Black Politics: A New Power

...Clearly this latter form of politicization in cities would be of more lasting political value than the rather ad hoc politicization used by lower-strata black militants...

...Without this intervention it is doubtful that the large lower strata of poor, unskilled, and semiskilled persons in the white ethnic groups of 50 years ago would have largely been transformed into skilled workers and homeowners...

...15 21 23 Kansas City, Mo...

...They are located in 41 of the 50 states, and include, among others, 12 congressmen, 168 state legislators, 48 mayors, 575 other city officials, 362 school board members, and 114 judges and magistrates...

...Negro city-dwelling in this century was stifled by that cluster of norms or customs characterized by the term white racism...

...Stokes polled 94 percent of the votes in black precincts and one-fifth of the white votes, which amounted to the balance of victory...

...Other Negro candidates for city offices, who are unable to see the political limitations of black militant rhetoric, have failed in the past five years and will continue to fail until they learn that the rhetoric of blackness, though of some value in the political mobilization of the ghetto, is no substitute for viable political organization...

...12 18 22 Columbus, Ohio 12 16 18 Phoenix, Ariz...

...32 37 41 Pittsburgh, Pa...

...20 It appears, then, that the lower-strata militant leaders lack the habits, values, and skills required for a durable politicization of the Negro population...

...Educationally, 50 percent of Negro males over 25 years of age completed high school by 1967 (compared to 73 percent of white males) while in 1960 new leadership comes out of the post-World War II college-educated generation of the Negro working class...

...1 2 4 Indianapolis, Ind...

...The incumbent commissioners received no less than 52 percent of the votes in the black precincts, while none of the corn 24 Metro-East Journal, April 3, 1967...

...22 For example, in 1955 only 9 percent of Negro families had income of $7,000 or more, compared to 31 percent of white families...

...Fourth and last, the federal government's recognition, since the riots of the 1960s, of the city's problems as a national priority is another and in a way the most crucial political resource available to the emergent middle-class Negro politicians...

...it is another matter altogether to use community action agencies to encourage welfare mothers to register to vote, to participate in precinct and ward committee elections and activities, to evaluate candidates and issues, etc...

...Clearly anything the city machine did to aid employment and income in East St...

...And to the extent that middle-class and upper-strata Negroes participate in the politics of black ethnicity, they must do so at least partly in terms of the lower-class criteria that legitimate this politics...

...3 8 11 San Francisco, California 6 10 12 Boston, Mass 5 9 13 Dallas, Texas 13 19 21 New Orleans, La...

...One kind of leadership is highly ideological, articulating militancy and black ethnicity as a matter of willed belief...

...BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER geoisie, for the most part, was indeed not induced to use its institutions to politicize the black lower strata in order to bring their votes to the service of party machines...

...35 54 66 St...

...Of course, none of this can be realized without leadership, and two leadership strata now vie for the main role in the politicization of black ethnicity: one is of lower-strata background and so has a special claim to having spearheaded the militant style now common to much of Negro leadership...

...Like Hatcher in Gary, Stokes recognized the need to confront the Democratic machine, again basically racist in its response to a Negro's candidacy, with a competitive organization in the ghetto...

...Also as in East St...

...Carl Stokes, typical of the black middle-class politicians, made his first bid for mayor in 1965, unsuccessfully, but stood again in 1967, winning the Democratic primary in a three-sided race with 52 percent of the votes...

...And the more talented among these transformed lower-strata militants would surely have opportunity to rise to executive roles...

...Their main contribution is rather different: they stamp the politics of black ethnicity with a lower-class style, which means that the experiences and problems of the Negro lower strata (marginal working class and lower class) rather than the black bourgeoisie have a determining role in the politics of black ethnicity...

...Both of these conflict-laden tendencies are directed toward the wider political mobilization of the ghetto and for the growth of Negro political capability...

...Second, the city machines' relative neglect of the black ghetto in the years 1915-60 deprived the Negro elites (the black middle and upper classes) of the opportunity and incentives to give political leadership...

...27 See Patrick J. McCaffrey, `Black and White inBaltimore," The Nation, December 21, 1970, pp...

...In short, by stamping the politics of black ethnicity with a lower-class style, the lower-strata militants 19 See Malcolm X (with Alex Haley), Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1966...

...This gives them a certain perception of and empathy with the special material and psychological needs of the black lower strata and thus, perhaps, a capacity to articulate these needs in a manner reasonably satisfactory to wide segments of the lower strata...

...In fact, their lead in settling in the cities amounted to more than 40 years...

...Of primary importance was that the migration from the South brought hundreds of thousands of Negroes at least some of the 2 Negroes did not acquire effective voting rights inthe South until the Federal Voting Act of 1965...

...The Negro mayors and city councilmen are in the front line of this development...

...In short, the civil rights politics, which the neglect of city machines caused Negro elites in most cities to adopt, had a class and status bias that prevented the black ghetto from taking on the attributes of an ethnic political subsystem—that is, an articulate and politically cohesive group within the structure of the city machine...

...For the first time in this century, black politics possesses a style and an ideological structure that facilitate vertical political linkages among the various strata in the black ethnic turf...

...23 This new leadership is exemplified at its best by recently successful politicians like Richard Hatcher, son of a steel worker and first Negro mayor of Gary, Indiana...

...Third, the rapid growth in the past decade of Negro population in the inner city, together with the emigration of whites to city fringes, is also to be counted as a resource...

...But this belated politicization of black ethnicity exhibits features that were uncommon in the development of white ethnic communities at an earlier period...

...their numbers alone argued against total indifference...

...Class Politicians THE LEADERSHIP NEEDED for this difficult task is in fact available...

...But a Negro stood as mayor in 1967, and at the head of an all-black ticket contesting all executive posts...

...21 35 38 Houston, Texas 24 23 23 Cleveland, Ohio 16 29 34 Washington, D.C...

...But before this can happen, the black city population, like its white ethnic counterparts, must make its contribution to the political forces that make possible such federal government intervention...

...Political Sociology of Racism FOR THE FIRST half-century after slavery was abolished in the United States, the Negro lived mainly in the rural South and, save for a brief 10-15 years of Reconstruction, he had no rights of political participation...

...and in the black precincts, where some 59 percent of all votes were cast, the incumbent white gained 60 percent against the Negro candidate's 40 percent...

...8 Herbert J. Gans, "The Ghetto Rebellions and Urban Class Conflict," in Robert Connery, ed., Urban Riots (New York, 1969), pp...

...It represents the black working-class segment that rejects lowerclass life-styles and cultivates instead upwardly mobile or middle-class aspirations, occasionally marries upward when opportunity allows, purchases a home, has some savings, and above all inspires sons and daughters to pursue higher education...

...57-58...

...Therefore this black urban sector has been and remains crucial in shaping both current and future Negro politics...

...BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER have, largely unwittingly, effected a veritable revolution in the structure of Negro politics...

...Some have fathers, mothers, siblings, and kin still residing in working-class quarters and can readily point to this as evidence of their ties to the black masses...

...This means that resources required to alter these people's lives can no longer be found in the cities but must be acquired from the federal government...

...Louis, as in many other cities, was aided by the fact that in 1964 some 33 percent of the city's Negro males were unemployed, and 52 percent of those Negroes holding jobs earned less than $3,000...

...Though these new politicians may not perform this role as convincingly as the lower-strata militants, they will certainly be more acceptable than the established middle-class Negro leaders...

...Urbanization provided blacks with the social organization and institutional differentiation that is necessary for effective political power.4 Essentially, political modernization is a matter of highly differentiated strata and institutions that will sustain political articulation beyond parochial settings (ethnic, religious, regional, economic, etc...

...18 29 36 Milwaukee, Wis...

...but they have contributed little to the durable politicization of the Negro lower strata, since they prefer shortrun tactics linked to violent rhetoric and symbolism, and sometimes to violence itself...

...35-40...

...Louis, the Democratic city machine was well-organized in the ghetto...

...What, then, was the experience of this critical urban minority of the Negro population that resided outside the South from 1910 to the post-World War II era...

...Included among these cities are Baltimore (1972), Gary (1973), Cleveland (1975), St...

...335 MARTIN KILSON and early-20th-century politicians...

...Thus, the Negro lower or popular strata (that is, the working class, the marginal working class, and the chronically unemployed class) have been, until the past decade, deprived of participatory incentives, an experience that had motivated the white ethnic lower strata's political development.15 This, in turn, has produced a Negro urban lower strata that by the 1960s ranked low in all salient indices of modern political life: low political skill and knowledge, a high sense of powerlessness and estrangement from institutionalized processes, and low participation...

...This means simply to use ethnic patterns and prejudices as the primary basis for interest-group and political formations, and to build upon these to integrate a given ethnic community into the wider politics of the city and the nation.' 3 To the extent that a given ethnic community was successful in so organizing itself, it could claim a share of city-based rewards and, through congressional and presidential politics, of federal government rewards.' 4 To fall outside or be only partially integrated into this process, since World War I, was necessarily to be without a basis for sociopolitical power...

...Rather, white city machines, with the notable exception of Chicago, 7 simply dealt halfheartedly with the problem of the political inclusion of black ethnic groups on terms comparable to that of white ethnic groups...

...Others in this category include Carl Stokes, first Negro mayor in Cleveland, Louis Stokes, first Negro congressman from Cleveland...

...Leadership and Black Ethnicity: Lower-Strata Militants ALTHOUGH THE RIOTS initiated by lowerstrata Negroes in the mid-1960s stimulated the rise of militant political leaders, it was the federal government's War on Poverty that enabled these leaders to institutionalize their politics...

...4 W. E. B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (Philadelphia, 1899), pp...

...The political resources marshalled by this new group of Negro politicians—the first generation in their families to gain a college education—equip it to begin the task of institutionalizing the politics of black ethnicity...

...However, unlike the all-black ticket in East St...

...Louis mayoralty race was defeated by the weight of the city machine...

...This was apparent in rather stark fashion in the mayoralty election in the City of East St...

...Quillin, who surveyed Negro status in several cities of Ohio before World War I. See Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middle Town (New York, 1929...

...for although black migration from the South began in earnest around 1910-15, in the succeeding 50 years more than half of the Negro population remained in the South...

...Neither interest nor pressure groupssuch as trade unions or lesser political forms ofvoluntary associations equalled city machines inthis regard...

...Illinois, New York, and Ohio have 14, 12, and 13 Negro state legislators respectively, and the proportion of Negro legislators in Ohio is larger than the Negro share of population...

...Thus two congressmen (Shirley Chisholm and Charles Rangel) represent Negroes in New York City, two (Charles Diggs and John Conyers) Negroes in Detroit, one (Louis Stokes) Negroes in Cleveland, one (Robert Nix) Negroes in Philadelphia, two (Ralph Metcalfe and George Collins) Negroes in Chicago, and one (Parren Mitchell) Negroes in Baltimore...

...Equally significant was his showing in white precincts: he polled 17,000 white votes, a figure that represents nearly his margin of victory-18,736...

...Leadership and Black Ethnicity: New Middle...

...Moreover, East St...

...As for the lower-strata militants' place in the politics of black ethnicity, they will be of little positive value if they persist in a political style emphasizing short-run and merely symbolic political gains...

...Louis, Negroes were by 1967 slightly over 50 percent of the population...

...In both cases a disciplined use of the black militant style forged vertical linkages among groups within the Negro ghetto, allowing these campaigns to surmount the divisions of the Negro community...

...As Negroes are more concentrated in cities than any other ethnic group, the city is now more than ever the main arena for institutionalizing the politics of black ethnicity...

...The attitudes of the police will sometimes be found among the most important items considered in local Negro politics in the North.9 In summary, the rigid and inhuman restrictions placed upon the Negro's access to the modem social system of American cities distorted and truncated his political development in the past 60 years...

...See Table I.) ' See Charles Merriam, The American Party System (New York, 1924...

...BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER lower-strata militants grasp the long-run needs of Negro political development, they will redefine their role in a manner conducive to a division of political tasks between themselves and the middle-class politicians...

...Table IV shows the percentage growth of Negroes in the 30 largest cities in the 1950s to 1960s...

...In the first 60 years of this century, only a minority of the black population, though an increasing minority (e.g., 10 percent in 1910, 23 percent in 1930, 32 percent in 1950, 40 percent in 1960), had any opportunity at all to experience modem political life...

...It is, after all, one thing to use community action organizations to attract adherents to ideas of black nationalist militancy and incite a demonstration by welfare mothers...

...s W. Lloyd Warner and Paul S. Lunt, The Social Life of a Modern Community (New Haven, 1941), p. 217, passim...

...167-92...

...6 From World War I onward, the coercive regulatory agencies of the cities combined with party and machine organizations to exclude the Negro from an effective political role...

...This was never realized through other forms of politics available to urban Negroes in this century—not through the second-class version of machine politics available to urban blacks (which I have characterized elsewhere as neoclientage machine politics 12) and not through civil rights or protest politics...

...This is particularly true for Negro mayors and city councilmen because their primary constituency, the black population, has more poor, unskilled, and semiskilled persons than TABLE IV PERCENTAGE OF NEGROES IN EACH OF THE THIRTY LARGEST CITIES, 1950, 1960, AND ESTIMATED 1965 New York, N.Y...

...Now in its formative period, this politics has yet to encounter major internal conflicts...

...3 Fortunately, the measure of political freedom available to blacks in other parts of the country was sufficient to allow an attack on white authoritarianism in the South...

...The turn of these militant leaders to politics after the riots of the mid-1960s was less a matter of wanting to provide leadership than of utilizing their new status in order to derive benefits on a scale unavailable to them in their previous "hustling" roles such as pimp, narcotics pusher, small holdup man, numbers writer, and others...

...This situation characterized the victory of Richard Hatcher in the 1967 mayoralty election in Gary, Indiana...

...In the latter, militancy and ethnicity are wedded to established city politics, much in the manner of white ethnic late-19th-century 11 Cf., Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 1949...

...The federal government did not intend, of course, to transform the community action organizations into militant political instruments...

...Atkins, Hatcher, and Stokes are lawyers), but a grasp of institutional dynamics in American society-a grasp unavailable to the lower-strata militant leaders...

...two, adequate aid to cities by the federal government...

...As it happened, however, much less than this occurred...

...the other is middle-class, though a good portion of this second leadership group is first-generation middle-class, and this segment is currently leading the bid of the black bourgeoisie to seize a dominant role in the emerging politics of black ethnicity...

...The machine's only Negro candidate, E. Saverson, longtime leader of the city's Negro Democratic organization, brilliantly exhibited the machine's strength...

...So do the current endeavors of two kinds of black leadership to utilize black ethnicity as an instrument for political efficacy in the black ghetto...

...Elmo Bush, the Negro mayoral candidate, got 29 percent and his running mates 20-26 percent...

...In this way the lower-strata militant leaders converted the War on Poverty's action organizations from social service agencies into instruments for politicizing (and radicalizing) such heretofore inarticulate Negro lower-strata groups as welfare mothers, gangs, school dropouts, semiskilled workers, etc...

...For just as their hustling roles afforded them a certain celebrity status—virtually that of "culture heroes" 19—their concern with such ad hoc political action as confrontations with officials provides them both publicity and celebration...

...9 14 17 Philadelphia, Pa...

...As in East St...

...Two developments will help keep such conflicts at bay: one, the co-optation of lower-class militants by the new black middleclass politicians...

...tion of ethnicity through city machines, and his political actions have borne the mark of this experience ever since...

...Though they have become an important force in the new politics of urban black ethnicity, they have proved incapable of institutionalizing this politics...

...10 Cf., Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted (Boston, 1951), chaps...

...and though he received only 46 percent of the votes in white precincts, a return much below his white running mates, no candidate on the all-black ticket received more than 12 percent of the votes in white precincts...

...it will acquire a degree of institutionalization comparable to the development of ethnic-centered politics among white ethnic groups at an earlier period...

...In the past 20 years, however, this weakness of the Negro working class has been significantly overcome, and this, along with the marked growth of the Negro middle class, constitutes the most striking sociological change in contemporary Negro society.22 This 21 See Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York, 1931), chaps...

...This study, written by the leading Negro Communist in the 1930s, covers the efforts of the Communist party to manipulate the Negro working class into a ghetto-wide leadership role...

...There are now about 1,500 elected Negro politicians or officials, 62 percent of them outside the South, representing overwhelmingly city constituencies...

...But since the corrupt Democratic machine opposed him even after he won the primary, his main instrument turned out to be the local press, which though not supporting Hatcher still did not oppose him, thereby allowing some whites to appraise him on the basis of his merit and the issues of his campaign...

...Since the 1930s the federal government has become the major source of the politically inspired benefits called patronage for ethnicgroups that contribute to congressional and presidential victories...

...The hold of this kind of machine patronage over the Negro vote in East St...

...Increasingly, mayors and city councilmen spend more time seeking federal revenues...

...Louis like other cities experienced some black militancy in the 1960s, including a small riot, and the head of the Negro ticket, Elmo Bush, an educational administrator, conducted the campaign in militant style, which included a visit to the city by Stokely Carmichael whose address at a mass rally included the remark: "Let me tell you, baby, when we got 52 percent of the voters in a city, we own that city —lock, stock, and barrel...

...BUT BLACK URBANIZATION was a particular form of city-dwelling...

...For it was the ability of political leaders of white ethnic groups to mobilize the votes in their communities that enabled the Democratic party to dominate the presidency in the era 1932-60...

...Indeed, interest groups like tradeunions and veterans' organizations realized theirmore effective politicization through city machines...

...In the November 1967 mayoralty election where Stokes confronted the Republican candidate Seth C. Taft, Stokes's campaign organization repeated its primary victory...

...See also J. DavidGreenstone, Labor in American Politics (NewYork, 1969) . 16 Harold Zink, City Bosses in the United States: A Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses (Durham, 1930...

...the city power structures that enabled them to shape their social institutions.' Ethnicity and the Negro Political Subsystem SURELY AN INTERPLAY OF POLITICS and social structure similar to that of white ethnic groups was required for effective and modem politicization of Negroes...

...Even more, special acts of city machines from World War I onward sought to truncate top Negro political development: "The immigrants and their descendants who controlled the [political] machines were anti-Negro," remarked Herbert Gans, "and gerrymandered ghetto neighborhoods so that they would not have to share their power with Negroes...

...SeeBureau of Census, Social and Economic Conditions of Negroes in the United States (Washington, 1967...

...6 See, e.g., Dayton David McKean, The Boss: The Hague Machine in Action (Boston, 1940...

...106-11, passim...

...Second, their background within the lower strata of the black community...

...MARTIN KILSON any other community...

...Frank U. Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio (Ann Arbor, 1913...

...Only in Chicago did this pattern of political relationship between the black bourgeoisie and the black lower strata evolve between the two World Wars...

...For a variety of reasons, mayors and city councilmen, more so than congressmen, have in the popular mind been symbolic of the political growth and success of ethnic groups...

...The lower-strata militant leaders pursue a policy of short-run rather than long-run politicization of the ghetto because they are accustomed in general to short-run behavior...

...No other American immigrant group faced comparable barriers to political modernization.10 It was precisely the white immigrants' reasonably, though not fully, caste-free interaction with 9 Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York, 1944), p. 527, passim...

...W. Lloyd Warner, the sociologist of mainstream America, discovered this in Yankee City: "The caste barrier or color line, rigid and unrelenting, has cut off this small group [of blacks-0.48 percent of the population] from the general life of the community...

...see ThomasWoofter, ed., Negro Problems in Cities (NewYork, 1928), pp...

...3 5 7 Buffalo, N.Y...

...Shirley Chisholm, daughter of an artisan and the first Negro woman to be elected to Congress, representing a new district in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York City...

...Furthermore, white liberals gained over 20 of the additional city seats in the state legislature, which enables the Negro and white liberal legislators to be a decisive force if they nurture their alliance.27 It would seem, curiously, that a long-run problem for the new middle-class black politicians is less their capacity to forge and maintain alliances with enough whites to ensure victory than the maintenance of discipline within the politics of black ethnicity...

...Civil rights politics was largely a middleclass affair: from 1915 to the 1950s the leadership and membership were mainly middle-class, and the large Negro lower strata had little political relationship to civil rights politics...

...These alliances were successful and Parren Mitchell's election as the first Negro congressman from Maryland was assured...

...17 See Gosnell, Negro Politicians...

...10 14 18 Chicago, M. 14 23 28 Los Angeles, Calif...

...The lower-strata militant leaders would apply their skills to the task of linking the middle-class politicians with the Negro lower classes, rather like the ward and precinct organizers in the traditional city machine.28 Also like the traditional ward, district, and precinct party workers, the lower-strata militants who enter this political relationship with middle-class black politicians will be put on city payrolls as patronage workers, which will guarantee them support during the intervals between elections...

...In 1965-70 the government allocated nearly $5 billion under the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act to a community action program, which led to the formation of more than 2,000 so-called community action organizations...

...So did Frank Warner knew well, whatever the general life of a modern community is, surely politics is a salient feature: for politics is, after all, the process through which services and benefits are allocated among competing sectors of society...

...12 17 20 San Antonio, Tex...

...The racial edge claimed by the all-black ticket was of little moment in face of a well-organized and disciplined party machine...

...TABLE II NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF NEGROES IN SELECTED NORTHERN CITIES, 1910-1940 Number of Negroes Percent Negroes in Population 1910 1920 1930 1940 1910 1920 1930 1940 New York 91,709 152,467 327,706 458,444 1.9 2.7 4.7 6.1Chicago 44,103 109,458 233,903 277,731 2 4.1 6.9 8.2Philadelphia 84,459 134,229 219,599 250,880 5.5 7.4 11.3 13Detroit 5,741 40,838 120,066 149,119 1.2 4.1 7.7 9.2St...

...It is clear that the 6,762 white votes Hatcher gained were indispensable to his victory...

...340 BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER the populous industrial states claim a major share of these congressmen and state legislators, and several of these black mayors head industrial cities...

...What is more, the incumbent mayor won 88 percent of the votes in white precincts, compared to 12 percent for the Negro candidate...

...The political infrastructure necessary to realize the long-run goals of this politics begins in cities and evolves outward, either directly through congressmen to the federal government, or indirectly through county, city, and state offices...

...Candidacies which in the past five years have recognized the limitations of this rhetoric, and have based their campaigns upon sound organization, have registered major victories...

...It is noteworthy that Negro communities in TABLE III POPULATION CHANGE BY LOCATION, INSIDE AND OUTSIDE METROPOLITAN AREAS, 1950-1966 (NUMBERS IN MILLIONS) Population Negro White 1950 1960 1966 1950 1960 1966 United States 15.0 18.8 21.5 135.2 158.8 170.8 Metropolitan areas 8.4 12.2 14.8 80.3 99.7 109.0 Central cities 6.5 9.7 12.1 45.5 47.7 46.4 Urban fringe 1.9 2.5 2.7 34.8 52.0 62.5 Small cities, town and rural 6.7 6.7 6.7 54.8 59.2 61.8 Source: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C., 1968...

...Primary among these is higher education, which affords the new leaders not only skills (e.g., Gibson is only 36 percent of Negro males at 25 years of age had completed high school (compared to 63 percent of white males at 25 years of age...

...The government's purpose was rather to provide the Negro lower strata with an opportunity to develop basic administrative and executive skills, a goal some observers claim was realized, though I doubt 18 See Sar A. Levitan, "The Community Action Program," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 1969, p. 67...

...37 37 40 Denver, Colo...

...An earlier study does have some data on homeowning tendency among the Negro working class...

...he was confronted by an incumbent ticket, all but one, white...

...These organizations were quickly politicized by lower-strata black militants throughout the 1960s and became their primary political structure...

...Moreover, the black militant rhetoric of the candidates on the all-black ticket was far from persuasive to the voters in the East St...

...This was achieved by Stokes's 25 See Edward Greer, "The 'Liberation' of Gary, Indiana," Trans-action, January 1971, pp...

...The restrictions imposed by whites upon blacks necessarily jeopardize the latter's capacity for political adaptation to life in the cities: blacks were victims of the whims and caprices of white politicians, bureaucrats, and party machines, few of which were notable for exemplary political manners even in dealings with whites...

...BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER missioners on the all-black ticket received more than 35 percent...

...But this depends upon what kind of regime controls the federal government, whether Republican or Democratic...

...8 The coercive power of city machines related to the urban black in ways that demoralized him...

...But both candidacies combined, as they must, the politics of black ethnicity by alliances with liberal sectors of the white population, and in both instances the white voters provided the margin of victory...

...Louis in 1967—a city in which some 84,000 Negroes comprise 60 percent of the total population and somewhat over 50 percent of the voters...

...The same is now required of the new Negro politicians...

...23 An area of major neglect in the sociology of the urban Negro is the study of the life-style and social structure of the working-class Negro...

...The rates of Negro concentration in the inner city since the 1950s and of white emigration to the city fringe and suburbs are shown in Table III...

...The fact that new middle-class politicians like Richard Hatcher are only recently removed from the Negro lower strata strengthens their position in this regard...

...On the central role of city (and county) machinesin politicizing white ethnic lower strata, seeGosnell, Machine Politics, chaps...

...18 26 31 Detroit, Michigan 16 29 34 Baltimore, Md...

...25 As a result, Hatcher won by a narrow margin, and though 91 percent of Hatcher's votes came from black precincts, 17 percent came from white ones...

...This leadership draws upon the Negro working class, a stratum in the urban black ghetto that since World War I has made numerous attempts to facilitate a ghetto-wide leadership, but with little success' 21 partly because of the working class's inability to provide enough of its sons with higher education...

...A previous experience with hustling, which is common to some lower-strata militant leaders, has also influenced their political style...

...It is projected that within the next 15 years the population of some 11 major cities will become nearly 50 percent Negro...

...Louis (1978), Detroit (1979), Philadelphia (1981), Oakland (1973), and Chicago (1984...

...Of special interest was that the incumbent Negro commissioner on the incumbent mayor's ticket, E. Saverson, polled the largest vote of all candidates in the black precincts...

...Whereas the city machines' full-fledged inclusion of white ethnic communities provided a powerful stimulus to the Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, and other ethnic bourgeoisies to participate in the political organization (and thus control) of their ethnic lower strata, 1 ' the black bour is It is often forgotten how crucial city (andcounty) party machines were in providing thewhite ethnic lower strata with viable political organization...

...The violence and militancy typical of contemporary urban Negro politics stem directly from this situation...

...MARTIN KILSON political rights they had so long been denied...

...6 and 20, which deal with the role of independent Negro unions, especially among Pullman workers, from World War I to 1930...

...the other is pragmatic, though not without a world view, articulating militancy and black ethnicity as a matter of political necessity...

...The incumbent mayor polled 71 percent of the votes and none of the four incumbent commissioners less than 60 percent...

...For one thing, it signifies the profoundly important difference between the earlier civil rights politics and the new politics of black ethnicity...

...Louis ghetto...

...He also recognized the need for allies in the white precincts...

...Only in Detroit and Gary do Negroes have a majority of city councilmen, and in Pittsburgh the percentage of Negro councilmen is larger than the Negro percenttage in Pittsburgh's population...

...Although a Negro had stood for the city office of commissioner (four commissioners and a mayor constitute executive government in East St...

...What are these political resources...

...5 5 5 Newark, N.J...

...Another successful Negro candidacy for mayor of a major city occurred in Cleveland where in 1965 Negroes were 34 percent of the city's 800,000 population...

...In cities where the chances to elect Negro mayors and councilmen are good, the problems facing the effective mobilization of Negro votes and some white support are for the most part still unsolved...

...One such feature is sharp conflict with the American political system as such, at all levels—city, state, and federal...

...Kenneth Gibson, first Negro mayor in Newark...

...Thomas Atkins, son of a working-class clergyman, and the first Negro city councilman in Boston in over 30 years...

...30-39...

...in order to provide public and civil services...

...also Lawrence H. Fuchs, ed., American Ethnic Politics (New York, 1968...

...MARTIN KILSON an engineer...

...This recognition, though already acted on by both Democratic and Republican administrations through the War on Poverty, the Model Cities project, and new welfare legislation, still awaits substantial action...

...The limited relationship between the urban Negro and the white-controlled city machine, from World War I through World War II, deprived the blacks of a primary mode of political development that had been available to white immigrant groups—the politicization of ethnicity...

...5 As $ See Rayford W. Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir 1877-1901 (New York, 1954...

...This meant that the politics pursued by Negro elites in most cities never produced a vertical integration of the elites with the Negro lower strata...

...They are more likely to be accorded discourteous or brutal treatment at the hands of the police than are whites...

...One cannot overstate the significance of this...

...The cities were becoming the center of sociopolitical influence, and the Negro's belated migration from the South to the cities of the East, North, and Midwest meant that his institutional capability for handling modem urban life was much weaker than that of the white ethnic urban groups which had preceded him by 40 years...

...2e Gaining white voters was central to Mitchell's campaign, for his congressional district was composed of only 40 percent blacks and 60 percent whites (40 percent Jews and 20 percent WASPS) . Mitchell's forces made a black-white alliance that was based on two (largely Protestant) New Politics groups and two Jewish-Negro integrated organizations, backed by liberal labor leaders...

...17 34 47 Source: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C., 1968...

...652-53...

...BLACK POLITICS: A NEW POWER As Gunnar Myrdal observed some 30 years ago: In most Northern communities, Negroes are more likely than whites to be arrested under any suspicious circumstances...

...IT IS CLEAR from the foregoing that the allblack ticket in the 1967 East St...

...First, personal attributes...

...But if rewards are forthcoming from the federal government, there is little doubt that the politics of black ethnicity will mature in coming decades...

...This conflict takes the form either of popular-based urban riots, commencing in 1964 and initiated largely by lower-strata blacks, or the intensive cultivation of antiwhite perspectives among blacks...

...Finally, lower-strata militants such as the Black Panthers could—if they come to 28 See, e.g., J. T. Salter, Boss Rule: Portraits in City Politics (New York, 1935...

...This division of political roles in the leadership of the ghetto will entail the lower-strata militants' acquiring political roles as local (ward, district, precinct) organizers, while the middle-class politicians would hold the executive political roles...

...The key to the white votes was a brilliantly executed alliance with liberal white Protestants and a scattering of white ethnic supporters, reinforced by the endorsement of Cleveland's most powerful newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer...

...As for possible conflicts over the rewards required by the emergent black ethnic politics, clearly these can be derived in adequate measure only from or through the federal government...

...The urban Negro thus was either outside or only partially linked to this politiciza 12 Martin Kilson, "Political Change in the NegroGhetto, 1900-1940," in Nathan Huggins, Martin Kilson, Daniel Fox, eds., Key Issues in the AfroAmerican Experience (New York, 1971), pp...

...Thus middle-class politicians participating in the politics of black ethnicity now articulate needs, demands, and policies that touch more on problems of lower-strata than of middle- and upper-strata blacks...

...Unless the latter can regain power in Washington and hold it for another 20 years, it is unlikely that the rewards needed for the politics of black ethnicity will be forthcoming...

...In Chicago, contrary to the pattern of other cities, the white politicians— especially Republicans—accepted the fullfledged inclusion of the black ethnic turf on terms comparable to those applied to the white ethnic turfs.17 In other cities, however, the Negro elites, denied full-fledged inclusion in machine politics, turned to civil rights or protest politics...

...5 6 7 Seattle, Wash...

...During this same period, the major white nonProtestant ethnic groups were crowding into the cities of the East, North, and Midwest, and by the end of the 19th century they had laid the basis for mastering the politics of the emerging urban society.' But the Negro did not enter urban society in significant numbers until World War I, and so for nearly 40 years, roughly from the early 1880s to 1915, the typical black had neither political rights (stripped from him by the white racist rule in the post-Reconstruction South) nor access to the social system of urban America...

...The rate of killing of Negroes by the police is high in many Northern cities...

...Moreover, the majority of white ethnics in the working class and marginal working class, not tomention those who were lower class, never gainedtrade union membership anyway, which meantthat they could rely only on party machines orparamachine organizations for their politicization...

...See also James W. Ford, The Negro and the Democratic Front (New York, 1938...

...The Future THE PATTERN of politically cultivating black ethnicity in order to consolidate Negro voting power and to discipline the black vote in favor of one candidate can be expected to persist through the 1970s and into the succeeding decades...

...52-53...

...7 7 8 San Diego, Calif...

...4 6 9 Atlanta, Ga...

...Louis, Hatcher did not rely simply upon militant rhetoric...

...20 See Martin Kilson, "The `Put-On' of Black Panther Rhetoric: On the Function of Polemical Excess," Encounter, April 1971, pp...

...No other level of government today has the tax power necessary to secure the revenues required to upgrade the Negro's low skills, health care, home ownership, educational facilities, etc...

...Instead, he organized a grassroots campaign—a united front of Negro organizations—which endeavored to overcome the Democratic machine's foothold in the ghetto...

...DuBois, one of the first systematic observers of the urban Negro, recognized over 70 years ago that there is a strong correlation between the institutional differentiation available to city-dwelling blacks and their political modernization...

...Yet little of this politicization of the lower strata represented a long-run political gain...

...Not that the black city-dwellers were ignored by white-controlled city politics...

...Louis 43,960 69,854 93,580 108,765 6.4 9 11.4 13.3Cleveland 8,448 34,451 71,899 84,504 1.5 4.3 8 9.6Pittsburgh 25,623 37,725 54,983 62,216 4.8 6.4 8.2 9.9Cincinnati 19,639 30,079 47,818 55,593 5.4 7.5 10.6 12.2Indianapolis 21,816 34,678 43,967 51,142 9.3 11 12.1 13.2 Los Angeles 7,599 15,579 38,894 63,774 2.4 2.7 3.1 4.2Newark 9,475 16,977 38,880 45,760 2.7 4.1 8.8 10.6Gary 383 5,299 17,922 20,394 2.3 9.6 17.8 18.3Dayton 4,842 9,025 17,077 20,273 4.2 5.9 8.5 9.6Youngstown 1,936 6,662 14,552 14,615 2.4 5 8.6 8.7 Source: United States Census Reports...

...reject violence—perform the important task of keeping the middle-class politicians informed of the changing needs and interests among the black lower strata, and could thus be a major factor in ensuring the political accountability of the politicians, something few American ethnic groups ever succeeded in maintaining...

...2 However, the political experience of this urbanized black minority obviously was part of the kind of political life that was to dominate 20th-century America...

...TABLE I PERCENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE POPULATION REGION-1950, 1960, and 1966 Negro Population Region 1950 1960 1966 United States 100 100 100 South 68 60 55 North 28 34 37 Northeast 13 16 17 North-central 15 18 20 West 4 6 8 Source: Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C., 1968...

...See Table II...

...37 38 44 Minneapolis, Minn...

...Louis, Mo...

...Now there is need for a leadership with the skill and political sophistication necessary to institutionalize these vertical political linkages, and thereby to maximize the political power of the Negro ethnic sector on a scale comparable to that realized earlier by other ethnic groups...

...Ruling elites in the South certainly were both willing and able to sustain Negro political subservience to the end of this century, and the connivance of the North, Midwest, and West cannot be discounted...

...Without this migration, they doubtless would not have obtained these primary political rights far beyond the 1960s, when they were secured, at least in the written law...

...The goal is to facilitate the Negro community's vertical political structure, and to surmount the horizontal class cleavages...

...Though they had no illusions about the white city machine, they understood that from it they did or could derive concrete gains in the form of jobs...

...These alliances will persist and gain in sophistication as the politics of black ethnicity matures, though some vigilance will be necessary to combat the simplistic and erroneous notion of black-white coalitions as tantamount to a zero-sum game, which was first enunciated by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton in their book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (New York, 1967...

...233-34, passim...

...The Black Panther leaders have taken this style to its extreme...

...MARTIN KILSON campaign, getting 96 percent of the votes in black precincts, with 74 percent of the Negro electorate participating...

...6 13 17 Cincinnati, Ohio 16 22 24 Memphis, Tenn...

...Additional electoral victories employing this method were registered in 1970 in the mayoralty campaign of Negro candidate Kenneth Gibson in Newark, New Jersey, where blacks are one-half of the population, and in the congressional campaign of Parren Mitchell in Baltimore...

...Louis would have an important political effect on the Negro vote...

...Federal government intervention in city politics is required if this politics is to serve Negroes as a means of social change...

...so was the election of the first Negro city district attorney, Milton Allen, and the election to the state legislature of 16 Negroes among the 55 legislators representing Baltimore...

...In fact, the resources that ultimately enabled the Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, and other whites to consolidate their power and improve their conditions also came not from the cities but from the federal government...

...On role ofparty machines in politicizing interest groups thatserve the lower strata, see Martin Meyerson andEdward Banfield, Politics, Planning, and the Public Interest (Glencoe, 1955...

...Only with the rise of a politically cultivated black ethnicity in the past decade has the Negro ghetto acquired the features of a politically institutionalized ethnic community...

...la See, e.g., Harold Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago Model (Chicago, 1937...

...The Lynds discovered a similar situation in their study of a typical American community, the small-sized city of Muncie, Indiana (35,000 population) in the 1920s...

...but in 1967 nearly 39 percent of Negro families fell into this income category, compared to 55 percent of white families...

...14 For a study of city-based rewards stemmingfrom the politicization of ethnicity, see TheodoreLowi, At The Pleasure of The Mayor: Patronage and Power In New York City 1898-1958 (London, 1964...

...MARTIN KILSON However, federal agencies administering the War on Poverty could not adequately control either what was done at the city level with the resources of community action organizations or the composition of these bodies...

...institutionalizing a Politics of Black Ethnicity NEGRO POLITICIANS, the main agents of the political institutionalization of black ethnicity, are more numerous today than they were at any period in this century...

...If, however, the 26 For an excellent antidote to the CarmichaelHamilton view of coalition politics, see Bayard Rustin, "'Black Power' and Coalition Politics," Commentary, September 1966, pp...

...For example, a classic description of a ghetto like Drake'sand Cayton's Black Metropolis has virtually nothing to say about the working class, compared to the marginal lower class, and the term "working class" is not even in the book's index...

...24 The election results were the opposite of Carmichael's projection...

...Louis) and won as a machine candidate, no black had contested the mayoralty before 1967...

...T Cf., Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago, 1935...

...In making this shift in the style of political articulation, middleclass leaders allow the lower strata a leverage that has existed never before...