"THESE ARE MY DIVIDENDS"

...Georgia, for each Negro child they have spent as ltttU as $2.59 per year...

...WHAT HAS HAS BRANDSTEIN accomplished in the year since she decided — almost single-handedly — to focus attention on a problem which Americans, so concerned with the issues of peace and war, hardly know exists...

...These Are My Dividends" One Woman's Harvest in the Land of Strange Fruit By DANIEL JAMES SOMEWHERE IN SUNBAKED rural Georgia a iiitle sprout is being nourished by a Northern woman who believes that certain American kids "not 'fortunate' enough to be living abroad" need as much aid as Europe's wartorn children...

...the right of man to his dignity...

...Rae Brandstein saw no reason, she says, why bombed-out European Jcids should be the only ones to benefit from American generosity...

...Due to the prevalent poverty and illiteracy, their birthrate is higher than the national average...

...But what has happened is only makeshift, confesses Miss Brandstein...

...Needless to say, in Georgia there is no literaey law to compel children to attend school until a certain age...

...The s&ms diftsrsntials apply...

...Moreover, knowing something "of Southern morei, she realized that the finest federal bill would scarcely help Negro children...

...odd** Rae NrsnesHtw, who was ease aa immigrant, "end what I'm irfftafl to reap in the South are my_ dlvWho knows...

...From the ags of twelve X worked in •wsstshops sighty la eighty-six bouts a wssk...

...The amount spent annually tot Southern white children is four to ten iimaa greater than that spent on colored children," she dUcoroiod, "In Macon County...

...Miss Brandstein told me, to the wages of whit* and colored teachers...

...Then her head began to swim and she told herself she was bnrking up a tree whose top was nowhere visible...

...What she saw has already been described...

...They all told her to "forget it"— it was a problem for the federal and state governments...

...I insisted...

...Letters still describe, in poignant if semi-litersts terms, how the parents themselves delight to traipse miles to listen to the radio...

...Then she multiplied this, in turn, by figures available on rural education in all the Southern states...

...The women —some of whom also wielded hammers — sewed new curtains and other frilly things...

...Perhaps, from the little sprout Rae Brandstein is busily cultivating, the dry desert of me rural South will someday bloom with luctoue gardens—grasratioi» of healthy, happy and informed yoMfg eitluns...

...In its most physical form the sprout being nurtured in Spaulding County, Georgia, by a tiny lady from New York City named Rae Brandstein, consists of an ugly clapboard shack standing alone iin an uncultivated plot beside a dusty rural bypath...

...Here she plans to install an audio-visual projector, a radio-record player, a library, and other school-community Objects...

...I was a child laborer," shs admitted, a sudden glint coming into hes> normally cheerful and cleat blue •yes...

...This sprout is a multiformed product which is sometimes books, sometimes baseball, sometimes clothing, sometimes a bus, and always...

...when Ifcey should be gang] to setoooL Yoav see, I've made' a groat investment In this oouatty...

...Working on the assumption that the parents would be her best allies, she first gathered them together and discussed her plans with them...

...According to the "big" criteria, mighty little...

...Next, singling out Holley Grove School In the hope of using it as a model...

...Spaulding County mothers and fathers—Arty per cent Negro—«re par* tially employed or unemployed sharecroppers...

...Through her Committee for Rural Schools, of which she is Executive Secretary, Rae Brandstein has managed to clothe completely 356 Spaulding County kids — probably the first time in their lives they've been adequately clothed...

...She discovered that Holley Grove was no exception, and that in Spaulding there were seventeen similar one-roomed shacks housing 747 children and 21 teachers...

...SOMEWHERE IN GEORGIA . Tee Dry Desert Will Semedey ffoem Daniel James is Managing Editor of fas Ntw Leader...

...She had been a field organizer for both AFL and CIO...

...What effect these small but potent deeds are having upon Spaulding County Negroes is best, described by this fact: people formerly apathetic to Holley Grove have now made it the very center of their existnee...

...I asked Rae Brandstein some questions about her own background...

...She admitted that was probably so, but -upon examining federal aid to education proposals she learned that they would barely apply to the situation she had stumbled on...

...They live in shacks no better •than the one-roomed affair their children call "school...

...Miss Brandstein, likewise, is soliciting funds for that purpose up North...

...A local school supervisor, for Instance, has decided to devote this whole summer, aided by friends, to rebuilding a nearby deserted shack into a library...

...She had been the AFL'e Labor Leugue for Human Rights coordinator in New York during the war...

...Miss Brandstein projected its renovation...

...Lo and behold, the men laid to with saw and hammer and made the tottering shack schoolworthy, supplying seats for all pupils and even a desk for teacher...

...One afternoon she found herself visiting Holley Grove School in Spaulding County near Griffin, Georgia...

...But how did you first get into these, activities...

...And she was particularly aroused by the insult hurled at us by the Argentine dictator's wife, Eva Peron, when the latter sent bundles of food and clothing for underprivileged U. S. children a year ago...

...BUT ALL THIS IS CHANGING a bit under the impact delivered by a little woman who lives a long distance — culturally as well as geographically — from the cottonflelds of Georgia, but whose soul has sunk deep roots there...

...bUt if you ever read somewhere that Spaulding County's juvenile delinquency rate is high, you will know one reason why...

...And Miss Brandstein sent them blackboards, maps, books, and last Christmas a radio...

...What do they do meanwhile...

...While the smaller ones amused themselves playing in the dirt — for recreation equipment was non-existent—the older ones played baseball with a ball made of bound newspaper and a bat of cardboard tied with string...

...To obtain apparel for children of all sizes and ages ranging from six to sixteen, she literally begged, borrowed — and all but stole — from friends,, labor unions and clothing manufacturers...

...Children whose parents work in Atlanta sometimes manage to get lifts in trucks, wagons or other conveyances...

...Too, they were expected to absorb their lessons after a three-to-eight-mile hike from home because bus transportation in this part of Georgia is a rarity...

...Since the war many from regions like Spaulding County have been migrating North and West in search of that opportunity which a half-remembered school text or billboard advertisement told them exists somewhere in America...

...In sum, concluded Rae Brandstein, t he problem of Southern rural Negro children especially irked her and drove her to action...

...So Holley Grove has beea trann« formed not only into a semblance of real school, but has also become a community center...

...They planted grass on the dusty lot outside...

...She had been attached also to the War Labor Board panel...

...SIX WEEKS out of each semester these Georgia youngsters get no education at all, for then they are removed to the cottonflelds first to "chop" and afterward to pick the cotton...

...I couldn't help it," she goes on, "I found myself crying...

...And finally, they passed their time without a break for recreation or for meals...

...Her ultimate aim is to house Holley Grove in a surplus war building standing elsewhere in the county, which she is now dickering to purchase and have removed to another site...

...Should Spaulding County kids somehow be fortunate — or unfortunate — enough to graduate from the public school system just described, they will earn the dubious privilege of trying to find their way forty miles to the nearest high school, in Atlanta, and busfare to Atlanta costs eighty cents a day — a sum which virtually -none of the county's sharccropping families can afford...

...Just thlsi 1 don't want to see any children forced to work, or get into tzoaUe...

...I Was somehow not entirely satisfied with the explanation that Miss Brandstein resented Eva Peron's insult...

...In coldest language this means that poverty and illiteracy— and sometimes, disease—are traveling northward and westward with them...

...After batting the ball around a few moments," reports Miss Brandstein, "the bat flopped about like a helpless scarecrow and became useless...

...Which fills a rathe acute need, for hitherto Spauldin.J County Negroes had no other place hi which to gather'for a social evening...

...Then she multiplied these figures by Georgia's 158 other counties...

...Rae Brandstein once watched these kids as they played during "lunch" hour, when, as the teacher herself admitted, "They get no lunch...

...Rising at sunup, they are usually deposited in Atlanta without money for lunch, and with time on their hands till 1 p. m., when classes begin (there are no morning classes for rural Negroes...

...Here, in the days before Rae Brandstein, kids sat on hard benches — or stood, if they were bigger children, for only two benches were available for three dozen of them — while learnJn the three R's...

...and, of course, to school facilities of all sorts...

...NOW WHY WOULD ONE WOMAN who resides in the North, who is not a Negro, and' who has already lived a rather full life, spend all this time and energy on a matter which must appear rather mundane to most Americans, even the crusading kind...

...Rae Brandstein discovered that your guess is as good as hers...

...but measured in simple, hum ah terms . . . well, let's see...

...And the c-hurchgoing elements, out to solve another problem — transportation — are ' putting every spare nickel into regular collections for the eventual purchase of a bus...

...Rae Brandstein returned to New York and spoke to some of her friends about what she had seen...

...What has that got to do with this rural business...

...They staked out a crude baseball diamond...

...I'm not going to wait for Eva Peron to make another gesture like that," declaredsRae Brandstein, and forthwith rolled up her sleeves...