Viewing page 18 of 484

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

The Decades

   The sixties were something else-it was a decade that was about to burst upon us with all the high hopes. that what we Negroes wanted was at last to be fulfilled. Up here in Harlem the words Community Control had a new meaning.
   Rosa Park has set the pattern for change a few years earlier, when she refused to move to the back of that bus. Martin Luther King took the torch and marched from Georgia to Selma, Alabama, which now. depends on Black Athletes to buttress the career of the legendary "Bear" Bryant.  Tup Holmes son and Charlene Hunter won the right to enter the University of Georgia, where today the byword of that institution is singing praise to Herschel Walker a 19 year old Black "super" football player.
   The sixties introduced a new world in the english  lexicon - "Community Control" or in other words, ghetto persons being involved in controlling their destinies in the areas where they reside.
   This new phenomena, spawned out of guidelines set down by Kenneth Clark in his formation of HAR YOU saw new meaning added to the words "affirmative action" which meant enhancement of opportunity for our yourng [spelling error?]in the corporate structure but more so, our being placed in charge of spending some money for the first time, where we lived.
   And of course we made some mistakes but not before we had agreed to the construction of a State Office Building, and new Harlem Hospital Center.
   However, we lost five years in both the construction of the State Office Building and Harlem Hospital because a group of well intentioned Harlemites who did not know "beans" about how an office building should be constructed or what "machines" were to be installed in a modern hospital, took charge.
   These well intentioned citizens of Harlem screwed up the action because they insisted on being in control and at City Hall, it was thought best to go along under the guise of keeping the city cool.
   Despite the drawback, the era was good for the economy of Harlem citizens who moved up from laborer and domestics and underclass workers and members of the middle class with attache cases, Brooks Brother suits and positions of local school boards.
   The era was fascinating. Kenneth Clark had written a document of what Negros wanted and Adam Powell took it to Congress and came up with the funds to finance Kenneth's plan. The umbrella organization was called HAR YOU Act and the manna flowed.
   Powell, a few years later, was to say that some of the folks went "hogwild" [missed spelled?] over what they were supposed to be about. No one was hurt because the HAR YOU program kept New York and its Blacks cool and according to Powell that was what the program was about.
   With HAR YOU the Harlem economy became brighter and folks, who before the program started, were making $25.00 per week soon found themselves writing checks for thousands to satisfy their needs. Whit [missed spelled?] HAR YOU came Community involvement and control and responsibilities this was when the "shit" hit the fan.
   Those who demanded their rights under community control went into on the job training and with on the job training a lot of folks found themselves wrestling with the responsibility of affirmative action, the execution of contractual arrangements which gave them the rights for the community to be involved in all planning for the community this also included running local school boards with its inherent problems. And here too, this learning process created problems - But Harlem survived.
   The era saw a rise in Black education. The formation of construction companies, rise of black architectural firms, formation of stocks and bond companies, rise of Black enterpreneurs [missed spelled?] in all forms of business (most of them under financed); the formation of advertising agencies, a fling for some of us in the arts and the theatre and in events of learning and culture and a raise in the living experience for better for a lot of us. All of which is now being threatened by the attempts to turn bac the clock on Black progress under the guise of saving the country [.]
   The seventies was also something else. A few of us got on the Boards of Fortune 500 corporations. A score of our young folks were taken in the corporate world. There was an exodus from the ghettos to the suburbs by those who could afford it. And a new wave of migration of poor descended on Harlem.
   It also seemed that with the gains won through toil, struggle, sweat and blood in the sixties, Blacks relaxed and for the decade with some of us forgotten how we got there.
   And now with a change of administration and new conservative thinking all our gains won are being eroded-Starting out with slowness on part on the administration to adhere to execution of the voting tights act of the sixties; turn around of thinking saying that there is too much government regulations on our back coming from Washington; the pushing of new Regeanistic Federalism which says give all gains back to State Control which in some areas of the country means giving the "red neck" a chance to regain control over us; get government out of the business of employment back to the private sector which now say they cannot absorb us, not too strict on adhering to affirmative action policies once guaranteed by the Federal government; the elimination of or the emasculating of all federal programs in education, health, welfare housing, employment and all social programs which had guaranteed a semblance of life for the poor.
   The refusal of government to aid American Manufacturers now in throes of going under because of competition brought on by foreign competition and the bottom line the loss of jobs and great unemployment of Black youths.
   And this has affected the well being of Harlem citizens.
[Image of four men lower right corner of page]

Transcription Notes:
Start at the fourth paragraph "This new phenomena" Page is now complete and ready for review