where to stay out.

At present the Act permits political subdivisions to petition for withdrawal of examiners when more than 50 percent of the non-white voting-age population is registered. Many counties that have, or should have, Federal examiners have moved past that point since 1965. Among these counties are some of the worst in the South and they should remain designated for Federal examiners and observers. Accordingly, this 50 per

Changing State Voting Laws

Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, when a State or political subdivision cov. ered by the Act seeks to change its voting qualifi cations or procedures, it must either obtain the approval of the U.S. Attorney General or initiate a suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. If the Attorney General objects to the changes, they may not be enforced until the court rules that they do not have the purpose and will not have the effect of denying to any person the right to vote because of his race or color. If the Attorney General does not object, the new qualifications or procedures may be enforced 60 days after their submission.

The Mississippi Legislature in 1966, in reaction to the increased Negro vote brought about by the Voting Rights Act, passed 12 bills and resolutions which altered substantially the State's election laws. Despite the requirements of Section 5, the State made no submission to the Attorney General and the new laws were enforced. The 1966 legislation, among other things, changed from district to at-large the voting for county supervisors, made the selection of an important county officer in certain counties appointive instead of elective, and increased the difficulty for an independent candidate to gain a position on the general election ballot.

It was not until March 3, 1969, that the U.S. Supreme Court in Allen v. State Board of Elections determined that the Mississippi legislation was covered by Section 5 and could not be enforced until after its submission to the Attorney General. Thus, Mississippi Negroes have been deprived of almost four years of Section 5 protection, which now has begun when the Act is a year away from expiration.

cent figure should be raised to, perhaps, two-thirds.

There are many other recommendations that could be made to strengthen the Act and its enforcement. For example, the Federal Government should make announcements well in advance and seek to publicize the announcements heavily when Federal examiners and observers are being assigned. Blacks deserve to know when examiners are being sent in to provide them a chance to register. They also deserve to know in advance that there is less chance that an approaching election will be rendered meaningless by irregularities. Moreover, Federal observers should be clearly identi fied so that whites and blacks alike will know of their presence. The Justice Department should have at all times staff and resources to review changes in State election laws aimed at weakening the ballots of black people.

A case can be made for extension of the Voting Rights Act, or for some law like it, for strengthening of existing voting-rights legislation, and for stronger enforcement of existing legislation. Certain steps are necessary to guarantee the rights of black people in the South to participate fully in the American political process.

We also can demonstrate that there is no decline of interest on our part, or on the part of Southern Negroes generally, in getting people registered to vote. Indeed, we have sponsored, or helped to sponsor, over 400 programs in 11 Southern States during the last three years, the vast majority of which involve voter registration. We intend to keep at the task until we feel that it has been finished. And like Mrs. Mauldin, we hope that we don't have "to go back" and retrace our efforts of the last three years because Congress and the Administration feel that enough has been done to protect the voting rights of black people in the South.

Most of the problems of the ghettos in the North and West have their roots in remote areas of the South. For many years Negroes in the South have been oppressed, starved, disfranchised, and dehumanized. Voting-rights legislation holds out at least the hope of correcting these wrongs within the democratic system. If this Federal support is lost, either through expiration or nonenforcement, no amount of persuasion will ever "bring us together again."

VERNON E. JORDAN, JR.

Mr. Jordan is the Director of the Southern Regional Council's Voter Education Project. This article is based on his remarks to the National Civil Liberties Clearinghouse in March 1969.

THE FALSE IMAGE MAKERS

The use of minority group stereotypes in the communications media has waned in recent years in regard to Negroes, the largest minority segment of the Nation. But there is evidence that a prominent blindspot exists in regard to the Mexican American and the American Indian.

It would seem that the advertising media must have recourse to the minority stereotype to sell some of its clients' products. Having been deprived of one group to exploit for its allegedly inferior traits, advertisers in television, magazine and newspaper ads, and on billboards seem to have found an easy outlet for thwarted creativity in formerly silent minorities.

In recent months a National Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee, Inc. (NMAAC) has been founded, and a nationwide campaign to promote a positive and accurate Indian image has been launched by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI).

NMAAC's primary target, according to founder and executive director Domingo Nick Reyes of Washington, D.C., is commercial advertising which depends on two general misconceptions: the first of the Mexican American as a shiftless ne'er-do-well (shades of Stepin Fechit), the second of the

Mexican as a bandit. NMAAC has

filed letters of complaint with at least five prime time users of advertising: Liggit & Myers, which produces a TV ad featuring a "Latin" type who never finishes anything; Frito-Lay, creator of the Frito Bandito; American Telephone and Telegraph, which utilizes the Bill Dana character of Jose Jiminez on TV, billboards, and telephone directories; American Motors, which portrays a desert bandito in a Javelin ad; and Granny Goose Potato Chips, which uses another version of the bandit theme.

In one letter, Armando Rodrigez, head of the Mexican American Unit of the U.S. Office of Education, who has helped spearhead NMAAC's efforts, asserted: "The U.S. Office of Education along with many other Federal, State, and private institutions, is now making a concerted effort to improve the portrait of the Mexican American to provide a symbol which the young Mexican American can be proud to inherit.

"May I suggest that advertising of the type you are sponsoring does not help the efforts of educators, nor does it improve the image of the Mexican American. Some of the advertisements you are using are misleading because they are based on a stereotype which is the result of ignorance and obliterates the many valuable contributions made by the U.S.' second largest minority group, the Mexican American," he said.

The NMAAC points out the following facts about the employment of Spanish surname people by the three major networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC (based on a recent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission study):

Only 76 Spanish surname out of 3,500 employees;

Of the 76, 36 were clerical and 17 blue collar;

Only three Spanish surname out of 504 managers;

Only three Spanish surname professionals in all three networks.

At a recent symposium on "The Indian Image" sponsored by California State College, Jay Silverheels, former Tonto of the Lone Ranger series, said that the motion pictures "made the Indian a foreigner in his own land." He added that the Indians "are still seen as plunderers and savages."

The NCAI campaign will strive to rid television, newspaper, and magazine ads of the "bloodthirsty savage" and "slovenly lazy drunk" Indian stereotypes. "Nothing violent, nothing pressure-group, just a polite mention of what we regard as offensive," said John Belindo, NCAI executive director, of the group's strategy.

The campaign will promote the slogan, "The American Indian-A New Awareness and Readiness." TV and billboard notices will be used to counteract stereotypes on the same media. Earl Old Person of the Blackfeet, Marshall Thom of the Navajos, and Roger Jourdain of the Minnesota Chippewas com prise the policy making committee.

If the Mexican American and Indian efforts are successful in opening advertisers' minds to the harm that stereotyping inflicts on whole groups of people, banditos and savages will no longer be seen on the media. However, the next step should be to depict these people in a positive manner and with respect in advertising and in programs as well. A.R.

ment Conference" in Detroit, which generated a scheme for massive reparations to be paid black folks by the major institutions of our society such as the churches. The ideological spread between the two groups of conferees is clear indication of the broad support emerging behind this concept. Further, late in the last session of the 90th Congress, the Community Self-Determination bill was introduced by more than 30 legislators to provide a catalyst for economic development in the ghetto. While that bill will never see the light of day in its original form, it does indicate Congressional interest in the issue.

Bleak History

Studying the history of capitalism and economic development in the black community is a sobering experience. One does not emerge from such a study with great cause for enthusiasm. Although Booker T. Washington and others founded the National Negro Business League early in the Twentieth Century, there has never been much black capitalism in this country. For example:

Only 6 black banks still survive today of those formed before 1922 and, while there were 49 blackowned banks in 38 cities in 1929, there are only 20 in 19 cities at the present time. Two black insurance companies function nationally-Supreme Life and North Carolina Mutual. Combined assets of the country's 50odd Negro life insurance companies is 0.2 percent of the industry's total. Between 1950 and 1960, the total number of black businessmen dwindled by 20 percent under the impact of integration. Of the 17,500 authorized automobile dealers in the country, 7 are black (7 times as many as in 1966). Of more than 6,000 radio stations, 108 beam directly to blacks; only eight are black-owned. While blacks are very prominent in music and sports, there is only one major black record company and no professional sports franchise controlled by blacks, not even The Harlem Globetrotters.

Black businesses traditionally have been segregated businesses. They have not in the main been able, or even tried, to compete against whites. They have tended to cluster around the production of those goods

and services which blacks could not get elsewhere restaurants, barber and beauty shops, hotels, funeral parlors, and cosmetics. And now, even this trade is threatened by integration and white competition.

As usual, almost all data related to the status of capitalism and economic activity among non-whites speaks of blacks. Except for an occasional newspaper article, very little information is available on Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Indians. One can only assume that, with few differences, the story for America's other non-white minorities parallels the black man's experience.

The generally bleak message of history, as one would expect, is overwhelmingly replete with instances of discrimination and antagonism directed against the ambitions of non-whites by the white majority. At the end of the Civil War, the skilled and artisan class in the Southern States was largely black. Throughout the latter part of the Nineteenth Century and during the first couple of decades of the present century, black men registered a number of the important mechanical and industrial patents of the period. The expression "the real McCoy" refers to the lubricating devices for railroad cars invented by black Elijah McCoy. Between 1872 and 1920 McCoy received over 57 patents for automatic lubricating appliances and for other inventions pertaining to telegraphy and electricity. The "McCoy" mark was an assurance of quality. Other blacks invented everything from traffic lights, to modern shoe lasts, to power hammers, to lawnmowers and fountain pens.

For 50 years following the Civil War, the black man was systematically stripped of his skilled and artisan status. Used to train white workers, he was denied any but menial employment and, eventually, was denied skills training itself. Although Thomas Edison was assisted in his inventions by a black man and-according to popular tradition the formula for Coca Cola was a black man's recipe, the giant corporations founded on these endeavors are wholly white-controlled and white-owned.

Consciously and effectively contained on plantations and reservations and in ghettos and barrios, the nonwhite minorities in America have provided cheap labor for a virtually all-white economy. What is more, whites still own the plantations, ghettos, and barrios and nearly all of the businesses which serve their inhabitants. To quote John Z. DeLorean, vice-president of General Motors and general manager of Chevrolet Motor Division:

For the Negro, the ghetto (also read "barrio") was no gateway to America as it had traditionally been for earlier arrivals; it was simply one more colony. The Negro owned none of its meager assets. He worked outside the ghetto in menial jobs, acquiring no management or entrepreneurial skills to bring back with him. What little capital he accumulated, he expended outside the ghetto. For what little purchases he made within the ghetto, he paid higher prices, because of the relatively small volume of purchases and the high credit risk he carried. What little ability he had to pay rent and buy commodities was exploited by absentee white landlords and shopowners at the same time that they allowed his physical environment to decline to the point of ruin. Lenders and investors shunned him, and even his city government gave him the last and least of its services."

The Legacy

Historians color the past with their attitudes and choice of words. My capsuled "history," outlined above, is valid for me even though a part-Indian is Chairman of the Board of Phillips Petroleum, and even though there are some few scattered millionaires and successful businessmen among the Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and black millions in this country. What is the real message when the combined assets of all black-owned banks wouldn't even constitute the largest account in any one of several banks in New York City? When blacks control less than 2 percent of construction in this country? When less than 1 percent of manufacturing is minority-owned? When 73 percent of black businesses are centered in low-income ghettos and, even so, have declined in the last two decades?

We must keep in mind that the major issue in all the present concern with economic development is centered in its promise for changing the condition of minorities generally. The discussion, with its current adherents, dates from the last couple of years since the riots,