O YE DRYBONES : Is the Black CON-scious Movement DEAD OR ALIVE ? AFTER 30YRS

ONE OF THE MOST TROUBLESOME FACTS IN THE STUDY OF
history over very long periods of times, such as several centuries, is that a truth may slowly emerge, period after period, until it clearly forms itself into a truth impregnable, a fact nowhere explicitly stated as such in the mass of data covered. As one continues to move on down through the centuries, countless events and situations may continue to make supporting additions to what has already been established as an unassailable fact. Yet that truth may be so repugnant, so utterly void of any rational or intelligent reason for its existence that hardly any historian would wish to state it in his work.Dr. Chancellor Williams {1974}(1)  "The last recession has had a severe and disproportionate impact on African Americans and minority communities," according to Marc H. Morial, president of the National Urban League.(2) In its January 2004 report on black unemployment, the Urban League found that the double-digit unemployment rates in the 14 months from late 2002 through 2003 were the worst labor market for African Americans in 20 years.(3)The term "deindustrialization" came into everyday use in the 1970s, when a wave of plant closings changed the employment landscape. From 1966 to 1973, corporations moved over a million American jobs to other countries. Even more jobs moved from the Northeast and Midwest to the South, where unions were scarce and wages lower. New York City alone lost 600,000 manufacturing jobs in the 1960s.(4) The article discusses the loss of close to nine million acres of land by Blacks in the U.S. since 1910 mostly due to ignorance and deception from whites. Legal and financial assistance to rural Black landholders are provided by the Emergency Land Fund (ELF). Over 130 cooperatives across the South have been set up by the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC).