Warner Saunders--In Two Acts / Act One: The Activist

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: Warner Saunders: In Two Acts : By Zondra Hughes, N'Digo Editor : Now embracing retirement from NBC-5 Chicago, news anchor Warner Saunders reveals the real deal behind his storied, fascinating journey from his radical years as a community organizer to his colorful years as an Emmy Award-winning reporter. : This is Warner Saunders, in two acts. : Act One: The Activist : Nothing sparks a revolution quite like shocking, in-your-goddamn-face injustice. The protest and the outcome is anyone's guess, of course, but action will be taken. As a Tuskegee graduate student, Warner Saunders witnessed an injustice that led him to his life's calling as a community organizer. : In 1950s Alabama, blacks -- many affiliated with the VA Hospital -- were decidedly middle class, yet the struggle for Civil Rights ensued. At the time, The NAACP operated a branch office and had several affiliate organizations in the state. : In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white person, sparking a one-year boycott. In response, John Patterson, the thirtysomething pit bull-ish attorney general, obtained a court order to inspect the NAACP's records and membership lists. The NAACP refused, citing privacy rights and retaliation concerns. : In a blink, the Montgomery Circuit Court issued an injunction barring the NAACP from conducting business in the state and later walloped the organization with a $100,000 fine. The attorney general banned the NAACP just as an unrelated Tuskegee race revolt was percolating. : In Tuskegee, blacks outnumbered whites, so officials passed a new state law that retracted the city limits and effectively stripped the black residents of their right to vote. : It was assumed that without a functioning NAACP branch office, the law would go unchallenged. : It was assumed. : But what Atty. General Patterson didn't know was that graduate student Warner Saunders, a Chicago import, had come to town. In two blinks, Saunders joined forces with The Tuskegee Civic Association. Proving that justice was blocked, but not broken, the members carried out a scathing economic boycott of the white-owned stores. Six weeks into the boycott, AG Patterson raided the organization's headquarters, citing an investigation of the "illegal boycott." : The white storeowners were suffering; the boycotters were not flinching; and Warner Saunders was smack dab in the middle, mixing it up and bringing the pain. The state caved. : "We set up a boycott of the stores and within months, before we left, they had given in and blacks had the opportunity to vote," Warner says, his brown eyes now blazing with recall. "I was so happy that I didn't know what to do. I thought, maybe what Dr. Martin Luther King said had some real possibilities here. Think about that; we were a bunch of kids, and we just scared them into changing their voting habits." : Fresh from the Tuskegee victory, Warner says he was "truly radicalized" when he returned to Chicago and delved into teaching, landing a job at the Hess Middle School on Chicago's South side. To describe Hess as a troubled school is an understatement. On March 31, 1957, The Chicago Daily Tribune headline screamed, "Reign of Terror in West Side School!" reporting that "roving bands of teenage hoodlums" attacked the principal and threatened students. : (Add to the mix the turf war between rival gangs -- the Vice Lords and the Egyptian Cobras -- Hess was the demarcation point.) : It was here that Warner and a fellow teacher threw outdated, used books from the window. "We needed a more updated view about what slavery is about - and not from the used books that we got from other high schools," Warner explains. "We thought the greater good was to demonstrate to kids is that you're not supposed to take stuff like that." : Outside the classroom, yet another injustice was brewing, now that the black neighborhoods were bloated with Southern migrants. : At the time, Chicago had experienced a steady stream of Southern blacks; some estimates indicate that up to 1,000 per day were making Chicago their new home. The demand for housing (within the segregated black neighborhoods of Woodlawn, Hyde Park and Cottage Grove) surged, paving the way for roguish real estate transactions that were openly rife with racism. : "They bought those two- and three-flat apartments and were breaking them up to move more people in, and you can just imagine what that was like," Warner says. "What would happen is that black people would buy a house on contract, but if they would miss one payment the house was seized and resold to others. I got involved with Monsignor John J. Egan and he started the Contract Buyers League, and we stopped that in a hurry." : Empowered once again by community activism that led to action, Warner's next mission was to transform the lives of gang kids. Warner left the classroom to become director of the Better Boys Foundation; he had a goal to retool disenfranchised young, black men and separate them from the deadly gang culture. Warner operated a boxing club with his colleague, Fred D. Hubbard, a prominent social worker. : "We had a successful boxing club. We got a lot of kids out of jail, but that lasted until a young kid'a very good boxer - and his brother held up a grocery store and killed a guard. They were on the run for a year and then they spent many years in jail. That killed off that program with us, and we started thinking of more social and educational programs." : Looking back, Warner argues that his idea of utilizing social programs to transform gang members was faulty at the core. : "The premise is faulty because the gang provides something they don't get at home or anywhere else," he sighs. "The very thing that we get at home -- love, respect, feelings of family and that somebody will die for you -- they are devoid of that. So why should they join society when they are not going to get that at home?"

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