WHEN BLACKS TAKE OFFICE

...The people in Jefferson and Greene counties are still poor, many still on welfare, still largely unskilled and unemployed, still ill-housed and ill-educated, still lacking the fundamentals of sanitation and health...

...On July 4, 1969, a slate of twenty-two men and women were sworn into office in Fayette, the county seat and its only incorporated municipality...

...Private foundations and the Federal government have contributed seed money, but the local officials had to be trained in finding out what money was available, how to structure a proposal, and how to apply for a grant...

...As a census official put it, "The political potential for blacks is tremendous...

...SEDFRE currently concentrates on work with local tenant groups, community health councils, and Head Start parent advisory committees, work that involves improving listening skills, identifying and ranking problems, selecting strategies for reaching specific goals, formulating short-range and long-range campaigns, constructing programs to identify and train new leadership...

...These income statistics may appear bleak...

...Two weeks after the Fayette election in 1969, SEDFRE set up workshops and training sessions for the twenty-one new officials, headed by Mayor Charles Evers, in parliamentary procedure, budget analysis, and economic development...

...Take as an example black school board membership...

...Skill development sessions sponsored by national organizations and willingness of both black and white experts to help on the job have already begun to create a sophisticated corps of black officials that the whites will be hard pressed to match...

...Then pipes were laid to each house and outdoor faucets installed...

...This same need for information and skills exists for the blacks moving into such posts as sheriff, alderman, mayor, state legislator, and magistrate...

...In addition to the triumph of bringing healthful water to a home that has never had it, the project now has a fulltime staff of five, plus twelve temporary employes...

...The direct appeal of white candidates to the black voters in the Deep South last fall, and the near-total absence of racist rhetoric even in rural strongholds, are new phenomena emerging in response to a new potential...

...Downward trends are being reversed...

...It is building privies for each family, and there is a training program to teach plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, water sterilization, the collection and testing of water samples, and mosquito control...

...SEDFRE held five weekend workshops, starting in April and continuing throughout the fall, on identifying problems, both in the community and in the organization's own structure, and in problem-solving...

...Delivering the goods and services to the voters, black and white, is the test for continuing in office...

...The Justice Department is now in court to have the results in Humphreys invalidated...

...The Beaufort-Jasper Comprehensive Health Service is a Federally-funded project run by local black citizens with the help of medical professionals...

...Often, unfortunately, many newly elected black school board members are unaware of the availability of Title I funds, do not know how to find out about them, or do not know what special projects are permissible or encouraged within Title I. Moreover, new school board officials often require help in identifying the needs of children in the local school district in terms of the availability of this outside assistance...

...About 195 are from eleven Southern states...

...Part of the answer lies in the technical assistance given by outside sources, and part lies in the growth of the local officials who learn how to master the intricacies of government and to turn the help given them to best use...

...Training programs have been started to teach skills to the two counties' residents, more than half of whom had been on welfare...

...The Beaufort-Jasper project, minuscule by comparison with national projects, provides a concrete example of poor people learning the skills needed to effect change and beginning to carry the ball of progress themselves...

...Minority-group leaders—because of their increased knowledgeability—have proved a stimulus for action in securing increased funds for needed school programs serving needy children of all races...

...In Humphreys county, a black candidate was attacked and struck by a white assailant while asserting the rights of pollwatchers...

...For with help, the black officials are doing what every officeholder knows the voter wants— giving intelligent attention paced to the voter's urgent needs...

...Looking at only a few examples, the evidence indicates that black officials can bring about real changes that improve the lives of their constituents in such important areas as jobs, housing, food, health care, daycare centers, education, and job training...

...First is the realization of what an election is all about...

...What does it take to turn a place around...

...Through their positions they can directly affect the education of all children in their area...

...But realizing the potential is going to take all the techniques available from the behavioral scientists to build strong local organizations and develop effective local leaders...

...Greene county, Alabama, and Jefferson county, Mississippi, serve as case histories for future action in decaying, poverty-stricken areas when leaders acquire the skills and technical assistance needed for planning, funding, and administration...

...Municipal offices in the county seat of Eutaw are still held by whites...

...A median family income of slightly more than $1,400 makes this county, with 11,000 residents, the fifth poorest in America...

...If the old leadership had been capable, neither our cities nor our rural areas would be the disaster areas they now are...

...A white officeholder in Greene county, Alabama, where blacks took control in the elections of 1969 and 1970, feels that the black officials are doing as well in office as their white predecessors...

...Changes in teacher attitudes have come about as free and open discussion of policies and programs was encouraged in the board members' communities...

...A Philadelphia detective was brought in as director of public safety to train the new six-man police force...

...Stories about teaching a black school board member to read a budget or helping South Carolina backwoods blacks to tackle basic health problems rarely make the headlines, even in local papers...

...So do the new businesses brought into both Jefferson and Greene counties as the result of an economic development program designed and staffed with outside funding and consultation...

...Look at just a few instances of what has been accomplished in a two-year period of government under determined black leadership: • Sixteen new houses were built in Fayette (population 1626) in the past two years, ten more are under construction, and FHA loans have been approved for another fifty...

...Last spring, the thirty-four-member advisory council and the twelve-member board of directors of the project asked for help in determining their roles and in increasing their own effectiveness in the ultimate delivery of health care to the people they represent...

...A few new board officials had never before seen a school budget and welcomed the chance to learn how to read one, with help from an experienced board member or from a finance specialist brought in by SEDFRE through its active network of consultants...

...One such group can be found in the off-shore island counties of South Carolina...

...Without a change in the tax rate, receipts from sales taxes have increased fivefold...

...Close on its heels comes Greene county in Alabama...

...Such construction means jobs...

...And Leon W. Lindsay, in an article on the county in The Christian Science Monitor, wrote: "These men . . . were inexperienced in government...

...Clusters of at least three families living within a radius of 150 feet were located and a well dug to a minimum depth of 125 feet...

...There are now some 684 black school board members in the nation, out of a total of 135,000...

...The useful art of group dynamics has been taken over by minority groups intent on turning their newfound skills loose on the besetting problems of the urban and rural ghettos...

...They do not, however, control the county government or the school board...

...These intensive programs have not solved all of the myriad problems created by a century of neglect...

...What happens after blacks take office, whether in city halls or in county posts or on boards of education, is the real story...

...Day-care centers are freeing mothers for training programs and jobs...

...But providing the skills that make for leadership is a much harder job and one that is now commanding the attention of many organizations, such as the National Urban League, the American Friends Service Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Southern Regional Council, and the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality (SEDFRE...

...Cooperatives are being started for food-buying and to help the small farmers...

...The NAACP now has a training department to increase the effectiveness of its largely volunteer staff...

...Witness the techniques employed to discourage blacks from voting in the Mississippi election last fall...

...Four years ago there were 125 black board members...

...But, in many ways, what appropriate organizations are now giving black elected officials in the way of supportive services is what all elected officials ought to have...

...Countywide approaches to such basic problems as health care have won approval from Federal and state agencies...

...At one of these workshops, the problem of clean, sanitary water was raised...

...Ronnie Moore is executive director of the Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality (SEDFRE), and Marvin Rich is its president...

...Not that the battle for registering voters or enabling them to cast their ballots is over, despite the Voting Rights Act of 1965...

...The National Urban League, for example, is now putting new concentration on minority leadership development, police-community relations, and organization development for such groups as welfare rights and tenant groups...

...not so the outlook...

...Local business in Fayette is better than ever, a factor that has kept the whites from moving out of this county seat...

...To date, eighteen of these simple but effective water systems have been installed, and they serve from three to fourteen families each...

...Within months, they were astonished to learn that favorable action had come through on their list...

...A SEDFRE staff member was lent fulltime to push economic development...

...They drew up a long list of specific recommendations for the Delaware schools on Title I opportunities...

...A blue-ribbon panel came in to identify the basic needs of the area, and a professional group made recommendations for economic development...

...Projects have been started not only in job training and health but in studying tax schedules, sewer needs, and water meter rates...

...Changes in curriculum have gone far beyond those one would expect, such as the institution of black studies programs...

...Accountability has been built into school systems...

...Jefferson county in Mississippi is the fourth poorest in the nation, with a median family income of slightly less than $1,400 for its 10,000 residents—of whom 7,500 are black...

...Getting the leaders, through voter registration and political campaigning, has been the first phase of making the Fourteenth Amendment come true for the disenfranchised...

...Then the water was tested, and a one-horsepower pump was installed...

...These men and women, on both all-black and interracial boards of education, often deal with budgets larger than any other enterprise in town...

...WHEN BLACKS TAKE OFFICE RONNIE MOORE and MARVIN RICH "We've got a lot of new leaders," commented a black Mississippi man following the 1971 fall election that put thirty-eight blacks into office in his state, "but we haven't got enough leadership...

...But their city officials now have some experience, not only in local government but in the sophisticated techniques of weaving through channels of state and national government, corporations, and foundations...

...But they were not the illiterate, fumbling administrators some reports made them out to be...

...The growth of black political strength is evidenced both by census data and by the new tone of white candidates' campaigns...

...In that county more than 700 ballots were simply not counted...

...Then the participants analyzed and planned for follow-up activities...

...Blacks now know even better than majority candidates that getting elected is only half the battle...

...SEDFRE has worked with these black school board members and administrators in a Southern seminar in 1967, a national conference in 1969, and a series of statewide workshops in 1970 and 1971, developing in them the skills needed to run the schools...

...Harassment and intimidation take many forms these days, often much more subtle forms than those displayed in the past, but the old forms still survive...

...In virtually every state where these workshops have been held, Tide I sessions have led to some concrete action, and often to considerable new funding of programs for disadvantaged children...

...And the Congressional Black Caucus is reaching out to their colleagues on the local level—as evidenced by the conference called by the Caucus in November, 1971, and the economic development workshop run by the Caucus this past January...

...But, late or not, it represents the new thrust of many national programs...

...Even though blacks and other minorities have been denied any of the training grounds for political leadership, especially in the South, such an indictment neither recognizes the incapabilities and insensitivities of those who had held office nor the abilities, sensitivities, and commitments of the new leaders...

...True, they need consultation and assistance...

...Many also have been able to sharpen such basic skills as running a meeting, preparing a budget, and analyzing the curriculum...

...According to the Delta Ministry of the National Council of Churches, eleven Mississippi counties have more whites registered to vote than there are eligible whites in residence...

...In Wilmington, Delaware, for instance, participants in a seminar session on Title I programs made immediate use of the information gained from specialist consultants...

...One of the unfair obstacles that blacks have to overcome when they take office, North or South, is a general assumption that they are somehow inferior to the officeholders they replace...

...Some 102 counties, all of them in eleven Southern states, are now at least half black...

...Using their problem-solving techniques, the staff and board determined the resources represented in their own group, additional ones needed, priority locations for pilot testing of a water system, and specific activities to be started immediately...

...Almost unnoticed, blacks have moved into these local centers of power and brought about real change...

...With the help of a consultant, eight basic steps were identified, ranging from spotting houses on a map to paying the monthly electric bill...

...These funds, perhaps one of the most effective strategies of the War on Poverty, are available through Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act passed in 1965...

...Blacks thus hold such important posts as mayor, alderman, election commissioner, constable, and town clerk...

...The results of such training tell the story...

...In just the past few years, the number of black superintendents of schools has risen from two to thirty-three...

...Before examining the gains made to date, a frame of reference may provide perspective...

...For the first time, a real garbage truck actually picks up garbage on a regular schedule...

...The experiences and educational backgrounds of the blacks on school boards vary...

...This kind of leadership building has long been recognized as necessary by large corporations which send their executives off to month-long retreats for honing of such basic skills as problem-solving and communications...

...Through participation in SEDFRE's education workshops, black school board members have received information from government officials, exchanged information on everyday practicalities with other school board members, and opened a dialogue with school administrators, community leaders, and teachers...

...The Friends (AFSC) assist local black elected officials, including those in Greene county, in a variety of ways...

...The results of these seminars, which continue to be conducted in different parts of the country, are hard to overestimate...

...The most frequent concern of these new board members is in the area of Federal funds for the so-called educationally and culturally deprived...

...Instead, the press is more likely to concentrate on an election's results, as if that were the end of the story instead of the beginning...

...The Legal Defense Fund is working with newly elected minority school board members...

...Streets in black neighborhoods have been paved and sidewalks put in...

...Greene county's education budget now exceeds its welfare budget...

...As a result of the 1969 and 1970 elections, blacks—who comprise seventy-five per cent of the population there—now hold the countywide offices of probate judge and chairman of the county commission, all of the remaining four seats on the commission, sheriff, all five seats on the board of education, the county clerk, and coroner...

...These inaccessible counties are ridden with disease, much of which is traceable to impure marshland water and the lack of a modern water system to guarantee pure water for human consumption...

...Such training is late in coming to the arenas of government, politics, and civil rights...