The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, September 29, 1982, Image 1
v. SouthiCaro 1 inianaaLi brary
horseshoe
Former policem;
''" iTT ;i;^:;.;
Photo by Andy Putnam
Samuel Calaham, one of the six municipal officers arrested
with Tchula, Mississippi, mayor Eddie Carthan, came to
Columbia Monday to speak at Zion Baptist Church in
Columbia.
-H- - * a
i icKei camp-out oegi
By Tom Coyne
jTHp Pa
Tickets for the annual CarolinaClemson
football game will go on sale helping U:
Sunday Oct. 17 at Carolina Coliseum, . .
according to Kyle Pruitt, chairman of the Ot hOlirS
Senate Athletic Committee. nn trnuiil
Pruitt said the procedure would be
similar to last year's, which he termed a p.m. tO Cl
SUCC6SS. #
Students will not be allowed on WB W0I11
Pnlicpnm crrruinHc until aftor 7 r? m _ ? '
b. UU..UU w.v? U1VV1 ? IJ.IIlu
following Carolina's Oct. 16 game r
against Furman University.
"The campus police will be helping us
out the first couple of hours to make sure
there is no trouble," Pruitt said. "If it
takes us until 9 p.m. to clear the
premises, then we won't start the list CASH O!
until 9 p.m." for the tick
Pruitt warned there may be students There
trying to start lists of their own, but the periodicall
only list that will be accepted is the list be out in
IPruittwillhave. process fas
THE GAME will be played at Clem- There
son's Memorial Stadium and the student available,
allotment for the game is 1,700 tickets. students w
The total ticket allotment for USC is case some
12,000, as agreed upon by the two schools. or if they t<
Last year, 7,000 tickets were available The line
to students. About 2,400 students camped and throug
out for the tickets, and the remaining tunnel will
ones were distributed during the day. passable.
The tickets will cost students $15 each. Pruitt sa
Each student is allowed to buy only one decided to
ticket regardless of how many student year beca
identification cards are presented. IDs trouble re]
will be checked on a computer list to trash fire
ensure no invalid IDs are used, Pruitt the coliseu
said. PRUITT
The tickets are not student tickets, procedure
I however, and Pruitt said if a student Sunday.
could find a friend willing to camp out, "Last y
it's possible to use the tickets for non- people in a
USC students. handle 1,7c
an crusades for i
By John Braun
Although Sam Calaham's story of racism in the '80s is set
in a small Mississippi town, his story could take place
anywhere, he told a handful of people at Zion Baptist Church
Monday night.
Calaham is one of the Tchula Seven, seven black municipal
officers ronvicted in 1981 of assaulting who they saw was a
bogus police chief in their hometown of Tchula, Miss. One of
the seven, ex-Mayor Eddie Carthan, is still in jail on the
assault charge and two other charges are still pending.
~i r *i~ ~ i 11 ?
auc umci sia iucuiucis ui me gtuup are louring ine country
to raise money for Carthan's defense, Calaham said.
"This is not just Tchula; this is happening across the
country," Calaham said. "People are being misused. It's no
different than South Africa."
Calaham was a police officer in Tchula at the time of the
assault. He was given a three-year suspended jail sentence
and fined $500 for his role in the incident.
Tchula, located near Jackson in the Mississippi delta
region, has 3,000 residents, 80 percent of whom are black,
Calaham said. Located in the lOth-poorest county in the
nation, the major occupation for the black residents of
Tchula is tractor driving on the large, white-owned plantations.
Before Carthan's election in 1977, the town was characterized
by "unpaved streets, outhouses, no jobs ? the only
jobs there were in agriculture, driving tractors for $2.50 an
hour. It was like it was in the '50s and the '40s ? it hadn't
changed ? until Eddie (Carthan) came in," Calaham said.
The town was run by a white mayor, Lester Lyons, who
was in office from 1965 to 1977 and was elected after Carthan's
term expired last June. "The money had always run
out as far as paving the street past the last white person's
house/' Calaham said.
When Carthan took over, Tchula had $290,000 in federal
grants for programs Lyons refused to start, he said. The
money was being spent only on the white people until a group
of blacks filed a class action suit to stop the spending.
When Carthan took office in 1977, two-thirds of the town
was on welfare, 47 percent 7>f the,town's housing units did not
have plumbing and more than 30 percent of the workers were
unemployed, according to a National Campaign to Free
Mayor Eddie Carthan, the Tchula Seven and to Preserve
Black Political Rights brochure.
In the next four years, 100 housing units, a day-care center
and a health clinic were built, streets were paved, and homeweatherization,
home-repair and nutrition projects were
started.
- ? p I V + i iHrint rr
ns UCl. ID Oiuuciu IC
mpus Police will be TOllOWinCI V
S out the first couple From stati Reports
tO make sure there is USC student Robert Matthe'
e. If it takes us until 9 who was charged with reckles
. connection with an accident th
lear the premises, then death of a West Columbia won
: start the list until 9 ?fhis
The scene of the traffic acci<
- Senate Athletic Committee at Whaley and Pickens St
,,, . v | n . "mess," according to Columfc
Chairman Kyle Pruitt j a Potash, the first polic
scene.
NLY will be accepted to pay "I was a paramedic for six j
ets. worked at many accident scei
will be roll calls taken seeing what I saw when I got t
y and those camping out will to rate it as one of the worst," 1
groups to make the roll call
iter. HE SAII) a black Trans-Am
are 1,700 student tickets by Patrolman Q. L. Yo
but Pruitt said about 1,800 doughnuts" on a street near ca
'ould be allowed to lineup in said Young began to chase the
students don't make roll call
ike their names off the list. Carl Stokes, systems vice
will run around the coliseum law enforcement and safe
h the Assembly St. tunnel. The University Police officers tr
be roped off so it will still be Trans-Am moments before
The officers reported they
id the Athletic Committee had squealing and saw the car
use the same procedure as last Blossom Street near the pa
use of its success. The only They ran into the street to t
ported last year was a small car, but the car continued
set on the GreeneStreet side of (south) on Main Street, Stokes
m.
SAID he expects the whole The officers reported tha
to be completed by 11 a.m. police car flashing its bl
chasing the Trans-Am, Stokes
ear, we took care of l,()00 k
n hour, so we should be able to Potash said Young reportec
K) students by 11," Pruittsaid. on a hill near campus. "Aboi
mavor's release
'When the president said "We're going
to give the rights back to the states" ?
0Kr that's the same thing they did 100
years ago when Hayes was president/
- Tchula Seven member and former policeman
Sam Calaham
Calaham said he was hired after Carthan became mayor.
Before the election, he said, "They had about three blacks
that they used to patrol the black area and arrest all the
black people." At the time of the assault, the police force had
one white and five black officers.
Until 1977, blacks had not participated in local government,
Calaham said. "For the first time in the history of Tchula,
black people came to a board (of aldermen, who run the
town) meeting after Eddie (Carthan) was elected," he said.
"Since he's been kicked out of office, no blacks have been
there (at board meetings)."
The board of aldermen during Carthan's term had one
white member and four black members, not including the
mayor, who could vote only to break a tie, Calaham said.
However, black representation was diluted on the board, he
said, because two of the black aldermen who worked for
whites "teamed up with the one white alderman" to oppose
Carthan's plans.
One of the aldermen, who has a master's degree in
mathematics, pumps gas for a white friend of the white
alderman. Calaham said "If von don't think thp wav ho (the
white alderman) tells you to think, you don't have a job."
The board blocked Carthan's proposals to bring six factories
to Tchula, he said. "The (white) farmers worried
about losing control," he explained.
Then, one night in 1980, the power struggle between the
mayor and the aldermen came to the fore when the police
chief resigned. Carthan, who Calaham said is empowered to
appoint a temporary chief until the next board meeting,
appointed a black man to take his place.
Three weeks later, when the new chief reported for duty, he
found the locks at the police station had been changed by a
retired police officer who had been appointed illegally by the
white alderman, Calaham said.
Carthan was notified, and he asked four policemen to
accompany him and an alderman to the station. Calaham,
who was in the group,said, "We went down to the station and
we asked them to go home ? that we would settle it in the
See "Tchula," page four
iieased on bond
weekend car accident
a half later, we got the accident report," he
sThnmWHEN POTASH arrived at the scene, he
at caused the saic* he saw "cars damaged all down the
lan has been line. The car (Thompson drove) was facing
parents after me and there was some smoke coming
from the radiator," he said.
Potash said he has not determined if the
dent Saturday car caught fire, but said a bystander "put a
reets was a fire extinguisher to the car. We may never
>ia Policeman know some things about the car. it was so
eman on the badly damaged," he said.
An unidentified nurse and medical student
fears and I ve hacj pUne(} Thompson from the car, Potash
nes, and after said. "They did everything right," he said of
here, I'd have ^e two attendants.
Potash said.
The Trans-Am was resting on its wheels,
was observed he added.
ung "doing
impus. Potash There were two passengers in the car,
car. both visiting students from the University of
Georgia, Potash said. One of the students
president for was still in Baptist Hospital Tuesday.
ly, saia iwo
ied to stop a
the accident. ~ ~ ~ "
heard tires |AG|/1fi
traveling on Sii^iy"
rking ^ara^p' Sororities gain more pledges with the end
ry to stop the ,, ? .. *
. turning left offa" ru$h Page three
' The USC Theater Department opens its
1982-83 season with a strange birthday
t a Columbia , paBC, 10
ue light was
'sa*d. ?Crazy Zack's continues to hold on to the
No. 1 position in the men's intramural
1 he lost the car football poll. Page 13.
it a minute and ??