Think Tank Makes African-American Issues Its Focus

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FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

Since the beginning of this year, he's had an eagle's eye view of black life and black power in America. Ralph Everett is the new president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. It's considered the nation's top African-American focused think tank.

For over 35 years, the Joint Center has studied and published analyses of African-American office holders and worked on issues from AIDS to housing. Ralph Everett recently sat down with NPR's Michel Martin to talk about his past and his future at the Joint Center.

MICHEL MARTIN: Throughout your career, you've had a series of important roles that are well understood as power positions in Washington, but may not be as well understood outside of Washington. So that's one of the things I wanted to talk about. You were the first African-American to head a U.S. Senate committee staff. Why is that job important?

Mr. RALPH EVERETT (President and CEO, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies): This job is very important in the United States Senate, because the staff that I headed was - I was chief counsel and staff and director of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which is basically viewed as the business committee in the Senate. We had very wide jurisdiction over transportation issues, aviation, space program, all issues impacted in the business community.

These provisions are very important, because we are the people who write the legislation that impacts the lives of Americans everyday. And as a staff director, you basically lead the staff and you direct them. You work with all of the 100 senators as legislation goes to the floor. So you basically set the agenda.

MARTIN: Being the first African-American to hold that position, did you feel that your performance was held to a special standard of scrutiny? Did you feel that you have something to prove?

Mr. EVERETT: Well, I felt that I needed to do the best job possible. And when I actually left the Senate, when people talked about me, they talked about the Senate Commerce Committee as being the best-run staff on Capitol Hill.

I have always worked to do my best in jobs, which I have held, and to some extent I do believe that more eyes are on you when you are a first to see how you will do. And you want to do very well so that others may follow behind you.

MARTIN: When you left the Hill, you went into private practice. You became the first African-American partner at your law firm. And later you were the first African-American managing partner of a law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers. Now, I don't mean to be rude, but you probably paid more in taxes last year than you will make in the job you are doing now. Am I right about that?

Mr. EVERETT: Oh, you're close. You're very close, but it's not about the money.

MARTIN: So why did you want to do it?

Mr. EVERETT: The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, as you mentioned, is the premiere African-American think tank, impacting the lives of African-Americans and other people of color on a daily basis.

I think that this is a very critical and important time in the history of our country, and I wanted to be at a place where I could have an impact. And that has a lot to do with the background, and my family background, and what we have done as a family over the years to improve the lives and help others in community service.

MARTIN: Well, talk to me a little bit about that. I mean, you come from Orangeburg?

Mr. EVERETT: Orangeburg, South Carolina.

MARTIN: South Carolina. And as I understand, you come from a family of firsts. Your father was one of the first three African-Americans on the Orangeburg County Council.

Mr. EVERETT: That is correct. And the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies was very important to my father in 1977, when there were few African-Americans who held elected office.

Eddie Williams and the Joint Center, they were there to assist these new office-holders in terms of how do you create a budget, how do you interact with others, and they created groups where all officeholders who were similarly situated were able to meet and get to know each other.

MARTIN: What does your father do in addition to his work on the county council? I'm betting that was a part-time position. Most of those are.

Mr. EVERETT: In addition to the work on the county council, my father was a principal of the local school, the all-black school back then called Elloree Training School. And my father also was the pastor of the largest African-American Baptist church in town.

MARTIN: You couldn't get away with anything.

Mr. EVERETT: I couldn't get away with anything at all.

MARTIN: You were in lockdown.

Mr. EVERETT: I was on lockdown. And everybody in the town was my mother and my father. So as a kid, anytime I went out, I could not - I lived on the straight and narrow road, I could not do anything wrong. Because someone would call my father and my mother and they would say, Reverend Everett, I saw your car headed out in the wrong direction.

And I would get home and they would be waiting right there for me to ask me where I had been. So I do owe a lot to the folks in my community and my friends and my family for making me the person that I am today.

MARTIN: You know, it sounds counterintuitive. It's the kind of thing that is hard to hear people say. But there are people now who believe that something has actually been lost with the end of segregation, that the community closeness that you describe, the sense of everyone being invested in the success of the community, that the community being persons of all levels of education and skill being forced to interact with each other actually had some positives. And I just wondered if you thought about that.

Mr. EVERETT: We did have a lot of things back during segregation that we do not have now. As you mentioned, folks of all different economic classes living in the same community. Whether or not you were the doctor or the lawyer, or whether or not you worked in the barbershop, you were in the same community.

However, I'm not saying that segregation was a good thing. We are now able to do many things that we were not able to do before. Segregation made one make do with what you had. For example, at my all-black elementary school in Elloree, South Carolina, we would have - everything would be hand me down materials. Whether or not it was the baseball bats or the uniforms or our books, were probably two years behind, out of date, but that's what we did. But it was our support system, our parents, our teachers who took a great interest in us. My first remembrance about segregation was when I was four or five years old and there was a circus that came to town.

And I happened to be downtown and I could see the elephants and the monkeys and other things and smelled the fumes. And they all disappeared behind this fence. And I asked my parents, could we go, and we could not go because we were black.

MARTIN: Your hometown was a scene of a terrible crime. Today we call it the Orangeburg Massacre, and this happened when you were a teenager. Tell us what happened.

Mr. EVERETT: When I was in the 11th grade, in 1968, we had a bowling alley called All-Star Bowling Lanes run by a gentleman who decided that African-Americans should not be able to bowl at his bowling lane. And there was a series of protests at South Carolina State College at the time.

And this went on for several days. And a short distance from my house, the National Guard was called out in order to keep order. And there was an allegation that someone fired into the crowd, and the National Guard opened fire on all the students who were standing on campus.

Three students were killed and 27 were wounded. And as it turned out, no one actually fired from the crowd. And at the time, it was referred to as an incident. And it later became known as the Orangeburg Massacre after all the investigations and whatnot were done.

And I still kept all the copies of the newspapers from that time, which I still have, because there was one article that just stayed in my mind, that the headline the next day after the three killings in the Orangeburg newspaper was all hell breaks loose.

And what they had done was all three students who had died, they had moved their bodies to take a picture of them and that picture was on the front page of our local newspaper. And of course a number of parents trying to shield their kids from that scene.

But it was an event where one recognized that the reason that it was called an incident at first was because we had no black elected officials. We had no blacks in positions of power. And so we had no voice. And now, you know, it's so important to be involved in the process, so you have a voice and things that go on where events like this can no longer just be kind of swept under the rug.

MARTIN: South Carolina, of course, is home to some of the most colorful figures in public life. You did work for a senator Ernest Hollings, who retired -

Mr. EVERETT: Yes.

MARTIN: - a couple of years ago. And also Strom Thurmond was a dominant force in, you know, South Carolina, in national politics, you know, for many, many years. You know, we found out relatively recently that Strom Thurmond had an African-American child, whom he was supporting throughout her life, with whom he had a relationship -

Mr. EVERETT: Yes.

MARTIN: - throughout has life. And this of course emerged after his death. I was just curious, what, as a South Carolinian, what do you make of that story?

Mr. EVERETT: Oh, well, we know now that story is true. I had a number of experiences with Senator Thurmond over the years when I was on Capitol Hill. Senator Thurmond - actually, when my only son was born, he delivered a Bible to my son signed by him.

And Senator Thurmond also came in 1989 when I left the Hill and spoke at my retirement party, which kind of evoked many emotions from the crowd that was there to see him and to realize how far Senator Thurmond had come, that he could come to the Russell Caucus Room and deliver a speech congratulating me on being the first African-American ever to had a Senate committee.

There were a number of people in the audience who, tears were in their eyes, who recognized how far Senator Thurmond had come to, you know, to be there. So people do change.

MARTIN: What are your goals for the Joint Center this year?

Mr. EVERETT: My goals for the Joint Center this year will be to continue to work on the issues that we have in the areas of health care, education, political participation, minimum wage, to improve the lives of African-Americans.

And I would like to continue to raise the visibility of the Joint Center, so that when anyone has an issue of concern regarding African-Americans and people of color, whether or not they are policy makers or whether or not they are people from the media, or whether or not they are people in the academic community, I would want the first question that comes to their mind to be what does the Joint Center think.

I want them to come to us. They will come to us with a question. We will answer and we will be here to help to continue to improve the lives of African-Americans.

MARTIN: Thank you.

Mr. EVERETT: Thank you for having me and I hope to be back again.

CHIDEYA: Ralph Everett is president and CEO of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. He spoke with NPR's Michel Martin.

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