u gon Ht
oman named 0
a ional board
LANSING -- Housing in
Michigan' in a state of crisis,
ccording to report issued
onday, Oct. 4 by a special
legislative committee.
. crisis in affordable,
safe ho ing for a ubstantial
number of our citizens --- in
both center cities and rural
are 0 th ta e -' simply
intolerab e, said Rep. Charlie
Harrison, Jr. (pon iac), chair
of th committ . ued
the 121-page study.
e governor and I law­
direct ub tantial
tate to solving the
.. the report tes.
"This report poses chal-
lenge to the Governor and the
Legislature to take serious
new 100 at housing condi­
tions cross the s ate and to
give the high priority to
finding ys to ensure the
avail bility of safe and affor­
dable housing for our state's
10 -income citizens," Harrison
id,
Middle income residents
are also affected, the report
states.
As of 1983, 81 percent of
the state's households could
Ie
Returning to the site of
so of the most dramatic mo­
ments in its long history, the
AACP will hold its 1987 fall
national board meeting in Lit­
tle Rock, Arkansas, October
22-24, according to Dr. Ben­
jamin L. Hooks, Executive
Director, NAACP.
A highlight of the meeting
will be the reunion of the "Lit­
tIe Rock ine," who wrote
themselves into the pages of
American history in the
autumn of 1957 -- 30 years
ago when, as the nation and
the world w. tched, they
entered Little Roc tral
High School under
tion of the U.. y.
This was the first time the
government had used military
force to compel compliance
with a court edict ordering
school integration under the
not afford to buy the average­
priced Michigan home.
In 1980, there were 195,000
homeowners with annual in­
comes of less than $10,000
who paid more than 30 per­
cent of their income for shel­
ter, the n tionally recognized
standard for what a household
can afford to pay for housing.
Low-income renters are
facing worse problems, Ex-
.. that the comouttee
members were shocked by the
housing conditions in Benton
Harbor, Rep. Harrison noted
the deterioration cxixts in
Detroit, Flint, I ,(losing. Pon­
tiac, Grand Rapids and the
Upper Peninsula as well.
Almost 263,000 households
. in the state with incomes of
less than $10,000 a year -- 7l
percent of all renters -- spend
more than 30 percent of their
income on housing.
Even more troubling, Har-
Continued on P 12
c
•
el
Detrol ge s
o n Wall of
Respect
p
1954 Supreme Court decision
in the Brown v. Board of
Education case which ruled ra­
cially separate schools were
unconstitutional.
The incident was a turning
point in the course of the na­
tion's race relations, for it sig­
naled to recalcitrant southern
states that once the federal
courts had ordered desegrega­
tion, the decision would be en­
forced, even if it too the
Army to do it.
President Dwight D. Eisen­
hower gav the order.
Faced with the failure of
state and local officials to dis­
perse the mo who were
blocking integration at
Central, he sat the law above
everything else and called out
the troops.
The leading role in the Lit­
tie Rock episode was played
JESSE JACKSON makes it official
e
e-
a
a
By C rIott Smart-Faa I
Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson will
formally announce his can­
didacy for the 1988 Democratic
by the NAACP, which
provided legal counsel for the
many court battles through the
ead of its Legal Defense
Fund Thurgood Marshall;
Wiley Branton, State Chair­
man of the AACP Legal
Defense Committee; and U.
Simpson Tate, Regional Attor­
ney for the AACP.
. Perhaps the most visible
role was played by Mrs. Daisy
Bates, then head of the Ar an­
sas State Conference of
NAACP Branches.
Mrs. Bates literally held
the hands of the Little Roc
ine as she supported the
fight to have them enrolled at
Central Hi� �rted them
to school, counseled them
through th trying times, and
spo e out loudly and
courageously on their behalf
Continued on P • 16
Presidential nomination in a
speech at the National Rain­
bow Coalition Convention, Oct.
9, in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Jesse Jackson was born Oct.
8, 1941. He lived in a small
framed bungalow in Green­
ville, S.C., at 6 Briar Street. As
a grade-school boy, he lived in
half of that house with his
mother Helen Burns and step­
father Charles Jackson, who
later adopted him. At that
time the house was divided
into two, three-room units.
It was a time hen money
wa scarce, and poverty
reigned, in Je se' life. He
remembers bare floors, a
wooden stove, and a backyard
outhouse shared by 0
families. But his mos vivid
emories are those of hu­
miliation and degradation of
Blacks during that time.
The area police harassed
the black men of his neigh-
borhood, often arresting
them on vagrancy or other
charges, bringing them
back the next morning to their
homes, in prisoner's clothing
and forcing them to clean
Contlnu on P 3
