and the callouses on their hands. They performed the harsh and low paying tasks and it was accepted as right and proper that as inferiors, they should be treated as inferiors and they were.

In May, 1968, time caught up with Bellamy. During a hearing in Montgomery, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights listened to testimony about this small unincorporated settlement, set up close to the Mississippi border in Alabama's Black Belt, that showed just how little it had changed over the years. When Bellamy was established by the Allison Lumber Company the only way in or out was by rail and while a two-lane asphalt highway later linked Bellamy to the outside, the testimony indicated it was almost as if the highway had never been built and time had stood still. The civil rights movement had washed through Selma to the east and touched Meridian to the west, but Bellamy remained as it had always been.

Black workers were still scrunched down at the lower end of the skill ladder and the pay scale, their houses were still pitiful when compared to those occupied by whites, their school remained an abomination, and not infrequently they were in debt up to their eyeballs to the single store in Bellamy. With the sawmill as the only employer, what opportunity existed for a young black man in Bellamy was the opportunity to get out.

A company town though it was, Bellamy was not a small operation. It housed the largest southern pine mill east of the Mississippi River and was owned by the New York based American Can Company, a multimillion dollar government contractor whose sales in 1968 were over a billion and a half dollars. The mill's work force numbered 334 with blacks representing 78 percent of the total. While there was no requirement that workers and their families had to live in the settlement, some 1,000 did with blacks in the majority. American Can purchased the approximately 125,000 acres of timber land, the sawmill and associated housing from the Allison Lumber Company in 1960, and in 1968 the place was still segregated. An invisible line was drawn through Bellamy, separating the white from the black. All of the homes the company rented to white workers were substantial dwellings with bathrooms and running water, while only eight of the homes rented to blacks had similar facilities. If there were not separate jobs for black and white, as the company claimed, the fact was that the average black made substantially less than the average white, the only dark face in the company office be

longed to an office boy-an adult well past the age of even late adolescence—and it was not until two weeks before the Commission hearing that two blacks were finally promoted to supervisory positions in the plant.

American Can did not establish the racial patterns in Bellamy, but until 1968 it had done little to break them. Similarly, the Federal establishment had moved in snail-like fashion. The General Services Administration (GSA) with a more than $1 million contract with American Can had never conducted a compliance review. Speaking for GSA, George Dorsey, Director, Civil Rights Program Policy Staff, told the Commission at the Montgomery hearing:

"I was not aware officially of the housing situation (in Bellamy) until I read it in this morning's paper about the testimony last night. Although I had heard it mentioned casually in the office, I was not aware of it otherwise."

In his testimony, Owen Hanson, Resident Manager, Alabama Operations, American Can, said this. “The problems we have been living with here have been gradually evolving; we are trying to formulate a plan so that we can do what has to be done and at the same time treat our employees fully as fairly as possible."

Shortly after the hearing changes did begin to occur in Bellamy, changes that many of the long time residents had little cause to believe would ever take place. Whether the hearing produced the changes or whether they would have occurred on their own is a matter that can be speculated on, but occur they did and Bellamy revisited is not the Bellamy of the first time around.

In late July of 1968, American Can submitted a proposed affirmative action program to the General Services Administration dealing with the disposal of company housing, the creation of a cooperative store and credit union, and promising company cooperation in the establishment of a local government for Bellamy. With some amending, the proposal was accepted by GSA as constituting compliance with Executive Order 11246 and implementing regulations. GSA also warned that failure to take aggressive action to assure early and complete implementation of the approved plans might result in termination of any or all outstanding contracts.

Even while the hearing was still in progress, however, the company had begun to move toward divesting itself of ownership of the houses on which it had been losing, according to its records, between $77,000 and $80,000 a year. Discussions opened with government

officials over methods by which the company could dispose of the housing. Several approaches were proposed, including competitive bidding and a lottery, before the solution of deeding the homes and land for $1 to three classes of individuals employees, retired employees, widows of employees-was settled upon and accepted by GSA. The Department of Justice and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, who were also involved in the discussions, officially neither rejected nor accepted the plan, while the Commission on Civil Rights rejected it on the basis that the gift of houses represented a form of compensation that discriminated against most blacks.

The black homes had an average value of $1,200 while the white homes were valued at $6,000. While both whites and blacks were given homes for token payments, what most of the blacks received was much less-on the basis of quality and value-than what white workers received.

As a part of its plan, American Can offered $500, to be expended on home improvements, to all of the new homeowners who had been paying $20 or less a month in rent. Since only those homes with bathrooms rented for $20 or more, the proviso restricted the list of eligibles to black families.

At the time of the transfer, October 1969, 139 of the company homes were occupied by blacks, 37 by whites, and five homes previously occupied by whites were vacant. These empty houses were offered to a list of the most senior black employees in exchange for their older homes, and five out of the 13 approached agreed to break Bellamy's color line. Additionally, two model homes were built in formerly all-white sections at a total cost of $14,600 and turned over to black employees in exchange for their old homes. Since then eight of the black workers have qualified for FHA loans to build new homes, two of them to be located in formerly white neighborhoods, and several others are in the process of receiving FHA approval. American Can is actually building the homes, resulting in a savings on contruction costs.

The sweet smell of fresh and available money brought a swarm of salesmen to Bellamy all eager to cash in on the bonanza of new opportunity. In the first few weeks after the transfer, 25 of the new home owners had signed up with a single firm for home improvements, primarily indoor plumbing. The $500 from the company, however, was only a start with each of the

final bills running up to several thousand dollars. Then to add a further headache, not long after work began on the alterations, the new home owners began to grumble that they were being overcharged for inferior work.

By this time the improvement firm had discounted the notes to a Birmingham bank, and the home owners turned to plant management for assistance. The Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP was contacted and it brought in an independent black contractor who examined the work that had been done and gave what he considered a fair estimate of what it should have cost. The bank and the improvement firm agreed to accept this evaluation and the net reduction to the homeowners was approximately 10 percent. A more prudent approach on the part of the black homeowners toward improvements on their properties was evident after this first experience with salesmen, and American Can also arranged with Farmers Home Administration to send in representatives to explain how improvements could be financed through government programs, even before the salesmen began their pitches.

When the company turned over the houses in Bellamy to the workers, it included some 30 flimsy dwellings in Whitfield, a small settlement in an isolated section of its vast property. Some notes on the social structure of a company town can be drawn through a comparison of two settlements. Whitfield is not only isolated from the larger settlement of Bellamy in terms of space, but in terms of amenities as well, however sparse they may be. Whitfield was once the home of the loggers and Bellamy. that of the mill folks. The social scales of the all-black society in which they functioned set the loggers apart and several steps down from the more sophisticated mill workers and the communities reflect this.

The homes in Whitfield are shabbier than those in Bellamy, and while the large settlement gives some semblance of being planned, Whitfield gives the impression of houses being put down in the woods and left to decay by themselves. What passes for the main street is little more than a wide foot-worn walkway with the structures, trembling on each side. Chickens roam freely through the settlement, picking at dirt as hard as rock. Here and there a thin dog dozes in the warmth, life moves so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. For water, there is a well, complete with bucket and rope. At night, the only illumination streams from the windows of the houses.

Efforts to improve the homes in Whitfield have not been as extensive or as expensive as those in Bellamy, and this is due in part to the presence of John Barnes, one of the principal figures in the Montgomery

hearing. In the manner of an elder of the tribe, he has cautioned his people against going too far too fast. He points to a house, down at the end of the path, where a home improvement company persuaded the owner to sign a contract calling for the installation of aluminum siding at a cost of $2,400. The owner ruefully admits "I should have asked him what he was doing before he did anything." The cost of the lesson ---a monthly note of $39.03 and aluminum siding when the owner would have preferred a bathroom.

"I'm trying to keep my people away from this," Barnes says. His way of accomplishing this goal is by preaching the gospel of "do-it-yourself" in Whitfield. With a crew of frequently changing helpers and the owners themselves, Barnes has worked on some halfdozen of the homes, building extensions, and sheetrocking and painting the interiors. The remodeled structures cannot be described as top quality housing, but Barnes has managed to complete them all within the $500 alloted by American Can. "I'm not trying to make a profit, just trying to help," he says. He shows one bill that lists $276.63 for materials, and when the cost of labor is added, Barnes estimates he came out of the job with $15.

Barnes is a giant of a man, his hands rough from almost a life time at the mill, his eyes red rimmed and perpetually squinted against the Alabama sun. Pine is a soft wood. Barnes is more like seasoned oak. He talks in slow measured tones, not an easy man to know. Whatever else, he is certain that he has done the right thing for "my people," and his role in Bellamy has not