Mississippi's segregationist ways cost Jackson federal money it was going to use for airport construction. Jackson Daily News and State-Times May 4, 1956 articles report that the Commercial Aviation Administration* implemented a new policy that cut federal funding for airports that had segregated facilities.
Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (NY) had pressed the CAA to adopt the new policy. However, Jackson dodged a bullet as the planned federal funding for Hawkins Field improvements was cut from $40,000 to $35,000. The new policy stated that the recipient must agree not to use the funds to build "segregated facilities".
However, the Jackson Daily News article provides a window into the racist past. It reported
Capt. Turner (Manager of Jackson Municipal Airport) said the Airport Commission had requested $40,000 from the federal government and that the government had knocked off $5,000 partly because of the CAA race policy.Kingfish note: This set of news articles turned up in my research on the Jackson municipal airport. No articles of a similar nature have been found regarding federal funds and segregation at the airport in Rankin County. The CAA provided $1.5 million to the construction of the new airport. It isn't known if the new new airport practiced segregationist policies. However, the Jackson Airport Commission could have spent the federal money on other parts of the project and used its own money to build facilities that were indeed segregated.
Although Capt. Turner said the airport terminal has always been segregated, part of the improvements money is to be spent on two new rest rooms which will be segregated. The terminal has no colored rest rooms at this time.
"We don't have many colored passengers" Capt. Turner said.
*forerunner to FAA
Earlier posts on history of Jackson municipal airport
The airport opens
How the airport was won.
The new airport's master plan.
Why is the Jackson airport in Rankin County?
Why Jackson built a new airport.
 |
| Click on image to enlarge |
7 comments:
with the expensive fares at the airport now, the passage could be revised to "we dont have any passengers anymore"
With the mandatory 20% minority participation requirement strongly embedded into any and all of Jackson's contracts, it no wonder nobody with a good reputation for projects finishing on time, within budget and with quality work will even bid a job anymore. The Jackson leadership is so "color oriented", they don't realize the good work crews from top top companies contain many workers of color, all colors.
LOL at 8:17 pm who imagines that in an all white world projects were ever always finished on time, within budget and good bids or didn't have workers of " all colors"!
Just like with everything, race and professed religion is not now and never was a good predictor of single person or single group competence and honesty since every race and religion has their incompetent and dishonest!
6:13- Thank you. It's refreshing to hear that you believe minority participation mandates are no longer needed as everyone has the same problems. Now we need to express those views to the City of Jackson and Hinds County.
Minority participation is a joke if you have any dealings with the construction and bidding process. Many "minority contractors" are just that on paper, get the job, then sub it out to a legitimate contractor. This isn't a racial post at all, but rather what happens. The majority aren't doing their own work. That costs the project owners more money in the long run which is then passed down to the tax payers. Some of these contractors are also the wives(yes Caucasian) of the bigger contractors just running a paper business. Then you have those that are actually trying to be a contractor themselves on the gravy train and way underbid the job, cant finish the work, and it has to be rescued by the bond company and sent back out to rebid.
What's really needed are GOB and friends and family set asides.
Then everything would get done and under budget.
What is really needed is to take the lowest bid and make the contractor actually do the work according to the contract. Noel idea, I know. Call me racist but isn't giving the contract to a person for the color of their skin the sort of thing people were fighting against?
Post a Comment