American Africans received none of our tax dollars back and were less-than-token hires in the public and private sectors up until the official end of Jim Crow laws in 1964. It took another 10 years of marches and demonstrations against these same institutions before they reluctantly began to open up their hiring practices and at least 10 more years for us to have the personnel to fill these jobs.
This was the first generation in most black families who went to college because the civil rights struggle forced colleges to open their doors during that same period of time. So with its history with the civil rights struggle, education and experience working in the public and private sectors, America finally has the group that has the ability to solve many of the racial issues of this nation. But no one is even seeing them as a relevant group.
More talents to tap
After the first six months of retirement, they have done almost everything they dreamed of doing while working for 40 years. Now boredom is setting in. They need a new challenge, and we need them to be challenged. We have not solved many of the thorny racial issues in America because American Africans did not have the breadth of experience we needed to make plans or the depth of administrators to get the job done.
We had to rely on white experts and the black ministers who represented the only leadership group with any real education. But our ministers were not trained to do urban planning or make long-range political or social community goals, and white experts were hesitant to change the status quo.
In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the best and the brightest of these new college graduates from the American African community were sucked up by the public and private sectors and had little or no time to do anything for the black community. Now we need to get the benefit of those 30 to 40 years they spent working for the city, federal government or The Boeing Co. Where else can you find a highly skilled and motivated group that already gets a paycheck every month?
Even ex-Mayor Norm Rice and former King County Executive Ron Sims have found themselves in this group. We have judges, CEOs, police officers, firefighters, planners and thinkers sitting at home without an agenda, with spouses who wish they did.
More importantly, we have an extraordinary group of retired black principals and teachers whom we need to put in the church Sunday-school classroom that remains closed during the week and get some serious tutoring done for our students.
Go to any large American African church and you will see this talent on the trustee and deacon boards, but they need to build more than churches — they need to build communities.
We did not have this kind of talent in the ‘60s and ‘70s, when federal money was available for community-based programs and the money was cut off before we developed them. Now, we have the talent but don’t have the money to create the community infrastructure needed to stop the bleeding and chaos in inner-city black America.
Let’s start here
To have a successful community, you must have a diverse and talented pool of people, and we finally have it in the American African communities all over America.
One of those groups needs to be the catalyst — why not Martin Luther King County? We have the talent and skills right here to set the tone for the nation, and with a philanthropic behemoth like the Gates Foundation at our front door, with the political savvy of ex-County Executive Sims and ex-Mayor Rice, who recently retired as CEO of The Seattle Foundation, the possibilities are limitless.
Do we have the will?
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American community activist for more than 35 years. He is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org).
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