POLITIC'S '72 BLACK BALLOTS
POLITICS '72 BLACK BALLOTS There is a Negro spiritual that contains the promise, "I'm goin' to feast at the welcome table." Black politicians today are raising with ever increasing frequency...
...The outspoken and strong-willed gentlewoman from New York agreed to the formation of an advisory panel, to be headed by Percy E. Sutton, the president of the Borough of Manhattan...
...Then the Muskie forces will choose those they wish to serve as delegates at Miami if the Maine Senator carries the district in the April 4 primary...
...We agree, for all our commitment to McGovern...
...Stokes put it plainly in a speech at Black Expo '71 in Chicago when he pointed out that it was futile to talk about the black vote when thousands of black voters remained at home on Election Day and thousands more had never registered...
...The "new" Humphrey, scolded by his advisers into giving shorter speeches and sticking more closely to his prepared text, suffered a relapse the other day when, exhilarated by the applause of labor leaders at a Miami meeting, he went on and on like the old Humphrey, so much so that he never did get to the advertised climax of his talk —proposed legislation to provide a million new jobs...
...But if these district delegates slates do not produce, say, about as many women as men, a percentage of blacks in proportion to blacks in the district, and ditto for the young, the middle-aged, or the old—the caucuses will have to change their delegate selections to conform to these requirements...
...It is evident that the major battles for increased black political power will be waged within the Democratic Party...
...Even so radical a force as the Black Panthers—at least the Huey Newton faction of that group—has concluded that it is time to put down the "pick up the gun" philosophy and to concentrate on political organization...
...But that's not too high a price to pay to introduce democracy into the nomination of a candidate for President...
...How successful the agreement will be in meeting those goals will probably be made clear when the national black political convention assembles in March in Gary...
...It has not yet dawned on many of the country's political writers, let alone the public, that Democratic Party reform of the processes by which delegates are chosen to its National Convention involves some staggering complexities...
...The recording carries no name or date, but the Kennedy accent comes through clearly, and this has led some to believe they were listening to an endorsement from "Ted" Kennedy...
...Too many blacks look upon voting as a pointless act in Whitey's system...
...The reply from some McGovern spokesmen that their device is no worse than Muskie masquerading as Lincoln is as silly as Muskie's Lincoln act...
...Newark and Cleveland and Gary stand out as Northern cities where major black victories have been scored because blacks resolved to get their piece of the action...
...Let's face it, we lost," said Darwin Aycock, political director of the Arizona state AFL-CIO...
...Subtract from Hubert H. Humphrey's 31.2 million votes in 1968 those estimated to have been cast by blacks, says White, "and a close contest becomes a Republican landslide...
...But that understanding must not blot out the necessity for black political leadership to be constant in proclaiming the value of the ballot...
...The choice of that battleground was inevitable...
...The votes just aren't there...
...Mayor Charles Evers is out on the hustings for Mayor John Lindsay because, according to Evers, "he's the closest thing to Bobby...
...Chisholm's candidacy had been interpreted more as a raising of the banner of women's liberation than as an effort at advancing the political power of black people...
...We'll lose if he is nominated...
...At a time when many Democrats are trying to make their party democratic, the AFL-CIO has opted for the sleazy stratagem of the backroom deal...
...Walter W. Morrison (Mr...
...Political apathy remains great in the black community, and there are blacks who see no purpose whatever in voting...
...Jack White, staff writer for the authoritative Race Relations Reporter, states flatly, "The Democratic Party cannot elect a President without black votes...
...Dr...
...Where Southern blacks have used their ballot with determination and sophistication, they have not only wrought changes in the behavior of white politicians, but they have been able to put their own people into office as sheriffs, as mayors and city councilmen, as members of school boards, and as state legislators...
...Years of service to the Party, and the amount of work or money contributed to a given candidate for the nomination, may count for less than factors of age, sex, or race...
...Most were pledged to Muskie, McGovern, or Lindsay...
...Chisholm...
...It is easy to understand the justice of the questions blacks raise about the worth of political participation...
...It seems no exaggeration to say that the most exciting trend in contemporary politics is the emergence of black political clout in the South...
...More than mere male chauvinism was involved in the failure of black male leaders to support Ms...
...Montesquieu said it best long ago: "The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as is the apathy of a citizen in a democracy...
...The Wisconsin example demonstrates that there will be far more grass roots democracy involved in delegate selection than ever before, even though the process may at first be as complicated as calculus...
...Those who made the pact to unify behind Shirley Chisholm hope that it will stave off a fratricidal battle among black political leaders and nourish the seeds of black political unity...
...It seems simple enough in theory...
...Among some 500 delegates chosen to attend the state convention (which will elect the national delegates), only a handful came from the AFL-CIO's uncommitted slate...
...On a recent four-day swing through Wisconsin, he kept twenty-six engagements in four cities...
...Those black politicians who have committed themselves to the task of creating an independent, effective black political force in the United States, have made it clear that they do not intend, as Carl B. Stokes, the former mayor of Cleveland, has put it, "to retreat to the old islands of protest and petition...
...Sutton was frank to confess that Ms...
...His assignments include reports on events as seen through the eyes of a black writer...
...Possibly the Panthers and other such groups, devoting their energies to political organization, will be able to spark voter registration drives in the North, where such campaigns are all too few, and where the few that exist are too often scattershot and ineffective...
...Stokes denied that he was suggesting a third or fourth party for blacks, but some other black politicians have made it clear that they do not see blacks as being eternally wedded to the Democrats...
...Black politicians reason that the black vote is essential to the triumph of the Democrats at the polls this November...
...He wiggles and wobbles all over the place...
...the McGovern backers will make their choice of delegates who will serve if he carries the district, and so on down the line of Presidential contestants in all the districts...
...Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician running for President on the ticket of the People's Party, recently came out against integrating public schools by bussing, leading The New York Times to report in an unfair "news" story that the doctor "is already beginning to sound like George C. Wallace...
...Caucus voting will be restricted to Democrats whose dues are paid up...
...The Muskie forces are furious because the McGovern camp is playing a recording of a bit of praise lavished on their candidate by the late Bobby Kennedy four years ago...
...Chisholm's presumed involvement with the cause of women's liberation was, I believe, the source of concern among her masculine political colleagues that she would not make the most effective spokesman (sorry, spokeswoman) or broker for black interests...
...To begin with, most of the black politicians who are involved in the effort are Democrats...
...There was no way these men could explain their call for a black Presidential candidate in light of their previous failure to support Ms...
...Black men, concerned with the plight of the black as nigger, were not of a mind to fight through the question of the woman, primarily the white woman, as nigger...
...Foul," cry the Muskie supporters...
...Chisholm...
...Dividing a Congressional district's five, six, or seven delegates (the numbers vary) to fit the proper pattern will take some doing...
...Sutton said he and other leaders hoped that the climate at Gary would be such as to make it extremely difficult "for anyone claiming to be black to support a white candidate"—as some now do...
...It is easy to understand the roots of black apathy...
...After all, they [the Democrats] need us a lot more than we need them...
...An increase in black delegate strength is a key aspect of the strategy for 1972...
...Glowing word pictures are painted by black politicians of the power of the black vote—and there is some—while white politicians are calculating that the voting behavior of blacks is such that the losses incurred in the white community by taking a pro-black stance cannot be made up in the black community...
...A discussion of the power of the black vote is, really, a discussion of the potential power of that vote, because the sad truth is that blacks do not register and do not vote with sufficient strength to provide the kind of clout they seek...
...For example, take the twenty-three primary states...
...Only then will they be free of the oppressive degradation spawned by years of exclusion and non-participation...
...It's pathetic...
...If they follow the procedure worked out for caucuses to be held in Wisconsin March 11, the supporters of each Presidential candidate will meet in each Congressional district...
...Evers' sister-in-law—the widow of his assassinated brother, Medgar—has been campaigning across the country for Senator Edmund Muskie...
...Chisholm's bid...
...Democratic Party politicians in Iowa estimate that students participated in the recent precinct caucuses in that state at least "three times as heavily as the voting-age population in general...
...Right on...
...But in practice, there will be much sweat and tears—even charges that the democratizing reforms are "undemocratic"—as the whole complex machinery of delegate selection begins to function...
...The Presidential candidacy of Representative Shirley Chisholm has posed a problem for black political strategists, for that candidacy has raised the specter of division and has complicated plans by some black male leaders to remain uncommitted so as to be in a better bargaining position at Miami...
...But all other problems pale before the central problem of black political power...
...Last October, setting out what he called a Political Emancipation Proclamation, Stokes said that black voters did not ha\e to go on "being the unrewarded servants of either major political party...
...Of course, the candidate still has to carry the district in the primary for the delegates chosen by his caucus to qualify for badges at Miami...
...The Party has committed itself to seeing that the 3,016 delegates constitute an approximate cross-section of the population in terms of percentages of whites, nonwhites, males, females, young, middle-aged, and old...
...Representative William Clay, a black Missouri Democrat, has said that, in his view, blacks have "no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just permanent interests...
...If blacks can send a substantial bloc of delegates to Miami, those delegates will have a voice in the platform language, to say nothing of the fact that in a close convention a candidate could, and most probably would, be willing to do some real bargaining...
...Allard Lowenstein, the crusading former Congressman who did so much to bring about Lyndon Johnson's withdrawal in 1968, predicts after several swings through New Hampshire that Representative Paul N. McCloskey will do more handsomely in that state in his protest race against President Nixon than most "experts" believe...
...The AFL-CIO's nationwide strategy of trying to elect uncommitted delegates to form a bargaining bloc at the Democratic National Convention received a well deserved rebuff when Arizona Democrats conducted their Presidential preference contest late in January...
...And his speeches are tough: "Isn't Muskie a terrible flop...
...In some districts, to be young, black, and female may, for the first time, improve one's chances of being elected at a Congressional district caucus...
...And Senator Hubert Humphrey can be expected to pick up support among old-line leaders of the civil rights establishment...
...What disturbed most black male leaders was the fact that Ms...
...In early February, however, several black male leaders, who had reportedly been looking for one of their sex to put forward for the Presidency, agreed to support Ms...
...There, a politician can no longer expect to be victorious just because he knows how to yell "nigger" louder and longer than his opponents...
...Since King spoke, hundreds of thousands of blacks have had their names entered on the poll books of Southern states...
...It is too early to tell whether such an implied threat has struck fear into the Democrats, although party leaders have indicated willingness to give blacks as many as one-fifth of all party committee memberships and staff jobs and a greater voice in the party's decision-making processes...
...Black politicians today are raising with ever increasing frequency and urgency a demand that black Americans be seated at the welcome table of the political process...
...Martin Luther King, dreaming his dream that August afternoon in 1963, said that the real political liberation of black people could not be accomplished "so long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote...
...Morrison is on the staff of The Milwaukee Journal...
...Georgia's Julian Bond has declared his conviction that Senator George McGovern is "head and shoulders above his opponents...
...For blacks to have political influence they must first work in their own minds the miracle of believing that their votes can count...
...As more blacks realize that there is not enough firepower in all the black community to challenge the system successfully—to say nothing of the moral dubiousness of such an approach—it will be seen that the ballot box is the key to opportunity and even to justice...
...Clay and other black politicians are certain that if blacks defect to a minority party or simply hang a Gone fishin' sign on their doors on Election Day, the Democrats will have no chance of picking up a lease on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue...
...I'm confident," predicts Clay, "that we will extract some significant concessions" at the Miami convention...
...More to the point, most black voters on the rank-and-file level are adherents of the Democratic Party...
...Black political leaders have served notice that they do not intend to see eighty-five to ninety per cent of the black vote handed over to the Democratic nominee, whoever he may be, without something given in return...
...There is bad blood between McGovern and Muskie forces in New Hampshire over a face and a physique of the past...
...What's pathetic is the labor Federation's shabby strategy...
...So formidable are the advantages with which President Nixon enters the campaign that the Democrats cannot afford the loss of any significant voting bloc...
...What Newton has discovered is that revolutionary rhetoric and talk about power from gun barrels have not been productive either for the Panthers or the black community...
...the octogenarian demands of his audience...
...But the North still suffers from wide and deep-seated black voter apathy...
...In fact, it can't even come close...
...Chisholm's candidacy had put him and other black males who were calling for a black Presidential candidate in a difficult spot...
...Next to the candidate himself, eighty-five-year-old former Senator Ernest L. Gruening is the most indefatigable campaigner in the McGovern stable...
...The purpose of primaries and open caucuses is to give voters a voice in selecting candidates —not to sell the voters a pig in a poke...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
