Rev. Floyd Rose 

I have been in Valdosta for 21 years, and except for the time I returned to Toledo to make a speech, I have been at the Martin Luther King programs.

They have always been entertaining, and at times informative. And the Southern Christian Leadership Conference has always given $100 per the request of the President. However, I would be less than honest if I did not say that I have been disappointed in the Martin Luther King Committee’s apparent lack of commitment to any of the things for which Dr. King stood and worked.

The Valdosta City Board of Education is building an $83 million-plus high school, and only one black contractor received one contract worth less than a half-million dollars, or less than 1 percent of 1 percent of the $83 million, and the MLK Committee said nothing.

Their sons can run the ball, throw the ball, and kick the ball for the entertainment of whites, but their fathers cannot get work on the new high school.

We have heard the excuses about blacks not being qualified, or they didn’t bid. Neither is true.

Historically, blacks have only been qualified when whites have said they were qualified. When they did bid and had the lowest bid, they still didn’t get contracts. They were told that their bid was not responsible. And “responsible” has always meant whatever whites wanted it to mean. And we find it interesting that blacks are qualified to get work everywhere else, but not at the new high school. 

Under no circumstances would Dr. King stand by and watch this happen and say and do nothing. And members of the local organization which he founded will not stand by and say and do nothing either. Whites do what they want to do, and if they need to make it legally right, they make it legally right. If they need to make it legally wrong, they make it legally wrong. Whites and blacks marched side by side until America made what was morally wrong, legally right.

Valdosta’s qualified black contractors have never demanded contracts because they were black, but they didn’t want contracts denied to them because they were black.

There are four black school board members, all put there by black voters, but none of them ever vote for the interest of those who voted for them. If four of the nine board members were white, and 51 percent of the population was white, there is no way that the whites would not demand that a substantial number of the contracts go to whites, and they should. It would be right.

Blacks, as well as whites, fought to get the EPLOST passed so that the Board of Education would have the money to build the new high school, because we were led to believe that blacks would get some of the contracts. But despite their claims, only one black contractor from Valdosta and Lowndes County got one of them.

It was the senior member of the board who publicly said that blacks must get contracts. However, when it came time to vote, he voted along with the rest of them.

Floyd Rose is president, Valdosta-Lowndes County Southern Christian Leadership Conference.