Description

One of CIC's primary activities was to hold biweekly meetings called "community dialogues" to discuss broad issues such as racism, police sensitivity, education, and employment discrimination within the city of San Diego. The meetings were moderated by CIC Executive Director Carroll Waymon, and his voice is often the first one heard in the audio recordings of the meetings. George Hall, deputy superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, delivered a statement to the CIC listing steps the District had taken in response to these dialogues, but made a controversial request that he not be questioned about any point in the statement. Common responses to his statement acknowledged that some steps had been taken, but not enough had been done and things were not moving quickly enough to stem a potential uprising by citizens, and particularly youth, in the minority communities. Two people commented that only through insurrection and rioting would any real change come about, and one suggested that the upcoming 200th Anniversary Celebration would be an ideal opportunity for minorities to bring their point home through disruption. Hall promised that an African American would be appointed to principal at Lincoln High, and was warned not to appoint just any African American, but one who was truly sensitive to, and understanding of, the African-American community. Under fire to clearly state his position, Hall was unwilling to indicate either a personal or professional commitment to the cause of eradicating racism in the schools, asserting that he did not deem it appropriate to ask such a thing as part of the dialogues. He also requested a 2-month break from the dialogue to further prepare for the final point of his statement, which was the "Inner City Project" to address community relations. Since the topic of education was to be postponed, a number of items were proposed for the next meeting's agenda, to be considered by the Agenda Committee. The tape constitutes the meeting minutes, but a summary consists of eight pages of stenographic-notebook paper with a handwritten list of tape-recorder-counter numbers (001-553) next to names of speakers and notes about actions, questions, some Gregg shorthand, and so on.