Ninety- Three Years
of
Editorial Freedom
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Vol. XCIII, No. 110 Copyright 1983, The Michigan Daily Ann Arbor, Michigan - Saturday, February 12, 1983 Ten Cents Eight Pages
Historic blacks
highlight civil
rights seminar
Sharon
resigns
amid strife
By SHARON SILBAR
Last night, Rosa Parks set the record
straight.
The reason she did not get up out of
her bus seat Dec. 1, 1955 was not
because her feet were tired from a
day's worth of shopping, as many
people believe. It was much simpler
than that: There were three empty
seats.
PARKS WAS one of the featured
guests at a campus celebration of Black
History Month entitled "The Civil
Rights Movement in Retrospect:
Looking Backward to Move Forward,"
held at the business school's Hale
Auditorium.
"On the third stop after I boarded,
several people did not have seats,"
Parks said. "There was only one white
man. The driver wanted four of us
(blacks sitting in 'black' seats) to get
up, leaving three vacant seats. When
the others stood up and moved to the
aisle, I moved to the window," she said.
"The bus driver threatened to call the
police, and I said 'Well, you may do
10 that.'"
THOSE WORDS made Parks
famous in the history of the civil rights
movement. Her action gave courage to
countless blacks across the nation to
stand up - or sit down - for their
rights.
Parks was joined by E.D. Nixon, an
organizer of the Montgomery, Ala. bus
boycott, and Wade McCree, a Univer-
sity law professor, both of whom are
well known and highly respected mem-
bers of the black community.
McCree said that he is worried about
the future of black Americans. "My ob-
servations tell me that we are not
working hard enough," he said..
"The apparent attitude of the current
national administration to civil rights is
color blind. Without a restoration of
civil rights, an awakened awareness,
and an improvement in the economy, I
expect little progress," Mc Cree said.
BEFORE THE speakers began, a
member of the audience borrowed the
microphone and led the more than 150
people in the audience in the singing of
spiritual songs like 'This Little Light of
See CIVIL, Page 3
Daily Photo by DAVID FRANKEL
Rosa Parks explains her 1955 bus ride that became a historic example of
racial discrimination at a campus celebration of Black History Month held
at the business school's Hale Auditorium last night.
From AP and UPI
TEL AVIV, Israel - Ariel Sharon,
assailing the Beirut massacre report as
a "mark of Cain on our foreheads,"
resigned as Israeli defense minister
yesterday but officials said he would
remain in the Cabinet.
Within hours of informing Prime
Minister Begin of his decision to resign
and end a three-day struggle to keep his
job, Sharon appeared before the Israeli
Bar Association and denounced the
Israeli inquiry into the Sept. 16-18
massacre at the Sabra and Chatila
Palestinian refugee camps.
"I CANNOT accept, even for a
minute... that clause (in the report)
that deals with the indirect respon-
sibility (of Israel) for the events of
Sabra and Chatila," he said.
"Judge for yourself how that phrase
will ring in the ears of every person, in
every language, everywhere on the
face of the earth. It will be a mark of
Cain on our foreheads for generations."
The commission that probed the
massacre by Christian Lebanese
militiamen ruled that Sharon bore
"personal responsibility" for the
slaughter of hundreds of people at the,
two camps in west Beirut.
CABINET MINISTERS and senior
Israeli officials said Sharon would hand
over the defense post to Begin
tomorrow but would remain in the
cabinet as a minister without portfolio
for an unspecified period of time.
"He is only resigning as defense
minister and not from the gover-
nment," said Ehud Omert, a
-parliamentary member from Begin's
Likud coalition.
All indicators pointed to Prime
Minister Menachem Begin eventually
asking Moshe Arens, Israel's am-
Sharon
... chooses to resign
Wholesale prices take plunge
From AP and UPI
WASHINGTON (UPI) - Wholesale
prices fell a record 1 percent in
January, with a sharp decline in fuel
costs accompanied by price breaks for
food and a wide range of other goods,
the Labor Department reported yester-
day.
The unexpectedly steep drop in the
Producer Price Index was the most
St-^e the government first measured
wholesale price changes in 1947.
IF SUSTAINED for 12 months, the
rate of decline would be a seasonally
adjusted 11.9 percent. dubbed "double
Riley will
keep seat.
in state
high court
deadl ock
LANSING (UPI) - The Michigan
Supreme Court yesterday deadlocked
three-to-three on whether Justice
Dorothy Comstock Riley should con-
tinue to serve on the high court.
Because of the deadlock she will
remain on the bench.
Justices Mennen Williams, Thomas
Kavanagh and Michael Cavanagh, all
Democrats, voted to oust her. Justices
James Brickley and James Ryan,
Republicans, and independent Justice
Charles Levin voted to keep her.
THE RULING does not resolve the
constitutional issues presented by the
case.
The court went through three weeks
of agonizing deliberation in the case
which dealt with tough constitutional
questions as well as a sensitive per-
sonal one - the right of a fellow justice
to continue serving.
See RILEY, Page 2
digit deflation" by one department
economist.
The White House claimed policy
credit. Spokesman Larry Speakes said
the new report was a "striking confir-
mation of the progress that has been
made in reducing the underlying rate of
inflation.
"This is good news and indicates that
the administration and the Federal
Reserve, working on the same
wavelength, achieved these-results'".
Speakes said.
CHANGES in wholesale prices nor-
mally are reflected later at the retail
level, making the latest decline a
prospective bit of bright news for con-
sumers.
The index for all energy prices for
dealers was down 4.2 percent. Home
heating oil was 9.7 percent less expen-
sive, a benefit of a relatively mild win-
ter on top of a steady slackening in the
world oil price.
Gasoline prices were down 3.3 per-
cent, although most of the change was
for December, not January.
EVEN .previously skyrocteting
natural gas prices were down 2.7 per-
cent.
Inflation also disappeared for food
prices, down 0.2 percent, and for capital
equipment, from factory machinery to
earthmoving equipment, which was
down 0.1 percent.
The fact that capital equipment
prices are declining will have a long-
range effect on the nation's overall in-
flation rate, said Georgia State Univer-
sity economist Donald Ratajczak.
SINCE THE new year is already im-
proving on,1982's&.price ..deceleration,
most forecasters are expected to
moderate their outlook to show 1983 en-
ding with a business inflation rate even
lower than last year's 3.5 percent.
bassador to Washington, to accept the
defense post.
ISRAEL RADIO said Begin preferred
Arens, who would keep the prime
minister in good standing with his right-
wing constituency. Arens also is well in-
formed about Reagan administration
policies and might help ease the strains
on Israel's relations with the United
States.
A remote possibility would be Ezer
Weizman, who resigned the Defense
Ministry in 1980 with harsh words for
Begin's leadership. Though Weizman
has remained popular in retirement,
Begin is understood to reject the idea of
his return unless he retracts his
criticism.
Begin also could keep the defense
See SHARON, Page 3
Closing of
Downtown Club
could leave
poor homeless
BCHERYL BAACKE
Lights and heat go out Tuesday for the remaining
residents of the Downtown Club, one of Ann Arbor's few
low-income housing facilities.
William Hall, part-owner of the 68-room building on the
corner of Fourth and Huron, said utility companies are
shutting off power to the dilapidated building Tuesday
because the rent taken for the past few months has not
been enough to pay the bills.
HALL SAID HE filed notice in early January ordering
all residents to move out, but the present occupants "just
didn't have the inertia" to do so. He says that most of
them can afford to move somewhere else.
The Downtown Club has been at the center of a heated
debate over what responsibility the city should bear
toward its low-income residents. The building's current
owners wanted to close the facility, which has been cited
for a number of city code violations, because they cannot
afford to bring it up to standards.
A GROUP OF local businessmen wants to buy the
building, which county officials say is worth around
$425,000, and renovate it for office space, Hall said.
But City Councilmember Lowell Peterson (D-1st Ward)
opposes the sale of the house for business use. He and
other members of an ad hoc citizens' committee have
been working for eight months to keep the Downtown Club
open as a low-income housing facility.
See LOW-INCOME, Page 2
Daily Photo by DAVID FRANKEL
The Downtown Club cuts off all services Tuesday, amid controversy over its future use. It has provided housing for low-income
groups; now, it may be converted into business offices.
TODAY
E.T. go home !
E.T. THE LEATHERY little movie star, should get
lost in space for good. say two men who are sick and
the two that they were infringing on the studio's copyright.
The shirts had the E.T. symbol of the creature's glowing
finger extended, while the responding finger of the little boy
was turned around in an obvious gesture of "digital
disdain," Deutsch said. He and his partner are now star-
ting a newsletter for people who are sick of sensationalist
hype for profits. "I've been chow-chow-chowed until my
paws are falling off. I'm sick of the guy from Jack-in-the-
Box. I'm tired of Valley Girls and computer games," Deut-
sch said. The newsletter may come out quarterly and is
"going to entail the unfair media blitz, the unfair
lottery is a pie in the sky and people who can least afford it
are the ones trying to strike it rich," Joe Fletcher said.
Fletcher propoed manufacturing lottery tickets from
pressed beef, pressed fruit, or protein wafers similiar to
those used for communion. "You could lick off the num-
bers," he said. But some ticket manufacturers found the
idea hard to swallow. "Maybe Fletcher would like to tell us
how to go about making edible tickets," said Steve Green-
field, a representative of Scientific Games Co., of Atva,
Ga., ticket markers for the lottery, which began last fall.
Edible tickets could cost up to 10 cents each, he said, and
by about 3,000,000 mourners.
" 1973 - The first 116 American prisoners of war were
released by North Vietnam.
" 1976 - University Vice President of Academic affairs
Frank Rhodes announced the appointment of Billy Frye as
Dean of LSA.
" 1957 - University figures showed a male - female
student population ratio of 2 to 1, with the men in the
majority.
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