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r One Voice Speaks For Black Greensboro Greensboro Daily News, Wed., Nov. 26, 19801 BY SCOTT SHANE Daily News Staff Writer Drive east on Market Street from downtown Greensboro and within a few minutes you will pass many of the power centers of Greensboro's black community. American Federal Savings and Loan and Greensboro National Bank, twin pillars of the city's black businesses, face each other beyond the railway underpass. The former Cosmos I restaurant, recently closed and reopened as Trevi Fountain and likely to maintain its status as the daily gathering place of several of the city's most influential blacks; Perry Brown's funeral home; Hayes-Taylor YMCA, for decades a vital institution for Greensboro's black middle class; the law offices of Kenneth Lee, chief builder of the city's black business community — all are located within the first half- mile. To the north is the campus of N.C. A&T State University; a short distance to the south that of Bennett College. Faculty members and graduates of these two predominantly black institutions dominate black Greensboro's academic and professional life. On both sides of Market Street are businesses owned and run by blacks. Most prominent is the small- business kingdom of brothers Alexander and Will Parker, including fast-food restaurants, a real estate firm,, a formal wear shop, a funeral home, a barber shop and more. "Once you cross over on Market Street into southeast Greensboro, you're in another world," says James Howerton, 33, a community representative in the city manager's office and one of a handful of blacks near the top in city government. "The people are different. The lingo is different. There are two worlds here, a white world and a black world. That's a reality." It is also a reality that the styles and reputations of Greensboro's black leaders are defined largely by their relations to the city's two worlds. The power remains — save at election time — almost exclusively in the white world; the black leaders' primary constituency is in the black world. It is the delicate task of Greensboro's black leadership to obtain a share of the power without losing the support and respect of their constituency. The conviction that power in Greensboro is still primarily located in the large corporations is shared by nearly every one of the approximately 25 influential blacks interviewed by the Daily News. Part Four Of Five "This is a capitalist country and a capitalist city, and we live by the economic golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules," says the Rev. Prince Graves, pastor of St. James Baptist Church for 28 of his 58 years. "Greensboro is a mill town — never forget that," says Lewis Brandon, operator of the Uhuru book store on East Market, which functions as a community center of sorts. "The people who run the mills — Burlington, Cone Mills and the other corporations — run the town." Bennett College President Isaac Miller agrees "The people who head up Jefferson-Pilot, Burlington, Cone Mills, Southern Life — they in my way of thinking represent the power structure in Greensboro. Their attitudes and objectives tend to be reflected by (mayor) Jim Melvin, (councilman) Vic Nussbaum and the others (in city government)." But the consensus is that corporate power is not exercised daily or publicly. "The business community gets to the council before the information about an upcoming decision is made public," says Hermon Fox, an engineer who teaches part-time at A&T and has served for several years as president of the Greensboro Citizens Association. "They go to church with them; they play golf with them. They're smart enough not to go down to the council and say, 'Do this.' When they make a decision it often doesn't come before the council." Blacks — with few exceptions — do not ordinarily go to church with or play golf with the city's corporate leaders. Neither do they work with them, since there are few blacks in middle management and none in top management in the large local corporations. There have been blacks on the board of the Chamber of Commerce for more than a decade — current black members are Richard Bowling and Bennett College administrator W.J. Trent. But with a single exception — A&T Chancellor Lewis Dowdy, who was elected in 1973 — all the blacks on the chamber board have been appointed by the president rather than elected by the membership. Many persons interviewed cited this as evidence of an insensitivity to black concerns on the part of the white business community. "The fact that there's one (black) or maybe two on the board does not represent the will of the Chamber of Commerce," said attorney and businessman Kenneth Lee, who dropped out of the chamber as a result of its apparent insensitivity. "It's like being an emeritus member," he said. "You talk and they listen, but you know how you got there and they know how you got there." Essentially excluded from the corporate world, blacks have reached positions of leadership by other means and in other areas. If there has been a shift in the nature of the city's black leadership in recent years, it has been toward diversity. "People are beginning to be more and more independent," says A&T business professor and tireless civic activist Katie Dorsett. "They're not looking to one leader. Blacks will probably never again have one leader — though some people would like to see black folks that way." Hermon Fox traces the increasing diversity of black leadership to the growing complexity of black concerns. "When there was a water fountain that said 'whites' and a water fountain that said 'blacks' it was easy to say where the problem was," said Fox. "But now our problems are more sophisticated and harder to define, and we need more sophisticated solutions."
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Full text | r One Voice Speaks For Black Greensboro Greensboro Daily News, Wed., Nov. 26, 19801 BY SCOTT SHANE Daily News Staff Writer Drive east on Market Street from downtown Greensboro and within a few minutes you will pass many of the power centers of Greensboro's black community. American Federal Savings and Loan and Greensboro National Bank, twin pillars of the city's black businesses, face each other beyond the railway underpass. The former Cosmos I restaurant, recently closed and reopened as Trevi Fountain and likely to maintain its status as the daily gathering place of several of the city's most influential blacks; Perry Brown's funeral home; Hayes-Taylor YMCA, for decades a vital institution for Greensboro's black middle class; the law offices of Kenneth Lee, chief builder of the city's black business community — all are located within the first half- mile. To the north is the campus of N.C. A&T State University; a short distance to the south that of Bennett College. Faculty members and graduates of these two predominantly black institutions dominate black Greensboro's academic and professional life. On both sides of Market Street are businesses owned and run by blacks. Most prominent is the small- business kingdom of brothers Alexander and Will Parker, including fast-food restaurants, a real estate firm,, a formal wear shop, a funeral home, a barber shop and more. "Once you cross over on Market Street into southeast Greensboro, you're in another world," says James Howerton, 33, a community representative in the city manager's office and one of a handful of blacks near the top in city government. "The people are different. The lingo is different. There are two worlds here, a white world and a black world. That's a reality." It is also a reality that the styles and reputations of Greensboro's black leaders are defined largely by their relations to the city's two worlds. The power remains — save at election time — almost exclusively in the white world; the black leaders' primary constituency is in the black world. It is the delicate task of Greensboro's black leadership to obtain a share of the power without losing the support and respect of their constituency. The conviction that power in Greensboro is still primarily located in the large corporations is shared by nearly every one of the approximately 25 influential blacks interviewed by the Daily News. Part Four Of Five "This is a capitalist country and a capitalist city, and we live by the economic golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules," says the Rev. Prince Graves, pastor of St. James Baptist Church for 28 of his 58 years. "Greensboro is a mill town — never forget that," says Lewis Brandon, operator of the Uhuru book store on East Market, which functions as a community center of sorts. "The people who run the mills — Burlington, Cone Mills and the other corporations — run the town." Bennett College President Isaac Miller agrees "The people who head up Jefferson-Pilot, Burlington, Cone Mills, Southern Life — they in my way of thinking represent the power structure in Greensboro. Their attitudes and objectives tend to be reflected by (mayor) Jim Melvin, (councilman) Vic Nussbaum and the others (in city government)." But the consensus is that corporate power is not exercised daily or publicly. "The business community gets to the council before the information about an upcoming decision is made public," says Hermon Fox, an engineer who teaches part-time at A&T and has served for several years as president of the Greensboro Citizens Association. "They go to church with them; they play golf with them. They're smart enough not to go down to the council and say, 'Do this.' When they make a decision it often doesn't come before the council." Blacks — with few exceptions — do not ordinarily go to church with or play golf with the city's corporate leaders. Neither do they work with them, since there are few blacks in middle management and none in top management in the large local corporations. There have been blacks on the board of the Chamber of Commerce for more than a decade — current black members are Richard Bowling and Bennett College administrator W.J. Trent. But with a single exception — A&T Chancellor Lewis Dowdy, who was elected in 1973 — all the blacks on the chamber board have been appointed by the president rather than elected by the membership. Many persons interviewed cited this as evidence of an insensitivity to black concerns on the part of the white business community. "The fact that there's one (black) or maybe two on the board does not represent the will of the Chamber of Commerce," said attorney and businessman Kenneth Lee, who dropped out of the chamber as a result of its apparent insensitivity. "It's like being an emeritus member," he said. "You talk and they listen, but you know how you got there and they know how you got there." Essentially excluded from the corporate world, blacks have reached positions of leadership by other means and in other areas. If there has been a shift in the nature of the city's black leadership in recent years, it has been toward diversity. "People are beginning to be more and more independent," says A&T business professor and tireless civic activist Katie Dorsett. "They're not looking to one leader. Blacks will probably never again have one leader — though some people would like to see black folks that way." Hermon Fox traces the increasing diversity of black leadership to the growing complexity of black concerns. "When there was a water fountain that said 'whites' and a water fountain that said 'blacks' it was easy to say where the problem was," said Fox. "But now our problems are more sophisticated and harder to define, and we need more sophisticated solutions." |