When City Manager Mort Abramowitz appointed me to the position of Equal Opportunity Coordinator for the City of Niagara Falls, N.Y., nearly 30 years ago, it came after our city had come to terms with the reality that something had to be done to help make the city's labor force and spending patterns more realistically reflect the city's population.
At that time, in the early 1970s, Niagara Falls was just beginning to wake up and realize that the world was changing, and that we had been standing still, holding onto the way things used to be, with the largest majority of African-American workers, as few as there were, clustered at the bottom of the city's work force and, with rare exception, none in the middle and at the top of the ladder.
Joe Profit -- a highly regarded and respected, albeit down-to-earth and lovable rotund man with a speech impediment which forced him to speak, as he said, "the King's English," in a clear, articulate and deliberately precise pace -- was the only black man in recent history back in those days to rise through the ranks to head a city department.
In fact, it was in his Department of Public Works -- with the labor-intensive, backbreaking jobs of plowing and maintaining the streets in the dead of winter, picking up the garbage and putting the cans back where they belonged every time, and generally keeping the city looking clean and safe -- where the biggest majority of black men who were willing to work hard could find a job with good benefits working for the city.
My appointment was not the result of the city manager's sudden empathy. It was the culmination of pressure that had been building on the city administration by a coalition of interests who had begun to question the city's spending of federal grants and other public money that was supposed to be used to address some of the city's most needy, which, according to the their own records, included a significant proportion of the city's African-American population.
Some, like the NAACP's Blondeva Bond and a few brave black ministers and community activists, dared to stand up and ask some tough questions in Albany and Washington about what looked to them like a record of abuse.
How was it possible for the city to apply for and receive millions of dollars of Community Development Block Grant funds based on a demonstration of need in the predominantly black neighborhoods, and then spend the money elsewhere? Why was it possible to exclude African-Americans from the jobs that the money was used to create? Why were minority businesses being systematically excluded, overlooked and ignored when the federal dollars were being spent to purchase goods and services?
Why was nobody doing anything to correct this?
Our coalition began filing formal complaints challenging the city's funding applications for federal Revenue Sharing Funds as well as the block grant money, threatening to cut off the supply unless our questions were addressed.
Finally, after months of accusations and denials, appeals and new threats, the city decided to re-evaluate the situation and we negotiated a settlement.
With the commitment of the City Council, and the mayor behind him, Mort offered me the position.
I accepted the job and we hired a small staff that worked extremely hard to do the right thing and make sure, as best we could, that the hiring and purchasing processes were fair. It was not easy. We met with some resistance, but over time, with continued pressure from the community, we made a difference.
Suddenly, there were positions opening up in formerly all-white city departments being filled by qualified African-Americans.
The police and fire departments, with new money from the feds, began a recruitment, training and promotion program. Even the convention center got on board and hired their first African-American who worked in something other than maintenance.
Things were looking up.
One of the people I worked with all those years ago was still there the last time I visited City Hall about two years ago. She was, amazingly, still working there. Though not doing exactly the same job, she knew the numbers. She said the Equal Opportunity Coordinator and all of the staff positions that were created to monitor and report the city's performance had been eliminated years ago, and that the city had been sliding backwards ever since.
"It is worse now than it was when we first started," she told me, announcing that she would soon be retiring. "I don't know who is going to do this when I'm gone," she said, "but somebody needs to know what's been going on here." Then she warned, "And somebody needs to do something about it!"
I agree.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |