
          Striving Toward Democracy.  Report of the Southern Regional
Council, 1980-1982
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 5, No. 3, 1983, pp. 5-16
          
          The Southern Regional Council, the South's oldest biracial
organization, consists of 120 Council Members in eleven Southern
states. The work of the Council is supported by foundations, labor
unions and corporations and by the contributions of individuals and
institutions as Council Associate Members. The Council maintains a
small staff in Atlanta where it carries out research, provides
technical assistance and offers educational programs which address
primarily the issues of poverty, ignorance and racism in the American
South. Through its work, the Council also attempts to develop regional
leadership concerned about these enduring problems.
          Begun in 1944, the Council has served as both a forum and a vehicle
for Southerners of good will in education, labor, business, community
action, religion and government to "work constructively for a better
South and a better nation." From the time when Atlanta newspaperman
Ralph McGill, Fisk University president Charles Johnson and Atlanta
University president Rufus Clement signed its papers of incorporation,
the Council has conducted activities and projects designed to promote
equal opportunity, civil rights and equitable development in the
South. Its past and present members include Julian Bond, Brooks Hays,
Hodding Carter, Marion Wright, Frank Smith, James McBride, Dabbs,
Josephine Wilkins, Ray Marshall, Barbara Jordan, Andrew Young and many
others.
          Vernon Jordan, John Lewis, Leslie Dunbar, Harold Fleming and Wiley
Branton have served on its staff. Recent presidents have included
banker John Wheeler, physician Raymond Wheeler, Clark College
president Vivian Henderson, former assistant secretary of state
Patricia Derian, and lawyer Julius Chambers. Tony Harrison, a deputy
chairman of the National Democratic Party, currently serves as Council
president. Council members have come from many backgrounds with
differing political, social, and economic views, but they share a
common devotion to solving the historical problems of the South.
          In its nearly forty years, some major accomplishments of the
Southern Regional Council have included:
          
            Creating the first network of biracial, state councils in
the South that provided in the 1950s the major Southern support for
public, integrated schools.
          
          
            Instituting major research and demonstration projects in the
field of voting rights (including the Voter Education Project) which
helped document the need for the first federal civil rights act in
this century and which registered more than two million black
Southerners. 
          
          
            Documenting the need for the first federal executive order
in this century barring racial discrimination in
employment.
          
          
            Providing a clearinghouse to document and monitor racial
violence and intimidation during the late 1950s and 1960s. This work
justified federal intervention that protected the lives and safety of
civil rights workers. 
          
          
            Sponsoring the Citizens Boards of Inquiry that documented
the prevalence of poverty and hunger in the region in the late
1960s. This work focused the attention of. the public and Congress on
the problems of poverty and spurred the first national legislation to
address the problems of hunger in America. 
          
          
            Creating a Southwide governmental monitoring project in the
early 1970s that documented the failures of the Nixon Administration's
new federalism in protecting the interests and rights of
minorities. 
          
          
            Carrying out the first regional demonstration project that
successfully placed more than five hundred black women in managerial
positions in the South. This project became the model of job placement
for the federal Department of Labor.
          
          
            Sponsoring the Task Force on Southern Rural Development in
the late 1970s which offered direction to state governments and the
Carter Administration on developing a national rural
policy.
          
          The Council acts as a multi-racial forum for Southerners to think
and act together. It sets up networks to develop and provide
information, expertise and advocacy. The Council is also an innovator
of new approaches and strategies which, if successful, become models
for other groups. All told, the organization provides information,
analysis and technical assistance to a wide range of
decision-makers.
          In the last few years the Council has continued its tradition of
important work for the South. These recent accomplishments include:
          
            Helping Deep South state governments find new ways of
responding to the needs and problems of poor and blacks.
          
          
            Sponsoring a series of reports that led to the adoption of
the first equal opportunity plan for employment in the history of the
US courts. 
          
          
            Providing technical assistance to local and state groups in
almost two out of three of all administrative actions taken by the US
Department of Justice that stopped racially-discriminatory voting
practices in the Deep South. 
          
          
            Providing key research and technical assistance
demonstrating the continued need of the federal Voting Rights
Act.
            
          
          
            Developing fair models for redistricting of local and state
governments which will enable more than seventy-five new, black
elected officials and an even larger number of more responsive white
officials to take office by 1985. 
          
          
            Supporting local self-help efforts, especially in the rural
South, for the unemployed, the untreated sick, the marginal farmer and
the elderly. 
          
          
            Finding ways to tap private economic resources to assist in
providing basic services and job opportunities in the poorest areas of
the South. 
          
          
            Offering one of the few regional magazines which provides
critical reporting and analysis.
          
          
            Initiating a major, experimental project to assist blacks,
women, the poor and others in capturing the opportunities of new
technologies in the field of communications media. 
          
          
            Creating regional radio programming about the problems and
promises of Southern life especially in its tradition of civil
rights. 
          
          
            Continuing to monitor segregation academies in the South and
providing documentation and research used in briefs filed before the
Supreme Court. 
          
          
            Convening or holding conferences and forums for more than
six hundred Southern leaders to explore common interests and to
develop new strategies on the issues of the 1980s. 
          
          While the Council's membership is limited to 120, any number of
individuals may become associate members participate in the functions
of the Council and receive its regular publications.
          
            Southern Legislative Research Council
          
          In 1980, the Southern Regional Council began the Southern
Legislative Research Council (SLRC) as a special project to provide
research, analysis and technical assistance to state legislators who
represent the interests of black and poor citizens in Alabama and
Georgia. Upon request, the SLRC assists both black and white
legislators, effectively increasing their capability to use
information and analysis in state government.
          The SLRC was founded on the view that state legislators with large
numbers of black and poor constitutents must have more available
resources if governmental institutions are to be responsive to
constituents' needs. These legislators usually have the least
seniority, the smallest amount of public resources and the greatest
demands from large numbers of poor and black people across the
states. Moreover, as in the last few years, the responsibilities of
all legislators will continue to enlarge with the changing role of
state governments. The Southern Legislative Research Council offers a
unique experiment in determining how these responsibilities can be met
by all state representatives.
          The strength of the SLRC has come from its ability to combine four
components--a reference service, an intern program, an expert network
and an information exchange--to aid "client" legislators and, at
times, community groups. The project has gained recognition for its
accurate and thorough analysis and dependable and reliable
research. Without advocating positions on legislative proposals, the
project's staff works only to respond to requests for hard data and
objective comparisons that are not often available from advocates or
other legislative services.
          During the first two years of the SLRC, legislators in Alabama and
Georgia have shown remarkable growth in their knowledge of issues and
effective representation of the interests of the poor and blacks. As
these legislators have begun to establish increased expertise on
issues, their credibility among colleagues and the legislative
leadership has increased. Just as important, there has been a growing
awareness between black and white legislators who represent poor and
black citizens that they share the same constitutents and, therefore,
must address the same concerns.
          In Georgia, the last two years have brought noteworthy progress in
the General Assembly for poor and black constituents, especially in
light of hard times across the nation. Evidence of this progress
includes:
          
            Increased funding for Aid to Families With Dependent
Children (AFDC) in 1981 and 1982, accomplished to substitute in part
for loss of federal funds. 
          
          
            State funding in both 1981 and 1982 for the new medical
school at Morehouse College, a predominantly black, private
institution, approved for the first time. Morehouse is only the second
black medical school in the South. 
          
          
            The Opportunities Industrialization Centers Program--a
national group working on joblessness, funded in the 1981 budget in
order to replace partially the loss of federal funds. 
          
          
            The Federation of Southern Cooperatives--a self-help
organization working with 

small farmers, especially blacks, throughout
the South, placed in the state budget in 1982. The appropriation was
the first allocation of state monies for such a community-based
economic development organization anywhere in the South. 
          
          
            Small increases in the budgets of health programs providing
non-institutional and preventive health services, provided while other
state monies replaced funds lost in federal cutbacks in
Medicaid. 
          
          
            Legislation passed in 1981 setting up a commission to study
Georgia's statutes and regulations for sex and race bias. 
          
          
            A Community Care Act passed to encourage increase use of
state monies for preventive and non-institutional services to the
elderly. 
          
          
            A nursing home bill of rights enacted to insure that high
standards are maintained in nursing homes throughout
Georgia. 
          
          During the same two-year period in Alabama, there was significant
legislative progress benefitting poor and black citizens:
          
            Increased state funding for elementary and secondary public
educational programs. 
          
          
            An increase in salaries for personnel in public schools,
passed in a state where teacher salaries have been ranked very low
nationally. 
          
          
            Funding increases for the two predominantly black
institutions in the Alabama state university system; for the first
time, these increases were roughly equal to those achieved by white
institutions. 
          
          
            Full funding for the Maternal and Child Health programs and
other public health programs serving rural poor and minority
constituents. 
          
          
            Legislation adopted for the first time in any Southern state
to prohibit discrimination in insurance coverage against sickle-cell
anemia victims. 
          
          
            Legislation passed guaranteeing funding of independent Community Action Program (CAP) agencies in
the state's federal bloc grants; this action assured that essential
services to the poor in Alabama will continue and that control of the
agencies will remain with independent boards of directors composed
mostly of community leaders and the poor. 
          
          Also, in the last year, both states implemented, begrudgingly at
times, reapportionment plans which increase the number of majority
black legislative districts in each legislature.
          These recent developments stand in vivid contrast to a long history
of neglect and inaction on the part of legislatures in the South for
the interests of the poor and blacks. Ten years ago the Alabama
legislature's overall performance was ranked the worst in the nation,
a status only slightly below that of most other Southern legislatures
including Georgia. As late as five years ago political analysts saw no
"common philosophy" or action that bound the interests of black
legislators in Georgia. The last two years may signal a turning point
in the unchecked history of unresponsiveness by these two Southern
state governments for the needs of their most disfranchised
citizens. The Project has helped to set in motion a decided change in
the Deep South, where, perhaps, the trend would have been least
expected, at a time when the role of state government in the nation is
enlarging.
          The Southern Legislative Research Council's structure consists of
four major components:
          A Reference Service provides primary research
and analysis on specific issues, policy questions, and related
matters; surveys of practices and policies in other locales relating
to identified issues; drafting and analysis of legislation (especially
budgets). These services are provided through the SLRC's permanent
staff although some documents and material are developed by interns or
the project's expert network. In each session, for example, the
project has developed a detailed analysis of department budgets for
health care services, welfare and social service programs, programs
for minority economic development, and capital expenditures. The
analyses of such programs included past expenditures and proposed
future outlays, comparisons of a state's expenditures with those of
other states in the region and estimates of possible services within
the proposed budget.
          The Intern Program provides an opportunity for
students to assist legislators by monitoring daily legislation and
committee processes, analyzing pending and proposed legislation,
providing summaries of activities and background materials, and
gathering related information about other events and developments in
state government. During the sessions, interns closely monitor
legislation and committee proceedings and keep "client" legislators
informed of legislative actions on targeted issues. Also as part of
their assignment, interns keep in contact with specific community
groups to assess 

their positions on issues and to exchange information.
          The Expert Network includes experts, scholars,
specialists, and other researchers from college, government, and
private institutions across the South who offer technical assistance
in preparing materials and documents and who provide an ongoing
exchange of information relating to legislative developments, events,
people and issues. In the last two years, the expert network has
primarily been useful in the preparation and review of model
legislation and specific research documents.
          The Information Exchange consists of various mailings and bulletins
to client legislators and others about events, reports, decisions, and
developments relating to the legislative process. It enables the
project to keep legislators and community groups appraised of
legislative actions on specific issues on a timely basis and offers
research and information not available from any other sources to
client legislators and their constitutents. In addition to a weekly
publication of the Legislative Bulletin during the
sessions in both states, the project publishes special mailings and
assists with inserts in Southern Changes, the SRC
bi-monthly magazine.
          Although the project's major work has been in Alabama and Georgia,
it has provided some limited assistance to other legislators and state
officials throughout the South. The Legislative
Bulletin is sent to all black legislators and the legislative
leadership in all Southern states. In the last two years the SLRC
staff has helped with regional meetings of the National Organization
of Women and the National Caucus of Black State Legislators. The
project has also supplied research to legislators, community groups,
and the governors' offices in Florida, Virginia, South Carolina,
Texas, and Mississippi on issues such as voting rights, election
changes, reapportionment, health care, and bloc grants.
          
            Southern Justice Program
          
          While the federal judiciary has played an essential role in the
developments of reforms benefiting both blacks and whites in the
South, most federal courts in the region during the last few decades
were hostile to major changes in the legal status of blacks. The basic
obstacle was simple and clearly stated in the 1966 SRC report
Southern Justice: "Dual justice survives because
presidents continue to treat federal judgeships as political rewards
and pacifiers. It survives because the Justice Department fails to
exercise the power that it has to correct abuses. It survives because
the judicial network, federal, state, and municipal, is one of the
most segregated institutions in America."
          While the judiciary in the South and the nation has changed in many
ways over the last fifteen years, the root and branch of the same
problems of the courts that existed as obstacles to equal and fair
justice in the South in the 1960s remain in large measure today.
          In addressing the major issues of justice in the South and the
nation, the Southern Regional Council has issued three reports in the
last few years on the state of the judiciary and judicial
appointments. Widely distributed, these reports influenced general
public opinion and have been responsible for important changes in
policies.
          In late 1978, an SRC report, Blacks &Women in Southern
Federal Courts, showed that no more than six percent of all
Southern court employees were black in a region with a twenty percent
black population. Women were found to be employed largely in
low-paying positions. After the Council released its reports, it was
forwarded to all federal courthouses in the South. In June 1979, the
Subcommittee on Constitutional and Civil Rights of the US House of
Representatives began hearings on federal court employment in light of
the SRC' findings. On invitation from the subcommittee, the Council
presented its testimony. Later, the SRC and twenty national civil
rights organizations petitioned the federal court system to adopt an
affirmative action plan for employment in federal courts throughout
the nation. In 1979, the federal judges met through the US Judicial
Conference, the administrative arm of the courts, and acted for the
first time in history to guarantee equal opportunity in its hiring
practices. In March of 1980, the Conference adopted a model
affirmative action plan to apply to all courts, a plan which the
courts have now begun to implement.
          The SRC, report on court employment was released two days after the
passage of the 1978 Omnibus Judgeship Act. Six months later the
Council released its status report on the appointment process. This
report found that "politics is still king and race is still a burden
in the appointment of Southern federal judges." Although the
Democratic Attorney General at the time said he was "tired of reports
that made no contribution," the Council's thorough fact-finding stood
unchallenged. As the only study of its kind, the report identified
developing trends in the process of appointments in the South and is
credited with helping to double the number of black judges appointed
under the Act.
          Another Council report, Crisis of Conscience: Federal Judges
in Segregated Clubs, released in 1980, showed that_ almost
sixty percent of all federal judges sitting in the South (and probably
a majority in the nation) belonged to all-white segregated clubs. In
March 1980, the Judicial 

Conference decided that it was inappropriate
for someone sitting on the federal bench to belong to clubs that
practiced "invidious discrimination." Shortly after the 1980
elections, however, the Conference effectively revoked its March
decision.
          In the last two years, the Council has continued to pursue these
issues. It has provided technical assistance to local groups and
lawyers attempting to increase the employment of blacks and women in
Southern courthouses through monitoring and litigation. In Georgia,
for example, the Council provided a local group with a "model"
employment plan to improve upon the local court's proposed plan. In
New Orleans, a small group of black employees in the court system
requested assistance in developing a strategy to document the hiring
practices in the courthouse and compliance with the equal opportunity
procedures. In Alabama, a white federal judge asked the Council for
aid in finding his first black and female law clerks. And, the Council
also has continued to monitor the nominations and appointments of
federal judges in the South in the Reagan Administration.
          In order to further its initiatives in the area of justice, the
Council is continuing in the task to collect and analyze the annual
employment reports in all federal courts that have been filed at the
Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts since 1980 and to prepare and
release a second report on the status of employment in the federal
courts.
          
            Voting Rights
          
          Not since the passage of the original Voting Rights l Act in 1965
has political participation been at so critical a stage in the South
as in the last few years. The passage of the Act was endangered for
almost a year, and while the Act has been renewed once more for a
temporary extension, this renewal will probably be the last; moreover,
critical changes have been made in some of the legislation's
provisions, and these as well as the unchanged sections must be
interpreted and applied rigorously by the US Justice Department and
the federal courts if the Act is to sustain its major force for equal
suffrage. In addition, most legislative bodies, including state
legislatures, have been reapportioning their districts which will set
in stone the structures of government in the region for the next ten
years.
          To meet the critical needs relating to voting rights, the Southern
Regional Council has carried out a program of research and technical
assistance for the enforcement of the preclearance provision of
Section 5, the review of reapportionment plans for local and state
legislative bodies in the South, and the assessment of the past level
of enforcement and influence of the Voting Rights Act.
          For the last three years the Council has maintained the only
organization that systematically monitors Section 5 compliance in the
Southeast. The project's work is designed to examine changes submitted
to the Justice Department that affect voting in Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and
Louisiana. When potentially discriminatory changes l are identified by
the project, contacts are made with local community groups and copies
of the full proposals presented to Justice are obtained. Working with
local leaders. the Council then carries out an analysis of the effects
of the proposed change on the local system of elections and
voting. When the analysis shows racial discrimination in effect or
purpose, the Council assists the local group in requesting the Justice
Department to interpose an objection to the submission. At times, the
Council itself files such a document on behalf of the local group.
          The importance of the Council's work in this field has been
evident. In Alabama, for example, the Council's staff has been
involved in three-fourths of all the objections which Justice has
issued to halt proposed changes in that state since 1980. Its
accomplishments in other parts of the South have been almost as
impressive and widespread: nearly two-thirds of all objections
rendered by Justice in ten Southern states in the last two years were
cases in which the SRC participated.
          In its review of the redistricting of legislative governments in
the region, the Council has been involved primarily in activities on
reapportionment plans for state legislative bodies and Congress in
four states. It has suported activities in the remaining seven. In the
redistricting of local county commissions, city councils, and local
school boards, the Council has already been involved in drafting and
analyzing nearly twenty-five plans in seven states. The Council has
also provided information and technical assistance about the processes

of reapportionment and redistricting to hundreds of officials and
community bodies in two major conferences held last year.
          In North Carolina, for instance, the Council has participated in
activities in and out of the courtroom to develop a redistricting plan
for the statehouse and the Congress which protects minority voting
strength. In fact, it was the Council which originally assembled
various groups in North Carolina who continue to improve legislative
redistricting there. The Council has carried out detailed work in
Georgia and Alabama through its legislative research project (SLRC)
and has done important work for other groups in South Carolina,
Louisiana, Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee. On
the local level, the Council has been working on several plans for
redistricting in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South
Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. In its coverage of Southern
state reapportionment, the Council's magazine, Southern
Changes, has also been a principal vehicle by which a large
number of Southerners have kept informed on this issue.
          All in all, there may be as many as seventy-five new black elected
officials and an even larger number of new, more responsive white
officials by 1985 as a result of the Council's reapportionment
work.
          Apart from its work on Section 5 enforcement and reapportionment,
the Council began, in 1981, to research the impact of the Voting
Rights Act, providing strategic data and analysis to a wide variety of
decision-makers in the South and in Washington. First, the Council
kept civil rights organizations, local community groups, and activists
in the region informed about events and developments relating to the
status of the Voting Rights Act as it traveled through Congress. This
task required periodic "updates" that outlined current issues and how
they related to the local concerns surrounding voting.
          By the spring of 1982, the Council began hosting the voting rights
research working group, a body composed of organizations undertaking
major research or educational work on voting rights in the South, so
that the different efforts could be focused and coordinated. In
addition, the monthly meetings permitted major groups in and outside
the South to discuss issues of strategy and policy as the Act
journeyed through Congress. As convenor of the working group, the
Council also set up a clearinghouse through which information, news,
and inquiries were funneled from and to different parts of the
region.
          The Council provided technical assistance to a number of
organizations and individuals on a wide range of issues relating to
the Voting Rights Act. SRC staff members assisted several witnesses
who were invited to appear before the House &Senate subcommittees and
who requested SRCs information and analysis. These witnesses include
Julian Bond, S.C. state representative Robert Woods, Fred Grey, and
Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In
all, the Council briefed upon request more than twenty-five witnesses
from across the South before they appeared at hearings held by the
Congress in Washington and in the South. In the same vein, the Council
responded to numerous journalists and reporters with current analysis
and specific information about voting rights abuses and trends.
          With other members of the Southern working group, the Council also
held the major regional conference on voting rights in the South in
August, 1981, and followed it with a second meeting in the winter to
provide key activists with another opportunity to assess the
activities and strategies employed by Washington organizations during
the House action on the Act. Over 350 representatives from eleven
Southern states and a few from outside 

the region attended the first conference.
          The primary research which supported the Council's technical
assistance was aimed at determining the extent of compliance by local
and state governments in the South with the Act and the nature and
prevalence of existing barriers to full political participation by
blacks. Part of the research was a review of all laws passed by six
Southern state legislatures from 1965 through 1980. When completed,
the project showed a list of acts affecting voting in six Southern
states that exceeded one thousand state enactments that had not been
submitted to Justice as required by law.
          In addition to this research on non-submissions, the Council
undertook to document the status of voting rights in Southern states
by a series of reports which analyzed detailed information on voter
registration and other relevant indicators of political
participation. Finding only minimal gains in black political
participation outside of Georgia's urban areas in the last decade, the
Council's report, entitled Status of Voting Rights in
Georgia, demonstrated wide differences between voter
registration rates for blacks and whites in most South Georgia
counties. Together with other working documents of the Council, these
reports constituted the basis for testimony before congressional
committees considering the Voting Rights Act. Because of the SRC's
research in this area, the Foundation News reported in
late 1982 that the Council was one of seven key organizations whose
work helped insure continuance of the Voting Rights Act.
          In the months ahead, the Council will be adapting its data to
address questions of enforcement of the Act and to promote greater
political participation. The analysis of the more than a thousand
non-submissions in Southern states will be put before federal courts
and the Justice Department by the Council and the litigation groups
with which it works. The data on the state of voting rights in
different Southern states also will be used to develop both priorities
and strategies for coordinating and applying resources to increased
meaningful political participation in the region.
          
            Education
          
          The Southern Regional Council's efforts to support public education
in the region continued in the last few years in the face of mounting,
complex problems. Of special concern in our work have been the
historical problems of the rural South where expenditures for
education have always been low and racial antagonisms remain high.
          In 1980-81, the Council embarked upon a study of the changes in
public education in the rural South over the last decade. In April
1981, the Council released its report portraying a decade of
frustrations for the children of the South's Black Belt. Through case
studies and statistical analysis, the story of public education in the
rural, predominantly black schools of the Deep South demonstrated
continued failure in support for school financing, equal treatment,
integration, and improved programs. At times the failures were
striking. For example, in 1970, expenditures for major repairs to
Black Belt public schools were reported in twelve of twenty-two
Georgia Black Belt school districts; however, over a four-year period
through 1977, expenditures were made in only three districts each
year.
          The SRC study found that "while local resistance to integration in
the Black Belt was transformed to local neglect, state and federal
standards for all educational systems and black control of school
boards in majority-black school districts have been responsible for
almost every major improvement in education in the Black Belt in the
last ten years."
          The Council has also continued its general monitoring 

of
segregation academies, those private schools which grew up as courts
ordered the desegregation of public schools in the rural and suburban
South. Because of the Reagan Administration's changes in existing
policies concerning the enforcement of regulations on tax exemptions
for segregation academies, the Council's existing and past research in
this area became valuable to several decision-makers. Upon request,
SRC submitted a brief report to Congress on the history of the growth
of segregation academies in the South. General trends indicate that
prior government policies barring tax exemptions for segregation
academies may have had an influence in decreasing the enrollment in
private schools. The Council's statistics also found their way onto
the pages of briefs filed before the Supreme Court in the case that
challenged the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University.
          
            Pilot Employment and Training Programs
          
          The Solar Greenhouse/Employment Project was
started in 1979 to develop a series of models for the construction of
solar greenhouses onto residences and other buildings as a means of
increasing employment skills, decreasing fuel costs and providing
year-round fresh food in areas of high poverty. With the increased
recognition of solar greenhouses as an alternative means of generating
heat, the project enabled small farmers and rural youth to secure
supplemental income as contract workers and trainees. The project
demonstrated that, especially in rural areas, the skills that were
acquired and the involvement among the working poor and the elderly
made the approach viable. In 1981 the project became a separate
entity. It now concentrates on a few selected, small communities.
          The Rural Black Women's Employment Program addressed
the problems of joblessness and poverty among black women in the rural
areas of three Deep South states--Georgia, Alabama and South
Carolina. It offered established groups of rural black women technical
assistance in developing their capacities to use federal job and
training programs to promote the self-sufficiency of their
organizations. The program helped secure federal support for several
demonstration projects and identified a large number of local black
women who are potential leaders in their own communities.
          The Agricultural Marketing Projects have
existed in a few Southern states since the mid1970s in order to
establish food fairs where small farmers can sell their produce and
develop bulk markets. These "self-help" approaches, often combined
with part-time jobs, have enabled hundreds of farmers to earn enough
supplemental income to stay on the farm. The Council helped l
establish the marketing project in Georgia and assisted many of the
projects in other states with matters of administration and
finance. Now, many of the weekly summer food fairs are arranged
entirely by the farmers themselves and, therefore, some of the
marketing projects have gone out of business.
          Student Health Coalitions are student-run
projects which set up "health fairs" each summer in rural communities
where there is no primary care facility. These fairs give examinations
to the poor and offer a vehicle for local communities to organize
together to address local problems. Since the college students who run
these coalitions in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama,
Tennessee, and Texas change yearly, the Council has assisted in prior
years in maintaining continuity and effectiveness by supporting the
work of Dr. Bill Dow as a convenor and counselor of the projects. Dow
was the founder of the first project in Tennessee.
          
            Coop Democracy and Development
          
          In many areas of the eleven Southern states, one would be hard
pressed to find much evidence of the boom economy which has led, in
the past decade, to the South's public reputation as "the nation's
number one economic region." Especially in the historic Black Belt,
improved economic conditions have been isolated and, in contrast with
other areas of the South, incredibly small.
          Since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, local cooperatives
and community-based developments have formed the backbone of most
efforts to address economic and social barriers in the Black Belt. One
cooperative venture, however, has been in the rural South since
1935. In that year the Roosevelt Administration created the Rural
Electric Administration to "take the kerosene lamps off the farmers'
tables." Today, the rural electric and telephone cooperatives in the
South probably have six billion dollars in assets, own forty percent
of the distribution system for electricity, maintain twenty percent of
the phone systems and serve most rural counties.
          With the increases in fuel costs during the last decade, the role
of the utility in the rural community has become considerably more
visible and important to households. Not well known, but increasingly
important, are practices of utility coops which go beyond providing
electricity and telephone service. In the past several years, coops
have begun to make substantial investments in economic
development. They have financed the construction of homes, schools,
parks, golf courses, swimming pools, resorts, hospitals and even
factories in their own service areas and have invested funds in
similar projects in other parts of the country. "The coops, usually
the largest single business organizations in their communities, have a
corporate-citizen interest in this whole matter," according to the
general manager of the I National Rural Electric Cooperative
Association.
          Perhaps the most non-traditional role of a utility coop 

offers the
most sweeping promise for the Black Belt and similar areas. Coops have
the capacity to act as a prime financing agent for local economic and
social development. With standing assets of more than six billion
dollars and operating revenues of close to four billion dollars,
electric and telephone coops in the rural South have a reservoir of
financing power that could be used to invest in local development.
          The Council's Coop Democracy &Development Project is designed to
achieve cooperative democracy and development among rural
utilities. The project develops and executes strategies that support
efforts of local residents to make utility coops more responsive to
issues of survival, self-help, jobs and economic improvement.
          More than twenty electric membership cooperatives have been
targeted for project activities in eight Southern states. Areas were
chosen based upon community interest, the percentage of minority
population, socioeconomic profiles and the availability of technical
resources which would be useful as communities attempt to redirect
coop activities and policies.
          
            Southern Changes
          
          Southern Changes, the bi-monthly magazine of the
Southern Regional Council, exists as a forum for ideas and opinions on
the issues and events of the South. Articles, essays and commentary in
Southern Changes examine issues of racial, class, and
sexual inequality. Southern Changes also seeks to
address issues and values beyond equality, in the realms of justice
and good will.
          In his essay from the April 1982 Southern Changes
(the first issue of a new format for the magazine), Leslie Dunbar
pointed to two patterns of national failure which join the
predicaments of the American South with a world larger than
America. His statement suggests much of the guiding concern of
Southern Changes. "From the great nuclear plants at Oak
Ridge and Savannah River to the Pantex Plant in the Texas Panhandle
where the bombs and warheads are assembled," writes Dunbar, "the South
is deeply imbedded in preparation for nuclear holocaust. From the
hollows of Appalachia to the migrant farm labor camps of Florida, the
South is still the poorest of regions. Here, if anywhere, is the place
to redirect America ...."
          
            SRC Special Reports
          
          While reducing the number of its special reports, the Council has
continued its tradition of releasing some research and analysis
through this means. The following major reports have been issued since
1980:
          The New Federal Budget &The South 's
Poor--(1981). The first detailed analysis of the Reagan
Administration's changes in the federal budget and their effect upon
the South's poor. This research project received extensive coverage on
the front pages of many Southern daily newspapers, wire services, and
national television and radio networks. Perhaps coining a useful
phrase, the conclusion of the report was that "the national
government's budget has now transformed the war on poverty of 15 years
ago to a war on the poor today."
          A Decade of Frustration--(1981). An
examination of the conditions of education in majority-black rural
school districts in the Deep South. Focusing on Alabama and Georgia,
the report compared data of the last ten years and found that in most
of these schools the quality of education as measured by plant
facilities, training teachers, and special programs for the needy had
declined. Local financial support had also fallen behind support
elsewhere in these states. At the same time, school districts which
were controlled by blacks in these rural areas were always among the
few systems which provided the largest financial support, a high
quality of education, and evenhanded treatment for
students. Distributed to community groups and leaders, the report has
also been cited by a legislative fact-finding committee and in briefs
of civil rights lawyers.
          Too Poor for Food Stamps--(1980). A status
report on the federal food stamp program which the Council issued in
order to illustrate the success of new federal regulations which no
longer required the poor to purchase food stamps.
          Bloc Grants Before Congress--(1981). A special
paper produced for community groups who were attempting to understand
the effects of proposed bloc grants on their own federal funding and
on programs which were vital to their constituents.
          Other reports issued by the Council included three on the status of
voting rights in different Southern states and one on the status of
voting rights in different Southern states and one on the status of
rental housing for the poor. Special reports underway include one on
industrialization in the South in the 1970s and changes in the South's
Black Belt population in the twentieth century.

          The Council's own archives will also be published in microfilm in
1984 as a result of an agreement reached among the Council, Atlanta
University, and the Microfilming Corporation of America. The Council
is foregoing any royalties from the publication of these archives so
that Atlanta University Library may increase its own collection of
archival materials.
          
            The Atlanta Media Project, Inc.
          
          The Atlanta Media Project, Inc. (AMP), was established in 1980 to
find new ways to address the major problems of access, employment, and
the effective use of the electronic media by blacks, the poor, and
others. In partnership with predominantly black Clark College's school
of communications, the project was created by the work of the NAAC P
of Atlanta and the ACLU of Georgia, represented by the SRC in
negotiations with national broadcasters. Responsible for securing more
than one million dollars in commitments for the construction of
Clark's new school and its own future operations, AMP began operations
in late 1981 when the Council housed its temporary offices.
          Historically, the absence of blacks, women, and Hispanics from the
airways in the South has been paralleled only by the paucity of
programming about the primary concerns of these groups. During much of
the last two decades, the principal efforts by civil rights advocates
to remedy these problems were aimed at regulating the conduct of
broadcasters and cable companies. With breakthroughs in communications
technology and increasing deregulation, AMP represents a unique
enterprise which will help capture the opportunities that
technological and regulatory changes are bringing and develop new ways
to redress the historical exclusions from the airways.
          In its first year, AMP helped Clark College construct its school of
communications in the new library building at the Atlanta University
Center. (The school is the only private college in the South that
graduates a substantial number of blacks with degrees in
communications.) Also, in late 1981, the project applied to the
Federal. Communications Commission for a license to operate a
low-power television station in Atlanta.
          In the next two years, the project will develop a model internship
program for students at Clark College; operate a center for the
production of public service announcements and public advocacy
messages for community organizations for use on cable, broadcasting,
and radio; administer a modest grant program for minority video and
film producers; explore emerging technologies such as special services
networks and teleconferencing for use by community groups; and hold a
national video festival to recognize the outstanding work of blacks
and women in the field. The project will be fully staffed by mid-1983,
and SRC's executive director continues to serve as AMP's president.
          
            Regional Radio
          
          In the last two years, the Council has begun to explore the
creation of a regional radio network that will offer programming
including news, analysis, public affairs, documentaries, musical
entertainment, and coverage of special events through contracts with
existing commercial broadcast stations and cable systems. In addition,
the organization has started the planning of a major special radio
series documenting the civil rights movement of the Deep South.
          These efforts point to the changing means that the Council is
engaging to educate Southerners about. themselves and their neighbors
and to reach the hearts and minds of a larger audience. For more than
two decades, studies have documented consistently the enormous
influence of the electronic media in shaping the views and values of
Americans. This new direction should soon permit the Council to
continue the tradition of four decades for careful analysis and
reasoned opinions through more direct and widespread channels of
communications.
          The network will broadcast programs in formats which include
topical news of regional events not usually covered by local or
network new organizations. A public affairs program might include
biographies of well-known politicians, leaders, lawyers, writers, or
the rich folklore of narration and song in the South. Blues,
spirituals, and religious music can be woven with narration for
powerful statements about past and present life. Programming may also
include explorations of the migrant traditions and ethnic communities
throughout the South. The network probably will produce documentaries
looking in-depth at regional issues, people, and places and include
occasionally a special taping of regional theaters, musical
entertainment, "Mark Twain" storytelling, folk tales and drama.
          The special series on the civil rights movement is being developed
separately to spotlight activities in South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas from the late 1940s to the late
1960s. While it shaped much of the region's recent history, the civil
rights movement has received little attention in traditional

scholarship and among the major means of communications in the
region. People, places and events that helped change the mores,
customs, and laws of the region and nation are relatively unknown to
most of the black and white citizens of the South. School children in
the sixth grade or below today were not yet born when Martin Luther
King, Jr. died, and less than one-seventh of the South's people are
old enough to remember the events of the late 1940s and early 1950s
that started the recent civil rights movement.
          When completed in the next two years, two separate series will
portray the civil rights history through the events in the five Deep
South states. In each, the focus will be largely on local people and
activities who were part of local events and struggles. After these
statewide radio series, a five-part regional radio series will be
broadcast. And, after these broadcasts, the audio material will be
adapted and edited for use as cassettes as a part of a historic tour
guide of the recent civil rights movement. These cassettes may be
accompanied by a small booklet providing maps, pictures, and a brief
text for use in touring the sites of each city's civil rights
struggles. Tapes of the broadcast series and the tour guides could be
made available to the general public through local governments or
public institutions.
          
            Forums for Discussion and Action
          
          A community of "Southerners of good will" is important to the
region, and the Council continues to foster cooperative efforts,
meetings, and discussions which bridge a wide range of groups onto
common purposes and activities. At a time when many government actions
are stayed and easy answers no longer are accepted as solutions to
complex problems, the job of examining, rethinking, and developing
practical strategies to accomplish enduring goals is increasingly
important.
          In the last two-and-a-half years, the Council convened and helped
set up several conferences and forums for joint strategies and
action:
          The Southern Roundtable: Convened by SRC, this
forum is the only regular opportunity for activists and civil rights
groups in the region to meet and share ideas, information, and
plans. In its first year the Roundtable, which meets monthly, focused
on the Reagan Administration's proposed changes in the federal budget
and the development of bloc grants. Members of the Roundtable now
includes representatives from more than fifty Southern groups.
          Southern Rural Alliance: In 1982, five
organizations--ACLU Southern Office, Emergency Land Fund,
Federation of Southern Cooperatives, Southern Regional Council, Inc.,
and the Voter Education Project--joined together to map out plans and
strategies for joint undertakings to promote increased political
participation and renewed economic development in the rural
South. While anticipating an expansion of the membership of the
Alliance to other regional organizations concerned about the rural
areas in the future, the members of the Alliance are uniquely suited
to start this effort to plan and act in concert on rural problems. The
ACLU Southern Office is a leader in developing and implementing the
law on voting rights; the Emergency Land Fund and its association of
landowners have a wide rural network of independent black leaders; the
Federation of Southern Cooperatives has more individual members
involved in economic activities in the Deep South than-any other
organization; the Council has a long-standing capacity for research
and technical assistance on issues of political and economic
development in the rural areas (and was the host of the Task Force on
Southern Rural Development that set the agenda for Southern rural
development in the late 1970s); and the Voter Education Project has
more experience than any private group at registering and educating
black voters in the South. A coordinator of the Alliance has been
hired and its chairman is Leslie W. Dunbar, former SRC executive
director.
          Freedom Movement Symposium: In 1981, the
Council held a series of meetings to review the strategies that have
been used historically by Southern "freedom" movements and to explore
their application today to other movements, especially that of the
handicapped and disabled. Veterans of the civil rights movement and
the poor people's movement from six Southern states met with leaders
of the movement for the disabled from these three states to exchange
ideas and thoughts about their problems and situations. Several
encouraging developments followed: leaders of two distinct, but often
similarly situated, constituencies met for the first time in the
South; civil rights activists found themselves reflecting on
strategies which they had not questioned in years; and the first
elements of an agenda for common, supportive work was developed. In
the coming months, the Council will set up a network of these groups
to encourage the refinement of that common agenda.
          National Organization in Support of Community-Based
Organizations: Created in 1980 to monitor the investigation of
groups such as the Federation of Southern Cooperatives by the federal
grand juries, this ad hoc national coalition intervened on behalf of
the Federation within the U.S. Justice Department. The Council was an
active member attempting to negotiate a resolution to the federal
investigation with the local U.S. attorney and to raise funds for the
Federation's legal costs.
          The Atlanta Committee for Responsive
Philanthropy: The Council acts as the convenor and host of this
group composed of local and Atlanta-based non-profit groups attempting
to examine the patterns of philanthropy in Atlanta and to organize
efforts to establish an alternative 

and broader base of concerns by philanthropy. 
          Other Forums:
          The Council's executive director and past president participated in
the 1981 national task force that examined the increase and causes of
racial violence against blacks in the country over the past few
years. The Council also sponsored and held conferences on voting
rights, reapportionment and public health care for more than six
hundred community leaders in the region during the last two-and-a-half
years.
          SRC Annual Meetings: Each year the Council
hosts a meeting of its friends, members and other decision makers of
the region. The Lillian Smith Awards are given for the best books on
the South at a luncheon and the agenda of the annual meeting is
usually topical and long. In 1982, Harry Ashmore, Pulitzer Prize
winning journalist and William Lucy, secretary-treasurer of the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees were
guest speakers.
          
            Assistance to Southern Groups
          
          Because diversity of local, state, and regional groups is essential
to the livelihood of a community of good will in the South, the
Council attempts each year to attract financial support for others in
the region. During the last two-and-a-half years, the Council
assisted-almost twenty organizations or groups in raising more than
two million dollars for their own work throughout the South.
          
            Striving Toward Democracy
          
          The last two years of the Council's work have produced some new
approaches and emphases which consider the changed circumstances of
the region and nation. These efforts have shown encouraging, tangible
results and promise a greater return in the future. Still, the
Southern Regional Council's major concern remains as it was in its
first biracial meeting of men and women in 1944: "to make human
relations democratic in the South."
          In late 1984, the Southern Regional Council will celebrate its
fortieth anniversary as an organization whose steadfast belief in
democracy ha kept it in journey seeking the best of Southern ways and
American principles. The anniversary will offer ;'n opportunity to
celebrate past achievements. reflect upon the hard lessons of failed
efforts and reaffirm our resolution to continue the search until the
South can offer to its own people and its neighbors elsewhere the
benefits of both beliefs and practices.
        