AMERICAN BLACKS: A PASSION FOR POLITICS

...Even the 1965 Voting Rights Act was placed in jeopardy by the incoming Reagan administration...

...Black participation in the 1984 campaign, Lewis says, "is an extension of the civil rights movement...

...This veteran is still only 44 years old...

...But again, no matter who is talking, there is clear recognition that the Jackson campaign has altered the politics of this country...

...The electoral victories of American blacks have been too solid, the long, hard fight for the vote too significant, the registration campaigns too farreaching to be canceled by the failures of a single individual, "charismatic" though he may be...

...These conditions were aggravated by frustrated hopes and a climate that tends to encourage violence...

...Eddie N. Williams, president of the Joint Center for Political Studies, a "think tank" dealing with special concerns of black America, speaks of a "growing passion for politics never before witnessed in the black community on a national scale...

...Goldwater then was considered a champion of white supremacists, Johnson a champion of equal rights...

...Milton Morris, research director at the Joint Center, recalls that the previous high point of black electoral participation was in 1964...

...But the reaction of both the country at large and the black community enabled the Democrats to force a renewal of the Act and even its strengthening by making results, not intentions, a criterion for voting rights...

...city council members quadrupled...

...For some, that aspect seems more important than the unprecedented participation of blacks in a political campaign...

...And on top of that Farrakhan said: "Here come the Jews, don't like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler...

...These came together with the Reagan budget of tax breaks for the rich alongside cuts in Food Stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, and school lunches...

...Like most of the black trade unionists and the Atlanta civil rights leaders, Mayor Young and others, Lewis deplores the racial and ethnic slurs introduced in the Jackson campaign...

...The New Republic (April 30) says the Jackson candidacy "is becoming an instrument for the destruction of the very dream that created the movement...

...Much of this increase is especially noteworthy because states such as Alabama and South Carolina recently purged their rolls, making it harder to reregister voters...

...Quarterly magazines like Dissent are mailed out by the Post Office under a special rate/arrangement, which puts them close to the bottom of the line...

...the dream of an America free of every form of racial division, racial hatred, and racial injustice...

...Virginia 14.6 percent...

...The Commission warned, "In the summer of 1967, we have seen in our cities a chain reaction of racial violence...

...If we are heedless, we shall none of us escape its consequences...

...He puts his emphasis on the positive...

...he nearly died in Selma...

...and third, the shift of the political climate to the right, which presents a threat to hard-won civil rights gains...

...Chairman of SNCC from 1963 to 1966 when it came close to open espousal of separatism, Lewis was a hero of the 1965 March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama...

...Before arguing that such pessimistic conclusions are not warranted, a brief account of the divisive racist development is necessary...

...In 1982 black turnout surged by 7.2 percent, compared to 3 percent for whites in the North and West...

...Like practically every other black leader, Lewis credits the Jackson candidacy for the impetus it gave to political action...

...But the idea of a "never win" movement had no appeal to Lewis...

...The answer is simple...

...Lucy described how the Reagan budget cuts hurt local governments, and it was in many such constituencies that blacks won electoral victories...

...Even more striking, black mayors increased from 48 to 247 since 1970...

...But this is not as new a phenomenon as many think...

...Lewis also sees a unification of the Mondale and Jackson forces come the Why Does Dissent Come Late (Sometimes...

...Affirmative Action played a vital role toward eliminating job discrimination...

...But in 1983 they were enthusiastic campaigners for Chicago's first black mayor...

...He sees the growing registration of black voters, alongside similar developments among Hispanic Americans and the poor of all races, as changing the political course of the nation...

...We're looking into this situation to see if there are any remedies, but meanwhile we can only ask our subscribers to be understanding and patient...

...q 263 Democratic convention in San Francisco...

...Well, that's a good name...

...There were civil rights victories in housing, employment, and education...

...Texas 31 percent...

...Many young people turned away from the King emphasis on nonviolence...

...Then, Jackson's "explanation" in Newsweek, worse than the original slur...

...But the amazing thing is that the civil rights movement, based on a rejection of violence and a turn toward political action, rescued the nation from racial conflict and despair...

...Black leaders such as Chicago's Mayor Harold Washington and presidential aspirant Jesse Jackson, he says, tapped into that force: "It created them, they did not create it...

...Undoubtedly, the Jackson campaign has further spurred grass-roots political action among blacks and helped to bring about the recent spurt in voter registration...

...Like most black leaders, while deploring the negative episodes of that campaign, he will not level public criticism against Jackson...

...Tom Cavanagh describes what followed: "Instead of taking their frustration into the streets, as was predicted in some quarters, blacks have thus far expressed their grievances largely through the ballot box—with dramatic results...

...Alabama went up 11 percent...

...WHAT IN MOST RESPECTS has been a thrilling, positive development has a negative aspect that must not be blinked...

...Union leader William Lucy puts this in practical political terms—there is a revival of the Roosevelt coalition based on an alliance of labor, blacks, ethnic Americans, and women...

...He described his experiences on "Jew Street" in Chicago and proceeded to compound the stereotyping of Jews that has plagued them for more than a thousand years...

...ALL THIS CHANGED in the 1980s as the Reagan administration's creed of social Darwinism became the symbol of a new rightward trend...

...Reagan has simply been callous about the needs of the poor, and not just the blacks but also Hispanics and whites...

...there are currently 19 black mayors in cities with a population of 100,000 or more, and four of the mayors in the country's six biggest cities are black...

...It was up for renewal in 1982 and the president's favorite senators, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, were striving to emasculate it...

...But this will be overcome, in his view...

...White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it...

...His skull was fractured by white racists...

...Cavanagh says about 90 percent of the blacks have been voting Democratic, and this can go up to 95 percent...

...black state representatives more than doubled...

...This past spring we received a number of phone calls from subscribers asking why they hadn't yet gotten their copies of Dissent...

...The ingredients were outlined in the Commission report: • Pervasive discrimination in employment, education, and housing...

...Florida 3.4 percent...

...From the researchers at•the Joint Center as well as from those at the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project (VEP), you get far more stress on the role of black organizations in getting out the vote than on the impact of the Jackson campaign, though they don't underestimate the latter...

...But does this mean that the achievements of the Jackson campaign in arousing black participation have been canceled out...

...Even the most recalcitrant index of all had changed slowly going into the 1970s— progress toward narrowing the gap between the incomes of blacks and whites...

...What happened in Los Angeles, Birmingham, Chicago, Philadelphia, and 24 other cities with populations over 50,000 that elected black mayors, and the many hundreds of smaller communities, South and North, where blacks won a measure of political power, is a response to something far more fundamental than the oratory of Jesse Jackson...

...He wasn't great for me as a black person, but he was a great German...

...Black in-migration and white exodus, which have 262 produced massive concentrations of impoverished blacks in our major cities...

...Furthermore, in "tossup" states, "the black percentage of the voting-age population is higher than the median victory margin...

...Still, there were Reagan's proposals to give tax breaks to segregated private schools and Justice Department intervention against busing and Affirmative Action guidelines...

...he sees the 1984 campaign "advancing interracial democracy in the South" and elsewhere...

...Louisiana 14.4 percent...

...One had to be in Chicago during the Harold Washington campaign to see how this turn toward politics galvanized the very people who had been at the heart of the 1966 and 1967 disorders...

...In the black ghettos, segregation and poverty converge on the young to destroy opportunity and enforce failure...

...The increase of black registration has been even more dramatic in the North than the South...

...second, demographic changes, a growing active, political concentration of blacks in areas where they constitute the majority or swing vote...

...During that period the number of black members of Congress increased from 10 to 21...

...HERE'S A VOLUME with yellowing pages entitled "Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders...

...William Lucy, the black secretary-treasurer of the largest AFL—CIO affiliate, AFSCME, and veteran civil rights leader John Lewis of Atlanta both used the phrase "natural progression" to describe the way the civil rights movement has taken to political action...

...There was also the historic discovery by the Reagan administration that ketchup was a good enough substitute for vegetables in the diet of poor children...

...South Carolina 3.1 percent...

...What white Americans have never fully understood— but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto...

...In 1966 these young blacks, many of them school dropouts, were among the rioters...

...How sharp a turn this was can be seen in the differing attitudes of young blacks in Chicago during the summer of 1966 and the spring of 1983...

...Farrakhan had threatened Milton Coleman, the black reporter who broke the "Hymie" story, warning him that "One day soon we will punish you with death...

...There were results not only in the electoral victories...

...Worst of all was Jackson's failure to disassociate himself fully from Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, a Black Muslim sect...

...What effect has increased black voter participation had...

...Thomas Cavanagh, a research associate at the Joint Center, feels that after the death of Martin Luther King, you had a "spectrum of black leadership that is less charismatic than institutionalized, working through such organizations as the NAACP, the National Urban League, the Children's Defense Fund, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Operation Big Vote," as well as organizations of black elected officials such the Congressional Black Caucus...

...A net gain of up to 2 million black voters by November "would be a realistic possibility," says 261 Tom Cavanagh...

...First, there was the "Hymie" insult by Jackson, for which he apologized...

...Division and separatism, he says, don't serve the interests of America's blacks...

...Eddie Williams recalls that Martin Luther King had urged his followers to reinforce racial compassion with old-fashioned American political quid pro quo...

...Cavanagh points to the increase of black elected officials from 1,469 in 1970 to 5,606 in 1983...

...And Dr...

...There are 11 states with a total of 134 electoral votes where the unregistered potential black vote exceeds Reagan's 1980 margin of victory, Cavanagh shows...

...Brian Sherman, research director of the Voter Education Project, cites a 407,000 increase in the number of black registered voters in 7 of the 11 Southern states between 1982 and the present...

...Hitler was a very great man...

...Georgia 9.7 percent...

...It was by no means sufficient for Jackson to say he didn't agree with Farrakhan's despicable statement...

...He finds that "a Democratic presidential victory in 1984 is inconceivable without a high black turnout...

...We've had conservative Republican presidents before, Nixon and Ford," union leader Lucy observes, "but at least they maintained what had been developed for the poor over many years...

...That historic effort by American blacks and their white liberal allies has made too deep an impact on the nation, and on the blacks themselves, to be wiped out so easily...

...Fire and looting took a toll in the millions of dollars...

...There were 83 deaths and 1,897 injuries...

...Morris sees the present upsurge as "long in the making...

...ATLANTA'S City Councilman John Lewis exemplifies the historic changes in the black civil rights movement of this country...

...The Commission's report, issued early in 1968, sought out the roots of the riots that raged in black communities in summer 1967...

...Whomever you talk with in the black community, leader or rank-and-filer, agrees that the big catalyst spurring American blacks to political action is Ronald Reagan...

...For a long time there was a deafening silence from the White House...

...Bad enough...

...He thinks it's a serious underestimation of the long fight for voting rights and the extensive history of voter registration to focus attention only on the Jackson campaign...

...He cites three factors: first, the perception by blacks that without political clout they cannot influence political developments...

...He went on to become head of the Voter Education Project from 1970 to 1977...

...The Commission had a conclusion that can bear far more notice today than ever before: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal...