How OIC of South Florida was born

 By Al Calloway

Rev. Maurice Dawkins came to the NAACP in Fort Lauderdale to work with the churches back in 1999, as I remember, and we quickly got together because I had seen his photograph in a booklet given to me by Rev. Dr. Leon H. Sullivan, Founder of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America, known as OIC. The reason that I remembered Rev. Dawkins was because he had organized the second OIC for Dr. Sullivan’s 1964 Philadelphia start up in California. It is historic how OIC quickly blossomed across America, including Indian Reservations, and later internationally.

My meeting with Dr. Sullivan happened back in the early 1970s when I worked with Harlem ministers and had a weekly hourlong FM radio show. Sullivan came to visit the group’s OIC program and I asked for an interview, and he joyfully gave me the last half hour of my broadcast. That is how I got the rare historic booklet. It is also how I could never forget OIC. Beauregard Cummings ran the L.E. Lee Branch YMCA back in 1997-98. I went to see him because I was curious why the OIC he led in Fort Lauderdale did not survive the so-called “white backlash” that enveloped the nation during the mid to late 1970s.

After interviewing former Fort Lauderdale OIC board members, including James Mizell, Cato Roach and George Allen, I wrote a piece published by this paper with a cover photo of Attorney Geroge Allen who was very active with the OIC project here, through his admiration for Rev. Weaver, then the popular minister of Mt. Olive Baptist Church who spearheaded the thrust for OIC here.

I gave the article to Rev. Dawkins and told him that Atty. George Allen was his Alpha Greek letter brother and would incorporate a new OIC here if he could be convinced it could work. We started OIC of Broward County and went to work. We worked hard in Broward County and ran the road dropping seeds in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach County. We then incorporated OIC of South Florida and began work with OIC of Miami Chairman and  longtime friend, Miami Times publisher, Garth Reeves. After investigating, I reported to Reeves and Dawkins that the Miami OIC was fraught with questioned costs, commingling of funds and that staff was unreliable.

We decided to disband with the end of that current summer program and start anew with the OIC of South Florida, Inc., which George Allen incorporated. Garth Reeves had been grooming his daughter to take over as publisher of the Miami Times and just wanted to be Chairman Emeritus and for Dawkins to be Chairman. However, Dawkins and I soon found Miami politics, at the time, to be too thick and unsettling, and decided to retreat for the time being. Garth Reeves and George Allen agreed. We tabled the South Florida plan to focus on a Broward County success. I brought in my friend and businessman, John Ruffin to spearhead working the downtown crowd while Dawkins worked Black leadership with George Allen and Art Kennedy quietly on the wings. To do the work, I retired as a vice president of the NAACP here after 20 years of service from 1980 to 2000. I am a Life Member! Dawkins also retired from the NAACP Executive Committee.

My Haitian Brothers from Brooklyn, New York, Patrick and Rene Jabouin, eagerly shared office space with our OIC thrust. They had leased the second floor of the Black bank building on State Road 7 in Lauderdale Lakes for their budding real estate enterprise. We soon got seed money to start an office with a project coordinator type person who could run with the ball. After receiving a few resumes, we developed a short list. The “we” included Dawkins, his wife, Dr. Joan Wallace (Dawkins insisted that his wife retain her professional name, instead of his), and me. My mind was clear after hearing one candidate for a few short minutes. However, the process had to go another round. One other person had skills I thought would interest John Ruffin, but I stuck to my guy for OIC. It turns out that Newton Sanon, my pick, won. (I have never been told anything about the other two votes!)

Last week at the third OIC Middle Class Summit, at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fl, I was invited to participate in honoring Newton Sanon, President and CEO of OIC of South Florida, Inc., for 25 years of community impact. Earlene Striggles Horne, Velma Blaine, and I were also honored as OIC of South Florida Founding Board Members. “The seed of an apple is an orchard invisible.”

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