Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 30, 1993 TAG: 9308300098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SONYA ROSS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"We believe this march is not the benediction, but a rebirth," said Joseph Lowery, 70, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the past 17 years.
There was some talk that maybe, just maybe, the movement's elders would "pass the torch" of responsibility for social change at this additional celebration of 1963 and the dream of equality Martin Luther King Jr. embossed on the nation's psyche.
Yet on Saturday, fond remembrance prevailed, and the old guard made it clear that fond remembrance will endure.
"We're going to celebrate the march on Washington until there's nothing left to celebrate," declared Benjamin Hooks, 68, who retired from the NAACP and resurfaced at the helm of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
The young, however, made a few things clear, too.
"We let everybody know we will challenge, seriously, their leadership," said Carl Upchurch, 35, head of the National Urban Peace and Justice Movement and the most vocal critic of Saturday's festivities. "They're on notice now."
Upchurch, along with three other leaders from his group of reformed street-gang members, appeared at Saturday's march, even though they had said they weren't coming.
They stood with NAACP Executive Director Benjamin Chavis, 45, who pledged his group's support of their efforts to curb violence in the inner cities.
"We have worked with these gang members for over a year," Chavis said. "They are my friends. I intend to work with them in every community in this nation."
"Ben Chavis is welcome in our circles. He is making a valiant effort to link the traditional civil rights efforts with our current struggle," Upchurch said. Other older black activists, he added, have not been so forthcoming.
But the young were. Upchurch's National Urban Peace and Justice Movement plans to link with the Student Coalition of Conscience, the teen-agers and young adults who worked with Saturday's march.
The Rev. Barry Hargrove, 27, a leader of that coalition and a youth coordinator for Saturday's march, said, "We were on the same side" on a lot of issues and will meet further to discuss strategy.
They want to "weave young America with urban America," Upchurch said, and take this mixture into every major civil rights forum, to tackle the problems most affecting the young: unemployment, poverty, murder.
Those sentiments were echoed by Lani Guinier, whose nomination as chief civil rights enforcer in the Justice Department was withdrawn by President Clinton after controversy about her arose.
"I think that there's a lot of energy in our youth and what we need to do is to tap into that energy and to help to create a climate in which people are not afraid to talk about the hard problems," said Guinier on Sunday, in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"I think that the apathy or the sense of alienation is profound. It is real and we have to deal with it," warned Guinier.
But dealing with the problem goes beyond the generational dispute to the arena of partisan politics where Republican and Democratic blacks often disagree over how best to improve conditions for African-Americans.
"I think the government can play an important role in trying to correct these things," said Guinier. "We have seen that help rebuild Japan, help rebuild Europe . . . it needs to rebuild American cities."
"The government has a role to play . . . [but] what the U.S. government did was help to create the environment where the Europeans rebuilt Europe," said former Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, who appeared with her on the CBS program.
by CNB