THE BLACKS, REAGANISM, AND 1984

...And there is no more need for a black candidate, defeated in the primaries, to run as a candidate in the general election than there is for a defeated white...

...this was followed by a Supreme Court decision in the Bob Jones case, which thoroughly repudiated what the president had ordered...

...Brown vs...

...Board of Education (1954) resolved what today can be stated as a simple question only after a quarter-century courtroom campaign...

...The mix of other civil rights issues and the way to resolve them now presents varying degrees of difficulty, especially in face of attacks by the Department of Justice...

...President Reagan restored tax exemption to segregated schools from which the Internal Revenue Service had removed it, provoking enormous public outrage...

...In the 1940s and '50s, however, there was great uncertainty about the outcome (Brown was argued three times...

...Opponents introduced coverage of sex discrimination to defeat the bill...

...In fact, however, civil rights issues always have been difficult and complex...

...Others, opposed to discrimination in theory, objected to trespass on private property, asserting that law enforced in neutral fashion required convicting sit-in demonstrators and that peaceful demonstrations provoked violence...

...Nevertheless, the great civil rights legislation of the '60s emerged from this situation and became the basis of the rights of blacks, other minorities, and women today...

...Civil rights lawsuits to eliminate barriers to voting will be particularly important throughout the South...

...If a comparable increase in registration could be achieved elsewhere, the increase in black votes could far surpass majorities by which Ronald Reagan carried a perhaps critical number of states...

...it might split the liberal vote in the primaries, thereby assuring the selection of a conservative white candidate...

...If there is a center of gravity to the racial issues of today, it is to be found in the policies of the Reagan administration...

...Assuming that, in the primaries, a black candidate won an important number of delegates, he or she might be in a position to negotiate at the convention to assure the ultimate selection of a nominee committed to positions the black candidate advocated...

...Late in June I attended a meeting in Birmingham with civil rights lawyers and community activists interested in removing barriers to voting in the South and in a black presidential candidacy...

...THIS RECITATION of happy endings following crises and uncertainties is hardly set forth to argue that everything turns out for the best...

...The experience in Chicago—where Harold Washington's candidacy increased the black registration from about 400,000 to over 700,000—is the most striking example...

...It might stimulate an increase in registration of whites opposed to minority aspirations...

...But President Kennedy, fearing violence and promising corrective legislation, attempted to persuade the Freedom Riders not to ride...

...it might split the Democratic vote in the election, assuring the victory of the Republican candidate...

...Together, they may suggest a picture of meaningless Brownian movement...

...But it was enacted and has become the legal mainstay of the civil rights and women's rights movements...

...The Democratic candidate in this election surely will be white, and so he will not attract the same degree of antiblack animus that, for example, was directed against Harold Washington in Chicago...

...provided impetus without which these laws would not have been adopted at the times they were...

...The vagaries of the primary process are so numerous that there is no way of telling whether, in the last analysis, a more or less conservative Demo415 cratic candidate would be selected if one of the principal players were black...

...The Administration also has taken anti-civil rights positions that have been quite unpopular, suggesting a commitment deeper than expediency...

...Whether the laws would be enacted, however, was uncertain...

...Affirmative action, school integration, black economic status, the Reagan administration's attack on civil rights, and the exercise of black political power: these are some of the matters that now concern the civil rights community...

...A political breakthrough may move the quest for equal treatment to a new plateau...

...The meeting of over a hundred persons was called on short notice, and the people who attended were busy, important figures in their communities...

...the iron grip the South held on Congress...

...Nevertheless, the acceptance rate was extremely high and there was a kind of electricity in the air, a kind of tension and energy that I have not seen since the days of the "movement" in the '60s...

...But, in any event, any Democratic candidate would be in a position to benefit—possibly enough to achieve election— from the increased black registration...

...It withheld support from reenactment of the Voting Rights Act in a form that would have made it effective until reenactment by overwhelming majorities was certain...

...indeed, so antagonistic has the Administration been to black aspirations that some believe it has offended white moderates...

...Nevertheless, civil rights lawyers and their supporters in Congress, so far, virtually have held the line...

...Even in the North, the Voting Rights Act (as in New York) and constitutional principles of one-man one-vote facilitate fuller black participation...

...The economic issues, however, will be determined in large part by the political struggle...

...That issue was whether stateimposed segregation in education should be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court...

...We may, as a result, be on the verge of critical black political involvement...

...The hostility that Administration civil rights positions engender in the minority community comes at a time when blacks are registering and voting more than ever before and may be poised on the edge of a quantum jump in their political participation...

...IT IS IN THIS CONTEXT that the proposal for a black presidential candidacy becomes interesting...

...But it does suggest that issues of race have been at least as deep and difficult in the past as they are now and that, nevertheless, progress has been made...

...As if to manifest the substance underlying these fears, Little Rock and other communities staged insurrections, Congress came within a hair's breadth of incapacitating the federal courts, "Impeach Earl Warren" movements erupted, and very little school integration took place until the early 1970s...

...As the '60s progressed, Vietnam issues mingled with civil rights concerns created enormous tensions and confusion...

...Because of all these challenges, the coming election may see a new, high level of minority political participation...

...Martin Luther King, Jr.'s early crusade, which focused on voting rights and public accommodations, seems uncomplicated today: apartheid was wrong, the demonstrations were right...

...And any Democratic position on racial issues would be more congenial to minorities than those of the present Administration...

...First, it may be useful to dispel the myth that in the past things were easier and simpler for civil rights advocates...

...Some leading proponents of civil rights opposed the Equal Employment Opportunities Act, fearing it would bring down the entire effort...

...Despite opposition by a few conservative black economists and writers, most blacks support affirmative action because growing numbers of them have higher education and professional and managerial positions as a result of it...

...Were this attempted by a black candidate running for president, it would, however, present some downside risks as well...

...And in the North the example of what has happened in the South has been important...

...But more significant, I think, may be the fact that the Administration's attack on affirmative action is aimed at that part of the black community that is most advantageously situated and most capable of fighting back...

...Some think that years ago issues were crisper, progress was achieved more readily...

...While politics is at center-stage, supportive legal action to prevent the undoing of the gains of the past with regard to schools, affirmative action, and other questions is also being fought hard...

...To some extent, at least in the South, this is a function of the Voting Rights Act...

...Indeed, it might be argued that today they converge so that legal and political questions bear a comprehensible relationship to one another...

...Undoubtedly, black candidacies have been the greatest single factor in bringing out large numbers of black voters...

...We forget how deeply rooted were the obstacles of federalism, which stood as a barrier to invalidating state laws...

...Its economic policies have hurt racial minorities...

...To me it suggested that an effort to get out the vote, perhaps centered on a black presidential candidacy, would be very successful...

...Burdensome registration procedures (for instance, many Mississippi voters must register twice) are impediments to the unregistered—that is, to blacks...

...A few of the demonstrators were indeed violent or had short tempers...

...At this writing, he has attempted to depose three members of the Civil Rights Commission with whose views he disagrees on busing and affirmative action, precipitating bitter opposition in the Congress and from civil rights advocates...

...In its social policies, it has fought blacks and other minority groups virtually every inch of the way...

...In late July, the Department of Justice and the White House engaged in a spate of pro-civil rights activity—including a lawsuit against Alabama's higher education system, and advocating a fair housing bill—which civil rights groups claim was designed to combat this impression...

...In part this stems from the Administration's perception that there is political advantage in fighting against affirmative action and school busing, two controversial civil rights remedies...

...the depth of racial prejudice, and fear of precipitating racial violence...

...Then the assassination of John Kennedy 414 and Martin Luther King, Jr...