Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 27, 1995 TAG: 9511270080
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAN CASEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The phone began ringing off the hook at Perneller Chubb-Wilson's Northwest Roanoke home Oct. 17. The callers sounded incredulous.
Had she heard that during a City Council meeting the day before, Mayor David Bowers said there was no racial divisiveness in the Roanoke Valley?
``Is David asleep?'' Chubb-Wilson recalls caller after caller asking.
The 61-year-old widow, mother of seven and grandmother of 19, swung into action.
That day, she made an appointment with Bowers, although she had to wait nearly a month to see him. Then she won commitments from five other people to go with her to the mayor's office. Together, they would set him straight.
``To me, there's more racism here than anywhere else I go,'' Chubb-Wilson said.
On Nov. 15, they confronted Bowers at City Hall.
Yes, the mayor acknowledged, he'd made the statement attributed to him.
But what he meant, Bowers explained, is that blacks and whites don't seem as polarized in Roanoke as they are in some other places. ``I have never detected in Roanoke an unwillingness, a divide between different races, where we can't get together and talk about working [problems] out,'' he said.
Before the meeting was over, the mayor promised the group that he would consider holding town meetings on racism in Roanoke. He also promised that a Community Relations Task Force he is re-establishing will be representative of the city's diverse population.
The concessions may have seemed minor. To Chubb-Wilson, they marked another day in a long activist career. She has battled discrimination and injustice in Roanoke for years.
The meeting with Bowers came on the heels of Chubb-Wilson's forming the first-ever Roanoke chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization Martin Luther King founded and led in tearing down American segregation in the 1950s and 1960s.
Chubb-Wilson will be inducted as chapter president at a Jan. 14 fund-raiser for another civil rights group she's president of: Concerned Citizens for Justice USA.
Other officers of the new SCLC chapter include the Rev. Lenord Hines, first vice-president; Herman Carter, second vice-president; and Jeanette Manns, third vice-president. The Rev. John L. Washington will be chairman of the chapter's 11-member board.
``From a civil rights perspective, it's wake-up time in this valley,'' Hines said. ``People have slept away the '70s, they've slept away the '80s. We're tired of the blatant racism, the injustice.''
Chubb-Wilson's home on Willow Road is her resume as a civil rights activist.
The foyer walls are crowded with plaques awarded by the NAACP and other organizations; framed congratulatory letters from Presidents Clinton, Bush and Reagan; an autographed picture of former Gov. Douglas Wilder; collages of snapshots of herself and others picketing. There also are several framed newspaper articles about Chubb-Wilson.
The big awards, she confides to a visitor, are in her bedroom,``but you're not going to get up there.''
Her office desk is piled with documents, notes, phone numbers scribbled on scraps of paper. They partially bury her computer. Beneath the desk are boxes crammed with more files. An adjacent file cabinet is crammed, too. It's evidence she has accumulated over the years working on behalf of people pressing complaints of job discrimination, racism in the courts, and Rule 11.
Rule 11 means little to the average person. But to Chubb-Wilson, it represents the zenith of her work as a civil rights activist.
Chubb-Wilson and Carl Poindexter, a retired college professor from Franklin County, changed the way civil cases brought by poor people are handled in federal courts across the country.
The rule , a footnote in federal court regulations, lets judges order plaintiffs to pay the attorney fees of defendants if a case is deemed ``frivolous'' by the judge and dismissed.
Back in the 1980s, the rule snared Poindexter to the tune of $18,000 after an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging utility taxes. He decided to fight it.
Chubb-Wilson joined him in 1985 when she read about his case in a newspaper. Her concern was a peculiarity unearthed by legal scholars: Rule 11 had been disproportionately applied against plaintiffs in civil rights cases and had a chilling effect on such cases.
Together, they persuaded then-Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke, to work to change it. After an arduous eight-year journey through the American Bar Association and Supreme Court, they won. The change, which took effect Dec. 1, 1993, gave judges the freedom to impose lesser punishments, rather than expensive attorney fees, in frivolous cases. It was a victory for poor clients and their attorneys.
The same year she teamed up with Poindexter, Chubb-Wilson founded Concerned Citizens, because, she said, courts discriminate against the poor.
``There is no justice for poor whites or poor blacks in this area,'' Chubb-Wilson said. ``The only people who receive justice are people with money. Poor folks can't even find lawyers to take civil rights cases in Roanoke. They all want $1,000 up front.''
The Roanoke SCLC chapter is a nearly all-black organization now, but Chubb-Wilson has plans to extend an invitation to whites. Fundamentally, it's a Christian organization open to people of all colors, she said.
``I think when we bring white ministers, black ministers, ministers of all faiths and races together, we can work on a solution,'' she said.
In talking about her goals for the Roanoke chapter, Chubb-Wilson pointedly shies away from criticizing the leading civil rights group in town, the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
But within her justification for forming the SCLC chapter is veiled criticism of the NAACP. Some black activists disaffected with the NAACP tried unsuccessfully to oust its leader, the Rev. Charles Green, this year.
The SCLC is needed ``because nothing has been done about the racial problems,'' Chubb-Wilson said. ``There's blatant racism in the courtrooms; there's blatant racism in the work force; we even have racism in City Hall.''
And there may be a bit of a struggle in the offing between the two organizations.
``I didn't know a thing about [the SCLC chapter],'' Green said Tuesday. ``I don't know where they meet, when they meet, why they meet. As far as I'm concerned, the NAACP is still the main civil rights organization in Roanoke.''
As for Chubb-Wilson, Green added: ``I'd rather not pass my opinion on about her. I'll just let her go on and do her own thing.''
City Councilman Mac McCadden, a board member of the NAACP, said he thinks the formation of the SCLC chapter could hurt struggles by blacks if it is viewed as an organization that's trying to divide the other group.
``If they can work together and get people to realize that ... people need to work together, then it's a positive,'' McCadden said.
Councilman William White, council's only other black member, thinks it is exactly that.
``I just sent my $10 membership fee in yesterday,'' White said.
by CNB