WSB-TV (Television station : Atlanta, Ga.)

Description

In this WSB clip from March 30, 1971, Clarence Coleman, southeast regional director of the National Urban League, addresses a press conference held in Atlanta, Georgia, and reports the findings of a National Urban League study focusing on racial discrimination in Augusta, Georgia.The clip begins with a silent shot of a biracial group of people gathered inside a conference room, where a press conference has been organized around a large table. At the head of the table are Clarence Coleman, an unidentified African American man and a white woman, seated in front of a row of microphones. Coleman, seated at the head and center of the table, acknowledges other attendees of the press conference by pointing to them as he speaks into a table microphone. A large banner with the National Urban League emblem hangs on the wall behind the table.The next section of the clip contains sound. Here, Clarence Coleman addresses the press conference, reading from a prepared statement. Coleman reports that the major findings of a study on Augusta conducted by the National Urban League determine that Augusta and Richmond County, Georgia, "like nearly all similar political units in the United States," is "fundamentally a dual community" divided by race: affluent whites possesses the decisionmaking power for the entire population; African Americans, on the other hand, are poor, and lack the power to determine city policy, goals, or priorities.Coleman notes that civil disturbances are a "sure way by which frustrated people can, at least temporarily, exert a rather...

Record Contributed By

Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection

Record Harvested From

Digital Library of Georgia