Point of Information

PART OF ANY American president's job is to make sure everyone believes that equality of rights are alive and well and flourishing in the country. So it came as no surprise when Ronald Reagan recently offered this bit of good cheer:

The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans.

The problem, of course, is that people everywhere start heaving similar signs of relief ("Thank goodness that's all over with now") and looking with great irritation at those of us not ready to ignore or dismiss the various events that argue for a slightly more realistic view. Indeed, those unwilling to follow the standard enthusiastic line on equal rights in America-i.e., those baffled by the notion that the current status of minorities could be widely considered anything but a travesty-such people are labelled cynics, malcontents, subversive.

Nevertheless, the facts remain. A fascinating "point of pride for all Americans" is taking place in Greensville. Texas, where two Black men are now fighting for their lives. Anthony Williams and his roommate, Lennel Geter, were arrested last year and charged with having committed more than a dozen armed robberies. Geter was convicted in October of robbing a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant, for which he was sentenced to life in prison.

The odd thing is, no one ever found a gun or money in the mens' possession; they were indicted on the word of a single, unidentified police informant. According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which will defend Williams and Geter, the police of Greensville arranged a frame-up in order to "solve" a slew of successful robberies in the area.

The civil rights group also says the men were under police surveillance for weeks before the crime spree began, and that the trial which ended in a life sentence was highlighted by police perjury and coaching of witnesses by the prosecutor. Public contribution to a special fund will help defray the cost of defending the men (Williams is about to be tried), and assist in the fight to overturn Geter's sentence.

Northerners inclined to dismiss the case as the atavistic behavior of a small Southern town should keep in mind the murder of 30-year-old William Atkinson in Boston last spring. Atkinson, a maintenance worker, was with a friend when the two were attacked by a gang of bottle-throwing white men, who chased Atkinson into the Savin Hill T station. As he fled down the tracks in terror, Atkinson was struck and killed by an oncoming train.

Just a few months later, in New York, three Black transit workers stopped their car in the white neighborhood of Gravesend to get a midnight snack on the way home from work. A gang of white men attacked them; Dennis Dixon fled, and Donald Cooper escaped with the help of a piece of pipe. Their friend and co-worker, William Turks, whose arm was in a cast, was not so lucky. The whites dragged him from the car, and killed him with what was officially described as "overlapping blows to the head by a blunt object like a stick or rod, or even a foot."

One 18-year-old, Gino Bova, has just been convicted of assault, riot, violation of civil rights and manslaughter; the jury opted for just about everything except the most serious initial charge: murder. Bova will be sentenced to two weeks, and of his five indicated friends, one is still at large.

The people who proudly proclaim the achievement of equality of rights for all always seem to disregard the never-ending stories from all over the country about who's been lynched and who's been denied things like due process. There may in fact come a time when something approximating equal rights will exist in American Institution ask that the self-congratulatory" we've got equal rights" rhetoric be toned down a bit, if for no other reason than out of respects for the friends and families of Anthony Williams, Lennel Geter, William Atkinson and William Turks.