Thank you. Cry. 6 minutes. Now past 12 programming on NPR is supported by carousel automobiles. The Oddities store offering the Audi A4 Avant European Sports wagons available in front rack and Quattro models. Good afternoon, and welcome back to mid-day on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary. I can glad you could join us back in the 1950s. There were just there was rather just a handful of black reporters working for mainstream white newspapers around America one of those reporters Karl Road work right here in Minnesota at the Minneapolis Tribune today at midday. We're going to hear his story and his thoughts were some of the major issues of the 1990s. It's like affirmative action School integration diversity for diversity sake Carl Rowan was actually born in Tennessee 1943. He made history becoming the first black commissioned officer in the US Navy after the war. He came to Minnesota earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Minnesota and then got that trailblazing job at the Minneapolis Tribune Carl Rowan won national attention for his work as tribute. And then he moved into government serving as a deputy secretary of state ambassador to Finland and head of the you Information agency finally it was back to journalism radio TV and newspapers are all ruined becoming one of the nation's leading political commentators and columnist earlier this summer Karl Road return to Minnesota to speak at the National Convention. The American Association of retired persons is subject was abroad one diversity is Carl Rowland. Ask back to the Convention of the AARP. Particularly since it's in the city that I called home for almost 16 years. The place where I met my wife. the place where my children were born and I think there's no better place to talk about diversity. And what it means in America? And why so many people fight so stupid lie about it? very often I imagine myself on one of our spaceships out there. Looking down on planet Earth. And seeing for what it is. Just a little glob you out there. and I'm thinking that I Point down to earth And that little segments called America. and that I might be able to say There lies a segment of mankind. a microcosm of mankind all kinds and colors of people living together in peace and prosperity But I wouldn't know that I couldn't say that. And have it be the whole truth. for all the people of these United States But we're going to work on it. They can put up all the propositions. They want to 2090. Whatever. But we are going anywhere. You know. when I came to this town There was no diversity in the Press of America. I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And I felt lucky to have been accepted at the graduate school at the University of Minnesota. particularly lucky because I learned that the Afro-American didn't have a Stringer in Minnesota. And they would pay me $10 an article. And with us $10. I bought an awful lot of raisin bread and peanut butter. That sustained me and my graduate school days. And I recall that. As I got my degree. Polo Ralph Casey the dean Sidwell Carl You've been a good student. But I don't know where the hell you going to get a job. UC and mainstream America's press you could count on the fingers of one hand. all of the blacks who had full fledged jobs There was one at the New York Times one at the New York Herald Tribune. one at the Toledo Blade and I don't know where the other one was. but Casey said Carl you might as well start Where You Are go down to the Minneapolis Tribune and see if they'll give you a job. So why walked into the personnel office? And they gave me a dexterity test. a spelling test They gave me everything but a pap smear. And at the end this woman said, I'm sorry. There's nothing available. If anything opens up will call you. And I walked out with a smoke coming out of my ears. Saying they've done it to me again. Got on the streetcar. Road back to Saint Paul where I was renting a room. And when I got the university in Avon. I was shocked to see my landlord out there huffing and puffing. She said Carl. You got across the street and get right back on a street car cuz the editor of the Minneapolis Tribune Mr. Gideon. Seymour has called three times. So I came back to Minneapolis. and I went in and Gib C Morrison Well I see here that you were all a fleet tanker in the North Atlantic. carrying high octane gasoline to refuel aircraft carriers You said you were the communications officer? You were the guy who had to get up at 3 in the morning to decode those messages. the app He said he'll I figure if they could trust you to decode those messages. I can trust you to be a report. And I got a job. I later found out how I got the job. One day the publisher John coltrane's a man of great social conscience had walked into his Newsroom. And he looked out and he saw nothing but white faces. and something inside his head said John this is not right. And I found out that he had. That he had gone to the editor Gideon Seymour. NSAID GERD you'll never convince me that in all these United States. You can find a negro man or woman capable of being a reporter on my newspapers. And that built the fire on the Gideon Seymour and Seymour went down and built a fire under the woman in personnel. And I found out that when I walked out that day she picked up the phone call me and see more and said, mr. Seymour, one of them just came. well What happened was that? I got one of the greatest opportunities a young man from a little red clay town in Tennessee could ever dream up dream. I won some of the most marvelous assignment you could ever dream of Yes, I went South travel over 6,000 miles almost got killed a few times, but I got a chance to tell Americans what Jim Crow was all about. What real Injustice means? And take a picture and write an article about a sign on top of the Imperial laundry that said we wash white folks clothes on. End of my walking into the laundry and saying to one of the black workers, how can you work in a joint like this? She said you missed you the joke's on them my clothes in that tub right over there. And it was great being a reporter moving a town moving a nation just by telling them the truth. Well, we called it affirmative action in those days and people were proud to be a part of doing something that gave a chance to people who never had a chance before. but today in the war over privileges where the people who had the preferences for 300 years and want to keep them. Are now calling it racial preferences. They're saying that the University of Maryland can have a scholarship program to Lear blacks, even though it wouldn't accept even though for 300 years. It wouldn't let any black in anywhere. Now if it wants to give a scholarship to a black person know that's racial preferences and is unconstitutional. prop 209 You've seen what has happened in California under that proposition. last fall in the freshman class at Berkeley there were 260 blacks the only be 98 this year. There were 219. At UCLA and now it's going to be down to 131. There were 492 Hispanics at Berkeley this fall they are admitting 264 all this because somebody says that the way you decide who deserves a college education. Is an SAT score are some other standardized tests. What Carl Rowan knows the Injustice and the stupidity that lies in this? UCI run a scholarship program Call Project X for black seniors in Washington, DC. I've run it for 11 years. And for 2400 graduates, I've given 55 million dollars in 11 years. This year we had 360 youngsters nominated by their High School. I didn't have enough money for 360 youngsters. So in order to decide who really gets the scholarships and these scholarships range from $4,000 up to $130,000 for 4 years. So did you decide who gets the scholarships? We have 10 judges. We look at the kids great. We look at their SAT scores. We look at their extracurricular activities. We look at the letters of recommendation from their teachers and their preachers and this year. Through that process we cut it down to 128 fan. And then we brought all 128 youngsters in before the 10 judges and have them give a speech. At the end of this process there was one student that buy 10 judges voting secretly. This one person was judged at the top of the 360. And this meant that this kid could decide whether or not to take 4 years at Overland Park Washington and Lee or some of our other Partnerships. You know, what the top students SAT score was 1150 out of 1600 a mediocre 570 verbal in 580 match and I remember there was no racial baggage in this judging because all the students were black. And please note that the student the judge is ranked 30th had an SAT score of 1500. The 56 rank student had an SAT or 1410 the 98th one scored 1460. And the 122nd drink student who didn't even get a scholarship had an SAT of 1420. Now that means if you just looked at SAT scores alone. The young woman ranked at the very top of the 360 would never have gotten into Berkeley or UCLA under prop 209 and irony of ironies the man we ranked 122 and Unworthy of a scholarship got into an Ivy League College. This shows you the madness of this nonsense where you try to use one little score to determine who's worthy of a chance in this Society. Oh, you saw what happened after they got to the situation. They're in at the Berkeley the chancellor there said the situation is Graham. At UCLA the chancellor said if this continues UCLA will lose its diversity and it will lose its greatness. Well, they've learned the lesson in Texas because they saw that this was happening in their law schools and their other schools and the legislature Texas which used to be so dog, at least segregated. I was down there many times with Thurgood Marshall in others fighting to open up that universities to somebody other than Caucasians. Well, they've learned that lesson in the Texas state legislature passed a law saying any student who graduates in the top 10% of his or her high school class. Is eligible for admission to any University State University in Texas? So these are so these are people who know the value of protecting diversity. I was very pleased a few months ago to see more than a hundred chancellors and presidents of the nation's top universities put a statement in the nation's great newspapers saying there is an intrinsic value to diversity that we learn something from each other and the best campus is one where you have a variety of people. You know. I don't think anything that has appalled me more. then to pick up the newspapers in Washington and see that one of AARP speakers Linda Chavez, and they Center for equal opportunity had issued a report saying that it looked as though the Naval Academy and the US Military Academy were practicing racial preferences. Why because they supposedly had done a survey and and discovered that the whites on average in the Naval Academy and at West Point scored higher sat then did the blacks at those Academy. That is to me is absolutely and outrages use of SAT scores. At these two academies 7% of those entering and 1995 which is the class. They used in their survey 7% of the answering people wear black. 12% of the American population is black you have somebody is going to be Grudge 7% going to West Point and a nap and I sat there reading this sing. Where the hell were they? When so many blacks were dying in Vietnam. Nobody said the percentage is higher than it ought to be According to some sat average SAT scores on money bags. So I call the Pentagon and I asked him. What were the percentage of people who were asked to leave their homes and go fight in Desert Storm? First I asked them also, what were the percentages of deaths in Vietnam? End of the 47387 people who died in battle 5670 to wear black are precisely 12% but we changed a lot since then we've got a lot more diversity in the military. So when Saddam Hussein I need you to go over and deal with this dictator in Desert Storm and have colon Powell and the rest of them do it. You know, how many army people wear black 30.4% Navy personnel 19.4% Marines 18% Air Force 13% So when you talk about who's fighting and dying, you don't hear anybody talking about racial preferences because that's a hell of a different kind of preference if you're out there getting shot. But I I have the blame my own profession in part for the ugliness that has moved into the arena of affirmative action because I don't care what your newspaper you pick up a good one a bad one. The headlines will say racial preferences and you've already stacked the deck when you use that term because it implies that somebody unworthy is getting something that really ought to go to someone who is more Worthy. And I don't know that I'm ever going to be able to change my profession in that respect because the people who run the newspapers still are the ones who have had the preferences for 300 years and who would particularly like to keep them. But I am I know that. you got some questions out there and I'm not going to talk much longer in case you're worried. My wife is back here. And she's warned me not to come here to prove her definition of an optimist. She says an optimist is a woman who puts her shoes back on what I say in conclusion. I am fed it yet, but I'm getting close. But there's one point I really want to make. before I stop and that is that society in which we live in mutual respect for each other. Does not come easily anymore that anything else comes in America? We've got to pay for it in terms of good teachers. We've got to pay for it in terms of good health care and good shelter and good food from people in their infancy and people in their old age. And as I go about Washington all of these years, I noticed that the fight is always over what we're willing to pay for. I have heard so many times the line remember Rowan you don't solve problems by throwing money at them. And I listen. And I remember how I got here. I remember the day in 1943. When I sat on the steps of the administration building at Tennessee State College in Nashville. About to drop out because I didn't have the $20 for the next quarter's tuition. I was saying goodbye to my buddy Joe Bates when he said I hate to see you go. Before you leave walk with me to the greasy spoon. I got to buy a pack of cigarettes. I said Joe the greasy spoon doesn't open till 11. You said I got a chick I'm dying for a smoke. So I walked with him and share enough the little Kansas restaurant was padlocked. We turned away and we had to walk back across a little dirt Circle. where the dinky bus made its u-turn the students would get all throw away their green transfers and there were always a zillion lying every place. We took a few steps up the wall can something said to me? Carl Rowan one of those green what you just passed in the weeds was not a bus transfer. I went back picked it up and I said hey. I just found some money and it didn't look like a wine. When I got behind the hedges, I opened it up. It was a $20 bill. I quickly surmise that some student on his or her way to pay tuition had lost it as a joke. I just pray to God that whoever lost it doesn't need it as badly as I do. And I walked into the administration building and paid my tuition. 3 days later and so help me God every word of this is true. I was sitting in the history class of Professor Moreau lamps. When apropos of nothing, he walked in and said Carl Rowan. Come with me to the Dean's office. Who buy my heart crease my scalp? Those were the olden days when? If your student went to the Dean's office the stewed worried about what he'd done wrong. So I walk down. with Professor Epson area word walked into the office of Dean George W Gore he said ding door. Here's the young man whose volunteering to join the Navy. volunteering to join Indian Navy He said yes, you are a boy. And I said no, I'm not ding Gore said young man young man. Take it easy. He said are you aware that? In the entire history of the United States Navy. There's never been a negro officer. I said yes. I read the Pittsburgh Courier. He said are you aware that? Hear it all negro Tennessee State. We often get messages from the federal government that they really intended for the all-white University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I said no, sir. I didn't know that. He said I want to show you a series of telegrams. First one said Nationally competitive exams Navy officer training. Hope some of your students will take exam. You should I sent this back. Do you really mean us? He said I got this back. Yes. We mean you. He said now. We don't want Tennessee State embarrassed. Somebody's got the pass. And I've asked for fesses Epps and Boswell to pick out a half-dozen young men. They think might pass this exam. And Professor apps has chosen you. What a wonderful testimony. And I know that out of loyalty to your professor. Add a loyalty to your college and loyalty to your race. I said yes. I volunteered to join the day. when you know I wouldn't know if they had an SAT scores another days. If they did I sure as hell don't know what mine was. All I know. Is I managed to pass that exam. And get the midshipman school. And get a break. That got me a job in Minneapolis. So when people say to me. You don't solve problems by throwing money at them. I say to hell you say. So in all the debates today. Over the so-called social programs that don't work. And you decide what it is you will or will not support. remember you may be talkin about some kids $20 bill. Thank you very much. Play Lil commentator and columnist Carl Rowland speaking this summer in Minneapolis at the National Convention of the American Association of retired persons. Following his speech Carl wrong took some questions from the audience. I'm from Washington DC and I watched your program every Saturday night on Inside Edition. I haven't seen you on for quite a while and I'm just wondering how you doing what you are doing. I retired from inside Washington some months ago and Well, you know, you got to leave sometime and after 32 years I decided of all the things that I do if I were going to cut back, that's the first thing I did, but I'm still doing the column in the radio show. I don't know how many of you out there know, I had a little Misfortune in lost my right leg. So I don't roam quite as much as I used to, but I'm slowing down a little bit. Thank you. At my cousin at Walter Frey of Keokuk Iowa was in the Navy in the Great Lakes to see how did he get in? Well, you could get in the Navy you just you just couldn't be a commissioned officer. And particularly you couldn't be an officer on a ship's commanding both whites and blacks as was my case in World War. I was a guinea pig shall you say? But it worked out there were people who said that they would never tolerate a black officer in the wardroom on his shift. They were wrong. They said the Navy guys wouldn't take orders from a black officer. They were wrong and as a result. We have a pretty thoroughly diverse and integrated Navy today. Mister ride, my name is Ruth bread, and I'm from Silver Spring Maryland. And for all you have met to outrace the nation and the world. I'd like to say praise God from whom all blessings flow. Thank you very much. I also have a question. We also have a problem which I see is becoming more and more problem in our nation. And that is the balance in our school system, and I'd like to hear your views on that, please. Well with regard to our school system, I am an absolute believer in Thurgood Marshall statement that Justice is when everybody can get the same thing at the same time in the same place. I am an absolute advocate of desegregation and integration and one of the very places where I learn the lesson about what happens if you tolerate any measure of separatism was right here in Minnesota because I didn't just write about blacks one of the most celebrated series of articles. I have a wrote was when I went out here to the Indian reservations. And wrote about how the first Americans are living and gave evidence that out of sight is out of mind. So we have got to try to have our children grow up together spending about the same kind of money on East youngster to enable him or her to contribute to this Society. Thank you. I'm from California and consider the passage of 209 to be an Abomination. But one of the Champions was a man named Ward connerly who is Black who is educated who is articulate and I don't understand and maybe I don't know would you could you explain how he could Champion that cause well, let me say that. I can't get in Ward tunnelers mine, and I'm not sure I'd want to if I could. But I do know that the man has gotten more attention than he ever had or ever could dream of getting in his life by slamming some door shut in the faces of black people and Hispanics and others who lacked opportunity for so many of the year. And I've learned that there's not a thing Carl Rowan can say or ever write that will Jane Ward connerly because ward connerly has no shame. How important is a problem of births out of wedlock and what can we do about it is a tremendous problem. What can we do about it? Not as much as I wish. We've had a sexual revolution in this country in which we've taken pretty much we pretty much taken the stigma off as they used to say when I was a boy getting knocked up. Nothing worse could have happened to a girl. And a boy in those days knew that there was a consequence even if it wasn't her daddy's shotgun. So today it is extremely difficult to accept to try to teach youngsters in school the consequences of sex out of wedlock and producing babies. We're having some success in convincing young males that get made young girl pregnant is not a sign of manhood. But not enough. In fact, I don't know how many of you seen my calling but I was writing about why we have this semi epidemic of young males and school killing their classmates their teachers and even their parents and I talked about the copycat syndrome. I talked about the tragedy of it being so easy to easy to get automatic weapons not alone pistol and I talked about TV and radio and so forth, but it is my view. That the dominant factor is the inability of young American teens to cope with this issue of sex in this modern time. You will notice that in Jonesboro. Young lad of 14 deadly shooting and said he was angry because he lost his girlfriend. And the last episode in the Aragon they found in the young man's Locker a note that said Killers start being lonely and then he talked about being he said love sucks. So I think this is this is such a pervasive problem that it deserves a lot more attention than we're giving it. A list of all I need my name is Christian pastel. I'm from Washington DC. My question has to do with public education. Do you have any comments to make about the proposal Congressman Newt Gingrich do award vouchers to Youngsville to attending in a city public schools so that they may secure the kind of education that more well-off students in private schools. Well, I've had youngsters who gone to the DC public schools that I've got youngsters have gone to private school and Grand youngsters who going to private school. And I had dick armey called me more than a few times in recent months trying to sell me on his proposition to provide vouchers for 2,000 youngsters in the District of Columbia. and my view is that this well and good and I can understand that any parent thinking that he can get a few thousand dollars is a scholarship will gladly say I want this and I don't blame the parents. But dick armey has an agenda. You give scholarship to mm? And then give the shiv to the other 75,000 kids in the school system you drain away support for the public schools and the truth of it. The truth of it. Is there a lot of people like dick armey who you in their heart don't want any public school system and the fact that I said he's as well roll. You can send your kids to public to private school. Yeah, I can and I can pay for it, but I don't stop supporting the public schools that I don't stop paying for the public school. So there is a snare and a delusion in this business of giving vouchers to a handful of kids while you turn your back on a thousand times that many so I am not a supporter of the voucher system. Hi, I've always admired your work and being in Minnesota. I really appreciated that have two questions daughter who's in her early thirties is a journalist. And I'm wondering what advice you would give to survive in that profession eat, even though she did pretty well. The second question is you do not believe in segregated schools, but don't you think separating some young boys in classes from some young girls in certain schools have worked beautifully it when they were together like in Chicago with that special teacher. Well, first of all, I asked for your daughter who aspires to be a journalist. Tell her to fall in love with her English teacher. And he already writes well, and she never to make it to lunch without having read at least one newspaper. And to read everything she can because if you can't if you don't read you can't write because you don't know anything to write about. And I am appalled at the number not of high school students. Go to college youngsters who say I ain't got time to read a newspaper in the morning and Saturday. I went down Citizen's duty to teach at Clark College in the five major black colleges there and I told the youngsters don't come to my class if you haven't read a newspaper because I'm going to give pop quizzes on current affairs and it'll count is 40% of your great. I don't think they believed it till the first quiz what a bunch of them flunked and then I had to laugh as they came into class with USA Today under one arm and the Atlanta Constitution under another and at the end of that semester they came and said, thanks. Because you helped us in political science and all the other courses were knowing what's going on makes a difference. Now you ask about separating young men young women. Oh, I admit that. There are certain circumstances where you separate people. That's why you got military academies. And that's why a lot of people send their sons to them and I even go far enough to say that's also why when I grow up we had what we need a few of now that's reform schools. I will not I will not simply say to this youngster you brought a gun to school you threatened the teacher that I'm going to throw you out on the street where you can become an even bigger threat to society, but I'm not going to let you stay in here and abused these kids and stop them from learning. So we got a tough place over there. We're going to put you in and give you a chance to learn something there. Thank you. Yes. My name is Cora Turpin. I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I'm one of these Community activist and I've always been amazed at how easily people will endorse the use of Monies. to put our young people in jails I think it's about $40,000 a year now that it cost and yet when asked to support Public Schools, they have a problem. I was wondering if you could make some suggestions on things that we could do to try to change this tendency because it is ruining our young people. Well, you've talked about one of the greatest problems in this society. And one of the things I often emphasized in speeches is the fact that we build prisons when we won't build school and we won't build hospital and we'll spend not 3000 but as much as $30,000 a year to incarcerate a single individual and we won't pay that much to send anybody to college. This is however one of those factors of fear. And that's why the bigots and some of the politicians manipulate the fears of people so that they lose sight of what their priorities are and how we change it. I do not know I mention my scholarship program and those 2400 youngsters. We've helped to go to college. But as I was doing that they were locking up twice that many young blacks who I have great ability to serve this is odd, but who got caught up as the gnats and flies of the drug trade. For example, the War on Drugs has turned out to be mostly a system in which the little fries and the Menard is of America wind up the Down and locked up and it it is a source of great despair to me because I talked about it, but nobody has much work to do anything about it. In fact, I was reading an article in USA Today flying up here about why so many such a high percentage such a great disproportion of blacks wind up getting the death penalty and this article pointed out that that's because almost all the prosecutors in capital cases are white And I always look they look and they see this young black and they have no compunctions about consigning him to death and prison. Oh that's easy. So we've got a lot of work to do in terms of trying to steer the youngsters away from all kinds of crime including minor crime, but we also got a great job to do in terms of looking and saying what can I do to help this youngster to educate him to give him a job instead of thinking that we saw some kind of Problem by building another prison. Thank you very much. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Nationally-known commentator and columnist Carl Rowland speaking last month in Minneapolis at the National Convention of the American Association of retired persons. Hey, she missed the beginning of the program and up on your Minnesota History. You should know the Carl Roland got his start really as a journalist right here in the Twin City metropolitan area graduated from the University of Minnesota with a master's in journalism, and then went to work at the Minneapolis Tribune and got National praise for his reporting at the Tribune then onto the service. If you miss part of the Carl Rowan speech by the way will be rebroadcast in this program at 9 tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio. So you get a second chance to hear from Carl Rowan 9 tonight rebroadcast programming on Minnesota Public. Radio is supported by Valleyfair amusement park where you can choose your kind of fun. Thrill rides live entertainment and the refreshing water park. That does it that for our mid-day program today would like to invite you to join us on Monday. Actually, Perry finality will be Manning the painting the controls here for the next couple of weeks. Mark yudof will be our guest at 11 and then best-selling author Bill Bryson over the noon hour that's coming up on Monday. Sarah Meyer is the producer of our midday program Mike McCaul pangra or associate producer. I'm Gary I can thanks for tuning in. I'm Lorna Benson first, there was Dilbert now. There's the temp a musical comedy about life as a temp worker that story on the next All Things Considered weekdays at 3 on Minnesota Public Radio know FM 91.1 You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. We have a sunny sky and 82° at Kenner W FM 91.1 Minneapolis. And st. Paul send me the partly sunny through the afternoon with a high temperature reaching the middle 80s partly cloudy skies are forecast for tonight with a low in the mid-60s partly cloudy and fairly hot tomorrow with a high near 90 degrees.