POLITICS: In Search of a Black Strategy

The meetings have been quiet, some of them almost secret. The participants have included virtually every important black leader in the U.S., among them Julian Bond, Carl Stokes, Charles Evers, Jesse Jackson, Poet Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and the 13 members of the black caucus in Congress. The purpose: to develop a black political strategy for 1972, especially in order to influence the selection of a Democratic presidential nominee. But after more than half a dozen meetings—most recently a full-scale conference of black elected officials held in Washington —that strategy...