Apartheid. USA 1988

January 20, 1987:

Joseph N Cooper, director of the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance resigned his post under protest saying that some Reagan Administration officials were paying only ‘lip service’ to the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. Mr Cooper who is black has served as head of the contract compliance program for 17 months. He was hired by Labor Secretary, Bill Brock. Mr Cooper told the Times that Attorney-General Edwin Meese 3d and Assistant Attorney-General, William Bradford Reynolds, were among those in Washington who

[p. 18]

sought to thwart Federal rules that require numerical hiring goals for companies that do business with the Government. These rules affect more than 20 000 companies employing 23 million workers at 70 000 sites.^28.

The first hint of trouble for Gerard J Papa, (33), white, and a lawyer by profession, and James Rampersant jr (24), who works for his father's floor-cleaning and polishing company and who is black, that trouble was on the way were the headlights of another car coming directly towards them on a deserted Coney Island street. The other vehicle blocked the car of the two men and next they found themselves under fire by a barrage of bullets as they cowered on the floor of their automobile. When the firing stopped, Mr Papa said, he was dragged from the car by officers and beaten and kicked. Mr Rampersant said he, too, was kicked while lying handcuffed on the ground. ‘When I asked what we had done, a cop put a gun to my head and said, “Shut up, or I'll blow your head off”,’ Mr Rampersant recalled. Later the police acknowledged that the arrests were a case of mistaken identity. Both men were stopped and fired at because they resembled a hold-up team - a Hispanic and a black man - wanted for the street robbery of a woman in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn six days earlier. Mr Papa and Mr Rampersant filed suit against the city in the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn.

In Buffalo, New York, Erie County Judge Joseph P McCarthy sentenced a man to life in prison after he had killed three black men ‘solely for the color of their skin’. The killer, Joseph Christopher (31) would not be eligible for parole for 58 1/3 years. ‘Your acts defy reason,’ the judge said. Mr Christopher faces another trial for killing a black man in Niagara County.^29.

28. The New York Times, from a report by Kenneth B Noble

29. The New York Times, by the Associated Press