I reject as being utterly untrue and without
merit Koen's ridiculous allegation that Governor
Ogilvie has acted in any manner other than in the
best interests of the citizens of Cairo," Perry tells the

force" made came generally unsuccessful attempts to

Cairo Citizen.
Rev. Koen, who in 1971 will embark on a 48-day
protest fast that leaves him close to death, is accused
by Perry of "ambitions that far exceed the boundaries

ting in Cairo as the governor and state legislature
suggested, if 40 percent of the city's residents had

of Cairo." Governor Ogilvie's aide then makes this
suggestion:

"Since

Rev. Koen has now realized

his dream of being a national figure, is it not correct

and proper for the black community of Cairo to
choose themselves another leader . . . one whose
entire mind, time and attitude is geared to the problems of Cairo and its people?"*
Federal Inaction
If the state's behavior raises more questions than it
*The Rev. Charles Koen said publicly in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch: "Ever since I've been 16, my desire to help
the poor, suffering black man has been the most consistent
and overriding motivation in my life."
In a private interview, he said: "We in the United Front
never forgot how people around the country were unaware
of black oppression here in the early and mid 60's because
the news did not get out. We had to establish a national
public relations vehicle to make these things known. Perry
was chosen to denounce that action and try o discredit
me, to make our movement seem a gimmick. But he went
too far, overplayed his hand, and the governor eventually
replaced him."

institute programs that would improve the overall
welfare of Cairo. It failed, the Commission will hear,
because the local power sources would not cooperate. But law enforcement is not required to solicit the
cooperation of lawbreakers. If vigilantes were opera-

been subjected to infringement on First Amendment
rights by local ordinances declared unconstitutional,
if segregated public housing persisted in defiance of
federal law, then why did not Washington promptly
intervene? That question and various answers to it
would be a major concern of the Commission hearings in 1972.
Private Action

But in the meantime, it remained for a private
group to press for judicial law and order. The national organization called the Lawyers' Committee
for Civil Rights Under Law opened a storefront
office in Cairo in September, 1969. Over the next
three years, it would make legal attacks on many
fronts against what it considered violations of blac...
civil rights designed, among other things, to harass
and ultimately destroy the militant movement in
Cairo. When, for example, blacks in the movement
charged harassment arrests for traffic violations and
the like, the Committee successfully sought jury trials
for the alleged offenders. The cost of trials to authorities

in money and time as opposed to summary

 21
findings by a local judge soon brought a sharp reduction in such arrests.* The Committee also obtained

court orders forcing police to protect civil rights
marchers and when three proved ineffective it
brought contempt actions.
Jake Bleaveans, a volunteer attorney who headed
the office, described his positiun in the eyes of most
white Cairo-ites. "I'm the lawye- for the niggers," he
said. "And for the Commies and for the people who
want to burn down the town."

One result can be seen today in the Committee
office. It is a Xerox machine, possibly the only one
in the country with a bullet hole, the memento of a
nighttime sniper attack.

The Lawyers' Committee exemplifies the ironies
that occur within America's racial dilemma as authority tries to deal with a pervasive problem using a
fragmented approach that must balance a black con-

cession with a white one, never resolving the total
tension, the incompatible disparity at the core. For
example, the Committee initially drew most of its
resources from church groups and professional contributions from leading law offices. Later, the Cairo

ing was singled out by Gov. Ogilvie as "one of the
ten top state employees who consistently maintain
the highest standards of job performance." The citation noted that he had "taken the brunt of published
criticism and censure by the Cairo United Front and
has two civil law suits filed against him in private
court." Filing the suits was the Lawyers' Committee
that Gov. Ogilvie helped to fund.

The Travail of a Mayor
While outside governments and groups were or
were not doing their own thing in Cairo, local government there lurched on. This account carmot begin
to describe all the machinations during the tumultuous years from 1967 to now. It can briefly describe

the experience of one mayorPeter Thomas--in
order to give some idea of the complex challenges
faced by even well-intentioned white authority under
pressure to reform overnight a racist way of life that
had been countenanced for a century by the State of
Illinois and the nation.
Thomas was appointed Mayor by the City Council
after Mayor Stenzel's tearful resignation in 1969. A

office was funded by the 0E0 at the request of

middle-aged Ford dealer, Thomas hadlike Rev.

Governor Ogilvie and over local white objections. It
was also Governor Ogilvie who sent state troopers?.

orphanage here in Cairo," he said in a Southern

into Cairo, and blacks charged that in a series of
incidents the troopers stozd by while local police
beat demonstrators and themselves participated in

a high school education and after I got out of
high school I went to work. I worked in the mills

Koenbeen born poor. "I spent six years in an
Illinoisan newspaper interview. "I managed to get

searches of black homes, roughing up and arresting
occupants in the process. The Alexander County Circuit Courtwhich blacks did not regard-as a sympathetic bodyruled the searches were illegal and dis-

and carried cross ties and drove taxicabs anything I
could do to eat."
Somewhere along the line, Thomas apparently de-

missed all charges. Civil damage suits then ,vere

past there have been injustices done to black people,
not only in Cairo but all over the world," he said. "I
feel these problems should be dealt with but I don't

brought against State Police Supervisor Bill Reincking and other office's.
Soon after, on Oct. 24, 1971, Supervisor Reinek*Results of harassment arrests can sometimes escalate
widely. Rev. Koen, working in St. Louis with the Black
Economic Uniol, became the object of police attention in
1968. He was sto)ped there for a faulty license plate bulb.
At the station house, there was a struggle involving him
and 15 policemen. Both his hands were broken and two
patrolmen later suspended. But Rev. Koen was convicted
of assault and when the conviction was upheld in 1971,
he began the fast that almost killed him.

veloped a social conscience. "I realize that in the

approve of the way the United Front is trying to
obtain equal privileges . . . [it] thinks that as the
mayor I shouldn't make a move until I consult
them."

Mayor Thomas, trying to walk a mythical middle
line between the races, made radical moves that antagonized white segregationists yet did not earn him
the support of black militants. He welcomed a survey
of the police department by the International Asso-

 22
ciation of Chiefs of Police (IACP), a respected and
conservative group of professionals, only to have the
survey results suppressed by his all-white City Council. He also encouraged the Federal "task force,"
writing them that a "successful solution to the problems in Cairo requires an integrated program progressing on several dimensions simultaneously." But
he could not prevail against white opposition to any-

Mr. Aveary said in a UPI story. "Any black who

thing that smacked of integration.

meetings with the City Council "must include the
People for Improvement of Cairo, a new organiza-

Through his efforts, a black man named Norman
Seavers was appointed to the City Council, the first
member of his race ever to serve. The appointment,

however, was made without consulting with the
United Front and Mayor Thomas caught fire from
Rev. Koen: "Pete Thomas must learn that the whites
do not choose black leaders for the blacks of Cairo,"

Rev. Koen said. "We have nothing against Mr.

opposes them [The United Front] is called an Un
Tom, and any white who opposes them is called a
racist. If they call the governor a racist, why should
little

old me worry about being called an Uncle

Tom? We won't ask for as much as the United Front
is asking."

And Mayor Thomas told the Front that any future

tion in the black community."

It was, of course, an old white ploy in the racial

struggle, North and South, to disparage militant
black leadership that had first forced the issue of
racism into the open and had developed a constituency in the process, and to insist that the white
power structure was perfectly agreeable to sitting

Seavers. However, we protest the immoral and unethical way in which the city tries to prove its racial

down with other "reasonable" black spokesmen. The

goodwill by trying to play one black against the

enced it in Mississippi, Dr. Robert Hayling in St.
Augustine, Florida, Martin Luther King in a dozen
places . . . In Cairo, the Front endured but Mayor
Thomas did not. His overtures to blacks did not
dissuade all black policemen from resigning in No-

entire community."

And the Mayor said of Rev. Koen: "When Koen
came upon the scene in Cairo, the blacks needed
leadership and this administration tried for over one
year to work with Koen and the United Front. All
our overtures toward working out problems were ignored by Koen and the United Front while terror in
the streets was encouraged by him and his misguided
followers."

The Mayor said he refused to allow one of his
salesman to seek office in the UCCA

(successor to

the White Hats) "Not and work here.'' Then he
publicly suggested in the Cairo Citizer that Rev.
Koen was living rich off United Front donations from
around the country. "We ask how a man who apparently draws no salary wears such expensive clothing

Evers brothersMedgar and Charleshad experi-

vember, 1970, after St. Columbia's Roman Catholic

Churcha black centercame under heavy fire
from white policemen.* But those overtures marked
him.

The next year, he was re-elected but former White
Hats gained seats on the City Council and his days
were numbered. Before 1971 was out, Thomas' au-

thority had been undercut by the Council and he
resigned r.---11::ced by an ex-White Hat clothing merchant flamer'. Joseph Walder.

"There is no doubt in my mind," he said once,
"That when my term ends my business will quit just

and drives such expensive automobiles," Mayor

like that, because I've tried to do what I think is

Thomas said.

right. Consequently, I've made a lot of people mad

Thomas became a board member of all-white
Camelot School. He backed a black bar owner and
former Golden Gloves boxer named James Aveary
who came from nowhereand quickly retired to the

same placeto form The People for the Improvement of Cairo.

"I am not bothered by the 'Uncle Tom' label,"

at me."
So it went in Cairo, a racial war of attrition which

seemed no closer to being resolved in 1973 than it
*Black policemen earlier had charged discrimination in
promotions, use of black officers only in black communities,

refusal of the chief to make white patrolmen ride with
blacks in squad cars, and blatant department racism.

 23
was in 1967 or 1867. One searches the history for
signs of true accord, for assurances that past sins
against the form and spirit of democracy will not be
repeated. But they are not there. What one finds are
lulls in battle, small and always threatened advances
toward racial justice gained after enormous outlay of
time, energy and physical sacrifice. Miraculously,

there are few residentsblack or whitewith bodily
scars from all the violence. But there are raw psychic
wounds and they are not healing. Boarded-up shop
windows are monuments to small business failures on

streets where boycott and fear have taken their toll

of commerce. Sidewalks are sparsely populated and
youth is conspicuously scarce. Occasionally, young
blacks and whites are seen together, shooting baskets
on an outdoor court in the Pyramid Courts project
or talking briefly on languid, sunbaked street corners.
But the poison of adult r)cism has seeped into the
wellsprings of the young. White teenage social life

centers around a
:ub called Oriac from
which blacks are excluded. Oriac, of course, spells
Cairo backwards. Backwards. So much seemed back-

wards when the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
came to Cairo in March, 1972.

 .PREAMBLE:

Have Corne To Cajeb :
The hearings ope on the morning of March 23rd.
They will continue 'both. day and night for three days
in a community thitt is
heavily armed as any in

ourselves the nature and extent of,-pfoblems, and
among other issues to seek thyeasons why Federal
statutes have not been enforced or have not been

the counyy, a conttnuniyi where racial tension has
often been only a .(trigAr-pull away from' violence.
Cairo is again tense ,rid veryone, entering the hearing room is careftilV co rteouSly seardhed by Federal marshalt. Coiniiissi ner Maurice IL Mitchell,
Chancellor of the University of Denyer, exkllains to

effective, and to find
ohow
. similar situations in

the audience:
"We and the marshals
ow that the vast ma) y
of the citizens of this city ye no intentionr esire
to disrupt or to otherwise pede the or erly process
of this hearing. The Federa marshals owever, have

in their best judgment 'detrmine /that the security
measures that they have ipst. ed are necessary in
order to assure theiSafety/ everyone in this room
and to provide the
f tatmosphere in which this
hearing can be con
Commissioner F.

vqith dignity and dispatch."
Fieernan, a St. Louis attor-

ney, is a veteranof
y uch heffpgs North and
South. Mrs. F eema
"We hay come to' airdFor spe fireasons. The

Commissi n has rece
allg:gations rom individuals
and or izations all *rAe coury that extensive
and o rt racial discrim Aeon exi here.',We have
also/ een told that gove
ent officials at all` levels

have not utilized all.of t1 authority to assist Cairo

in dealing with these priklems, Ad in some instances have abused their authority 4c1 contributed
to .the worsening problems in Cairo."
"We realize that inforrnatio which
received
from secondary sources or froii persons')Loutside a
community can often' be misleading aAd cllstort the.'
truth. We have come here, therefore, to ascei;ain for

other communitie 4nay be rectified."

"I want to emphasize again that in turning our
attentio,u2t(c'the racial situation in. Cairo we also will

lear a great deal about similar situations in other
mmunities throughout.the country. In this way we
hope to gather information and arrive at conclusions
that will be enlightening and of benefit to Americans
everywhere."
trFinally, John Mc. Knight, acting Chair an of the
inois State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Corn;fin ssion on. Civil Rights, offers this perspective. 'He.
scribes how six years earlier his Committee held
arings in the very same courtroom.
"The Committee," he says, "heard many citizens
u scribe the discriminAory practices and policies of
die local institutions. Although local and state
officials were frequently cited as the agents of dis-.
iMination, many statements pointed to direct Fedeal involvement in racially restrictive practices . .
It the American government is to insure equal opportunity and participation, it must know, at the very
least, where its own programs are inadequate. Unfor-

tunately, we found that Cairo was not a case of
Federal overseeing; it was. .a case, ,of Federal oversight."
"It is our hope," he concludes, "that as a result of
this hearing those responsible for the health and welfare of this community, the residents as well as Fed- .
eral, state and local officials, will begin to make those
changes that are so clearly needed."
.

The hearing is underway.

 AC/26
LAW AND ORDER
"A white cop put Rev. Koen's birth certificate on the
Police bulletin board and wrote Bastard on it

heard radio reports saying Nigger this, Coon that
In S0111e arrests they would have a submachine
gun against a black guy's head, begging him to move

so they could kill him."
Interview with former black Patrolman Wilbert BeardJune, 1972

"I don't think from what I have seen of police-community relation, the total failure it's been in almost
every instance it's been enacted in every other city in

the countryand this I am thoroughly well studied
onthat we'll not have it in Cairo."
Ex-White Hat and present Police Commissioner James Dale, Jr. testifying at CRC hearingMarch

The first Cairo resident to testify is what the Com-

mission calls an "overview witness," one familiar
with the broad local picture. But the Reverend J.I.
Cobb, who has been quoted earlier, more accurately
bears witness to an underview of the community, the
view of the minority trying to struggle up.
"Every administration for the past 20 years," he

says, "I have visited the City Councils and have
talked to them, every administration. . . and been
in conference with the Mayor. Sometimes with
groups, at times alone . . . and my plea was that the
total community should be involved and the minority
group should not always be represented by the same
people."
.

.

.

in most cases the City Council would sit

quiet and listen and then in many cases sneer or
show of lack of interest, andif that did not take
placethere was a lack of action. And then when
attempts were made by (white) people in the community to set up certain things among themselves
and those people were not afraid of being called
*City Commissioner Carl Meisenheimer h'd praised
Beard on October 28, 1969 for easing racial tensions. Beard
discovered that a man wounded in an alleged racial shooting
actually had been committing a burglary at the time.

 well, people that had the courage to step forward
and were not afraid to be called 'nigger lovers'

.

.

.

THE REVEREND MR. COBB". "That would be the

decision made or given by the Police Commissioner

And this is a thing that it seems to me that most

[James Dale Jr.] possibly with thc sanction of the

whites don't want to be called, and that is a 'nigger

City Council itself."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "You believe there
is such a policy in existence in Cairo?"
THE REVEREND MR. COBB: "Probably unwritten,
but it is the policy and practice."

lover.'

Rev. Cobb testifies that some federal relief programs temporarily providing food and jobs were
helpful during those 20 years. But he adds that
the "cause of much frustration and unrest among
Negroes is bccausc of the dragging of the feet of the
Federal government in many areas . . . I would say
that the Federal government is moving just a little bit
too slow across the country." One arca of too-slow
change his testimony identifies is police administration.

Today, Rev. Cobb is the first black in Cairo history to sit on the three- member Police and Fire Commission. What 20 years of pleading before councils
did not achieve, pressures arising from militant protest has. But Rev. Cobb continues in minority status
on the Police Commission and there is only one
black man out of 20 officers.

"It is very bad," he says. "There are certain areas
that at certain times the Police Department doesn't
even police. Whcrc thcrc arc large concentrations of

Negroes such as Pyramid Courts there are times
when there is absolutely no protection in the area.*
If you call police, thcy'rc not going out there . . .
Whcn it comes to the attitude of thc police toward
the communiti, the attitude of the majority of the
white community or the majority race is reflected
within the department itself."

. who do you
think is telling the Police Department not to go to
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "

.

.

Pyramid Courts?'
*The Reverend Mr. Cobb testified out of personal experience. On the night of January 4, 1970, his car was
fired into. Black police officer Wilbert Beard, who was still
with the Cairo Police Department at the time, took a rifle
from an unmarked police car he believed was involved in
the shooting. Beard fired test rounds from the rifle, then
dug slugs from Cobb's vehicle and mailed both groups of
bullets to State Police Headquarters in Springfield

for a

ballistics check. Beard received no reply from the state
police and when he called them they said they had never
received the package.

Thcn he gives this Cairo undervicw of law and
order:

"The way we see it from where we stand is that
every time that we strive to do something to help
ourselves that there are some more policemen armed
with guns, more ammunition is bought to put a stop

to thc drive to better the condition of thc Negro.
This is the way that we see it in this community, and
this is the way it is seen across the country.
"More guns."

Guns will also be on the mind of the Rev. Koen
as his testimony as United Front leader develops.
The long fast has left him broken in health and he
supports himself with a staff walking to the witness
chair. Once he had been either a spellbinding
preacher or expert rabble-rouser, depending on
your view of him. Now, his voice is barely audible,
words often slurred.

"I think thc big problem that exists hereI don't
`think,' I know it isthc major problem is this: law
enforcement. . There's been an obvious breakdown for thc last three years particularly. There's
been a breakdownsince, I know from my childhood up to the age of 19 before I went to college
.

.

with law and order."
He accuses state police of illegal raids on Pyramid
Courts in which "some black citizens were brutally
beaten and some were thrown in jail . . ." Rev. Koen
refers to a $75,000 grant to Cairo by the Illinois Law
Enforcement Commission, part of a federally-funded

program designed to upgrade police departments
with

special

emphasis

in

community relations.

Only around $6000 was spent and Rev. Koen
charges that ". . . this past summer the remaining
fund that was left in this account was pulled back
by the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission, because there were guns purchased and the City Police

 29
Department could not be accountable for all the

subsequently altered, that after we left the State of

guns which were purchased."

Illinois did conduct somc training.

Rev. Koen's charge that weapons bought with
federal tax money disappeared goes unchallenged in
the hcaring. He makes this connection between the

"We found that there werc somc members in
the Police Dcpartmcnt and also city officials who

missing guns and the Front's experience with law

were insensitive to the racial conditions confronting
them. The solution seemed to be to 'blast away and

enforcement:

we'll win.'

"We have been forced to bring in lawyers from
around the country to defend us on illegal charges,
on trumped-up charges, and then we turn around
and we see justice on the other hand where guns
come up missing [bought] with State and Federal

"We found that the racial strife and its related
incidents of violence were the outstanding police

funds

.

.

. and when we find these things out, it was

hush-hush. We don't know nothing about what has
happened to these cases or what is happening . . .
we find that when it comes to justice that we are

always on the othcr end of the stick in terms of

problems in the community.
"We saw where the police did not give the Pyr-

amid Courts any police protcction at the time of the
. . .
And they were questioned: 'Why
don't you go inside this project if these people are

coverage

shooting at you and you're firing back in self-c efense

why not go in there and try to find outknock on
doors, do some investigation and find out who is

receiving injustices."

doing the shooting?' And thcy felt that thcy would be

Rev. Cobb is a newcomer to the field of law enforcement and Rev. Koen is bitterly partisan in his
judgment of the Cairo police; their testimony must
be weighted accordingly. Witness Charles Vanderbosch is a veteran white lawman with a master's
degree in political science who advocates strict pro-

cndangcred and it really was not worth thc effort,
and no one in the city government forced them to
really conduct a follow-up investigation or prelimi-

fessional neutrality

in law enforcement. He has

served 18 years on the Chicago Police Department
and eight years with the International Association of
Chiefs of Police where he is assistant director of
field operations. In February and March, 1970, along
with two retired officers from the New York City
and Tucson Departments, he surveyed the Cairo
police at thc invitation of state officials and thenMayor Thomas.
IACP Survey
Mr. Vanderbosch tells the hearing: "We have
done studies in the Dcep South, in the upper New
England statcs and the Midwest, and we have never
found another Cairo."
Then he summarizes some findings of the survey

and thc following random samples are consistent
with thc context from which they are excerpted.

"I would say that in 1970 the Cairo Police
Department was barren of professionalism . . .
However, from what I understand, this has been

nary investigation.

"We found that the white citizens also are exposed to . . abuse. In fact, when we were here
doing the field work, some of our consultants were
riding in the police vehicles with thc Cairo police
officers, and a number of stops were madc, traffic,
field inquiry type of stuff, and thcy werc rather taken
aback at thc crudeness, at the vulgarity of the police
.

officers talking to thc citizens of Cairo.

"The Police Department was totally undisciplined at the time. There was no provision made for
disciplinary actions. And up to the time we were
there no one had bccn subjected to disciplinary measures. They wcrc using up thousands of rounds if
ammunition and there was very few reports made of
the shooting incidents . . And the city just went
.

along as if nothing was happening.

"We don't know and I don't think anyone in
Cairo does know, what thc crime rate is in this
community because the department at that time did
not have records, and thc records they did have we
just really could not read and get a picturc of it . . .
Thcrc's a possibility that complaints made against
thc Police Department are not recorded so 'We don't

 30
our

"I went there," he testifies, "And I looked down
on the paper, and they didn't have that the lady hit

The report pointed out that the Cairo Police ne-

my car and kept on going, you know. So I asked why
didn't they have this on the paper? So this man told

any problem
community.' "
have

with

the

people

in

partment "despite its many shortcomings . . . should
not be made the scapegoat for the sociopolitical and
economic problems plaguing the city." Mr. V4nderbosch's professional appraisal contained in the IACP

me that he would have to see her about this, you

report was given to the City Council in August,

know. It wasn't on the report that she hit my car and
kept going. So he told me if I didn't get out of there,
you know, he would lock me up, you know, where I

1970.

belonged."

"Well, we made approximately 200 recommendations in this report to improve the quality of police
services in the city of Cairo," he says. "To my
knowledge, none with the exception of the training
which the State Police gave the people have been

It is the kind of discourteous treatment that blacks
are accustomed to at the hands of some white police
and to which white civilians are not all strangers.
March 21, 1972. Witness Deberry is riding with
some friends, and as they turn into the intersection

implemented or carried out."

of Washington and Sycamore Streets, they see "a
police officer had another black man pulled over to
the street and he was doing a lot of provocative

Finally, he is asked whether the present chief of
police or police commissioner has contacted him
concerning the recommendations.

"We mailed the report to the city of Cairo either
in July or August, 1970. We haven't heard from the
city since that time."
Four Cases in Point
The IACP findings, damning though they are, may

be out of date. Have standards of conduct that
shocked impartial investigators in 1970 improved in

1972? The hearing calls two former black police
officers, and two black residents of Cairo. The police

officers resigned from the Department after what
they claim was racial harrassment -including suspensionconvinced them that black cops in Cairo
were handcuffed by racism while trying to discharge
their duties.
The men are Russell Deberry and Vernon Hodge
(citizens with law enforcement complaints), and
Wilbert Beard and Robert Meeks (formerly policemen); each must be considered unsympathetic to a

police department they believed mistreated them.
Mr. Hodge tells a story of minor harassment. One
night in February, 1972, his parked car is sideswiped
outside h:s home. A witness helps him find the white

lady driver who did it. Police are called and depositions given. Hodge says he was told to return to the
station to pick up the report.

talking. He was cursing the guy."
The Deberry car stopped.

"The reason for that," Deberry says, "was that so
many incidents has happened with the Police Depart-

ment and blacks that if other blacks see one black
pulled over by a police officer or police officers, they
know that he's going to be subjected to harassments
. . . He's going to be hollered at, talked at like he's

not human at all. So then they usually come to the
aid and say, you know, What's the trouble? Or they
try to form more than one person standing there in
order to sec that some kind of justice is given, you
know, in its right perspective."

Deberry says that the detained driver explained
that he had first been stopped for a defective taillight. The driver said he had bought a new light but
that it kept sputtering. He was stopped again, he
said, and told the officer that it must be defective
wiring which could not be corrected until morning.
The driver, according to Deberry, lived 15 feet from
the second police flagdown and he asked if he could
park the car at the spot overnight.
"And he was trying to explain this," Deberry testifies. "But the officer wouldn't let him explain it, you

know. He just kept saying, 'You're going to go to
jail. You're going to go to jail.' You know, 'I'm a

 Af*

31
police officer and you're going to respect this badge.'
"So he got on the radio . . . and he called some-

where or somebody, but in less time than you can

saya miracle of beauty it was likeI don't know
how many people were around the car, you know,
that was local whites, some merchants from some of
the boycotted areas downtown

.

.

."

"You are stating that in answer to the patrolman's call additional policemen
came and also additional non-police civilians who
GENERAL COUNSEL:

were armed?"
MR. DEBERRY:

"That's correct."
"What happened at that

GENERAL COUNSEL:

point?"
MR. DEBERRY: "The police and non-police were
all together . . . like if you hadn't known they were
local [civilians] you would have thought they were
policemen too . . . The police came up . . . they

unstrapped their holsters, pulled their piecestheir
gunsout. And some of the local whites had their

Former black patrolman Meeks acids another historical vignette: "I had this incident where a radio
operator, patrolman, made a remark like, 'Shoot this
nigger in the back' or something like that. And it just
so happened that I was in the station at the time, and
I went into the radio room and confronted this operator, also confronting the Chief because he was sitting there with him . . . the Chief got up and left.

He made some remark about going to the Mark
Twain or something." (A local bar and restaurant).
Echoes of Tom Sawyer and Nigger Jim do persist
along the Mississippi, and they emerge briefly in the
most shocking tale the Commission hears of contemporary law and order in Cairo. Again, the witness is
Debcrry, the date Sept. 29, 1971, when he says he
was bringing his pregnant wife to a hospital after one
false labor. Again, he encountered a black motorist

stopped by police, this time spreadeagled against a
squadcar, surrounded by white guns.

"So I came up

.

.

.

I didn't have time to say

guns and were like kneeling behind the cars and over
the fenders with the guns."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Did any of the people who
were apprehended have a gun drawn?"
MR. DEBERRY: "No."
The arrival of an Alexander County deputy sheriff

anything about where I was going or to explain anything as to why I was in that vicinity where they had
this black guy against the car . . . I was snatched
from behind. I was hit up side of the head and called

prevented further escalation, the witness says, and
blacks and whites "went on our respective ways."
Again, a small incident with large violent potential
but no grave finale. Yet nearly three years after the
White Hats were supposedly disbanded, vigilantes
apparently remained tied in to the police radio net,

"And I said, 'Like for what? Why am I arrested?
Like, I'm trying to get a doctor."*

drawing guns with police sanction. It recalled earlier,

violent days that former Police Sergeant Beard depicts for the hearing.
"Fellow police officers f would' use remarks like,

by name by the police officer

.

.

.

He just said,

`Deberry, get your ass in the car.'

"And he says, 'You're going to get a doctor all
right, you know, like when we get you to the station
we're going to see that you get what you're supposed
to be getting.' "
At the station house, Deberry says that the current
Cairo Police Chief Bowers said: " 'I want every nigger in Cairo rounded up, and if it means busting

heads to bring them to jail, I want them brought

`We're going to go out to Pyramid Courts and what
we should do is bomb them all out or blow them all
up,' you know, and stuff like this. And there was also
statements made, you know, like 'That nigger this' or

in.' "

`That nigger that.' Which I had to verbally reprimand a radio operator for one night . . . And what
happened after that I don't know. I never heard of

stolen her purse. A number of black teenagers, 14
and 15, had been rounded up and stood with De-

any, you know, results from any complaints of mistreatment . . . of blacks by policemen."

Eventually, Deberry learned the reason for the
night's excitement. A black youth had reportedly

slugged a white womankin to a policemanand

*Later in the hearing, Deberry will testify about another
experience when he sought medical attentionfor an aching toothin Cairo.

 berry in the police station, arms raised overhead
against the wall. Deberry says Chief Bowers told

small decree of what you have had in many other
towns who haven't had the notoriety and publicity

them:

we have had in Cairo .

"'I'm not going to take anything from any nigger,
and you're going to find out that I'm not the punk

chiefs that's been here. We've had three or four,
whichever it was, to resign. But I'm not going to
resign
. . And another thing is that none of my
.

police officers' wives, mothers or grandmothers get
knocked in the face or their pocketbook snatched. If

they do, some nigger is going to die for

it, you

know.' "
Deberry testifies that minutes later, Chief Bowers

spoke to him recalling their childhood when they
played together, even as Tom Sawyer and Nigger
Jim.

"Chief Bowers, he says, 'Hell, I've known you a
long time.' He says, 'I used to play basketball in the

projects.' I say, 'Yeah, I know you did.' He says,
`Then why do you hate my guts?' I say, 'It's not a
matter of hating you but I don't like anything that's
against me.' . . . He says, 'Like, I was a little hotheaded tonight, the reason I was saying all those
words I said.' You know, he says, 'Like I tell you
what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you go.' "
According to Deberry, while he was being held
without any charce, former White Hat and present
Police Commissioner Dale strode around headquarters cradling a .45 calibre Thompson machine gun.
He quotes the Commissioner as saying:
" 'Before you go, I want you to take a message to
the black people of Cairo, and that is that if anything

like this goes down again there's going to be some
bloodshed in the streets and we don't give a damn
how old they are or how young they are.' "

As a parting gesture, Deberry says, a patrolman
flung his car keys out the door when he asked to
have them returned.
Police Officials Testify
"I don't personally consider that we have had any

racial problems," says Police Commissioner Dale
when he testifies. ". . . the racial aspect of this has
been far overblown . . We haven't had the antagonism between the black and white races to even a
.

.

.

"We have had," the Commissioner concedes,
"many incidences of criminal damage to property,
many instances of criminal damage to body also.
People have been shot. Things have been burned.

But it's been for one sole purpose and this has
gained money through contributions and certain indi-

viduals have profited by it, and this has all been in
the nature of civil rights."
For the record, he identifies the civil rights movement as the cause and not the effect of racial difficulties in Cairo. Inexplicably, neither Commissioner

Dale nor Chief Bowers is asked to make a specific
response to Deberry's account of what happened in
the station house on the night of Sept. 17. Nor are
any of the detained black teenagers called to articu-

late how it feels growing up in a city where the
Police Chief vows that "some nigger is going to die"
if a purse is snatched in the future. Chief Bowers, a
$9000-a-year 4-year "veteran" of the force, says he
has never seen unnecessary force used on black or
white.

"I was on the street before I assumed the office
that I have now," the Chief testifies," and in handling individual black citizens or black complainants

or the subjects of the complaints, I have seen in
many instances the officers bend over backwards not

to perpetrate these things that have been brought
forward, for the simple reason as many of us know
the pendulum has swung terrifically to the left and
it's impossible for an officer to do the things that
have been said that has been done without losing his
position."

Chief Bowers then says he believes "the safeguards against anyone being victimized is a very
good thing. This did not exist in the past." But in the
next breath he, along with Commissioner Dale, denies virtually all the negative findings made by the
IACP. The Chief says he advertised over radio for
black applicants but none replied and the Commissioner, questioned about his hiring practices for police and firemen, declares that "I don't care whether
he's black, pink, purple, what color he is."

 33
The Chief denies that Pyramid Courts go unpatrolled and swears that he investigates all citizens'
complaints against the police. Although he i;4 vague
about the number of complaints received, he is certain none has ever been substantiated. He denies the
IACP charge of poor record keeping and offers some

of his own statistics to prove that blacks arc not
discriminated against.
They show that in the six months from September,
1971 to March, 1972, 714 whites were arrested, 240

blacks; whites serving 508 days in jail, blacks 156;
whites fined $12,175, blacks $2896. Chief Bowers
does not volunteer, nor is he asked, how these figures
compare with those from before the time when the
Lawyers Committee presence* and several law suits

served to brake arrests that blacks charged were
made promiscuously and some court decisions found
were made illegally.

no community presence at police headquarters, was
for an $18,000 director.
"The city officials indicated." says James R. Rush,
Criminal Justice Planning Director for the Greater
Egypt Regional Plann.ng and Development Commission, "that they had been attempting to hire some-

one, that the salary would have to be almost that
high to convince someone from outside the area to
conic to Cairo and head up a program . . ."
GENERAL COUNSEL: SO that figure was put there
at the request of city officials?
MR. RUSH: "Yes."

"Our agency." says Arthur J. Bilek, Chairman of
the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission, trying to

explain the dfficulties of working with Cairo's revolving-door officialdom, "dealt with a variety of
local officials. We dealt with Chief of Police Klutz,
Chief of Police Bell, Chief of Police Peterson, Chief
of Police Burke, and Chief of Police Seriak, Mayors

An Aborted Program

Leo Stenzel, Pete Thomas and James B. Walder.

Although it seems that Dale and Bowers, in comparison to previous witnesses, are talking about a
police department other than Cairo's, all witnesses
who have not been comatose for a decade are aware
of certain community dissatisfactions. Commissioner
Dale is asked whether the IACP recommendation for
a Police Department community relations program
has been followed'? He characterizes such programs
elsewhere as "total failures" and says that he hasn't

Now, it's very possible that during that long progres-

seen any that were not heavy in "rake-off." He
claims that the $75.000 police improvement program
given to Cairo by the state was top-heavy on administration expenses.

"It had S25,000 salaries in there which is not"
he says, "This is not a $25,000-a-year community.

So I vetoed the program as well as several other
people, and I would veto it again."
Actually, as subsequent testimony shows, the high-

est salary budgeted for the program which Rev.
Koen charged with producing missing weapons but
*The Illinois Law Enforcement Commission also maintainer a Public Defender Project in Cairo offering services
to the underprivileged in both criminal and civil cases.

sion of dealings with a variety of people, Chief of
Police No. 3 may not have agreed with the decision
that was reached with Chief of Police No. 1 and so
on."
Rush, Bilek and John Jemilo, Regional Adminis-

trator for the U.S. Justice Department's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, all testify as
the Commission tries to sort out responsibility for the
seeming failure of state and federal dollars (and authority) to infuse new life in Cairo's peace-keeping
apparatus. Rush cites pressures having nothing to do
with high-salary considerations to explain why the
city turned back nearly all the $75,000 offered. He
displays a copy of a newspaper called the Tri-State
Informer which bears the seal of the (White) Citizens Council with its slogan "States' Rights, Racial
Integrity" and contains this paragraph:
"Support those elected officials who stYul firm on
law and order. We publicly denounce weak-kneed
politicians who think the only solution to our community problems lies in state and federal grants.
Community and police relations boards are nothing more than police control which in the end only

 34
handcuffs police and increases the strength of
criminals."
Another flyer produced by Rush achieves a bumper-sticker condensation of this philosophy: "We need
to support our local police by turning down Federal
grants "
Rush also claims that "some representatives of the

black community indicated to me that unless all
black representatives on the advisory board which
we were attempting to establish were chosen by a
particular group within the community, they would

not be supportive of the program." He does not
expand in this to identify the groupRev. Koen's
United Front, for example, or boxer-bar owner
Aveary's People for Improvement of Cairobut
concludes: ". . . essentially what we were running
into was the traditional stand-off with not being able
to pull out the middle road, if you will."
If you will or won't accept the premise that this
racial "middle road" actually exists, you may still
question what the U.S. Justice Department was doing
while Cairo floundered judicially. Mr. Jemilo, Justice

Department witness, is asked what he knows about
the law enforcement grant largely composed of Federal money.

"I have no information on that specific grant," he
replies.

A listener wonders whether Jemilo might have
carried some notes or something to Cairo once he
bothered to come at all.
Bilek has precise information. On Dec. 21, 1971,

the present Mayor Walder officially informed him
that the City Council had agreed the $75,000 grant
should be rescinded after only $6538 was expended.
Bilek is asked directly, "What steps has the Illinois
Law Enforcement Commission taken to assist Cairo
*The Informer was published by Carl Helt, owner of
the Cairo News and Music Co. He was also an official of
the UCCA, successor organization of the White Hats. When
black demonstrators marched, his shop's loudspeaker blared
speeches by Alabama Gov. George Wallace. Former Mayor
Pete Thomas, who refused to let one of his salesmen hold
office in UCCA, advertised *Ii the now-defunct Informer.

He called it "strictly business," and added: "They panned
me pretty good."

with its problems in the field of law enforcement?"
The answer elicited, like so many others in so many
hearings, is not a model of clarity. There is a long

list of planning studies and grants for everything
from the $15,660 IACP probe of Cairo to a $40,000
"comprehensive criminal justice planning grant to
Cairo, Alexander County and nine adjacent counties." What $40,000 whacked up among so many
jurisdictions means is anybody's guess. So much of
the state aid he lists overlaps city and county lines
that it is impossible to pinpoint the effort in strifebattered Cairo. And nowhere in the confusion of
figures is there a clear sense of expectations, a timetable for results, nowhere an awareness of the hateful
gunfire rattling around the city for years or a determination that it must be quieted for good.
Bilek does say that any grants carry the require-

ment that applicant cities will not "engage in any
type of discrimination, including racial." Commissioner Freeman, with the rescinded $75,000 grant
apparently in mind, asks:
"Does your office initiate any investigations on its
own to determine whether there is in fact racial discrimination in the employment by the grantee?"
MR. BILEK: "We have not to date unless there has

been some reason to believe that that is in fact occurring."
COMMISSIONER FREEMAN: "If the grantee
.
would receive a grant of $11,000 and then would set

up a circus and nobody complained about it, would
you assume that because you had received no complaints that there was no need to make an investigation to determine whether the funds were being spent
in accordance with the terms of the grant "
MR. BILEK: "Yes, Commissioner."
Comm sioner Mitchell is curious

about the

$15,660 that the state spent for the Cairo Police
study by the IACP.

"What do you usually do when you get a report
like that?" he asks.

The answer from Bilek, Chairman of the Illinois
Law Enforcement Commission:

"We have had a number of those in Illinois and
what we then attempt to do is to get the community

 35
that originally asked for the study and received it to
implement the recommendations under that study.
And we do this in a variety of ways. We deal with
the regional planning group, of which Mr. Rush is
represented here, and we say to them, Now here is a
study. Here are the problems identified. Here are the
recommendations. Can you work with your local
people here and try to get them to do that?' "
Commissioner Mitchell persists: "Is it unusual
that in a study that produced such drastic findings
that there is no further correspondence with the
source of the data? Here is, after all, a man who says
this

is the most unusual police department in the

United States."
MR. RUSH: "I think it's perhaps not that unusual,

knowing people. The study, as you have indicated, is
a rather critical study [emphasis added]. I think the
people, the local officials, felt that they had been
unjustly criticized and for that reason they have rejected the entire report perha,..;:, for certain items."
Commissioner Mitchell, a trace wearily, concludes: "I'm in a field of work in which a lot of this
study activity goes on and people are racing around

trying to grab off grants, and I must confess that
listening here today has reinforced my private suspicion that we should declare a national moratorium

on research and then have a single study to figure
out why nobody ever uses any of the research we
have ever done before.
"I have no more questions."

 37

IN CAMELOT

.

.

"The legendary site of King Arthur's Court was a
place where justice, honor and truth reigned supreme. The place where men were united in a brotherhood based upon respect for the dignity and nobilIt remains for the young to
ity of the individual
strive for perfection and live for an ideal. Camelot
in an
was perfection and Camelot will live again
unlikely place, in a place blessed by nature but
marred by man."
The Rev. Larry Potts announcing the establishment oI rrivate Camelot

School alter Cairo schools were inlegraled. Cairo Citizenhay 16,
1969.

"The Camelot teachers kept telling us we couldn't
fail. They told us the colored were like a bunch of
animals. Larry Potts gave a speech and said we were
competing with blacks. One winter day the classroom
was cold and a kid sitting with an overcoat on said
he was going back to public school. And a woman

teacher said to him, You can go back if you want
with those black sons of bitches."
Interview with Brad Holly, 18, who attended both Camelot and Cairo
High SchoolMay 28, 1972.

Camelot Parochial School opened in September,

1969, three years after the Federal government
found Cairo's schools in violation of Title VI of the
1964 Civil Rights Act. The city's schools were inte-

grated through the familiar expedient of closing
black schools and often doubling up enrollment of
predominantly white ones. Two new schools were
also built. There were predictable initial racial frictions like student fistfights* and teacher struggles
over assignments, curricula, discipline etc. Often they

were struggling over scrapsoutdated books, under-equipped labs, inadequate classrooms. With a
*The violence perhaps was magnified by those forces
that did not want integration to work. Dr. Morris Osborne,
regional director for the U.S. Office of Education's Equal
Educational Opportunities, will tell the hearing: "When
all of this shooting and everything that was going on, the
schools in Cairo have had less police patrol probably than
any school in the nation."

 38
diminishing local tax base and no school tax increase
in the previous nine years (a recent increase referendum lost 21/2-to-1), Cairo public schools had been
steadily deteriorating. This deterioration was coincident with a blackening of enrollment and follows, a
national pattern. Minority enrollment now stands at
70 percent of 1335 pupils in the Cairo schools.

When Camelot School opened, with Alexander
County Commissioner John Dillingham Chairman of

its Board of Directors, it attracted 300 pupils from
the public schools and approximately 15 teachers.
The pupil transfer distorted the black-white ratio in
the public schools and at the same time it severely
reduced state aid calculated on pupil attendance. Although Camelot is technically open to both races, no
black has ever applied. On Sept. 16, 1969, school
organizer Rev. Pottswho had been secretary to the
post-White Hats UCCAtold J. Anthony Lukas of
the N.Y. Times:
"How could they come to a school started by the
very people they are trying to destroy?"
Under Illinois law, public school buses were per-

mitted to carry Camelot students to their all-white
school. In 1970, although lacking accreditation,
Camelot was granted tax exempt status by the U.S.
Internal Revenue Service. This permitted donors to
deduct cash donations to Camelot as "charitable deductions." Jay G. Philpott, IRS District Director,
announced the new status in October, 1970, citing
the school's public announcement that it was nondiscriminatory.

"Where a school has adopted such an admissions
policy," he said, "for purposes of issuing a ruling the
IRS will assume that such a policy has been adopted
and will be maintained in good faith."
In May, 1971, 2 formal letter from a Cairo resident charging Camelot with practicing racial segregation was received by the Commissioner of Internal
Revenue in Washington. There is no apparent record
of any subsequent investigation to determinein
light of the complaintwhether the IRS assumption
of Camelot's "good faith" was justified.

The hearing considers two elements in Cairo's
struggling and divided educational systemprivate
Camelot and the public schools. Some issues, like

Camelot's tax exemption, are distinct; others overlap,
like the financial cost to the public schools caused by

diminished enrollment, and what is being done to
make up the difference. Race touches virtually every

aspect as adults armed with old beliefs, prejudices
and self-interests battle over young minds, and if the
discords heard by the Commission are uniquely Cairo's, the undertones sound today throughout America.

Three men prominent in Camelot's history testify.

Jack Greaney is acting headmaster; Rye Eaves is
Chairman of the Board; and Torn Madra is both a
Camelot organizer and father of a student enrolled
there.* Mr. Madra, a well-to-do warehouseman, was
in the forefront of the White Hats. A husky, volatile
man, he was quoted in a N. Y. Times story on June
23, 1969, explaining the effectiveness of the White
Hats:
"Our main deterrent value is that we are untrained
and dangerous on the streets. The Guard is trained
for restraint and t'. militants take advantage of it.
But ordinary Joes
shotguns are going to defend
their property and w.)n't read 'em a card about their
rights."
Mr. Madra gives his version of the racial situation
preceding Camelot under questioning from Counsel
Powell.

MR. MADRA: "I think the beginnng of what you

would like to call the racial turmoil in our school
system was when Preston Ewing [NAACP president], who is now on your staff, pulled black foot-

ball players"
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Mr. Ewing is not a member
of this staff."

MR. MADRA: "Well he's on theHe signs letters
as the secretary of the Illinois Division or something

And he pulled black football players off of the
Cairo High School bus a few minutes prior to its
departure for its opening game of the season. I think
that was in 1967. And he did this because there were
no black cheerleaders elected by the student body.

Up until that time I think the whites and blacks
*Madra, without children in the public schools, became
a leader of the successful effort to defeat the public school
tax referendum.

 attending school together, they were playing together,

they were working together and they had a good

the school and local government.
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Would you please describe

athletic team.
"And some of the black boys who were seniors on

the method by which the Camelot School obtained

that bus cried when Preston Ewing pulled them off
because there were no black cheerleaders. And, of
course, they went up and six of the 11 starting members of the football team were no: 'ere and they got
the dickens beat out of them.* And I think that was
the beginning of the racialnot just the disciplinary
problem but the racial problem in our schools."
Mr. Eaves is asked why he thinks Camelot was
created and he answers:

housed?"

"Well, one thing I think that was bad for the
public schools was the overcrowding of the schools. I

the building in

which the

high

school now is

"Well, there's not much question
about thatthat the people who owned the property
MR. MADRA:

gave it to them."
GENERAL COUNSEL:
MR. MADRA: "I was

"Who owned the property?"
part owner of the property."

GENERAL COUNSEL:

"How did you get title of

that property?"
MR. MADRA:

"I bought it at public auction to-

gether with three other gentlemen."
GENERAL COUNSEL:

"From whom :lid you buy

don't think our public schools was ready to receive
the amount of students that it had to receive when
they went to full integration. We took two facilities
that was almost filled to capacity and then we closed
one of those down and put it into the other one and
we got an overcrowding, and I think that any time

it?"

you get an overcrowding such as that you get turmoil
and it's not conducive to good educ. 'ion."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "W.21-C thei.e any other cir-

MR. MADRA: "I don't see that's material to this
particular hearing but they didn't have to pay anything. We gave it to them as a gift."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "How much did you pay for

cumstances that led you to enioA your students in

MR, MADRA:

"From the Cairo public school sys-

tem."*
GENERAL COUNSEL:

"It was, in fact, owned by

the Cairo public schools. How much money did the
Camelot school have to pay for the building?"

the Camelot Schools, Mr. Eaves?"
MR. EAVES: "No sir, none that I can think of."

it?"

In a community where white parents had long
insisted on segregating their children from blacks,
Camelot is seen only as a response to spatial, not
racial, stresses. This explanation apparently satisfied

investigation, sir."

MR. MADRA:

"I don't think that's material to this

IRS officials who, Mr. Madra testifies, conferred with

Attorney John Holland, counsel to the witnesses,
instructs Mr. Madra not to answer on the grounds
that "it could tend to incriminate him . . It's immaterial. It's arguing with the witness. And it's abu-

Mr. Dillingham, a member of both Camelot and

sive."

county boards. There are other relationships between

Despite these dire objections, Mr. Madra eventually answers. The price was $4400. This bought a
dozen-room brick structure with grounds in a community where some modest 6-room frame houses on
20 x 50 plots sell for as little as $1500. Since there
was little demand for any real estate in Cairo and
less for abandoned schoolhouses, the price may have

*Mr. Ewing's account given

in

an interview contains

information lacking in Mr. Madra's: "When the high schools
integrated, Hacks were in a minority and cheerleaders were

elected by popular vote. Some of the black girls had been
cheerleaders for 3 years in Sumner High. I asked the
schools superintendent to merge the two squads. But nothing
was done and a white vote elected only white girls. So we

did go to the bus and asked the black players to boycott
the game. They did and next week the cheerleaders were
integrated."

Both men agree the absence of black players was costly.
Cairo lost 88-0.

.

*Actually, two buildings were purchasedthe Elmwood
and the Lincoln Schools. At the time, black groups seeking
to create. a recreation center had approached the city asking

how they might buy an abandoned school but the city
refused to sell to them.

 40
been correct. But the sale stirs other questions that
are not pursued. If Cairo's public schools were so

One interview outside the hearing may serve as a

desperately overcrowded, would it have been feasible
to reactivate the Elmwood School as an annex rather
than sell it off? How well was the auction advertised,
who else bid, why did the city decide to auction off
Elmwood at a moment so propitious to the founding

back and forth between the public and the private

short prologue to what students say inside. The interview was with Brad Holly, 18, a semi-longhaired,
angel-faced but quick-fisted white who has bounced
school.

"We call them 'niggers' to their faces and they call

of Camelot? And were the black 40 percent of the

us `honkeys'," he tells me. "There's perfec. under-

city's residents consulted about the transformation of

standing."

a building with their tax dollars in the brick and
mortar into an all-white school? For that matter,
were whites unable to pay Camelot's $300 tuition
told that the sale meant that less funds would be
available to educate their children in the public
schools? These questions go unasked and unanswered.

But the transformation from public schoolhouse to
private is a complete one: Elmwood-turned-Camelot
does not engage in athletics or any other extra -curricular activity with the public schools of Cairo.
Commissioner Freeman sums up her impression.

"You have here," she says, "A situation of selfperpetuating segregation. It's an all-white student
body and all-white parents and all-white board."

Mr. Greaney demurs: "I don't feel so, Mrs. Freeman. Since I have been in the office [of acting head-

mastedand I think if you check that I don't think
you will find a black person that I have been other
than nice to or cooperative with in the community. I
think that my door is open at any time for

anybody....
"I will add this:

I feel

that a black student

would be somewhat ostracized from his black community for this, because I
have had indicationsNow no person, no black parents has actually come to me, but I have gotten word
back through sources that they would like to enroll
their children with us but they fear the backlash that
might conic from their own community."
They. may also fear that a son or daughter might
get a teacher who in class compares black children to
"a bunch of animals."
making application

.

.

.

How the Kids See it

What do young people, black and white, feel
about themselves, their city, the schools and race?

Holly came to Cairo in 1965 and experienced
integration in the junior high school. According to
him, it was a far cry from Andy Hardy's Schooldays.
"The blacks thought we were stereotyping them,"
he says, "And we thought they were doing it to us.
You'd walk down the halls, not saying anything, and

someone would come up and hit you. Junior high
school was the worst two years of school anyone
could go through. Fist-fightin' all the time. I did my
share. But by high school, black and whites were
settling down."
Holly went to Camelot in the eighth grade and he

did not like it. He is filled with racial ambivelanee
and his Camelot complaints are schoolboy stuff, not
sociological protests: the coaches were short-hair fanatics, there were no home football games because
other teams wouldn't come to Camelot to play, students had to sprint three blocks at lunchtime to line
up at a cafeteria their school lacked. He recounts
instances of racist remarks from his Camelot teachers but complains that after transferring back to
Cairo High School he found coaches favoring black
athletes over whites.

"There's no real problems there now," he says.
"But there's no real togetherness either. Oh, there's
plenty of stuff goin' on in parked cars. But you gotta
watch the cops because they tell the parents if they
catch a white guy and a black chick together . . . If
I had a party, though, I wouldn't want a bunch of
blacks because of what people would say. You'd
never see another date with their daughters or run

around with their son. The parents here are real
paranoid."
Talking to Holly, you have no real sense of which

way he will go. In Cairo, "real paranoid" parents
have helped to produce "perfect understanding" in

 41
their children. Brad Holly has heard a Camelot

teacher refer to "black sons of bitches." and the
memory stays with him. But "nigger" slips easily off
his tongue, contradictions war inside him. And the
testimony of children at the hearing also is contradictory. Camelot students Shelley McKee and Pat Sams,
and Rhonda Jenkins, a black girl from Cairo High
School have been conditioned by their young life-

times to see and feel dIcrently. Miss McKee has a
pert brunette prettiness and Mr. Sams is clean-cut,
athletic, forthright. They have been studying in a
school which Rev. Potts says emphasizes ". . . religion and moral values. We also encourage our
teachers to stress the American heritage, which in
turn leads them to a better understanding of the
threat of Communism." Miss Jenkins, a wispy girl
who wants to study art, has lived in Pyramid Courts
during the days it came under sniper fire.
Young Sanis offers his view of what is troubling

Cairo: "Well, what the beef is, seems to be about
now, is just thatis just jobs. When everybody is
working, everybody is making money, everybody is
happy. When you don't have money and you're not

working, you get displeased. You try and change
things."

Keynes or Marx might be ha:.-pressed to put the
economic facts of life more succinctly. The girls,
however, have sharply contrasting opinions on what
race and education are all about in Cairo. Miss
McKee thinks that blacks are "welcome to conic [to
Camelot] if they want to." M.ss Jenkins says that if
"a black student went to Camelot, I don't think they
would really feel welcome."

The white girl is pleased with her private school:

"The teachers help me more. We can have more
private studies and the classes are smaller. And the
atmosphere. We have a nice atmosphere."
The black girl says of public high school: "The
way of teaching is bad, and a lot of things in the
school need to be improved. Like the books. The

books are not up to date. And the material. Just
everything. Everything in the school is bad."

Are there racial problems among students "I
don't think there's as much as there used to be,"
Miss Mc Kee replies. "1 think there were a few years

ago, but I think things are calming down a lot and I
don't think it's the trouble that we had . . I have a
lot of black friends and I have been to Cairo High's
ballgames and I have cheered fnr Cairo High ballgames, and I wouldn't refuse to talk to anybody just
.

because they were black."

"The black and white students get along at Cairo
fine until 3:30 comes," says Miss Jenkins. "That's
when the parents cc me to school to pick up the
children and then there's no contact between the
students because they're afraid of the parents and
they arc afraid of the principal, Mr. Verb le, because
he hates to see blacks and whites together."
And Miss Mc Kee says that to improve conditions

the "only thing I could think would be employment
and like the housing. If they can make that better,
where some of them wouldn't have to live in run-

down houses and they could justLike a Federal
program to build houses where everybody could be
more equal."
Camelot, the IRS and Wonderland
An area where everybody is supposed to be
more-or-less equal is tax exemptions, and the hearing

next focuses on it. On July 10th, 1970, IRS issued a
national ruling that private schools practicing discrimination could no longer be given exempt status.
Edward Trainor, Regional Commissioner of Internal
Revenue for the Midwest Region, is asked whether
IRS has verified Camelot's non-discriminatory claim.
"We have had no complaints," Mr. Trainor replies.
"There is nothing in our file to indicate we received
any indication that they haven't performed in conformity with our policy."
Commissioner Mitchell produces the letter of com-

plaint which had been sent to IRS in Washington.
The letter says in part: "We believe that the continuation of Camelot's tax exempt status
. is unlawful" because racial segregation is the prevailing pilicy. Mr. Trainor says he has never seen the letter but
he is sure "it would cause us to re-evaluate the file
and see what the situation was."
Dr. Osborne. of the U.S. Office of Education, is
asked about granting tax exemption to a school like
Camelot that is not accredited by the state. "Well,"
.

.

 42
he replies, "I think that there is no question in my
mind as an educator, as a professional educator, that
the IRS has very little business granting any educational institution a tax exemption prior to checking
with the chief state school officer and his office on
the accreditation of that institution."
Dr. Michael Bakalis, Illinois state superintendent
of schools, offers his opinion: "I would agree with
Dr. Osborne in general," he says, "Except for some

peculiarities which we have at least in the state of
Illinois in regard to recognition of private schools.
We are not required by law to offer any kind of
recognition to any private institution, any private ele-

they have suggestions as to ways we could arrange
this. As I stated, very frankly, 1 am not an educator

and this area of law is very technical, and I'd be
happy to cover the tax aspects of this. However, the
details of the accreditation, of course, I think present

a real problem, and I am sire that we have taken
this position and would continue to take it that if you
have suggestions as to how we can improve our procedures here we would be more than happy to cooperate with this Commission."
The "clarification" disposes of the subject al-

though re-reading the transcript one speculative
questions nags: What would everyone concerned

mentary or secondary school . . . in this state. I
think in my personal opinion this is an unfortunate
situation at present but it is the situation that exists

have done if the United Front had opened a school
for black children and applied for tax exempt status?

right now.

Public School Losses
The hearing learns how the public schools have
paid for Camelot's successful establishment. Daily

"But my position philosophically is certainly that
we have the ability I believe in my office to make
determinations as to whether a school is based on

any kind of discriminatory policy, and I certainly
would not be in favor of granting any kind of tax
exemptions to a school that would be classified in
that category."

What Dr. Bakalis is trying to say, as he later
makes clear, is that "philosophically" he feels that
IRS should have checked accreditation with him. His

assistant, Michael Stramaglia, adds that there are
1140 public school districts in Illinois plus innumerable private and parochial schools so his limited staff
cannot check on each one and all new private and

paraochial accreditations have been deferred. Dr.
Osborne says flatly: "The issue . . . is that the IRS
is issuing tax exemptions without applying basic criteria."
IRS man Trainor adds a final few words: "Well, I

could just clarify first of all policy for the Internal
Revenue Service has to be set for all 50 states of this

nation, and I think this is an example right here of
some of the problems that we run into when we try

to establish a criteria that can be applied across
every state, because we have a variety of state laws.

Now, I'm sure the IRSand I think it has taken the
position here in its announced policywe would be
more than happy to work with this Commission if

public

school

attendance which had

gradually

dropped from 1,977 in 1965-66 to 1,632 in
1968-69 suddenly plummeted to 1,182 in 1969-70,
the year Camelot was founded. Cairo's School Superintendent, Gene A. Mason, is asked about Camelot's
effect on the system: "Well, it's simply decreased our

average daily attendance [ADA] which has decreased our state aid. Of course, we don't have that
[same] number of students which we have to hire
teachers for, but it has hurt us in our student population which we received financial assistance for from
the state."

One wonders anew why the school system sold
one of its buildings to further a plan (to establish
Camelot*) guaranteed to hurt the system. Beyond*
*Official ambivelance prevailed. NY Times, Sept. 18, 1969:

"When the school held a fund-raising and "grand opening"
picnic earlier this month, it was attended by William Egan,
a city commissioner who has since become Cairo's acting
mayor, and Elmer Winkler, another city commissioner.
"Camelot now has 15 teachers, most of them drawn from

Cairo's public schools. Robert Simpson, president of the
Cairo School Board, said the drain of both teachers and
white students probably has hurt the school system somewhat but he declined to criticize Camelot's organizers.
if I were a parent with young children in this town,
I don't know what I'd do,' Mr. Simpson said."

 43
that deal, statistics tell a broad story of race and
public education in Cairo. Despite the city's contin-

ually eroding population and attendant financial
woes, Cairo ran its schools without deficit financing
i.e., borrowing from the state to get through one year
in anticipation of repaying the nextthrough

1966-67. In 1966, the Federal government found
Cairo's schools in violation of Title VI of the 1964
Civil Rights Act. The city moved to comply without

a court fightand to assure that vital HEW funds
would not be cut off. It adopted the "Princeton
Plan" of desegregation, generally accepted as a
workable plan. The Princeton Plan calls for the
"pairing" of formerly white and black schools, with
younger children (both black and white) going to
one and older pupils to the other.
But from that point on, deficit financing became
the educational way of life in Cairo. averaging about
a quarter of a million each school year ,:1\1eedless to
say, this nhcnomenon of public funds running out as
blacks came in was not peculiar to Cairo, Illinois).
Although financing details are complex, and it is not
always clear whether certain negative actions or
non-actions were provoked by integration or were
deliberate attempts to cripple integration, one thing

is apparent: Cairo's schools have approached the
point of bankruptcy at the moment when integration,
for the first time in history, is a reality.
Dr. Osborne says: "I'm suggesting if you look at

the history of it, Cairo has never been in a strong
position to support their schools, and there is no
reason to support them now because look whereIf
you looked at your socioeconomic structure of where
your kids [come from] who are gone to the Camelot
school, there's less reason today to support the public school than there ever was.
"If you ask me . . . if you walk down the streets

of Cairo there are a lot of people that maintain that
the only thing that is going to bring this district into
focus is to let them go bankrupt and then shock
treatment will do it. But that's a pretty big gamble,
sir, you know."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "That's letting children go bankrupt, isn't it?"
DR. OSBORNE: "That's right . . ."

Title IV in Cairo
Other witnesses report that for the last three ycars
running, all first-year teachers have been automatically fired to cut expenditures that would result from
tenure. The cost in teacher morale, in student confidence, in classroom continuity is never calculated.
With dollars so badly needed, it's curious that certain
financial help is rejected. Van Ewing*, a black member of the school board and also active in housing,
describes the brief history of Title IV in Cairo. Title

IV is one of many Federal programs that are supposed to shore up sagging local civic structures. In
this case, it is designed to assist desegregating school
districts in accordance with community desires. Fed-

cral-eity negotiations to obtain a grant at one point
got underway, according to Ewing, but without the
broad community participation required by law.

"Too frequently here in Cairo," he says, "Many,
many programs have bcen brought in and only the
officials have decided whether or not the programs
wcre coming in . . . So we . . . felt that since this
was one of the basic guidelines that we did indeed

want to make sure that through some equitable
means we would make sure that community people,
teachers, students and, of course, administrators and
parents would be involved in the planning and the
implementation of the program."
There were two results of demands for community
participation, Ewing testifies. One was black-white
cooperation. "For once, at least on this program, you
know, we were beginning to plan something together
. . . rather than something being planned and saying, you know, 'This is what it is.' "
The second result was a white counterattack
against the Title IV interracial coalition. The John
Birch Society rose up, its position supported by
many officials. Although Ewing estimates that 95

percent of teachers in three schools were for the
plan, 18 teachers at Cairo High School voted aeainst
it, following the lead of their principal, Leo Verble.
*Van Ewing, a brother of Preston Ewing, had owned an
appliance store in Cairo that was burned three times during

the height of the violence and was eventually forced out
of business.

 44
Dr. Osborne tells the Commission: "We spent
more manhours in Cairo, my staff, on Title IV work
than in any city in six states . . . We can bring in an
advisory specialist to the Board of Education to advise them on problems incident to desegregation, and
one of the things they can advise the superintendent
on was once the white (families) ran, what do you

been repeated reports of misuse by school systems of
billions in Title I funds.*
Title I in Cairo

There was urgent need for Title I in Cairo since
numerous students readand still are readingfour

do with your tax base? And we were going to get
R.L. Johns and Kern Alexander which are two of

to five years below their grade level. Testimony develops that 900 of Cairo's 1,100 students are eligible
for Title I, a figure that makes its own morbid com-

the best finance men in the U.S. And the board

ment on what it's like to go to school poor in the

turned it down.

world's richest country. The vast majority of Cairo's
eligibles are black. But Ewing testifies that "in the
Title I [district] office there are approximately five
employees with the janitor in the building and the
janitor is the only black employee." He says that in a

"But I'm here to tell you, to testify today, that I
don't know what happened .

.

. there were 150 peo-

ple over here to a meeting and they all voted that
they wanted this program, and they all got involved.
[But] I've got a sneaking suspicion somewhere up in

this power structure that people will saytell you
one thing and they turn right around and do another
. . I was kind of irked about this because I
spent 90 days, I talked to every board member, and
everybody says, 'You're going to open old wounds.'
Hell, maybe old wounds have never been looked at

one

.

correctly."
. , many people," testifies Ewing, "saw this as

another avenue where another Federal agency was
going to pump money into Cairo and dictate to the
citizens of the school community how to run their
programs .
Education."
.

.

[so it] was killed by the Board of

school system 70 percent black, 95 percent of the
Title I payroll for certified personnel goes to whites.
This means that the ratio of black teachers to black
studentsparticularly important in remedial reading
programs--is far out of any natural proportion.
A former white teacher of remedial reading who is

a member of the NAACPRalph Andersontells
of one instance where Title I funds were spent with-

out anyone's reading being remedied. "For two
weeks," he says, "a Title I teacher aide was used
daily as an assistant in a non-Title I class . . and
he was used quite often as a substitute in regular
classes, thus negating to a large degree his possible
teaching effectiveness as a Title I teacher aide. The

The Commission does wondergiven Cairo's pen-

students constantly complained of his absence. None-

chant for rejecting Federal moneywhether the

theless, at the end of each week he was required to
initial a Title I time block
. certifying that he had

Board of Education now would accept Washington
dollars accompanied by non-discriminatory guidelines, even if they were available. "I think that the
board now maybe has kind of changed its feelings
and would accept Federal money," school superintendent Mason says.
Thus Title IV joined the list of aid rejected over
the years by impoverished CairoYouth Corps, Job
Training, Police-Community Relations, low-income
Cairo schools did avail themselves of a
housing .
Title I remedial education program under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Although, this legislation was designed to enrich education for poor children, black and white, there have
.

.

.

*In September, 1972, a confidential HEW internal report
said that school districts were widely misusing Title I money.
The Nixon Administration, championing Title I compensatory education as an integration alternative, had promised

funds would not be diverted. HEW found, for example,
that Chicago had reported 42 schools out of compliance
but its auditors discovered the true figure was 126. The
Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, studied
80 districts and found 79 out of compliance. HEW spokesman Mrs. Jeanne Park conceeded the abuses but said the

situation should be under control within a year. Source
NY Times, Sept. 12, 13, 1970.
AP, on Dec, 14, 1969, reported Title I money used in
Cairo to pay rent on a school district administrative building.

 utally fired by the board.* He testifies that school

James to comply. He removed the button from him
in the presence of the other members of the executive committee . . [even] if [Mason] felt that the
button was offensive, I think that he had no right to
pull the button off."
When a rational approach to race is too long deferred. the irrational occurs and suddenly a button
becomes important enough to merit the consideration
of an arm of government like the U.S. Commission

officials had questioned him about his membership in

on Civil Rights.

NAACP and that he was told by an administrator:
,`.
.
. it would be important that I not be a member
of any organization that is a part of the conflict in

Mason defends himself: "I asked this student to
take off the button because I felt that it might stimulate a fight maybe between a black and white studcnt. And ho didn't take it off . . or he did take it
off for a time but he put the button back on. And I
asked him to take it off. And he did take it off. But I

indeed worked as a Title I teacher aide.
When I complained about this to the school administrator I was told that, 'Mr. Anderson, you're
the only teacher I know who would risk his job to
see that the law is obeyed. We can always find a way
to get rid of you."
Mr. Anderson. who had been chosen by community people to write proposals for Title IV, was even-

Cairo."
Before finishing his testimony, he describes an incident involving School Superintcndent Mason.
"During a meeting of the executive committee of the
Cairo Junior High School Student Council," Mr. An-

dcrson says, "I was present when Mr. Masonwho

was then principal of the Junior HStold James
Wilson, the president of the Student Council and also

the president of the youth chapter of the Cairo
NAACP, to take off the "Black Solidarity' button
which he was wearing. He actually didn't wait for
*Interviewed outside the hearing, Anderson says his
dismissal letter arrived the same week the Commission

came to Cairo. It charged six reasons including "not going
through proper administrative channels with complaints .. .
unprofessional discussion of teachers and administration
which cause dissention [sic] among teachers [and] inability

to properly relate to junior high school students." There
were 210 students at the JHS. Three passed around a
petition in his behalf which was signed by 120 of 130
students approached. Lawyer Holland barred the petition

.

.

did not snatch the button off
."
Button, button, who had the button? The question
at once is ludicrous and meaningful as a small symbol of a large issue in a nation whose paper policy of
equality ultimately fails or prevails according to what
.

men like Ewing, Mason and Anderson make of it.
Mason admits that Title I teachers were used as
regular substitutes "because we had no students for
the Title I teachers at the beginning of the school."
Schools in Bankruptcy
Dr. Grace Duff, in her 17th year as the elected
Superintendent of the Alexander County Education
Service Region, presents a long and detailed account
of how Cairo's educational structure has crumbled to

the point where the public was unaware that bank-

ruptcy lay just around the corner and the school

from his contract hearing.
Anderson concedes differences of opinion between himself

board was firing new teachers, then filling the vacancies with no long-range plan for paying them, and all

and school authorities on many racial issues related to his
belief that student concerns were secondary to budgetary

the while failing to inform the public of the fiscal

needs in seeking Title I funds. According to Anderson, these

differences emerged in the summer of 1970 when he was
initially interviewed for a job by then-assistant principal
Leo Verb le. Anderson says that Verb le's first question was,

"suppose a big burly black stud grabs you and calls you
son-of-a-bitch, what would you do?"
a mother
Anderson says he replied, "I'd say, 'Have I done something
to you? What's the matter?'"
Anderson's wife, another Cairo teacher, was also dropped
by the school board.

chaos.

She comes to this melancholy conclusion: "The
thing that disturbs me greatly as an educator is that
we have this feeling in our community that we will
just run full blast as we are until we just close our

doors and then we will let the state take us over.
That's frightening to methat we do not have the
will, the will power, the strength, nor are we willing
to accept our responsibility as administrators and as

 47
board nimbus to do thc things we know we should
do in education and . . . get our house in order."
Commissioncr Mitchcll then obscrvcs, "If I wcre

moving an industry arwnd the country and looking
for a promising place to put it, I'd be horrified at a
place that had a bustcd school systcm, that was limping along on flat whccls and had no rcal futurc and
hadn't rcsolvcd its basic community relations problcms and was looking for cven worse [ous]."
With 65 percent of public school tax referenda
being rejcctcd in Illinois and similarly high rcjcction
rates in othcr statcs, and with schools like Camclot
springing up cvcrywhcrc in a climate increasingly
favorablc to giving public aid to private schools,
Commissioncr Mitchcll says to Dr. Osbornc:
"Onc of thc things wc run into whcn we comc to a

placc like this is that when wc talk to statc and
national officials they tcnd to say, 'Well you know,
we can't tell pcoplc what do to. We havc broad
programs and thcy arc available.' . . . Yet thc facts
of lifc, the civil rights facts of lifc, if you want to call
cducation a civil rightwhich this Commission feels

it isis that unlcssIf a community wishcs to turn
down Fcdcral funds and stop its bond referendums
from cver bcing successful and therefore turn off its
funds, if the community, thc voting community,
chooscs to degrade thc quality of its school systcm, it
appears to havc a right to do so.
"Now that's sort of likc seceding from the educa-

tional assumptions of thc Unitcd States. How does
thc Fcdcral govcrnmcnt vicw that kind of a possibil-

ity"
The reply of Dr. Osborne, a Fedcral cducation
expert, madc no hcadlines but few conclusions
rcachcd that day by any American official on any
subjcct contain such potcntial "future shock." He
says: "What is going to happcn is that within 10
years, it communitics such as Cairo continue not to
seek funds whcrc funds are, you are going to get a
national curriculum. Because wc are not going to
allow about 10 more ycars down thc road for child= to be subjcctcd to damn foolishness . . . You
havc got Mickcy Mouse power structures running
bctwccn administrative levels, betwcen one principal
and another principal, between one superintendent

and anothcr superintcndent, and as long as this chicanery and foolishness continues what is going to
happen is you arc going to get a national curriculum."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "What you're saying

to me is anothcr 10 ycars of this and the Federal
government is going to takc over"
DR. OSBORNE: "They have to."
If a Fcdcral takcovcr should

conic to pass,

it

would be one morc examplc of Washington intcrvcn-

tion in an arca formally allocated to states' rights.
This would further diminish the revered constitutional compact insuring citizens local control ovcr
certain institutions of cducation, commcrcc and gov-

crnmcnt rathcr than ccding it to a distant and bureaucratic authority. It would be a substantial, perhaps a fatal, blow to dcmocracy. But unfortunately,
thc American experience has shown that thc original
democratic compact (conccivcd in a time of slavcry,
flawed from its conception, curscd by the flaw) has
systematically cxcludcd some citizens from thc rights
privilcges and rcsponsibilitics of local control,
whcther it involves a scat in a classroom or a lunch-

room, a placc in a voting booth or in a factory. So
an awful American irony plays out: thosc citizens
most dedicated to individual libcrty under the Constitution must advance the surrender of local control
to the kind of mural apparatus that inevitably curtails thc fullest democratic expression cnvisioncd by
our Constitution-mai:us. Racism lays a heavy lash

on the body politic in Cairo and a thousand other
cities.

Whether or not Dr. Osbornc's prcdiction comes
is academic to thc students who tcstify at the
hearing. Cairo has already done its worst to them
tt tic

and their one -word answers to a single question say
morc about their city than many pagcs of adult testimony. Each is askcd: "Do you plan to stay in Cairo
after you graduate?"
MISS MC KEE; "No".
MISS JENKINS: "No".
MR. SAMS: "No".

The hearing continucs after they tcstify, but their
vcrdict is already in.

 9

SOME PAINFUL REALITIES
"1 will follow that system of regimen which, accord-

ing to my ability and judgment, I consider for the
benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is
deleterious and mischievous
yy

Hippocratic oath taken by medical men for 2000 years

Question: "Does the dentist take an oath similar to
that of a physician?"
Dr. Kobler: "Yes, ma'ni."
Question: "Would you subscribe to that oath if you
had to repeat it today?"
Dr. Kobler: "If I had to I would say, Yes."

Question: "Dr. Gillespie, do you subscribe to the
Hippocratic oath?"
Dr. Gillespie: "Well, yes."
Te4rimony of white C,1ro dentists who do not take black patients.

CRC hearing, March, 1972.

Witness Russell Deberry tells a story which, up to

a point, is painfully familiar to all of us. It begins
with an aching tooth, the kind of ache you first treat
yourself with a drugstore nostrum, hoping the pain
will go away. This is what Deberry did. But some
pain does not go away.

"Over that night

it

swole," he says. "And my

whole face, you know, like I had headaches and my
eyes got so they started hurting from the toothache.
The next morning I started calling dentists in Cairo
to sec if I could get an appointment. So I called two

or three of them. They said, 'Okay, you have to
notify us within a 5 -day limit before you can get an
appointment.' "
Who hasn't experienced difficulty in getting a dental or medical appointment? But there was an element in Deberry's case that not everyone faces. He is
black and, as he tells the hearing: "There's no black

dentist in Cairo and (white dentists) don't want to
wait on you." So, seeking relief from a toothache,
Dcberry must deal with another painful reality.
"I kept laying and I kept laying and I said maybe

if I go in and they see how much pain I'm in and

 50
how I'm swolc up, you know, [and] that I do have
moneybecause it's a question with some of the
dentists. So I have heard from some of the blacks
that's been to them

.

.

.

"The receptionist told methis was on the phone
'Well, the office is full. You didn't make an appointment. And the doctor is all tied up for the day.
But if you could come in within five days, you know,
if you could hold off just for five days, then we can
wait on you.'
"So, you know, I set there and I said, Five days!

I'm almost dead today. So I said, I know, I'll go
down. So I went down to the dentist's office, walked
in and the receptionist was watching TV in the little
hallway. The doctor was sitting at his desk with the
door half closed. Nobody else was in the office. The
chair was empty.
". . . I didn't tell her I was the one that called. I
just says, `I've got a toothache. My face is swollen.
I'd like to get the tooth pulled.'
"She said, 'Oh, I'm sorry, sir, we don't do extractions, you know. We only work on dental plates. But

I can recommend you to a black doctor in Cape
Girardeau, Missouri,' which is some 30 miles away,
you know.'

"So I say, `You know, I need it pulled now. I
don't have transportation to get over to Missouri.
"She said, 'Well, he's open until 5:30.'
"Now, it was 4:20 or something then . . . and 30
miles away and I've got to locate a car . . . So she
wrote the number of the dentist down. She assured

me that he was a black dentist, good dentist, no
appointment needed. I says, 'Okay.'
"She says, 'Let me give you another number.' She
gave me one in East Praire, Missouri, which is some
40 miles away . . She says' If this one don't take
.

you or if you miss them by getting over there late,
then go to East Praire. I think he stays open till 6
o'clock.'
"So I was turned down and my teeth weren't
pulled. I had to go 40 miles to do that."
A receptionist is called to testify, not the one who
directed Deberry to cross the Mississippi River for
dental help. Mrs. Jean Vasscr, black, is a receptionist

at St. Mary's Clinic in Cairo. The clinic, operated by

the Sisters of the Holy Cross since the Civil War,
does not have as dentist. "I myself have been unable
to get an appointment in Cairo," Mrs. Vassar says.
She crosses the Ohio River to Paducah, Kentucky,
when her teeth hurt.

Two Cavities in Dental Service
The two Cairo dentists who next testify are the
only full-time den dsts in the city or the county, and
they serve a two-county area with a population of
22,000. Dr. Emmett Gillespie is in his seventies, a
crusty and short-spoken man who practiced in Cairo
for 43 years. Dr. William M. Kobler, in his early
40's, bought his Cairo practice in 1957.
Dr. Gillespie at first estimates that he treats "one
or two" black patients a week and then under questioning reduces the number to "possibly four or five
in the last three months." He says that after practicing dentistry for four decades in a community 40
percent black that he has no regular black patients
and he explains it this way: "After 43 years of practice you have your own following where you are
taking care of say three generations of one family.
You build up to a pretty steady practice, and it's all I
can do is take care of these under the present conditions. It's all I'm physically able to handle."
COUNSEL POWELL: "When a black comes to you

in need of dental care and in need of prolonged
dental care, what reaction do you have "
DR. GILLESPIE: "I refer him to Dr. Friend."
It develops that Dr. Friend is a dentist who comes
to town 1/2 day each week. There is another dentist

in Mounds, 12 miles away. He is in his 80's. Dr.
Gillespie says that aside from his generational practice, he "occasionally" take on new patients.
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Do they occasionally become full-time patients of yours?"
DR. GILLESPIE: "Not necessarily."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Do they occasionally become full-time patients of yours?"
DR. GILLESPIE: "Possibly".
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Yet, although you do occa-

sionally take on new full-time patients, none of these
people whom you take arc blacks. Is that correct?"

 51
DR. GILLESPIE; "That's correct."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "How do you decide who to
treat and who not to treat, Dr. Gillespie?"
DR. GILLESPIE: "Well, that's my own privilege."

The dentist, who is an official of the Tri-County
Health Department supported with state and local
funds, is asked whether he would regularly treat a
black patient who needs prosthetic work which he
says he performs.
DR. GILLESPIE: "I don't say I would."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "I didn't hear you."

DR. GILLESPIE: "I don't say I would end I don't
say I wouldn't."
He does say that he does not -participate in Medi-

caid or Medicare programs although he did take
public aid patients until 7 or 8 years ago. He denies
that he stopped taking them because of any official

request not to discriminate but that it was simply
"too much of a load."

Dr. Kobler testifies that he too has no full-time
black patients and that he has treated no black patient in the last six months. He says that he bought a
well-established practice and consequently takes few
new patients, and all of them on referrals.

"I do obtain some new patients," he explains,
"And like I say, I ask them who sent them and that
way I usually obtain a good patient."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "What would you call"
DR. KOBLER: "Which is sound business practice."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "What is a good patient?"
DR. KOBLER: "One who pays."
He follows this refreshingly frank answer with the
information that he sometimes takes on new patients

without a referral but none of these is ever black.
Then to the question, "Have you ever refused to
treat a patient because of his race?" Dr. Kobler answers, "No." He has never participated in Medicaid
and he says both he and Dr. Gillespie ". . . were
removed from the public aid rolls at the same time,
and the reason was our patient load was so great that
we couldn't treat all the public aid patients and consequently the state came to us and they said, 'Well, if
you can't take them all, don't take any.'
Commissioner Freeman tries to learn if there was
more to it. ".
Is it not possible that the welfare
.

.

rolls were saying that if ten patients are sent to you
that you will treat them without regard to race, creed
or color, and that you refused to participate in the
program because you do not accept this requirement
. . . would you treat them without regard to race,
creed or color?"
And Dr. Kobler replies, "If my schedule permitted
that. I mean, if my work schedule was such that I
could take care of them, yes, ma'm."
Commiss,mer Mitchell, citing "one of the great
Christian imperativesthat no man shall suffer if we
can do anything as individuals and certainly as professional to prevent it," says: "Now, what we're
hearing here that's most important it seems to me out
of everything else is that there are only two dentists.
They are overloaded. You have your own eccentricities about the choice of patients and I won't comment on that . . . But have you ever engaged in
conversations, discussions, done any planning, thinking about the provision of adequate dental care to
many people in the community who don't appear to
have adequate dental care?"
W.C. Spomer, a lawyer who has accompanied the
dentists, introduces a letter which has fortuituously
arrived just in time for the hearing. It was written a
week earlier to Dr. Gillespie by the Comprehensive
State Health Planning Agency in Gov. Ogilvie's
office. The letter says ". . . it appears that Alexander and Pulaski counties have acute need for additional physician, dentist and professional nurse manpower. We can implement this in these two counties
through assignments from the National Health Service Corporation. In your position as a practicing dentist, we need to know if you concur with the assessment of need, and we solicit your active participation
in the project."
The state's display of awareness of Cairo's "acute
need" is entered in the record and Commissioner
Mitchell asks Dr. Gillespie's response to the letter.
"Okayed it," the dentist says. "Accepted it. Glad to
have it."
What will come of the letter is uncertain. But Drs.

Kobler and Gillespie reiterate how hard it is to get
young dentists to come to Cairo, a "depressed area

with fees not what they are in larger cities." Dr.

 52
Gillespie says that if his son were a dentist he
wouldn't want him to practice in Cairo because of
the "way things are now, our school situation and
all." But he says he has corresponded with dental
schools trying, to no avail, to get black dentists to

Staff Director, John Buggs, has a final question for
Dr. Kobler. Perhaps because Mr. Buggs is black and
has paid for a toothache or so in his time, he remains
curious about Dr. Kobler's referral system. The dentist agrees that one of his criteria in accepting refer-

come to the city.
"I also corresponded with Dr. Wallacc who was a

rals is the ability to pay the bill.
Director Buggs says to him: "In Alexander

black dentist in Cairo for a number of years," Dr.
Gillespie says. "And he made his nest egg and he

County, as you may know, all of the black people

moved to Chicago. And he became quite well known

in Chicago through the dental associations and the
political end of dentistry. And his picture appeared
in our dental journal a number of times at different
meetings . . . And he said he regretted it but he said
it was just impossible to get these young men to
come down to a small community like Cairo, and I
can appreciate what they do. Just like Dr. Wallace
. .
. Our colored dentists will come in and stay for a
number of years. They will make a nest egg and then
they want to go to a larger community."

are not poor. I have some statistics here that indicate
that there are at least 15 families with incomes up to
$9000, at least 38 families with incomes up to
$10,000 and at least 41 black families with incomes

over $10,000 a year . . . In terms of the fact that
you say your fees are not as high as in other places
.

.

. they would find it possible to pay.

"If one of those persons came up and presented
his last income tax return to you indicating what his
income was and indicated that he was willing to pay

you cashwithout a referralwould you take him?"
"Yes sir," replies the doctor.

How a "depressed area" with low fees produces
dental nest eggs is not quite clear but Dr. Gillespie is

not questioned further. However, the Commission

Medical Care in Cairo
St. Mary's Hospital is the only hospitP.1 ..n Cairo,

the only one in Alexander Comity. It serves a three
county area . Since January, 1971, it has operated
the only clinic* in the area where poor people, black
and hite, can bring their medical problems to all of
the area's six doctors who practice there. In its first
13 months of operation, ncarly 2000 patients used
the clinic, their number dividcd cqually bctwcen the
races. Some had never seen a doctor before in their
lives, othcrs had trial to sce doctors but had lacked
the money or the half dozen overworked doctors in
the county had lacked the time to see them.
"Our doctors hcre are so overloaded," receptionist
Vasser testifies, "They're out day a id night, and then
emergencies come up and if you're sick and sitting in

[their] office, they can be out at the hospital doing
. . . you have a doctor at all

something else. Here

*The State Department of Public Health schedules clinics
at set intervals and there is a mobile dental clinic that visits

schools from time to time. But these services are only
intermittently available. If a person is sick on Monday it is
small comfort to know the state clinic will be open come
Friday.

 53
times during clinic hours, and any emergency that
comes in you can bring them right into the clinic and
know that a doctor is there. So the clinic is a very
important place . . . and I think it would hurt a lot
of people if we don't have a clinic. If there's no clinic

here, then a lot of people are going to go uncared
for. A lot are going uncared for as it is."
St. Mary's Clinic is not merely an auxiliary medical service for thousands of men, women and children. It is the only place they can count on for help
when pain strikes or fear of disease comes and will
not go away. Beyond any statistics on the number of

patients treated or the costs involved, St. Mary's
Clinic means that a father with a sick child and an
empty pocket can do more than curse his inadequacy
and despair over what his poverty is doing to a loved

son or daughter. The clinic is both a first and last
resort of hope.

down ultimatums which they expected me to accept.
Mostly, it dealt with our community relations and
with our involvement with two priests who were here

at the time who were associated with the United
Front."
CouNstft PowELL: "What was the problem con
cerning the United Front'?"
SISTER JOAN: "Well, our chaplain was a member

and was one of the leaders, d the board
demanded of me that we cease this relationship and
.

.

.

that we no longer permit members of the United
Front to conic to the hospital or to be involved in
any religious services and this type of thing."
COUNSEL: "Did the demands made by the advisory board . . . relate to treatment of patients, who
would be treated at the hospital and who would not
be treated
SISTER JOAN:

St. Mary's and the OEO
But St. Mary's Clinic, which has existed during its

short lifetime on funds from the Office of Economic
Opportunity, is going to lose that support and may
have to close.
. .
. The story of St. Mary's is told by
hospital officials and Federal functionaries. Sister
Joan Marie is the Administrator and Sister Gladys
Marie Associatc Administrator and clinic coordina-

Why?

to r.

"No, it did not

.

.

.

The hospital board was temporarily disbanded and
the sisters moved on to the problem of patient care.
Before the clinic was :stablished, the St. Mary's
emergency room provided out-patient treatment. But
doctors were leaving the staff, according to Sister
Joan, because "they could no longer meet the demands of the emergency room service which are ex-

treme. That was one of our primary reasons for
Opening the clinic."

Application was made to OEO to fund a clinic
and an outreach program to sock out those ill and

"I originally Lame here to close the hospital," Sister Joan Marie testifies. "Because of the insurmountable difficulties. I think the primary one was financial
. . . if we, you know, weren't a large religious com-

sory board was established, a one-year $100,000

munity with eight other hospitals, we could never
have sustained ourselves in Cairo." She adds that in
the last fiscal year, bad debts alone amounted to

"Some of the people who come who have never
seen a doctor have not been ill before," explains

553.000.
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL:

"Weil, business is

very good in bad debts, I see."
SISTER JOAN: "That's right. But, you know, our
situation is that, basically, we could not walk away
from this hospital."
From her arrival three years ago, she faced other
problems. The hospital advisory board was "laying

uncared for. After a community bi-racial clinic advigrant was received. The sick quickly found their way
to St. Mary's.

Sister Gladys Marie. "Or they have not known how
to go about it. And they hear about the clinic and
know they can walk in and have a cup of coffee, and
it's a little easier for them to come."
"[But] I feel tht t the medical services are grossly
inadequate," Sister Joan adds. "I believe that we are
only we're still . . . well, we're still just putting
out fires. I feel that our disease prevention level is
very low and was lower before we opened the clinic

 54
4

K'ykrah..

yam' p Aim
R.

4

4

-

oRGA

1111110
.

.

.

there is a great deal more that needs to be

done."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Is there a city com-

missioner or councilman or whatever who is assigned
to health ?"
SISTER JOAN: "There is. I have no relationship
with him."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Ever meet him at
allT'
SISTER JOAN: "No sir."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "What you're saying

is that this city's program for health care essentially
emanates from the hospital itself and does not come

from the Council and you are not aware of interaction with the city in health planning'?"
SISTER JOAN: "Well, to be perfectly frank with

you "

COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Yoa have to be.

You're under oath." (Laughter)
SISTER JOAN: "1 know. I don't see anyone initiat-

ing any long-range plans. I feel that the community
. . . there's a great element of mistrust here which
I'm sure you are aware of. I feel that people here by

and large are not willing to risk

.

.

.

we are not

willing to talc( a chance. We are not willing to make
mistakes . . . and I can't live this way. We can't live

 55
this way at the hospital. We have taken chances. We
have been right out on the limb. And I think this is
the way v,e must operate."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "By nature and train-

ing, you have learned to take risks on the future of
the human race, haven't you?"
SISTER JOAN: "That's right."
Despite the risks and disappointments, Sister

Gladys can say: "You know, the last two days of
hearings it's been such a negative thing. Not being a

native of Cairo but only here a short time, I see
many positive things, and I hope that the Commission finds these also."

The next place the Commission looks, however,
offers no optimism. Daniel Larsen, supervisor of the
OED's Illinois Regional Office, tells the hearing:
"We have no capability at this point to re-fund the
clinic."

It isn't that 0E0which Commissioner Mitchell
praises for speeding the original grant with a minimum of red tapeis disappointed in its investment.
"I think the reason it was originally funded," Larsen
says, "was because our office felt that there was a
desperate need for this kind of health facility. And

we continue to think that that need exists

.

.

.

I

think that given the resources that they have available to them, we feel that they are doing an excellent
job of operating the health program."
Buc there is no re-funding "capability." Larsen
says that 0E0 has been in touch with HEW to see if
it has money available for St. Mary's. Gerald Bennett, assistant to HEW's Regional Director in Chicago, and Roy Armstrong, HEW acting Director of
Comprehensive Health Planning, are called to see
what they can do to keep the doors open in a place
where the poor and pick can bring their ills, sip a cup
of coffee, feel a do. for cares about them. HEW, in
the last fiscal year, put $7,169,000 into Alexander
County. Some $2,751,000 went for old age and survivors benefits, $321,000 for disability insurance,
$847,000 for Medicare, and hundreds of thousands
more for Title I, welfare and rehabilitation services.
It does not look like there will be anything for St.
Mary's clinic. "I think that is worth knowing," Armstrong says, "Because I think it would be unwise to

create an expectation here . . . that HEW is now
standing in the wings with available resources to
subsidize the clinic, because that in fact is not true
.
. There is great uncertainty as to whether or not
it would ever be funded by HEW."
Chances arc that someone poor in Alexander
County who needs to sec a doctor has never heard of

section 314 (e) of Public Law 89-749. This law
allows HEW to make direct grants-in-aid to things
like clinics, but only out of a specifically al'ocated
sum of money. The difficulty, Armstrong explains,
is that the grant-in-aid program is now six years old
and most of its fund has been spent. In addition, he
can think of at least 25 competing requests from
other communities with similar problems. "Certainly
we know the need in Cairo is gross for all kinds of
services," he says. ". . . It's unquestionable in terms
of need for service. But it's also true in many other
communities. So again it's a matter of availability of
funds

.

.

."

Ono of the competing requests is from Red Wing,
Minneso:a. Commissioner Freeman asks, "What is
th.. black populotion of the Minnesota rural area you
arc talking about?"
"The problems in Minnesota, ma'am, are Indians,"
he replies.

So the HEW logic or sense of priority seems to
say that for impoverished Indians in Red Wing to
receive medical services, their black and white counterparts in Cairo must be denied. The HEW budget
request before Congress

asks for increases

in

all categories except two: section 314 (e) and (d)
which covers Federal subsidies to states for health
services. Congress in 1972 would fund the largest
Defense Department budget in history. Direct Vietnam war c +sts that year ran to $134,000,000 a week.

If that cost had been diverted to HEW, Red Wing
and Cairo could end their competition. Two hundred

clinics could be funded at $100,000 each for the
price of one day's combat. These comparative figures
may speak for themselves, or they may say different

things to different people. But in a nation where
inadequate health care is common in many Cairos,
the figures merit national consideration, national
judgment and national response.

 56

THE HOUSES OF CAIRO
MRS. GESTA DEBERRY: "Well, we filed an application shortly after we were married which is over two

years at the Court housing project
I talked to
the office lady. She'd tell me, 'No, we don't have any
vacancies, keep in touch now.' So in the end after I
found out they weren't planning to give me a house
and having stood me up so long
I said, 'Well, if

you don't have anything at the Court maybe you
have a house at Elmwood.' Within the next three or

four days I had a number that I could move in
whenever I got the money."
QUESTION: "What kind of project is Elmwood ?"
MRS. DEBERRY: "That's an all-white project."
QUESTION: "And the Courts?"
MRS. DEBERRY: "That's an all-colored project."

QUESTION: "And you got a house at the Courts
when you threatened to make an application for
Elmwood?"
MRS. DEBERRY: "I got one in four days."
Testimony before the M. Sate Advisory CommitteeJune 10, 1966.

MRS. GENEVA WHITFIELD: "

there's many peo-

ple who are in need of shelter and the only place
where there is adequate housing would be Pyramid

Courts because it's an evident fact that they will
never be allowed to move into Elmwood Project
which is all-white.

"I was living in a 4 -room, house with 14 in the
family. The kitchen floor had fell in. There was a
sheet of tin over the floor. The table was sitting on

top of the sheet to keep the cats and dogs from
coming up through the floor. And still there was
nothing available in Pyramid Courts for me. . . . I
was 7 years getting the apartment I have now. The
only way I did get it is when I said, 'Since you're
going to stand me off for Pyramid Courts, then how

about giving me a house in Elmwood?' And you
know, in no time this house was available for me."
Testimony before Civil Rights CommissionMarch, 1972.

 47/58
Two witnesses, testifying six years apart, tell the
same story of persistent, unlawful discrimination in
Cairo public housing. In 1966, the responsible state

lems, the very severe racial problems that have de-

and Federal authorities might have pleaded igno-

son's "estimation" as a criteria for integrated hous-

rance of Cairo's contempt for the law of the land and
the plea have b.:en accepted; civil rights housing law

ing, his reply is more revealing than relevant. Even if
it did, it is just possible that the "severe racial prob-

was relatively new and Cairo had long existed in
antediluvian limbo. Six years later, with a body of
testimony like Mrs. Deberry's on the record, with
Cairo's racial discord and its roots reported in the
Springfield, Chicago and Washington newspapers,

lems" might be one effect of segregated housing

what is the official explanation of why black Americans in a city where wretched minority housing

abounds cannot enter a project built and supported
by national tax dollars?
James S. Johnson has been Executive Director of

the Alexander County Housing Authority, which
runs the projects, since it was established in 1939.
He serves by appointment of the County Board of

veloped, have made it impractical in my estimation."
Since the appropriate law does not mention John-

rather than a reason to continue it.

"We have heard testimony
that housing conditions in this community are very
poor and that people are very poor . . . And we also
have information that the housing projects . . . are
better than the housing which exists in the private
sector. Are you telling me a white tenant that you
would assign to a black project which has an adequate apartment wouldn't take that apartment? Have
you ever tried to make such an assignment?"
GENERAL COUNSEL:

MR. JOHNSON: "Yes. I have never had a white
tenant that would offer to go to Pyramid Courts,

Commissioners whose overlapping membership with

no."

the board of Camelot School has been noted. Johnson test;fies that Pyramid Courts with 237 tenants is
all black and Elmwood with 159 is all white and
both always have been so. He goes back more than
30 years to explain that when the projects were built
by the old U.S. Housing Authority ". . . we were
directedin fact, forcedto place our projects in
segregated areas. I don't mean in segregated areas as
such. I mean in areas of white and areas of black
which amounts to the same thing, of course . . . So

"Have you ever tried to
make such an assignment?"
MR. JOHNSON: "Yes sir, I have."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Consistent with the require-

historically those two projects have been segregated."
Johnson recalls that in 1966 or 1967, HUD issued
guidelines forbidding segregated public housing. "It

was about this time that racial tension built up in
Cairo," he says. "The city became so polarized that
it has been impractical at this time to desegregate
these two projects to the extent that you would consider satisfactory."
Since there has been no desegregation, satisfactory
or otherwise, he is ,..ked whether now he should
implement the guidelines by assigning blacks to the
all-white project and vice versa.
MR. JOHNSON: "As I stated before, if it would be
possible with all safety, I could agree. But as I have

said, the tensions and polarizations and the prob-

GENERAL COUNSEL:

ments of HUD, wouldn't it be proper for you in a
case where a white tenant refused assignment at a
black housing project to deny that person assignment
in public housing?"
MR. JOHNSON: "Yes, it would be."
GENERAL COUNSEL: ".
I suggest to you that
in assigning these people to projects without taking
.

.

into account HUD criteria, you're not complying
with Federal requirements. Do you have a comment
on that?"
MR. JOHNSON:

"No sir."

There is no clear-cut indication of whether Johnson is influenced in his "estimation" by the white
political powers of Alexander County at whose plea-

sure he serves. He says

one point it was "our

feeling" that desegregation was impractical and Commissioner Freeman pursues this assertion.
COMMISSONER FREEMAN:

"That is your feel-

ing. And my question to you is whether this feeling
on your part, which is in violation of the law, is
known to the Federal agency or has been brought to

 59
the attention of the Federal agency as an expla-

nation"
MR. JOIINSON: "Yes."
COMMISSIONER

FREEMAN:

"for why

you

have not complied with the law."

MR. JoHNSoN: "Yes, Mrs. Freeman, I am quite
sure that the Federal agency is aware of it."
Commissioner Freeman tries to find the name of
the Federal officials involved. Johnson replies ". . .

there have been a number of discussions about the
integration of the two projects, none on a formal
basis and none in writing, I'm sorry to say. And I
could not definitely, honestly, give you the name of
any one person, Mrs. Freeman." Staff Director Buggs
presses the issue.
STAFF DIRECTOR: ". . . the Federal government
publishes at least on a yearly and I think on a semiannual basis the racial characteristics of all the pub-

lic housing projects in the United States. The assumption is, of course, that they get that information
on forms that are submitted by local housing authorities. Have you ever submitted such a form?"
MR. JOHNSON: ". . . it's submitted at the end of
each quarter."
STAFF DIRECTOR: 'Has anyone from the Depart-

ment of Housing and Urban Development ever
raised any question with you about the social composition of any of the projects based upon your submission of information?"
MR. JOHNSON: "Based upon the submission of the
occupancy report? No sir, they have not."
But apparently some curiosity has developed over
badly-needed repairs at Elmwc od Courts and Pyramid Courts. They are the only Liternatives to shackliving for many persons, black And white, ancl even
this housing is coming apart al the seams. Mrs. Geneva Whitfield, a black housewife, tells of conditions
at

the Courts: "The houses need paint. And the

roaches, the rats, and the cracked ceilings, cracked
walls, bad plumbing and bad screen. And whenever
there is a screen repair, the tenant has to pay for the
repairs."

Another black Courts' resident, Mrs. Bernadine
Peairs, has also been inside Elmwood Courtsas a
babysitter. The Housing Authority, she says, cleans

up Elmwood on the outside where "out at Pyramid
Courts they don't do anything." But Mrs. Peairs says
that inside Elmwood things are only "a little better."
Johnson says a "very, very extensive" remodeling
program will start when HUD comes across with the

money. He says that within the last two months
HUD officials and he have been discussing repairs,
and that the guidelines include "integration of the
two projects."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Integration is a part
of the guidelines and if you remodel you will have to
deal sonic way with those requirements?"
MR. JOHNSON: "Most assuredly, yes, sir."
In Search of Responsibility

Time will tell about the future. The Commission
tries to track down past and present responsibility
for continuous Federal law violation. It is a trail
through a bureaucratic labyrinth similar to many encountered in other hearings where a high tolerance
among public officials for broken civil rights law is
everywhere in evidence. Jerry Sternstein, from the
Office of Housing and Buildings in the Illinois Department of Local Government Affairs, is asked why
ore isn't being done to provide housing in Cairo.
Mr. Sternstein replies that Cairo is "approaching the
15 percent mark on subsidized housing under the

public housing program" and he is "not sure the
answer lies in building more public housing units."
He thinks that the private market or state-sponsored
moderate income programs are the answer. "I'm saying I don't think you'd want to have a community
that had 75 percent public housing," he says. Well,

no one has suggested 75 percent and his attitude
raised an immediate question:
GENERAL COUNSEL: ".
. if you have 15 percent
publicly subsidized housing in a community in which
there are 30 percent of the people below the poverty
line, don't you think there ought to be housing suffi.

cient to meet the needs of these people and within
their cost?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "I certainly do."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Then figures don't mean any-

thing unless you look at the needs, do they? Isn't it
the responsibility of your office to look at the needs?

 60
And when you speak of figures shouldn't you speak

of those figures in terms of the needs within this
county?"

Sternstein replies he would "never advocate, you
know, not looking at the total needc, si'.,iation." But
he feels there will be no more applicatit
for public
housing until the modernization program goes
through. All right. The Commission nc:ct would like
to know what the state is doing about discriminatory
housing in Alexander County, the perpetuation of an
all-white Housing Authority and staff.
MR. STERNSTEIN: "If we were asked to make a
management survey of the Housing Authority, we

would then givewe can informallyof course, you
know, I can tell them if they ask me what I think.
But I have no power."

But he explains that since 1970 "when we began
to look at this problem," there hadn't been any appointments so "at this stage of the game we are in
what I like to call a checkmate position." It sounds
more like a draw that maintains the status quo. The
game, at any rate, began 33 years earlier when the
Housing Authority was established in 1939. Public
disclosure of illegal segregation had been made years
earlier in I)(i6 before the Illinois State Advisory
Committee. Commissioner Freeman asks whether the

next move might be for Mr. Sternstcin's office to
"consider" telling the Authority it will withhold approval of all appointments until a black is named
MR. STERNSTEIN: "I think, you know, the question of could we consider itWe could always consider it. But from reading the state law"
COMMISSIONER FREEMAN: "Could you give an

"You have nothing
to say about the approval of commissioners of Local
Housing Authorities?"
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL:

MR. STERNSTEIN: "We do approveWe don't
make appointments. Thy appointments to the boards
are made by th_ Chairman of the County Board of
Supervisors. We approve his appointments or their
appointments."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Suppose you don't
approve them?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "Suppose we don't approve?"
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Has there ever
been a case where you didn't?"
MITCHELL:

"Why

wouldn't

you?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "Well, what we could do is we

don't approve in instances where we can verify that
an appointment is anti-public housing. In other
words, if a man is put on a board with the express
purpose of thwarting the public housing program, we
simply don't approve the selection."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Given a commissioner who segregates the public housing under his

authority so that black people live in one kind of
public housing and whites in another, does that concern you at all?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "Yes."

MR. STERNSTEIN: "I think we would be on very
shaky legal ground."

Commissioner Freeman then examines the legal
requirements for occupancy of the state's public
housing. The law says: "The authority shall require
that occupancy of all housing financed or otherwise
assisted under this Act be open to all persons regardless of race, national origin, religion or creed
."
.

.

COMMISSIONER FREEMAN: "IS your office res-

ponsible for the implementation of this provis:on in
any way whatsoever?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "No. I believewith reference

to a Federal program HUD isWe allow HUD to

MR. STERNSTEIN: "Yes."
COMMISSIONER

opinion as to"

enforce that."
DIRECTOR BUGGS: "Suppose HUD doesn't?"
MR. STERNSTEIN: "Then I would try to."

The Buck Doesn't Stop Here

With the buck passed to Federal agencies, the
Commission calls John Waner, Area Director for
Illinois, HUD, and Irving Horwitz, HUD Regional
Opportunities Adviser charged with investigating
compliance with various civil rights laws. Waner is
asked whether he or his office was aware of public
housing segregation in Cairo. "It has't been brought
out in the record to date,- he replies (italics added).

He says he became aware of the "acute situation

 B1
primarily through the press." But Wailer believes
that there are "some positive steps that are being
discussed to bring about an improvement in the situation that has been long overdue.- "It's a slow process." he adds, "Because the climate of the community has not been conducive to any immediate
changes

.

.

."

Once again, civil rights law enforcement appears
whimsical rather than absolute. at the mercy of community climate. One wonders if a community's climate were hostile to the draft, would Federal officials
stop drafting there? If they did, would the Justice
Department neglect to prosecute? The Commission
turns to Horwitz. the civil rights enforcement officer.

He has been with HUD for nine years. But he is
quick to point out that the Office of Equal Opportunity did not come into existence until 1968 and anyway, he says. the Justice Department has power to
bring suits without HUD doing anything. And then,
his office has only 16 staff personnel to service six
states.
Commissioner Mitchell's exasperation shows:

. what you hear as you sit here," he tells Horis that you know there's segregated housing in this city. And you know its going to stay
segregated on the basis of any present plans or principles or power that seems to be brought into play.
You know that the taxpayers of the State of Illinois
and the United States of America through their governments have said there should not be segregated
.

witz, ".

.

.

housing.

"And you bring in people who represent all those
institutions, and it says everywhere in fine print that
there can't he any segregated housing. and then when

you ask anybody they're too busy or they just got
here last August or there's something. But you never

seem to he able to pin down how to resolve the
problem."
Horwitz responds by describing the efforts of the

interagency Federal task force to deal with Cairo's
problems "which unfortunately are not peculiar to
Cairo. They may be more extreme in Cairo than
elsewhere." he continues. "But jiff Cairo was seen,
von know, as maybe an opportunity think that
maybe for one of those rare times in our history that
I

Federal agencies could put together a total package
of programs and goodies and whatnot to help alleviate the problem. But one of the things that we run

intoand maybe I'm pleading, you knowwhat can
I say'?mea culpa is that rightly or wrongly we
live in a kind of political system whereby Federal
assistance and I hear (also?) from the state is dependent upon the community's capacity first of all to
request that assistance and go through all the legal
and financial rituals that they go under
."
.

COMMISSIONER MITCHELL:

.

"Well, you're not

saying to me that the Bill of Rights depends on
neighborhood consent?"
MR. HORWITZ: "No, but the solution of problems
I think does depend upon consent."

Wancr explains that HUD cannot use the "carrotand-stick" method of withholding funds from Cairo

and Alexander County because today

the

local

officials do not apply for any program funding. But
Staff Director Buses counters that Presidential orders
forbidding Federal funds in discriminatory programs
go back to 1962 and he points out that HUD has the
legal power to take over a local housing authority if

Federal regulations are not being obeyed. Wilbur
Tuggle, one of Waner's aides, concedes that it could
but "given the reality of staffing" it would be impossible. And Horwitz concludes: "I can only state that
the Federal establishment as I know it cannot bring
about significant change in places like Cairo until
and unless there is a mechanism by which there is
almost total control of the local environment. I don't
frankly perceive that happening too soon."
It

is

the second time at the hearing (the

first

during testimony on education) that the prospect of
Federal assumption of traditional local powers is
raised. It is an indication of the frustration felt by
some public and private citizens who wonder what it
will take to make something. anything positive, happen

in the Cairns of America. Few in Cairo, for

example. be they black militant or white supremacist,
will deny that housing needs are both basic and critical. So it would seem that Cairo officials would wel-

come plans to bring better housing to both races at
no cost to the c;!. y. So it would seem .

.

.

 62
A Private Start
Van Ewing returns to testify in his role as Executive Director of the United Cairo Community NonProfit Housing Development Corporation. It is a biracial group formed in 1969 when Governor Ogilvie
announced his $5 million program to build 250
apartments. Ewing says that the Governor recognized a "tremendous need" for housing improvement

and said "he was making available to this area or
could make available to this area $290,000 as seed

.

.

MR. EWING: "No, we weren't asking for it free
. we were asking them to sell us the property and

we had a dollar amount."

Then-Mayor Pete Thomas went along with the
plan for a while, and a council ordinance approving
the sale and

the

rent supplement program was

adopted May 10. 1971. That night, Pyramid Courts
came under sniper fire. Verbal attacks followed in
the council, Ewing says, with charges that the United
Front would control the project. He tried to explain

money toward the development of low and moderate
income families."
Considering the time and place, all went remarkably wellfor a while. The Illinois Housing Development Authority gave an initial $40,000 administrative grant and a housing survey was conducted that
found half of the city's units unsound or dilapidated.

that "this indeed was not public housing, that we
were not talking about housing that a particular

Ewing says the Corporation decid,d to build a $2

wards a rebuilding, you know. of the community and
towards providing housing for all of the people in the
community of Cairo . . . not just, you know, for
black people."

million multi-family development under the FHA 236

program with rents ranging from $90 to $125.* A
Federal rent supplement program was included.

"At $90," Ewing testifies, "We did not have an
awful lot of people, you know, who felt that they
could pay $90. But with the rent supplement program, those who would not have been able to afford
it [could]. We would be able to get them out of the
shacks and put them in decent housing and hopefully
the structures that they would move out of would be

demolished, and then at a later date we could develop additional housing on those particular sites."

With a 100-unit goal, the Corporation needed
about 15 acres, the cheaper the better so that most
of the mom:), could go into the "brick and mortar"
costs. Because Cairo is squeezed in between two
rivers, there is not much sound open land available
that is suited to project construction. But there was

one area of 240 lots that years before had been
designated for urban renewal. Like so many things in
Cairo, renewal never got started. But the city owned
84 of the lots, and the Corporation wanted them.
COMMISSIONER FREEMAN: "Did this $2 million
cost contemplate that you would have gotten the

land free from the city?"
*Welfare had long been paying rents of $70-$80 for
shacks, many with outside water and toilet facilities.

group would control. We were talking about housing

that would be assessed at the same tax rate that all
other citizens in the community would be assessed at.

"We were speaking of the kind of housing that
could begin or at least provide the initial thrust to-

And a Public Stop

But new elections were coming along and race,
however disguised, would be the one issue. In a city
that had short-charged its public education by selling
two school buildings to Camelot, the council voted to

table the ordinance to sell the lots and create new
housing.
COMMISSIONER FREEMAN:

"Has the ordinance

ever been brought up again?"
MR. EWING: "No, it hasn't."

(the rent supplement resolution) in effect now?"
MR. EWING: "No. Several months ago this resoluCOMMISSIONLR FREEMAN: "IS

*In a later interview. Ewing says he sought cooperation
from ex-Chamber of Commerce President. Gen. Bolen.
He says Bolen agreed, then called a meeting of all white
housing contractors, pointedly not inviting a contractor who
had built the last two houses constructed in Cairo. He was
black. Ewing's Corporation h;s received additional financial
help from the Winois Housing Development Authority

and through the Farmers Home Administration has built
one house with 13 more approved. But these are homeownership middle income dwellings in the $15.000-$18.000
range which do nothing to relieve the substandard living
conditions of Cairo's black and white poor.

 63
tion was rescinded by the present City Council."*

One of the present council members is Allen E.
Moss, a former White Hat leader and now commissioner of public health and safety. He testifies why he
opposed the housing program.

MR. Moss: "There was a lot of local opposition
because they felt like the programit was a 235 or
236 program, I'm not clear on that. My memory
doesn't serve me that exact. But there was a lot of
opposition because it hadn't worked anyplace else.
And I still think it's fashionable nowadays to do
what the taxpayers and the people who elected you
want you to do."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Now you mentioned the

taxpayers. Among the taxpayers in this city are a
number of people, some of whom are black, some of
whom are white, who are in need of housing. Don't
you, as a member of the City Council, have an obligation to meet the needs of those people?"
Mn. Moss: "Oh, I have an obligation, and we had
a City Housing Board, sir. We also have a County

STAFF DIRECTOR: "Mr. MOSS, you testified earlier

that the basis for your opposition to the 235-236
program was because it didn't work any place. Am I
correct?"
MR. Moss: "That's right, sir."
STAFF DIRECTOR: "Could you tell me where you
got that information?"
MR. Moss: "There was a lot of adverse publicity.

I think one of the major networks done an hour
special on it. Some of the areas was in Detroit and
some on the East Coast, and Cu.', West Coast. It just
didn't work."
STAFF DIRECTOR: "Mr. Moss, the 235-236 program is the most successful program HUD has ever
had."
MR. Moss: "Well, I'm not a housing expert, sir.
Maybe it is. But the literature I have read was adverse to it. "*

Staff Director Buggs tries to clarify the point that
.:he Housing Development Corporation plan rejected
by the City Council was not for public housing, and

Housing Board. And these groups had both been

he asks why Mr. Moss complained about it as a

working on the housing problem. We didn't feel like
we should duplicate that service."
GENERAL CoUNSEL: "What, if any, steps is the
City Council taking to provide low-income housing
for people in the city?"
MR. Moss: "As far as I know, there are no imme-

public official and voted against it.
MR. Moss: "No, I didn't complain. I just voiced a

diate steps or nothing that's being pushed but the
city does have a Housing Board that is trying to get
funded."
Although Mr. Moss testifies that he is responsible
for the "complete operation of the [city] legal department," the hearing finds it difficult to obtain precise information about the status of the 84 lots. He
has "no idea" how long they have been considered
for urban renewal. Asked if the land has been declared a blighted area, he replies, "I'm sure it has,
but I couldn't testify directly to that."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Is there a building
code?"

MR. Moss: "There must be, sir. As I explained
when I first sat down at this table, I do not make
that my specialty. I'll be glad to research the subject
if you'd like a complete detail on it."

vote the way the people that complained to me
wanted me to vote, and that's the way I voted."

STAFF DIRECTOR: "But if it were a private enterprise building private housing without local public
funds, would you oppose it?"
MR. Moss: "Yes, if this project was explained and
all of the details ironed out and everybody was in-

formedand as you say it was with private money
and they were taxpayersthey'd have the same right
to complain to me because I didn't vote for it. And I
would vote for it if people convinced me it was a
good thing. It doesn't matter what I think."
STAFF DIRECTOR: "I don't really think we are
communicating. If a private body comes to the City
*Later in the hearing, attorney Holland offers in evidence

a Fortune magazine article, which he says is "the specific
article that was referred to in city councilman Moss' testimony covering city council votes up to the middle of 1971
against subsidized housing." The article, entitled, "Housing
Subsidies are a Grand Delusion," was published in February
1972.

 64

3

4

-3.

Council and asks to buy property that the City
Council owns for the purpose of constructing on that

property housing which is not public housing and

which the citizens of Cairo will not be taxed to
support, do you then as a public official have to take
a position that housing should not be built?"

MR. Moss: "Oh, I don't take that position until I
hear all the facts, sir."

The hearing does not get all the facts on what it
takes to put a decent roof over the heads of poor
people in Cairo. But it learns enough to understand
why the building up of the city never begins, why the
shooting up never ends,

 65

".

.

IF WE COULD WORK TOGETHER"

"We are plagued with the three U's unemployment,
There
underemployment and unemployables
might not be conflict in Cairo if Negroes could have,
as many whites do, a good job, a home, a car, and a
chance to go on vacation sometime, like I do."
Martin Brown, former editor of the Cairo Citizen forced out of town
by white militants. APFeb. 16, 1970.

"A proposed Federal program designed to train and

upgrade city employees ran into trouble from all
sides at a public hearing in Cairo City Hall
Some termed the program 'just another Federal dole

to appease the black community.'
However,
black spokesmen were equally apprehensive about
the program."
The Cairo Citizenluly 13, 1971.

The most bitter and complex racial battles are
waged in the field of employment. Bitter because
jobs are basic to life and people fight hard when their
livelihoods are at stake. Complex because, even in
homogeneous societies unaffected by racism, the
mechanism joining job to worker must mesh together
so many variable factorsthe worker's relative skills
compared to his competition, the judgements, prefer-

ences or "pull" involved in the hiring process, the
economic conditions exerting their ultimate pressures. When the unacknowledged factor of racism is
added, it demoralizes blacks and makes hypocrites of
whites who deny it.
A black man and a white apply for the same job
or seek the same promotion, and the black habitually
loses out. Is it racism? White says it is a matter of
qualification. Black says the only qualification that
matters is skin. Companies refuse to settle in an area
that seems fertile for industrial growth. Is racial turmoil fomented by black militants the reason, or

white intransigence to change? And whatever the
reason, when there are not enough jobs to go
around, how should a community even hypothetically committed to redressing past racial wrongs go

 66
about apportioning the few jobs that are there?

which nobody seems to care about. And without the

enforcement and without the threat of a contract
Employment Figures
Cairo is long on such questions, short on answers.
The overall statistical story told by the latest census
in numerical outline makes glum reading. Total
county unemployment stood at 8.3 percent with
black unemployment at 16.2 compared with a 6.5

white rate. The number of persons employed in
county industries dropped 25 percent in the decade
of 1960-70, a thousand jobs in all disappearing. Of

rescission based on non-compliance with a nondiscrimination clause, who is going to do it? I mean, you
know, they don't do it unless they have to."*
GENERAL COUNSEL: "You would suggest then a
fruitful line of investigation for the Commission
might be an examination of the frequency with which
compliance investigations take place in this area?"
MR. BLEVEANS: "Yes, and I assume that you'd be

met with the same thing you have been met with

the jobs remaining in 1970, white collar jobs ac-

beforethat they don't have the staff. They can't

counted for 35% of the white iaales and 10% of the
black males, 49% of the white females and 35% of

handle it. They can handle other things but this is

the black females. Blue collar jobs were held by

45% of the white males and 61% of the black
males, 17% of the white females and 15% of the
black females. No white males and 1% of the black
males held household service jobs; 2% of the white

females and 15% of the black females held such
jobs. The figures on the underemployed are anybody's guess.

An Overview: Private and Public
John Bleveans, Chief Counsel of the Lawyers'
Committee for Civil Rights, who has been quoted
earlier, gives some "overviews" on racial hiring.
Many c,1* the largest area industries are Federal contractors or subcontractors who legally arc supposed

to comply with nondiscrimination pledges or lose
contracts.

"For some reason, you know, the part of the contract that says 'make the product and this is how you
will make it,' and all those things, all those contract
provisions are very important and everybody knows

something they can't handle."*
He adds that "in all fairness I would say that there

have been two new businesses that have come to
Cairo or come to this area in the last yearone is
just north of town, a printing operationand they
may grow to be like a 100 - employee business, and at

the present time I believe that their work force reflects the racial composition of this county. I have
also had some assurances from a shipyard that is
going to open or re-open at Mound City that they
will attempt to do somewhat the same thing. They
are the bright lights as far as I am concerned . . .
otherwise it's a pretty much all white proposition."

If the private sector generally feels a sense of
responsibility only to its owners and stockholders in

the pursuit of profit, public employmentin theory
at leastshould be responsible and responsive to the
people it serves. What is the practice in Cairo?
. . . without exception," Bleavean says, "When
you walk into a public office in this city and county,

you are met with the whiteness of it. For instance,
the Alexander County Courthouse, I don't suppose

what they are. But when it gets down to that bit

*Other agencies also suffer from staffing inadequate to

about affirmative action or [that] you won't discriminate against blacks, that seems to be an appendage

do the job. The Food and Drug Administration, for example,

*Bleveans is talking about Cairo in particular but his
conclusions could apply nationally. Nowhere in the country

Congressional funding, a comparison of Congressional budget priorities is interesting. In 1971, the House Appropria-

has a Federal contract ever been cancelled for racial discrimination. Since there are more than 100,000 contractors
and subcontractors doing government business, this indi-

cates either that there is no continuing job bias in the
United States or that the government is an accessory to

tions Committee cut 20 percent from funds requested by
the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged
with enforcing anti-bias laws. At the same time, it granted
another low enforcement agencythe FBIits full budget
request including $30,000 to buy a new armored limousine

violations of its own law.

for its director.

has only about 200 inspectors to cover 60,000 food processors. Since adequate staffing is directly dependent upon

 67
there are more than three blacks in the whole court-

schizophrenia bordering on a municipal suicide wish.

house. You can go up and down the halls of the

Certainly it was hard for Shelley Mc Kee to understand. Miss Mc Kee, the white schoolgirl who testified about education, had this poignant observation
about the impediments in the way of Cairo kids who
might want to return to town after educations were
completed instead of becoming another exodus

various county offices that are there, the state attorney's office (Ed. note: where White Flat leader Pey-

ton Berbling held sway)I'll just go down the hall
with you nowthe state attorney's office, the treasurer's office, the assessor's office, the sheriff's office,
the county clerk's office. [Then] come around to the

statistic.

circuit clerk's office, go out the back door to the

"We (could) come back and build Cairo up to

Highway Department, stop off at the two courtrooms
and you won't see, you know, enough black faces to
remember."
"Go into the City Hall . . . and you get the same

what we want it to be. Then we would be the grownups running it and we could have our own ideas . . .
But like the program from the government that was

thing. I don't believe there are any black people

employed in the City Hall . . . I have had occasion
to know through one lawsuit* the employment situation in one of the larger public employers that pro-

vides gas and light to the city [the Public Utilities
Commission (PUC)] . . . They had 25 employees,
all of whom were white."

At the same time, 40 percent of the: customers
paying light and gas bills were black.
Rejection of a Federal Program

With blacks and whites both hurting from unemployment in Cairo, you would think that a program
to produce jobs without draining local funds would
be welcome. So you would think. But in 1971, a
Labor Department grant for $137,000, under a program called "Public Service Careers", designed to
train and upgrade city employees, was rejected. Some

supposed to come here for jobsI think it was career planning or somethingand it was voted out. I
think that was a big mistake because we need that,
because so many kids are trying to find part-time
jobs and they can't do it. And a lot of kids would be
happier and it might settle things if we could work
together, and through these programs it might help a
lot."
To learn what killed the Careers Program, it's first

necessary to understand how it was born, and the
Byzantine account of the life-and-death of one minor
program illuminates the major obstacles to progress
in Cairo.
In 1970, with the continuing United Front boycott

hurting merchants who still refused to hire blacks,
segments of the white community headed by moderate Mayor Pete Thomas were making some conciliatory gestures. Thomas, some Council members and
Mrs. Sarah Jane Clark of the Shawnee Development

blacks and whites both opposed the program and
the rejection had the appearance of community

Corporation, devised the Careers Program which
would have meant about 25 black-white jobs over
two years with funding from the Department of

*The suit charges discrimination against the PUC and
the County Housing Authority. One document filed says
of the Housing Authority: "At least since Nov. 18, 1959
the Authority has not advertised any job openings in the
Authority work force. The Authority has not solicited new
employees through the use of union referral services, private employment agencies, newspaper advertisements, or

Labor.

the Illinois State Employment Service . ." The implication
is that the all-white Authority dispensed jobs by word-ofmouth, systematically excluding blacks.
The PUC, according to the suit, does not have any
educational, height, weight or sight requirement fer its
employees, all of wham are white.

Detour Ahead

A short detour must be taken at this point to
examine the Shawnee Development Corporation

(SDC) of which Mrs. Clark, a white lady, was a
prominent member. SDC was one of many Community Action Agencies which sprang into being after
the 0E0 was created to sponsor various programs
designed to help the poor to help themselves. It became a sponsoring agency operating Labor Depart-

 68
ment job programs like Operation Mainstream and
the Neighborhood Youth Corps and OEO Emer-

mon sense to get the job done."

gency Food and Medical Programs. By the time
many groups like SDC got into action, OEO itself

might find inhibiting?
"This has been discussed many times previously and
the answer is simply, No."

was being nickel-and-dimed to impotence and slowly

dismembered by Congress. In 1971, for example,

OEO was "pumping" only $38,000 a year into
Alexander County (exclusive of the St. Mary's

Move away from the police station which some

SDC eventually did relocate but it did not budge
from its assertion that the Alexander County Housing Authority "ha; done since its inception in 1937

Clinic).
Although under law SDC was supposed to provide
broad-Lased community representation to the poor of
five counties, it chose to set up headquarters directly

an outstanding job within the framework and the

behind the Cairo police station. This was patently
hostile territory to many poor people who were black

Now, understanding that Mrs. Clark was a power
in SDC, some subsequent events may be more intelli-

and not a few who were white. A 1970 OEO

gible. The program that she, the mayor and the

evaluation team said that while national publicity

Council submitted won Labor Department approval.
At the hearing, Mrs. Clark is asked, "Had there been
consultation with members of the black community?"
MRS. CLARK: "There had not been consultation
with the United Front or those members of the black
community."
When the plan was presented at a public hearing
in July, 1971, many blacks were apprehensive about

about Cairo's race problems was driving away industry, SDC was not doing all it could to make the best

of a bad situation. The evaluators found that SDC
"has fallen considerably short of achieving the degree
of effective participation called for by the Economic
Opportunity Act and OEO regulations." For starters,

suggested that SDC relocate someplace not in
proximity to the police stationthe former black
it

high school building, for example. It called for more
youthful, neighborhood participation on the Shawnee
board of directors and it condemned the Alexander
County Housing Authority for "selection of tenants
on a racial basis".
Stung, the SDC fired back that the OEO team had
fallen under the spell of the United Front. A story in
the Southern Illinoisan on May 6, 1970, quoted the
SDC board as saying: "Their mention that the Cairo

racial problem has attracted nationwide publicity
with the resulting derogatory reactions is quite true.

Their close cooperation and attention paid to the
militant United Front group is responsible, to a degree, for this nationwide distorted public image of
Cairo."

Race, it conceded, had "contributed" to industry
staying away. But it defended its own white-dominated racial composition. "We wish to state that the
people who comprise [our] Neighborhood Advisory
Committees are dedicated Christian people, endowed
with a desire to help their neighbor and enough com-

funds available to them."
Resume Normal Speed

buying a pig in a poke. The NAACP's Preston
Ewing Jr. questioned whether the poor and minorities would be getting their fair share of jobs. Rev.

Koen demanded that half the jobs go to blacks.
And the charge was made that Mrs. Clark, one of
the program's white architects, was going to get the

cushy top administrative post. She denied this at
the time.

At the hearing she explains the conflict and the
City Council vote one summer's night this way: "I
don't think it was a question of racism or racial bias
on the part of the Council as much as it was this
aura that two groups have that have done verbal
battle many times. And that evening it was pretty
hot, and there were quite a few sirens running up
and down the street to make everybody a little nervous, and the Council simply voted `no'."
But, as the record shows, it was simply not so
simple.

State Activities and Inactions

Neither was the state role in Cairo employment.

 69
Six years earlier, the Illinois Advisory Committee
hearing had concluded:

"The Cairo office [of the Illinois State Employment Service] has neglected to push for integration
of work forces in local industries which might employ Negro trainees. Specifically, it has avoided referring any Negroes to Dam 53 fEd. Note: a nearby
multimillion dollar Army Corps of Engineers project] for skilled or temporary unskilled jobs over a
period of years, even though the Corps of Engineers
periodically requested referral on a non-discriminatory basis."

For that matter, the Illinois SES itself had .o
blacks working in its Cairo office. Nor in the Spingfield office of Erwin Althoff, its state direeter, who
told the hearing: "The Illinois SES has been follow-

ing a policy of strict non-discrimination for many
years."

Six years pass and the reputation among many
blacks of SES as a job source or of the State of
Illinois as an employer has not improved.' Frank
Hollis, James Whitfield and James Wilson testify.
Whitfield and Wilson are on welfare, Hollis is described as an investigator for the Law..ers' Committee for Civil Rights. Wilson describes his unsuccessful efforts to find a job through SES.
"Well, like every time I go down there tney give
you a little card to fill out with your name, your
address and how many kids you have. And that's it.

And then they ask you, 'Well, come in next week
and if there's anything, if there's any jobs opening,

administers the various lucrative programs. Strict
state and Federal anti-discrimination regulations, of
course, are supposed to govern the use of highway
funds. But blacks over the decades have complained

that highway programs left tnem standing by the
roadside and witness Wilson contributes an upciated
complaint.

He says that the previous September, a bulletin
was issued calling for workers at a nearby road construction firm in Carbondale. Wilson testifies that he
and a "carload" of blacks first checked with the State
Highway Department and were directed to the contractor. They filled out applications with the contractor and wen told they would be called shortly. That
was six months earlier.
"So like we haven't heard from him yet," Wilson
says, and he continues his story of a runaround on
the Alexander County highways.
"We also went back to the Highway Division in
Carbondale to apply for a state job and spoke, and
they said that there was no openings in the Highway
Department but they could direct us to someone who
would let us know more about it, which was down
here in Cairo, the county clerk. I then took a carload
down to Cie county clerk's office, and we set down
and talked with him, and he told me that he wasn't

he didn't know nothing about the State Highway
Department as far as hiring and it wasn't none of his

business and for me to contact the Governor's aid
official to see about that because he didn't have no
authority over that. But we was told that he had

we'll let you know.' And for several times like I went
for a whole month, you know, and it's just a routine
thing, like nothing but to go down and check in and
check out. No jobs on the bulletin board. No nothing, you know, about the job situation."

authority over it."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Were you told that political
considerations were involved in getting a job with the
Highway Department?"

One place where the job situationfor someis

that to bein order to get a job on Ow state highways that it was politicaland that you would have

always good is out on the highways. In fiscal 1971,
Alexander County received $10,754,710 from the
Federal Department of Transportation for highway

planning and construction. This expenditure repsented nearly half of all Federal money coming into
the county from a Federal government that cannot
afford to fund a $100,000 health clinic. The State of

Illinois adds its share to the Federal bundle and

MR. WILSON: "Right. The county clerk told us
to contact someone in the Springfield office before I
could get hired."
Wilson and Whitfield, drawing welfare, were determined job seekers. Whitfield says that the county
clerk told him that they hadn't hired anyone locally
in five years although Whitfield had heard that "they
have recently sent five people down to the highway,

 70
you know. So I had to write a letter to one of the
Governor's aides. So I drafted up a letter and I had
one of the secretaries at the United Front office to
type it up and I sent it to one of the Governor's aides.

All right, I didn't hear from him. So one day in the
office we decided to call somebody up there." Wilson, they testify, called the Deputy Director of the
Highway Division. He gave Wilson the number of
one of Governor Ogilvie's aides in Chicago. But
when they called Chicago, he wasn't there.

"So then we called Springfield," Whitfield says.
"He wasn't there. So we left a number for him to

call. So he called [Wilson] back, you know and
[said] that we would get a letter, you know, in
regard to the job as soon as he gets to the Maintenance Department to find out what jobs are available. But we haven't heard from him yet."

These stories admittedly are long and probably
tiresome in their homely detail. But how tiresome it
must be on welfare and looking for a job and living
such stories.

Hollis testifies that in 1967 he did get a state
highway job as an engineers aide, "There was racial
tension in Cairo in 1967," he says, "And the Governor made available two lobs, and I was one of the
lucky people to get one."

hat lasted a year, Hollis recalls, but then an
election changed the parties in power and he was
out. But during that year he observed the Highway
Division office in Carbondale. He says that some 150

jobs inside the office itself were all held by whites.

In the Private Sector

Each of the three men, at one time or another, has
worked at the Burkart-Randall Co. It is a division of
Textron Industries that makes polyurethane foam
padding; Burkart's is also the leading local industry,
hiring eight percent of all employed Cairo residents.
The plant has been in Cairo for as long as most
people can remember. About fifteen years ago, it
shut down with devastating economic results, and did

not re-open until six years ago. Blacks have depended on the plant for jobs even as they charged it
with discrimination.
For example, on Oct. 19, 1966, NAACP president
Hattie Kendrick reported to the Illinois Advisory
Committee: "[Burkart] is hiring Negroes. Workers

are nearly 50 percent Negro. As a matter of fact, for
a while they seemed a little zealous. It was reported
that public aid took some of the recipients to Burkart
in vehicles driven by local case workers in the welfare office, and the Negroes were told to stay on the
job and not return to the Department of Public Aid
should they lose their jobs."
Sixteen months later, eight blacks were charging
Burkart with racial discrimination before the Illinois
FEPC. Seven claimed they were denied jobs and the
eighth complainant said he answered a newspaper ad

for a supervisor's job, was hired as a truck driver
and then was put to work loading boxcars.

Hollis, Wilson and Whitfield all claim that the
company discriminates. Hollis says that he has inves-

tigated black worker complaints for the Lawyers'

Today, with massive construction underway on Interstate 57 (which will allow traffic to bypass Cairo and
compound its present difficulties), Hollis claims that
no blacks are employed as engineers. When vacan-

Committee and finds conditions the same as when he

cies do occur, he says, they are never advertised or

Wilson, who worked at PIrkart's as a machine

posted publicly or listed at the SES.

"It takes, you know, racial conflict or something
before the blacks know about a job. "*

worked there three years before. That is, no "black
persons in the higher level of salaried, managerial
and supervisory positions."
*The Cairo plant is one of five in the Burkart chain and
the new national headquarters. Although Burkart, whose
products are used in the home and automotive industry,

*In August, 1969, one month after 200 United Front

does not hold Federal contracts, its parent company Textron

supporters were arrested outside Gov. Ogilvie's office, he
authorized the hiring of 20 to 25 jobless Cairo residents
to work on highway maintenance crews. The Governor's
directive said in part: "The unemployment situation, particularly among blacks, is critical in Cairo." Springfield

does. The anti-discrimination clause in Federal contracts
with Textron applies to all its subsidiaries. This means that
if discrimination existed at Burkart's, Textron contracts
could be cancelled. It's a moot point since, as has been
noted previously, never in history has a Federal contract
been cancelled for job bias anywhere in the country.

Journal, Aug. 13, 1969.

 71
operator four years ago, describes his experience. "I
left Burkart's because of like during the three years
that I was there I was a machine operator, and like I
knew the plant pretty well. So like what would happen is that they would bring in a white person to me
and, tell me to teach him what I know, and he would

become my foreman. So like this went on for the
three years I was there, like the foreman would even-

tually leave and they'd send me another person to
teach him what I knew, you know, and he would
come to me and be my foreman."
(For Commission veterans of the 1968 USCCR

hearing in Montgomery, Alabama, there is a bitter
parallel to the testimony then of John Barnes, who
had worked at American Can in Bellamy, Alabama,
for a quarter of a century. "I learnt," he said, "when
they get ready to hire a white they'd bring him to me
and want me to learn him, and I stayed in the same
category all the time. And this _white, he would ad-

at Burkart." He
goes on to say that three black workers recently
rejected offers to become foremen, apparently be[present] employment situation

cause they did not want to leave the union bargaining unit. But he points out that 37% of all promotions in general have been going to blacks.
COUNSEL POWELL: "Well, on balance, I think

your statement is very commendable . . . Do you
have any idea why there are only two black foremen
out of 38 in the plant in an area where there is such
a large black population?"
MR. CONNAUGHTON: "No. The method of select-

ing a foreman is done on the basis of qualifications
and those two foremen were selected and offered the

job and took it. Why there are only two I really
couldn't say."

'Connaughton, in a prepared statement, had told
the Commission that "the unsettled situation in Cairo

vance, probably he would go somewhere or go to the
office and make a salesman, foreman, probably his

has proved a distinct disadvantage to us. Existing
personnel are reluctant to transfer to, and new personnel are reluctant to undertake, duties in a city

salary would go to $500 or $600, and mine re-

torn by dissension."

mained the same all the time.")

"So I went up in

the [Burkart's] personnel

office," Wilson continues. "and we had a discussion
about it. So they told me that like they had a position for me but they felt that I wasn't quite ready for

it. So I say, 'Well, like you know it's been three
years. I don't know how long do it take, you understand, for me to be qualified for whatever position
you all have for me?' They said that, 'Well, it takes
time, you know.' So within that time then I just left."
In 1972, according to Burkart officials, in a plant

32 percent black only two out of 38 foremen are
black. Burkart counsel Stephen Shulman testifies that

all except two of 26 clerical workers are white. Of
38 officials and managers, 36 are white. But figures

show that 36 percent of laborers are black. T.J.
Connaughton, Vice President for Operations, says:
"We have a balanced work force in the Cairo plant."
Connaughton tells the hearing that "we have decided not to argue about the testimony" of Hollis,
Whitfield and Wilson except to point out when they
each left Burkart's. "1 trust it is apparent," he says,

"that these gentlemen are uninformed about the

Commissioner Freeman asks, "What is the involvement, if any, with the community, with the
community itself?"
MR. CONNAUGHTON: "For myself personally I
have been responsible for this operation for about a

year and I franklyI personally have not got involved. I have been up to my neck trying to
straighten out some manufacturing problems. We as
a company . . as far back as 1967 have made
.

numerous attempts to try and bring some Federal
agencies or government agencies or people to come

to grips with some of the problems. Our division
management spoke to the local Chamber of Commerce here back in early 1968 and urged them to
conciliate the problems that they had here which
were shaping up and obviously going to get worse
. . . Some of the testimony that we heard before is
indicative of our own frustrations in trying to solve
some of these problems."
In

1968, General Bolen was president of the

Chamber of Commerce, the same Bolen who replied

"Sh" when a reporter asked him whether blacks
should have more say in city affairs. It would be

 72
fascinating to know what the general said to the
heads of thc Cairo's most vital industry or what the
industrialists said to the general. Apparently, what-

In an age of acronyms, PADCO stands for Pulaski-Alexander Development Corporation. The twocounty group got itself together in 1968 with a board

ever was said, the white powers did not feel that

of directors that counted tcn whites, two blacks.

what was good for Burkart's was good for Cairo. Or
perhaps the conversation was inconclusive, the minds

Working with a few thousand local dollars and amid
latent hostility from white elements who equated the
start of progress with the end of prerogatives,
PADCO originally had little success in attracting

on either side did not meet, the Chamber did not
understand that Burkart's was firmly committed to
racial equality in Cairo.
There seems to be no such problem today with the
Federal government. Connaughton says that the
company has been filing contract compliance reports
with the Office of Federal Contract Compliance

is well. However, individual blacks Nho do not
think all so well have complained to the FEPC in
Springfield that job bias persists at Eurkares. John
G. Cheeks, FEPC office director in Springfield, does
not single out Burkart's or any other company. But
he says that during thc ',.st four years, his office has
made 33 separate trips tti Cairo to investigate a total
all

new business or rejuvenating the old. But in the
spring of 1970, the Federal Economic Development
Administration gave it a $40,000 technical assistance

grant. Considering the scope of the problems, it
wasn't much but it was the first real money PADCO
had ever seen and the people were happy. The Cairo
Citizen of April 23 1970, frontpaged the news:

"Recognition of PADCO as the area agency to
become recipient of a federal grant for economic
development in the two counties greatly enhances
the stature of PADCO and raises its level of importance to No. 1 position."

of 84 complaints. And he draws two flat conch.-

Four months later, almost to the day, a Citizen

sions:
"There ; definitely employment discrimination because of rac:_. in Cairo and Alexander County.
"Although certain employers and unions have bet-

headline read:
"CITY COUNCIL DROPS PADCO SUPPORT"
A hundred people had jammed into the meeting

ter records than others, the Illinois Commission has
no appreciable evidence that racial discrimination in
employment in the Cairo-Alexander County area is
diminishing."*
Another Private Project

While job bias went its undiminished way, an organization named PADCO was trying to do its own
thing about economic conditions. And its brief history in Cairo demonstrates once again what happens
dominates a people that good intenwhen racism
tions produce questionable results and progress
seems always to be trapped in thc starting gate.
The 'FEPC, Cheeks says, could do a much better job
if it had authority to investigate employment practices and
file charges on its own initiative rather than being limited
as it now isonly to responding to individual complaints.
Federal agencies are in the same predicament. Job rights
law somehow is always weakest at the point it should be
most strong.

called to consider whether Cairo should honor a
$10,000 financial commitment to PADCO. The taint

of Washington was on PADCO with all the racial
overtones that connoted. Support was voted down,
4-to-1, on the grounds that the city could not afford
to help a group seeking to attract new industry. The
only supporting vote came from Norman Seavers,
Cairo's first and only black councilman, and the
tenor of the meeting can be judged by a question
asked of Seavers early in the discussion: "Why don't
you lead your people downtown and help break the
boycott?"
PADCO survived without the Cairo Council's assistance and today is headed by Nolan Jones, direc-

tor, who has a board of 11 whites and 11 blacks.
Jones is a man with natural-born Boosterism who
can look at area conditions today and tell the hearing:

"The overall picture I think is encouraging because we have so many tremendous resou..ces to de-

velop on here. Our transportation picture is good.

 73
We are at the apex of the inland waterway system of

the United States. We have four major railroads
serving the area. We have interstate transportation.
We feel that all the ingredients are here for success."
They always have been, of course. But Jones says
that now he is getting good cooperation from a host
of

disparate

sourcesthe Governor's

Office of

Human ReFources, the Illinois Industrial Development Authority, local banks, the EDA. And PADCO
itself is working "extremely hard."
"To give an example," he says, "In our last quarterly progress report we reported we had participated

in some 153 face-to-face meetings in three months.
Twenty of these were with industrial prospects, 18
with small business loan conferences, six speeches to
service clubs and ci 'ic organizations."

And what has been accomplished over two years
in light of PADCO's avowed purposes describes' by
Jones: "The prime oljective of this organization is to
improve the economy of the area. The name of the
game is really jobsto find new jobs, to increase the
spendable income." Richard Grigsby, his deputy
director, begins the answer by saying " . . we have
hopes for an air industrial park . . . an airstrip
where the local companies can fly in small planes
and park them beside their plants . . . it will be the

only industrial park in the United States that will
have an airstrip, water, rail and highways."

It certainly is a bold concept in an area where
most plants do well to keep their trucks running,
much less buy company airplanes. But perhaps real

is required to see the day when Alexander
County will have its own functioning ail industrial
park. In the meantime, Grigsby says that PADCO
was "directly or indirectly" involved in such projects
vision

as

Grigsby cites the printing company in North Cairo
mentioned in the testimony of Lawyers' Committee
director Bleveans, and a variety of smaller projects.

There is no way of knowing which projects are a
direct result of PADCO and which are "indirects."
Jones thinks that the total number of jobs produced
"will probably project out about 310." It is not clear
how many actual jobs there are now and there is no
racial breakdown submitted on new employment.
Jones des,:ribes one of PADCO's most active and

successful undertakings. "I'd like to pay tribute to
some agencies that have given us strong support. The
Small Business Administration [SBA] has been excellent in giving support in this area. In the 29 loans

that we processed with them over a period of little
over two years now . . we have had one rejection.
I think this is a good track record."
(But outside the hearing, some blacks who originally backed PADCO do not think it is so good. In
fiscal 1971, SBA listed a $592,430 input into Alexander County which it called "Influence of Federal
Activities." Rev. Koen. of the United Front says that
as far as the Front can ascertain, only $20,000 of that
nearly $600,000 from SBA went to black businessmen.

("And all the ..vhile our boycott was continuing
strong downtown," he says, "We saw white stores
remodelling, we saw new ones like the aquarium or
pet shop open with all white employees, and we
couldn't fig e out where the money was coming
from wish tne boycott hurting business so bad. Now
we think we know. It came from SBA and it undermines the boycott.")
The hearing does not explore this area. But Jones

does produce figuresthey may be projectionsthat
he says show that $40,000 spent on PADCO last

an aquarium in Cairo which has four em-

year "repersents a savings in welfare cost of $1 million in this area. It would represent $57,000 in sales

"A beauty parlor in Olive Branch, one employee.
"A garage in Cairo, three employees.
"A service station in Mounds, one employee.

tax, $37,000 in real property tax, $140,000 in increased federal income tax, a $35,000 increase in

ployees.

"Harvard Lumber Company

in

Tamms pro-

jected 50 jobs but due to the increase in the lumber
business they are going to double their stiff and have
100 employees."

state income tax front the personal income developed
out of the projects we have worked on."
God knows, the area needs every dollar it can get.
Ilut at the moment when PADCO, whatever its deficiencies,, seems to be making some progress, the ne-

 74
mesis that has dogged Cairo since the land bust of
1842 seems in no mood to depart gracefully.
PADCO, for reasons not Iltogether apparent, is in

money. Yet they cannot use technical assistance

the process of becoming a five county planning group
instead of continuing as a two county technical assistance body.

tion of Regional Councils has received a commitment from Washington that would fund an agency
like the revamped PADCO. It would seem that a
Federal government that can bail out a giant aircraft
company on the grounds that jobs are needed could
use the same reasoning to keep PADCO safely af-

"We are having a little hangup at the present
time," Jones says, "in our transition, in that we are
funded under technical assistance . . . When we become a planning and economic development district

money for economic development planning,"
There is hope that something called the Organiza-

loat. Admittedly, a shop that sells goldfish does little

we would come under planning money in their

to help the Cairo economy. But a shop that sells

[EDA's]

nothing does nothing at all.

department.

They

have

no

planning

 75

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

A Hearing Ends

I.

that these
QUESTION: "Is it your assumption
problems will just somehow fade away? Or Jo you
expect them to get worse or better?"
MAYOR WALDER: "I guess there's a certain amount

of that. Of course, when you're recounting our troubles you don't sound like a Chamber of Commerce
meeting. It sounds a good deal like the opposite side.
We just console ourselves I guess by looking at other
towns that have just as much trouble, just as much
housing problem,, and we do talk to them and ask
them what they are doing, see, and what they can
do.

PI

Mayor James Walder, CRC hearing, March-1972.

"Some days I think there's some hope for the rejuvenation of Cairo. But most days I'm pretty pessi-

mistic. It may be past that point of decline from
which it can't resurrect itself. Especially since the
white leadership doesn't seem concerned. They may

wind up with a kind of caretaker government and a
population of two or three thousand just hanging
on.

IP

interview whir John Bleyearts, Lawyers' Committee director since February, 1971. July-1972.

Conventional liberal wisdom says that all citizens,
particularly in a democracy, are responsible for what

their governments do, but there are degrees of responsibility. Some participate in an injustice; some
actively oppose it; some others are primarily spectators of their own lifetimes.
Over the generations, the majority of white Ameri-

cans have been partners in racism, either silent or
announced. Withou` this partnership, the national
climate would not h, ve allowed certain practices in
Cairo to become established in the past and persist
into the present, thre itening the future. But to say
that the offense of racism has been general doesn't
relieve certain indivi luals and institutions from

 76
specific responsibility to deal with it. Officials who

are on the scene have legal powers and political

ber who became mayor later in 1971 when Pete
Thomas, the moderate car dealer, resigned.* The

means to alter events that are not possessed by ordinary citizens who might agonize over what Cairo has
done to its people but who are powerless to influence
the course of current history there.
The Civil Rights Commission has heard much evidence of racial inequaiities. There is a continuum of
white abuse going back to those slaves ferried across

resignation was a delayed result of Cairo's election
that April when two ex-White Hats who have al-

the Mississippi to build

the earliest settlements.

was to put the four-man council under control of

Today at the near end of that continuum, there are

former vigilant,s.
Thomas said ti-_e day after the election: "I still
don't know how long I am going to last. So far, they
(white militants) have blocked everything I've tried

officials at all levels who cannot be held accountable
for a past they did not create but who are responsible for what is being presently created. With them,
the condition of Cairo has nothing to do with vague
notions of corporate guilt but everything to do with

ready testifiedJames Dale and Allen Mosswere
elected on the same slate with Walder to the City
Council. Thomas had run on a bi-racial ticket
against a United Front candidate whom he defeated
overwhelmingly. But the net result of the election

to do. I can only hope they become more moderate
now that they are on the hot seat."

the discharge of their office under the laws of the
city, the county, the State of Illinois and the United

The new councilmen steadily undermined his author-

States of America. What have they been doing?

ity t'ntil he was forced to step down, replaced by

The Mayor Speaks

After most of the evidence is in, the Commission
hears Cairo Mayor James Walder. He is a middleaged, middle-American haberdasher, a disarmingly
genial man who describes his part-time mayor's job.
"1 go up to the city hall every morning and answer
mail, and then I go down to where I sell shirts for a
living. And somebody calls me and tells me there is a
dead cat in the street. And 1 tell them that's not my
business but 1 have to talk to them for a good long
time because I know them . . And things like that
.

go on all day. And that's why it takes more time
than you would think for the city because people
think that the mayor takes care of all of them. And,
of course.
know all these people by their first
1

It turned out that Thomas was on the hot seat.
Walder whose store became a favorite target of boycott pickets. Testifying, the mayor at first acknowledges a certain unpopularity among blacks. He tells
Commissioner Freeman that "I believe that the black
residents do not think I'm their mayor."
A few minutes later, Commissioner Mitchell says:

"You took an oath when you took the job and you
have a responsibility for leadership. How do you see
yourself exercising that?"
Mayor Walder replies: "Well, I over-exaggerated

in my statement to Mrs. Freeman. There's a lot of
colored people who do feel like I'm their mayor. In
fact, 1 feel like the great percentage of them feel that
way, especially those I know personally. And over a
period of years, I know a lot of them personally."
Since he has extensive knowledge of blacks and

names and have known them for 60 years, and I
can't tell them its somebody else's department or

whites covering 60 years, Mayor Walder is asked

bury the cat themselves. I have to be real nice about
it."
Dead cats aside, Walder is a former UCCA mem-

Public Utilities Commission?

*Thomas, who served during Cairo's most tumultuous
years, would have been an invaluable witness. But those
years proved a bruising experience in his personal and
business life, and he apparently does not care to re-live
them publicly, and did not testify at the hearing.

whywith one or two exceptionsblacks have not
been appointed to city boards or agencies like the
"I can't account for anything, of course, that happened before November of 1971, four months ago,"
he answers. "But I think that what you say is basically true. I have only been mayor for four months."
The mayor recounts the general difficulty in finding qualified men who will give up their time to serve

 77
on unpaid boards. ".

.

.

I would say the colored

man has to work a little harder for his money, in that
he is generally employed by somebody else and his
time is not his own."

COUNSEL POWELL: "Don't you think that in a
community such as this which has about 38 percent
black population the blacks ought to be more accu-

rately reflected on the public bodies and commissions?"

MAYOR WALDER: "If people could be found that
are willing to serve on these committees, yes."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "You do think that? It's your

position that blacks are not on these public bodies
and commissions because they are not willing to
serve. Is that what you're saying ?'
MAYOR WALDER: -That's right.

the recipient to indulge in "civic duty".
The Commission moves on to consider the plight
of the majority of blacks whose sub-standard income
consigns them to sub-standard housing. Mayor
Walder says he doesn't have any program for low
income families at the moment. "We would desperately like to get a program in here that will work but

we don't think instant slums are the answer. We
don't want to try a program that will not do the job.
We have a slum. We don't need a new slum."
Previous testimony has shown that the City Coun-

cil not only voted not to sell city land to a bi-racial
corporation that planned to build low income housing but also rescinded a rent supplement proposal
passed before the April election that put Walder,

That's

Moss and Dale on the Council.
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Why would you rescind a

if people would

resolution which was a broad resolution and which
could be taken advantage of by anyone? Mr. Ewing's

MAYOR WALDER: "I didn't go far enough into
[describing] my limited colored pool I don't think.
We have got when we get right down to it about 15

ability or lack of ability to take advantage of the

or 20 colored menand these committees

tion helps to meet, does it?"

Yes.

right."
GENERAL COUNSEL:

"But

come".

are

program provided for by the resolution has nothing
to do with the need in the county which the resolu-

mainly menthat can serve on these committees ...
And out of [those 15 or 20] we have to find somebody that is willing to serve on them. And it's difficult to find them. It's a job to find, I say, the Caucasians to serve on the committees. These committees

MAYOR WALDER: "Why not rescind the resolution, Mr. Powell? It was serving no purpose. And it
can be put back on the city books by a simple vote

are without pay. They are no fun. They are civic
duty. And it's difficult to find anybody to serve on
them and I think that's a great reason why there

black assertion that it would play a hand in the city's
future but a kind of municipal housecleaning to keep
old resolutions from cluttering up the books. Does
the mayor, perhaps, have another housing program

aren't more blacks on the committees."
A listener remembers the testimony of Rev.
John Cobb as he told how, for 20 years, he had gone
to council meetings, pleading that the black community be allowed to involve itself in city government.
.
. in most cases the City Council would sit quiet
and listen and then in many cases sneer or show a
lack of interest," was his testimony.
A listener also remembers the local income statis-

tics cited by Staff Director Buggs as he tried to
determine what it would take to induce a white dentist to treat a black patient, ". . . at least 41 black

families with incomes over $10,000 a year." That
kind of income in Cairo would presumably permit

in five minutes when it is proven necessary."

The vote, then, was not a calculated rebuff to

in mind or for that matter any kind of program to
improve conditions in Cairo?

MAYOR WALDER: "No, I don't think we have"
COMMSSIONER FREEMAN: "You don't have any
program?"

MAYOR WALDER: "a definite program, no, I'm
afraid we don't."
COMMISSIONER FREEMAN: "Do you think that
Cairo can continue the way it is right now?"
MAYOR WALDER: "Well, yes, I guess we can. We
have continued this long . . . Those who haven't
liked it have gone and they are gone. And those who
have liked it have stayed. And while we are not

 78
perhaps the most prosperous community in the coun-

try, we're not I think the worst community in the
country either. And I'm civic-minded. I believe that
the time will come when we all get along very well
together and I believe . . . I don't believe we are
ever going to be Chicago but I believe we'll show
growth."

MR. BAUER: "No, I haven't formed any opinion. I
have never consulted about it, sir."

A vacancy currently exists on the Authority and
Bauer says that he is considering appointing a black.
GENERAL COUNSEL: "Have you taken any steps

to insure that the County Housing Authority does
not practice racial discrimination in its employment

If that is authority's present word on the future of
Cairo, is there any "power structurt." in the wings

practices?"

that has formulated it? Commissioner Mitchell asks:
"Who makes the decisions in Cairo?"

with that, sir."

Mayor Walder turns to Jack Bauer, Chairman a
the Alexander County Board of Commissioners sitting beside him and says: "If there's any powe'.. it
would be in the Alexander County courthouse, I'd
say, Jack. Not with Jack, I don't think. But with the
people who have been up there."
Alexander County is Heard

Mr. Bauer has been "up there" on the Board of
Commissioners for seven years. Pursuing the question of power and responsibility in local government,
the General Counsel says: "Mr. Bauer, the Commission learned . . . that of the 44 members appointed

by the County Board of Commissioners to the
County Housing Authority since its inception in
1938 none has been black. How would you account
for that?"
MR. BAUER: "Well, I can't answer for something

MR. BAUER: "I

don't think I have anything to do

But Bauer's board does directly control 44 fulltime jobs. Testimony shows that nine are held by
blacks including a jailer and cook in the Sheriff's
department and four black case workers and receptionists in Welfare.

Since Bauer "can't answer for something that has

happened over a period of years," and Mayor
Wald( r "can't account for anything, of course, that
happened before November of 1971," power and
responsibility on the local level prove difficult to pin
down.

The State Comes Forward

What about the higher state level? Gov. Ogilvie's
aide, Paul J. Wisner, who directs the Illinois Office
of Human Resources, testifies. He had been the Governor's personal representative in Cairo during some

of the worst of the troubles. The United Front's
Rev. Koen had criticized him then as having "a

that has happened over a period of years. I am
assuming that that's what has happened. And I'm

complete lack of understanding and ability to work
with blacks." Wisner's present office has broad but

assuming that these members have been appointed
by the Chairman of the County Board over those
years. And I would have no way of answering it,

somewhat amorphous dutiesliaison for Model

sir."
GENERAL COUNSEL: "But you have been a member of the Board of Commissioners for the last seven
years, have you not?"
MR. BAUER: "Yes sir, that's true."

GENERAL COUNSEL: "And in that period have
you formed an impression as to why it is that in all
the years, including the seven which you have been
on the Commission, there has been no black person

appointed to an authority which has jurisdiction over
an area which is very important to blacks?"

Cities programs, community service demonstration
programs, and a division of program development
"which has a substantive analytical staff capability
available to the Governor, other agencies and private

groups throughout the state of Illinois." His own
analysis of Cairo is curiously devoid of reference to

the city has passed through.
also fogged by what passes for syntax in

the racial crucible
It is

government.
`. . . we realize at the state level that not only

Cairo but a lot of cities and a lot of counties in
southern Illinois have suffered over the period of
time and have become in some ways backwaters in a

 79/so
large industrial state that is one of the largest . . . in
the country. I think there is an attention being given
to this by the agencies in terms of developing local
competence in placing districts in localities throughout the state so that the problems of dealing with the

sophisticated mechanisms of our society, whether
economic development in the private sector or the
categorical programs with federal funds available in
the public sector, can be tapped by these localities.
So that while Cairo is a special problem, it's not
uncharacteristic of general problems that exist in the
State of Illinois, particularly with communities that
have been former river-rail transportation centers or
coal mining areas in the southern part of the state."
Wisner goes on to say that ". . . notwithstanding
all the negative aspects of the problems in Cairo, the
community still does conduct its life under normal
circumstances a great proportion of the time and has
areas of community health and stability."
This description of a community that has logged

over 200 nights of shooting in the last three years
later leads Commissioner Mitchell to say:

something you said and something I heard
". .
from Sister Gladys Marie earlier about the fact that
things an often better than they seem at these hearings. And I think that's true, because heari figs tend
.

not to concentrate on what is at the foot of the
Christmas tree but what the problems are. We
wouldn't be here if there weren't any problems, so
we address ourselves to them.

"But there is also a danger in saying, as I think I
heard you say, that life really continues here under
normal circumstances and accepting the normality of
what we have heard herethe normal circumstances
here is that public housing is segregated.

"The normal circumstance here is that if you're

black and you have a toothache you have got a

replies, **Because I'm certainly not that tolerant of a
standard or no' finality that would include these problems. I think what I was saying is that there are these

problems that exist but they are not always at the
fever pitch."

The Governor's aide

,zscribes some things the

state has done in Cairo.
**We have a proposal which we think is close to
fruition on dental program which will be funded
approximately 50-50 for a total of $70,000 from the

state and from the 0E0. We are looking into the
long range plan for the hospital if we can be of
. to try and develop a comprehensive
multi-component health program."
Whether the tangible, pressing need to keep open

assistance

.

.

St. Mary's Clinic comes under a "comprehensive
multi-component health program" is uncertain. Exactly what a "comprehensive multi-component health
program" is or whether the state is really going to
help create whatever it is does not get explained
during Wisner's testimony. He does concede that the
state-assisted ($140,000 in various funds) United
Cairo Community Non-Profit Housing Development
Corp. "has had more problems than such an organization normally has in a community [but] they seem
to have lived with those problems fairly well."
"Fairly well" is one of those semantic approximations that defy contradiction. The record shows that

in July 1969, Governor Ogilvie announced a $5
million low income housing program for Cairo with
an initial grant of $290,000 that would eventually
produce 250 apartments. Nearly three years later,
the state had contributed $140,000, $80,000 of that
in a revolving loan fund that eventually would be
returned to the state. Exactly one single unit house,
priced at $14,900, had been produced with 13 more
in the same price range approved for financing by

are severe problems of law enforcement, that the city

the Farmers Home Administration.
"The first year of a housing development corporation," Wisner says, "being not for profit, communi-

government has no plan to deal with many of the

ty-based type of work, is usually written off as a

kinds of problems that surround this community.
"So if life continues under normal circumstances,
that's not good. That's bad."

period of adjustment, settling down, learning to some
degree until we develop the local competence. They
are proceeding on a single-unit development at this

"I didn't mean to give that impression," Wisner

point. They still have in mind multi-unit develop-

transportation problem as well as a toothache.

"And the normal circumstance here is that there

 81
ment .

I think with practical and moderate estimate and a few breaks and some cooperation that
they feel they could achieve 50 to 75 units in a year
or so in Cairo if they are able to get rolling."
The Commission has already heard that the state
paid for the IACP survey of the Cairo Police Department and that the Illinois Law Enforcement
Commission offered a $75,000 grant for a police
.

.

community relations program. Through no fault of the

state, Cairo authorities used only $6,000 of that
amount, some of this allegedly spent on weapons that
remain unaccounted for. Wisner adds that from 1969
through 1971, state police contributed approximately
170,000 man hours to law enforcement problems in
Cairo. Whether or not this total includes time spent
in Pyramid Court raids for which state police
officials face civil trial for alleged brutality is not
apparent from the testimony.

Wisner calls attenticu to the legal services program.

know cach other very well and know how to offend
each other very well. So I think things don't often get
beyond the level of, on the one hand, the hurt and

distrust of the black community, and on the other
hand, the pride and fear of the white community.
And they are at each other pretty good and know
how to get at each other pretty good."

Again a white witnessthis time the personal representative of the Governor of Illinoishas posed an
equation that most blacks find impossible to comprehend. To speak of racial polarization without examining its causes and to stress the element of personal
feud avoids use of the word "racism." Would polarization and these particular feuds Wisner alludes to
exist in Cairo without racism? Isn't racism the factor
that makes the state spend public money to bus children to an all-white private school and to administer
segregated public housing, that forces blacks to cross
the two broadest rivers in America to get their aching teeth fixed?

"I think what has happened through governmental

Anything less than a frank acknowledgement that

that there has been an effective and

racismand not the United Front or personal feuds
created polarization and created it in Cairo 100

assistance

is

balanced advocacy system established in Alexander
County and that you have better law being practiced
possibly than existed before
. and I think the
impact of the presence of the state police has been
felt. I think that it has moderated the conflict . . .
let's say the most extreme expressions of the conflict
in terms of violence . . and it has had an impact
on public safety in the community."
.

.

.

CouNsH. Pownt.: "Mr. Wisner, in your efforts
to find solutions to Cairo's problems, have you had
the necessary cooperation and assistance from local
officials?"
MR.

WISNER: ''Weli, there have been suggestions

made that haven't always been respected. I think
maybe
question might be broadened as to
whether we have had the necessary cooperation from
the community in general . . The community is
.

locked in an intense stalemate that not only is

a

product of maybe more historical forces of economic

decline and racial polarization but a very personal
feud between people who have lived in this community for the great part of their life and have -very
different perceptions of how it ought to proceed,

years ago would seem to confuse rather than clarify
the issues before the hearing. Wisner's equation sug-

gestsat a time when former White Hats dominate
the City Council because the city's white majority
likes it that waythat problems might still be solved
through the horse-trading techniques of a labor-management negotiation

with some new negotiators

brought in from both sides. Wisner, in his testimony,
refers to the Governor being limited by local government jurisdiction, speaks of areas where the Governor "cannot intervene, does not have discretion, does
not have power to direct local officials." But he does

not refer to the quantities of lawfrom the 14th
Amendment equal protection clause through state
and Federal anti-job bias statutes down to the Illinois' own public housing no-segregation requirementsthat are being broken all over Cairo while
officials including himself display a high degree of
tolerance for illegal behavior.*
What would happen, a listener wonders as Wisner
testifieS, if through some demographic fluke a mostly

black city had developed in Southern Illinois and it

 82
was treating white citizens the way blacks are being

posed of representatives from all segments of our

treated in Cairo? Would Wisner talk of personal
feuds and polarization as a barrier to state action

citizentry." Accordingly, when the Federal Regional
Council (a bureaucratic catch-all supposed to expedite Washington aid to deserving communities) organized a task force to assist Cairo in March, 1970,
the Council sent word to both the United Front and
the Chamber of Commerce, probably the first and
only time in history that the two organizations were
on the same mailing list. The word was that help was
available "if all major interest groups in Cairo can
agree on the creation and composition" of their own
correspondent task force.

assuming that the situation had not long before advanced beyond the talking stage?

How the "Feds" See it
cooperation in
He tells the hearing that
Cairo has been "good." individual Federal officials
have already given their versions of reality in education, housing, law enforcement, etc. The Federal overview conies from Harvey Lorberbaum, chief of the
OEO Special Project,. Office in the region. He once
headed the Federal "task force" for Cairo and in one
sense his testimony must be reassuring to those who
fear that an all-mighty Washington apparatus moves
at will across the land, unsurping local powers and
imposing its own. Lorberbaum says that at the end

of 1969, a year of unremitting violence, Mayor
Thomas came to Chicago to meet with him and other
Federal men.
"At that meeting," Lorberbaum testifies, "he told
about the problems in Cairo, indicated that Federal
programs were badly needed in Cairo. In about Au-

gust of 1969, [having become] quite aware of a
depressed economy, racial conflict, economic boycott, all types of problems, a number of the representatives of Federal agencies started to meet informally to try to determine what would be the best
method of approaching the kinds of information requests that were coming in."

Lorberbaum says that Thomas stressed that "the
primary responsibility for initiating and designing
specific programs should rest with local groups com*In an interview after the hearing, Wisner says of the
State's position on Cairo's all-black, all-white public housing: "I

think there should be equal opportunity to rent

.
those units but there's been no action on the state level
We have to deal within the context and decide 4whether it
will have a positive effect to force integrated housing given
the tenuous relations of blacks and whites. So that has not
been our principal focus." Wisner's assistant, Julius Hovany,
defends the state role by saying, The middle gets it from
both sides," and responds to black militant criticism of the
state efforts by saying, "If you can't tell an extreme story,
you can't raise funds around the country."

That, of course, was like trying to get cats and
mice to agree on kitchen privileges. For almost the
next two years, Lorberbaum says, the Federal force
met with "pretty much a non-response" as it waited

for Cairo to produce an interracial body it could
work with. Toward the end of 1971, the task force
tried to throw in the sponge.
. . it had met with frustration," he says, "since
it felt that it had utilized all of the things that were at
their disposal and still was unable to get the kind of
positive response that it felt w,is necessary and
should have been forthcoming."
It is a surprising, even shocking confession of im-

potence on the part of a government that is able to
organize and fund land reform programs in Southeast Asia, self-help cooperatives in Latin America
and explorations on the moon. Lorberbaum says that
the task force has continued in a reduced effort and
he enumerates some accomplishments. OEO funded
St. Mary's Clinic for one beneficial year, there was
an emergency food program, Head Start was refunded "as well as funding for the development of
three or four play lots in areas where there were no
facilities for the children."
COUNSEL POWELL: ". . . Are you aware of any
Federal programs which any Federal agency could
have instituted in Cairo under its own authority and

which such agencies have failed to utilize?"
MR. LORBERBAUM: "No, not under its own au-

thority without any type of local participation. I do
not have knowledge of any programs like that, sir."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "What you're really

saying is that given a community in which there is a

 83
black minority as large as 30 percent or 40 percent
or somethng like that, if the majority group does not
want conditions in that city to change by the use of
Federal resources, they can decide? Is that right?"
MR. LORBERBAUM: "In many cases yes. There
are some limiteu examples of programs that were
funded without the enthusiasm of the majority of the
community."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "The word 'enthusiasm' doesn't seem to belong anywhere in this discus-

sion. Let me ask you something then. Here is the
United States Commission on Civil Rights . . .
which is supposed to come here and look around ar d
go back and sit down and make some recommen(,ations to the Congress ::nd the President of the U,ited
States and possibly the officials of the Stat.-, ui Illinois

about the alleviation of clearly evidet problems or
those that app:flr to be clearly evicent in this area
. .
. Now you say, in 1972, 'Well, tor a couple of
years we had a . . . task force on this thing. We
couldn't get anywhere and we just gave up and filed
the papers.' Now, what's the Civil Rights Commissionwhat is your recommendation to me? What do
you think I o ight to do? How do you think I ought
to talk to the Congress and the President?"
MR. LORBERBAUM: "[the task force] did help to

introduces into the record a letter that the Commission has received from a white Cairo resident. All
formal testimony has been received; there is a moment available to consider a plaintive communication
from someone who individually has reversed Cairo's
out-migration, choosing recently to make her home
there. Staff Director Bu3gs reads these excerpts:
. . . I was walking near some projects and saw

two white girls about eleven years old who were
unwrapping candy bars and throwing the paper on
the ground. I asked them why they were making
their town ugly, and one replied, 'Because I don't
like this town,'
'Why not?'

"'Ain't nothing in it.'
"This is the kind of child I worry about because
she doesn't have the association with Camelot children and she doesn't have association with black
children either. White people are afraid to work with

blacks for fear of retaliation from other whites. I
think this is the major source of difficulty in race
relations. How do I propose to overcome this difficuity? I think the best way to overcome the fear of
associating with people is for authority figures to set
the example. If the authority figures in the country
and in the neighborhoods would set the example of

implement programs here in the community. The
successes were minimal since there are very limited
programs that can be put into a community without

associating with people of different ethnic groups, the
other people in the country would have no difficulty

comr.tunity acceptance."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "So you're not mak-

"If the government would talk the white establishment in this town into being helpful, I really think I

ing any recommendations to me then? You have
learned as a result of the work of your task force

could talk the rest of the people into cooperating

that there is no recommendation that will work?"
MR. LORBERBAUM: "Oh, no, I think there are
many, sir. I think there are many, sir."
COMMISSIONER MITCHELL: "Have you ever

made those in the form of a recommendation in
writing?"
MR. LOBERBAUM: "In writing? No, sir. I have
discussed them with local officials. I have discussed
them with our community action agency."
A Letter to the Commission

On Saturday, March 25th, Commissioner Freeman

in following.

I think that if you can get the Establishment to
work for you and with you, the others will follow.
And especially if the newspaper will cooperate and
give Mrs. No-Name some publicity because she's
.

.

.

working on the committee with Mrs. Prominent
Black and Mrs. Well-Known-White."
Those are formidable "ifs" in the letter, springing
more from hope than from reality.
A Summing Up
Commissioner Freeman, in summing up the hear-

ing, casts a realistic eye on the life of Cairo that has
been crowded into three days of testimony.

 85
"We have seen men and women, black and white,
deeply concerned with the needs of this community,
facing the frustration of dealing with seemingly im-

the degree to which there has been a lack of communication and understanding in this city. Cairo has too
long been a community where guns and violence are

mobile bureaucracies on the one hand and racial
prejudice and povcrty, as divisive factors, on the

sub,tituted for reason and cooperation. The police
department seems to have become an instrument of
control in the hands of one segment of the commu-

other.

"This Commission held its first hearing in Montgomery, Alabama in 1958. Since that time the Nation has made important advances in guaranteeing
equal rights for all citizens. Unfortunately, it would
appear that this progress has barely begun in Cairo.
The contrast between progress and reaction is stark.
"Many of the people that remain are enmeshed in

a familiar pattern of need: need for adequate employment, need for decent nonsegregated housing,
need for effective education, and above all, need for
hope in a climate of pervasive despair.
.

.

.

state and Federal agencies, although interested and in some cases willing to provide aid, have
".

.

.

nity, rather than an agency responsible for the maintenance of peace.
"Most troubling to this subcommittee is the information we have obtained concerning public housing.

Such housing comprises nearly 15 percent of the
total housing stock in Cairo, and it is almost totally
segregated. This is known to the responsible Federal
officials to be a clear violation of their guidelines."
Commissioner Freeman goes down the list:

"shortage of health care," blacks "confined to the
lowest job levels," "municipal commissions and public bodies [that] remain all white."

Finally, she promises that the "information ob-

Cairo.

tained here will be the basis for our communications
to concerned Federal and state agencies. We will ask
these agcncies to take remedial actions commensurate with their full authority, and to continue to offer
resources to Cairo which in the past have been re-

"In the field of law enforcement, the Commission
heard sharply contrasting testimony, underscoring

fused by local officials."
The gavel falls; the hearing ends.

thus far not demonstrated the capacity for implementing imaginative programs which would provide
a decent educational opportunity for the children of

 86

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
II.

.

.

.

The Life of a City, A Nation
Continues

Some people believe,, for various reasons, that
the quiet days are over and continuing trouble can be
expected for weeks and months to come."
St. Louis Monitor, August 3, 1972.

"Several white men attacked two buses carrying
black and Puerto Rican children to a Queens junior
high school yesterday morning, smashing windows
with pipes and du,,iphg oil on the students."
New York Times, October 26, 1972,

The hearing is over but Cairo goes on. A few
months later, on a day when the city's streets drowse
in the he:A of mid-summer, an observer of the hear-

ing visits the city. Only an occasional car passes
along the main thoroughfare of Washington Street
or, to the west toward the Mississippi, down Commercial Street where the black boycott is entering its
fourth year. Cairo may be at the apex of the inlanC

waterway system of the United States, with four
major railroads and three major transcontinental
highways meeting there but one would never know it

from the pervading emptiness. And if it is hard to
believe that such a sparsely-peopled town is bounded

by the country's two greatest rivers with roads and
rails reaching out from it to the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts, it is harder still to visualize past days and
nights of violencethe crackle of sniper fire, buildings aflame, National Guardsmen in battle gear patrolling now peaceful sidewalks.

But the present surface quiet may be misleading.
Little or nothing has been resolved since the Commission left Cairo: public housing remains segregated, no blacks have been added to the Police and
Fire Departments, public school teachers are being

in wholesale lots but Camelot continues to
enjoy tax-exempt status while the IRS chooses to
fired

 7/ ea
investigate the United Front.* Already ominous

echoes of the past are heard, early in August, the
marquee of the Gcm movie theater read: "Theatre

Pulaski Counties at 10 percent, up a point from the
hearings and nearly double the national rate. The
Monitor claims that real unemployment stands at 20

Temporarily Closed." There had been an interracial
fiFtfight inside one night, brief but fierce, and when it
was over blacks wcrc arrested but the white youths

percent for whites, 40 percent for blacks, and it

were permitted to pick up their popcorn and go

souri.*

home.

An adjoining story is headlined: WHITES GET
96% OF CITY HALL MONEY. At first glance, it

There had also been a resumption of nighttime
shooting, The St. Louis Monitor under the headline,

claims that 40 percent of all jobs in Cairo are held
by non-resident whites from Kentucky and Mis-

SHOOTING STARTS AGAIN IN CAIRO, re-

seems that journalistic exaggeration must be at work.
But the figures in the story are the city's own, taken

ported on August 3rd:
c`.
.
. there were three nights last week that were

from payroll records and an annual report of expenditures. The story says that the City Council,

filled with gunfire which has been described as

between May 1st, 1971 and April 30, 1972, "spent
$1.4 million on city employees and for purchase of
goods and the delivery of services. Blacks received

`moderate' by Cairo standards. The three consecutive nights of shooting was the longest since March

21 of this year which immediately preceded the
public hearing by the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights. There have been no reports of personal
injury or damage
property . . . Many rumors
are circulating in both the black and wh:te communities and some people believe, for various rea-

sons, that the quiet days are over and continuing
trouble can be expected in the weeks and months
to come."

A block or so from the police station, a traffic
island where Washington St. splits into Sycamore
provides a shady and historical vantage for a follower of the hearings to catch up on newspaper reports of contemporary developments. The island,
shielded from the southern Illinois sun by sycamore
trees, holds Cairo's proudest artistic possession, a
turn-of-the-century sculpture called "The Hewer" by
George Gray Barnard. The Hewer has found eternal
employment chopping into a marble log with his
marble axe. But, according to a Monitor news story
in hand from August 31st, too many flesh-and-blood
Cairo-itcs are not working on anything. The paper
says that the Illinois State Employment Service has
reported general unemployment in Alexander and
*By 1973 when this publication went to press, blacks
reported a decrease in police krassnr.nt and the hiring of
two probationary black patrolmen. Although the Environmental Protection Agency had approved funding a new fire
house, there still were no black firemen in Cairo.

only $60,000 of that amount." A research group
from Southern Illinois University, working with
Cairo blacks, reported that only 12 or 130 city employees were black. Ten of these were street or garbage workers. An analysis of the expenditures report
showed that while almost $1 million was spent for
goods and services, black suppliers received only
$1020.

Putting aside the newspaper and looking out from
the locus of "The Hewer," the visiting eye can sweep
over much of Cairo's embattled history like a military historian's inspecting an ancient field of combat.

Except that this battle is not yet committed to history. Just South is the brick jail ana police station
*Non-resident job figures are difficult to verify. At the
hearing, T. J. Connaughton, vice president of Burkart's,
said that more than 75 percent of the workers in Cairo's
largest industry came from outside the city-548 of 700.
One :nindred fifty-four of these were black, he said. Groups

like United Front say the bulk of these blacks are from
Alexander County but that the vast majority of non-resident
whites are from out of State, depriving local people of jobs.
The Spring floods of 1973 supplied some fresh evidence on
this point. Although Cairo levees saved the city, severe
floods across the Mississippi and Kentucky crossed Highway

51 leading from the bridge into Cairo. This meant that
Kentucky residents from Paducah and elsewhere would
have to drive an additional 96 miles to get to their jobs
in Cairo. The Cairo Evening News reported that absenteeism
at the city's main plantsincluding Burkart'sran 50
percent.

 89
where Pvt. Robert L. Hunt died on July 15, 1967,
and in death brought life to Cairo's Movement.
A rifle shot away from the jail, at 14th and Syca-

more, are the bullet-pocked church, rectory and
school of the black Roman Catholic St. Columbia's
Church. It was here that Father Montroy became a
cause celebre, saint or sinner depending on one's
racial

philosophy. The spare and homely fram'

buildings, originally built by a Catholic hierarchy
Cairo dedicated to keeping black Catholics out of the
white Catholic church and school, came under heavy

fire from October 21 through 24 in 1970. Blacks
charge that the riflemen shot from the roof of the
Police Station, fusillade after fusillade while white
and black civil rights workers, men and women, cowered inside. In midsummer 1972, the white Catholi.:,s
of St. Patrick's Churn! of Cairo, in concert with their

Bishop Albert Zuroweste, are trying to evict the
NAACP and the United Front from their offices in
St. Columba's Curt activist priests had formally
signed over to them. This eviction attempt is based
on the claim by Bishop Zuroweste and his Cairo
followers that St. Patrick's church and school today
can accommodate both black and white. But there
arc Catholics who question the sincerity of the bishop's posit:on. Sister Margaret Ellen Traxler, member
of the School '3isters of Notre Dame and Chairman

of the National Coalition of American Nuns, ex-

decided in civil, not ecclesiastic, courts.* And a few
blocks down from the church in the storefront office
of the Lawyer's Committee, other racial cases make
their slow way to judgment. Among them is a suit

against former White Hat leader Peyton Berbling,
Alexander County state's attorney, charging him and
other high law enforcement officials with racial discrimination against blacks in the administration of
criminal justice. In late summer, the Seventh Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled that Berbling and the others
must stand trial. Also pending is a Lawyer's Committee suit against Mayor Walder, County Commiss'on Chairman Bauer, and institutions from the Al,..xande- County Welfare Services Committee down
to the Cairo Board of Library Directors.
The Lawyers' Committee office, with its bulletpunctured Xerox and a framed motto from Abraham
Lincoln that says "To sin by silence makes cowards
of men," is the first stop on a stroll around the tcwn
to gather post-hearing impressions. Lawyer Robert

Landsden, Cairo's foremost white advocate of the
need for racial equity and scion of one of the city's
first families, works in a small office cluttered with
briefs and the paperwork from scores of civil rights
cases. His father and grandfather were Cairo lawyers. He has seen justice and iniusticc closeup for
40 years before the bar. Landsden was quoted early
in these pages when he said this about the town

presses a different view of the St. Colombia's eviction
attempt and has made this appeal to her sister nuns:

where he has lived his lifetime:

"I call upon you to fi :go further complicity with
St. Patrick's Church and School. It is easy to argue
that in teaching at St. Patrick's where there are some
black children, we at least do something constructive
in a tense and polarized community. It is a false
argument because we must look to the over-all thrust
of racism, to the over-all evil act of sharing even by
our presence in a racist court eviction in which oppressor moves against the oppressed. We can never
do a little good in what is an overwhelming evil act."
The St. Patrick's-St. Columba's dispute will be

sooner sec Cairo float down the Mississippi than give

*Before the case was decided, the National Black Catholic Association and the Catholic Interracial Justice COMmitt c:e. bought St. Columbia's from the Bishop and dem:a
it to the United Front.

"There are a lot of white people who would
a black man a break."
Nothing has happened to alter that judgment and
Landsden, ostraciz d by many of the people he grew
up with, is not optimistic as he presses in court for
racial gains he does not feel can be achieved through
negciation.

"I myself wouldn't fool with the Chamber of
Commerce or City Council," he says. "They wouldn't

do anything to benefit black people. The most disappointing thing to me, though, is the failure of the
Federal judges to try these civil rights cases. The
delay is not normal. We are asking for injunctive
relief, where an injunction against the exclusions

 90
of blacks from governing bodies might solve the
problem. And the lame excuse is that the judges
have too many criminal cases to try. The excuse
does not hold water."
Is the appraisal too pessimistic? Has no progress

been made since the hearings? No progressno,
State and Federal pressure have resulted in one
black appointment each to the Housing ',,nd Welfare

authorities. The third black in Cairo's history has

been named to the Board of Education; Bobby
Whitaker is now the only black on the sevenmember board. There is continuing talk of a stateassisted dental clinic opening. But for the present, a
black dentist named Scott from Chicago flies down
in his own plane each Sunday night to see black
patients on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday,

a white dentistnot one of the two who testified
treats blacks. Thursday on, a toothache means a
trip over the Ohio or Mississippi.

Van Ewing's United Cairo Community NonProfit Housing Development Corp.its name mercifully shortened to Egyptian Housing Development

Corp.is still stymied by the city's refusal to sell
land from makiIg any start on low income housing.
The beginning production of middle income housing, by and for blacks, is a source of black pride in
accomplishment.* But it is small comfort to those
still living it shacks and likely to remain there into
any foreseeable future. With the exception of one

grocery, Cairo's retail stores continue to defy the
boycott by employing only whites.
The small progress in Cairo has been brought at a
great price. Years of agitation, violence and death,
*By early 1973, 35 middle income (about $15,000) homes

had been completed and 21 were under construction. The
Illinois Housing Authority provided the corporation with
staff and planning funds while the Farmers Home Administration supplied the mortgages. Payments ran arouna
$85 a month wt.;ch some Cairo welfare resident- had been
paying to live in hov(es. Three welfare families are presently

"homeowners." Eigh, others who had been on welfare got
jobs throutth tlre corporation (the general contractors and
cub-contractors all are black), got of welfare and bought
horn_? they had helped to build. The c.ty still refuses to sell
land on which multi-famiy buildings could be constructed
to provide apartments for low-income citizens.

thousands of hours in courts or on picket lines, unnumbered petitions to authorities for redress, two
hearings under the aegis of the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights and the spectre of more struggle ahead
all this to obtain three civic appointments, one new
house, a few jobs in a grocery and the promise of a
dentist.

An Editor Speaks

a few steps from the Lawyers' Committee
at the Cairo
News, editor David Cain is
interviewed and has a different appraisal. Tall and
But

grave, Cain is bullish on Cairo.

"I see Southern Illinois and Cairo as one of the
richest areas in the United States as far as the quality

of life that can be obtained here," he says. "I can
travel to any recreation area in five counties. There's
Shawnee National Forest, there are magnificent
homes. Shawnee Junior College hay a training program we participate in that serves five counties.
Things exist but unless you merchandise them right
nothing happens. We have an aggressive Chamber of
Commerce that was doing real well until the whole
thing flared up atzain. Why did the Civil K-ghts Commission hold hearings to open a bunch of old wounds

that had been partially healed. This is what our tax

money is going to and they are coming back to
crucify us."

Asked, "Are there any legitimate grievances here
in Cairo?" Cain replies:
"Yes, on both sides. But people interested in minority groups completely ignore the majority of the
population who pay taxes, send their kids to school,
and behave as good citizens."

"What do jot: think about the fact the--; are virtually no blacks working in retail stores?"

Cain thinks for a full minute and says:
"I don't think very much about it. Most stores are
mom-and-pop places. And good people are hard to
find. When these people foci they have a need, they
will do it willingly. But when they feel forced, they'll
balk at it."

Cain's newspaper, of course, is the only one in
Cairo, the only source of information about what is
going on in government, education, and business. He

 91
employs some black clerit.al help but no black reporters. As a journalist, he feels that the nation's

the office of attorney John Holland reveals. Holland

press has misrepresented Cairo while listening to the
"media freaks" of the United Front.

opposite in almost every way. The two men have had
parallel careers, have studied the same body of evi-

-I found a really lot of bad holds in their reporting," he says. "The N.Y. Times was the worst of all.
It was ftc j.,aper tube phenomena. Looking through
it, every,hiv ty, looked a little bigger than it was but
there was no real magnification. And the Civil Rights
Commission was guilty of the same thing. For example, they were not willing to listen to the Sisters of

dence available in the life of Cairo and have managed to arrive at diametrically opposed conclusions.

about the same age as Lawyer Landsdenis his

Holland defends most of the persons that Landsden's

St. Mary's, to hear their plans or the good things

rights cases bring into court. When a visitor
enters Holland's well-appointed offices paneled in
walnut, State Police Supervisor William Reineking
defendant in suits brought by Pyramid Court residents for allegedly illegal police raidsis waiting to

they had to say about Cairo."

see the attorney.

A check of the transcript tests editor Cair's final
reportorial conclusion. On page 655 there is the fol-

Holland sits inside with Tom Madra, White Hat
leader and Camelot organizer, and he is at the deskpounding stage of anger with the United Front, the
Civil Rights Commission and the Lawyers' Commit-

lowing colloquy:
COUNSEL POWELL: "Is there anything e!se of par-

ticular significance that you would like to comment
on so the Commissioners might"
SISTER GLADYS MARIE: "Yes, I would. I would

like to comment on the black white ratio also, and
also on our outreach program."
COUNSEL POWELL: "Please. Take your time."

On page 656, Powell says: "You have mentioned
your out each program. Would you care to describe
that for the Commissioner and how the mobile unit
is used in that?" On page 663, Commissioner Mitch-

ell asks Sister Joan Marie: "Is there a health plan
.

.

.

for the city?" And on page 669, Commissioner

civil

tee even before the interview begins.

"I'll tell you about the United Front," he says, his
stout face flushing as a fist comes down on the desk.
"They're a damn bunch of criminals that destroyed a
million dollars worth of property. Nobody's going to
deal with them.. Just not going to do it. They were
going to murder 15 people, do you know that? They
collected money from all over the country and none

of it ever went for the use of the poor black man.
Now we're all for helping the poor man. But by God,

you don't do that through the Lawyers' Committee
or the Civil Rights Commission."

Freeman says: "The Sisters of Holy Cross should

Holland cools down after his initial explosion and

certainly be commended for the kind of program that
you have underway. We wish you success. We wish
we could say that we could offer you more than our
good wishes. But it's refreshing to receive this kind
of testimony." Finally, on the mundane level of the
length of testimony, the sisters receive 23 pages in
the transcript. This compares with 17 for Rev. Koen

says that while there is no proof about the United
Front "murder list" charge, the FBI has statements
from a black girl charging that the Front attacked
her home because she tried to work in a downtown

of the United Front and 14 for Jake Bleveans of
the Lawyers' Committee, while Mayor Walder and
County Commissioner Bauer received 33 pages and
Police Chief Bowers and Cairo Police Commissioner
Dale logged 34 pages.
Despite the record, bad feeling against the Commission persists as another short walk across town to

store that was being boycotted.

"Listen," Holland says, "I told Preston Ewing a
dozen times I'm looking for a good colored leader
who can control his people. Everybody looks for a
good black man nowadays. You find one and you've
got liquid gold."

"They put one on the Fire Department," Madra
says, "Even though he couldn't pass the test. He
quit. Said he didn't like to sit around."

Holland relaxes in a smile and adds, "He must

 92
have been a pretty good kind of Negro," he says, "If
he didn't like to sit around."
Madra, who holds a master's degree, is a. strc,igly-built man taut with nervous energy. fie sits on
edge of his chair, feet drumming and says: "There's
no good black leadership in this community. There
are some good Negro undertakers and doctors. But
that's all."
Do blacks have any legitimate complaints? Housing, for example?
"There's no doubt," Madra replies, "That blacks
from other states did gravitate here into Illinois be-

cause of the welfare programs and did inherit bad
housing. They came here for the largesse. They were
unemployed and unemployable. They live by preference in a shanty."
Attorney Holland explains that there are no blacks
in government because "there are very few to choose

from. There's nothing better than having a good

Ewing is putting up a new ceiling in his living
room, preparing the place for educational teams
from Southern Illinois University that will be coming
in to tutor high school students and provide courses
like photography that are not available in the public
schools.

"We've decided to bring in educational resources
because that's the only way we're going to get them,"
he explains. "In a sense, the Front and the NAACP
is assuming responsibility for the welfare of the black
community. With the Establishment here, even the
things you gain you have to fight to consolidate them
and you can't move on to new things. So we've had
to shift gears in our approach. There are times you
need to use the streets and numbers of people to gain

support and raise issues. Now is the time for programs. It doesn't get the headlines but it's a critical
time."
Rev. Koen agrees.

youth, quoted earlier, may bear repeating. "Build a
lot of athletic facilities," Holland says. "Stick up 15
basketball posts and bring in first class men to teach

"There is now a systematic plot underway to destroy the Front," he says. "That's bluntly stating it.
It's not on the old level of vigilante attack and harassment, police raids and so forth. It's like the Internal Revenue investigating the Front. It's people tied
into the local Catholic Church structure trying to
force us out of St. Columba's. It's former vigilantes

`em. Course, it remains to be seen whether they'd put
in a bunch of wild men."

who have manipulated themselves skillfully into positions of authority within the city goverliment.

black man on your city council. But the black militants drive them out. We're thinking now of putting
two on the council."
His solution to the black problem of unemployed

The last interview a visitor to Cairo has is with

"This election, they are trying to take over the

two men who might fall inside Holland's "wild" cate-

county government which was bad enough before.*

goryRev. Koen and Preston Ewing. Koen still has
not recovered from his long fast; his body is wispy
and his eyes seem to stare at you from some far
confident man in his early 30's who has somehow

These people no longer have to wear White Hats.
They can force the sheriff to deputize them and go
forth under the cloak of law. And if it can happen
here, I think it can happen in other parts of America. The issue is, how will the state and Federal

managed to grow up in Cairo without being demoralized by a system that has either crippled many blacks

governments deal with it?"
How will the state and Federal governments deal

and whites or sent them fleeing. The men are in

with it? That question is branded on the consciousness of anyone who witnessed the Commission hearing and who has seen Cairo at first-hand. NI the end
of a summer's day, washing down the man: conver-

place he has been. Ewing is tall and energetic, a self-

Ewing's home, a plain but ample wooden house in
a neighborhood of similar houses where some Mines
still live.

"I was born on this block," Ewing says. "We still
talk with the whites but not the way it used to be.
One

white lady down the street on the Library

Board just was served with one of our subpoenas."

'Cairo city councilman Moss, former White Hat, was
defeated in November for election to the Alexander County
Board of Commissioners.

 93
sations with a cold beer in a Cairo bar, the question
requires a reassuring answer. But there is none.

During the hearings, one listened in vain when
state and Federal officials testified, to hear a tone of
Outrage in their voices at conditions in Cairo. Some
sign that they were offended, first as human beings
and then as Americans, that color could tear a town
and the people in it apart. But the capacity for outrage over racism seemed to have deserted them, if
they ever possessed it. Instead, most offered defenses
of their own little bureaucratic fiefs or cumbersome
evasions of responsibility. They were being asked

the Constitution but enforcement will be satisfied
with apparent. not essential, change. Ifwhen the
I9M Civil Rights Act was passeda deep and uncompromising national commitment had been made
to racial equality in America, if that commitment
had been pursued with the same passionate energy
and spirit that was lavished on a diversion like the
space program, Cairo today might not be a banquet
hall of interracial love feasts. But it could not be a
pit of racial combat.

Months after a summer sojourner in Cairo goes
back East, the New York Times one Fall day carries

men and women teach, keep a comfortable home, or

three stories in a single edition that are concerned
with racial conditions in New York City. One story

seek dignity and reward in labor. But so many of

tells about white parents sitting-in at a public school

their answers held no essence of these human consid-

to keep out black children. This is not a Wallace
standing in an Alabama doorway but people with

about livesthe way children grow and learn, how

erations, were as dry and detached as if they were
testifying about soil conditions on the moon.

Their attitudes, perhaps, are understandable at a
time when national leaders are not above using code

names like Mariano, Goldberg, Reilly and Kowalsky
barring the offspring of Americans whose forbears in

most cases caught an earlier boat to these shores

words that are really racist shibboleths, as ``ley practice their politics. The officials take their cue from
those on top and when "leaders" choose to lead
backwards, subordinates follow. And if a defense can

than did the ancestors of those turning black children
away. Another story describes the burning of an interracial church in the city and a sign painted on the
sidewalk outside: "Nigger Get Out, This Is a Warn-

be made for the apathetic state and Federal wit-

ing." The third reports the city's retreat from construction of a bitterly-opposed low income housing
project that would have brought poor blacks into a

nesses, one should also be made for Cairo. Sipping

the beer, looking at one of the ubiquitous signs
Scotch-taped to the bar mirror: "CairoLove It or
Leave It," and listening to white voices that arr.
certain in a racially obsessed atmosphere to say Nigger this or that before the beer is finished, it is easy
to despise Cairo.
A stupid and sullen place with an Amos and Andy
view of blacks and predisposition to meanness. But
that is too easy and it is unfair. Cairo has its share of

racist grotesques but it also has as rn,:ch human

white middle-income neighborhood.

If the founders of Camelot, the city council that
refused to sell land for a bi-racial housing development, and the church fathers pressing eviction at St.
Columba's read those stories, how can any findings
of a Civil Rights Commission convince them that
Cairo bears some unique guilt that should be atoned
for by good racial works?

"I think," the Rev. John Cobb testified, "That

capacity for decency as any city. The sign behind the

'South' has moved all over the country."

bar could just as easily read: "Integrated Cairo- Love It or Leave It." But Cairo whites have been
conditioned to act the way they do by their Total

That may be a libel on the South. Racism isn't
regional today and it never has been. That is an
American truth as evident on a Cairo levee as it is

American experience. They have been getting a mes-

on Broadway. Whether this truth turns the American
Dream into the American Tragedy depends on the

sage from Washington and Springfield for the last
100, the !ast 50, the last four years. With varying
degrees of explicitness, that message has been: Racial equality laws are an inevitable legal outgrowth of

national conscience and will. No commission can
judge that. But ultimately, that will determine the
future of Cairo, the fate of us all.