(2 of 6)
In that most effective of democracy's equalizers, the voting booth, the Negro is now voting black with an assertiveness that has impelled many white politicians to assess with new respect the black bloc's gathering strength. Some of the Negro's political leaders have said that what they want is something like the Irish Power that has been evident in Boston or the Jewish Power that has shown itself in New York City. By now, almost everyone in the U.S. knows that Gary, Ind., and Cleveland installed Negro mayors last month. Negro bloc voting was indispensable to both victories. But so was the small proportion of white votes that went to Cleveland's Carl Stokes and Gary's Richard Hatcher, and that surely would have been withheld if either man had taken a radical Black Power stance. If they had lost, it would have been a big boost for the symbols of the extremists' Black Power—which in its most radical expression rejects all coalition with and any need of whites.
Even more heartening to black pride were the election of a Negro sheriff in Virginia and of the results in Mississippi, where the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, organized by Negroes, elected six candidates out of a statewide slate of 32. This modest triumph has encouraged the party to try once again to unseat the state's white delegation to the 1968 Democratic National Convention—a strategy that failed four years ago.
Because the Negro is a member of a minority constituting some 11% of the U.S. population, he can never expect to register more than modest victories in the ballot box unless he wins white adherents to his cause. Here, also, black pride is dictating the new posture, which is not that of a needy supplicant begging for white assistance, but that of an equal who proclaims his self-sufficiency and his value as any man's ally. Many facets of Negro community life now reflect this concerted effort on the part of the Negro to elevate his own status and selfesteem.
Variety of Goals
The effort varies wildly in scope and purpose, from Detroit's Central United Church of Christ, which worships a Black Messiah, to New York City's National Economic Growth and Reconstruction Organization (NEGRO), which has raised enough money selling bonds—for as little as 25¢ each—to acquire a hospital, a chemical firm, four clothing factories, a construction company, and a transportation line so expansion-minded that it recently sent a fleet of twelve buses across the country to Watts, the Negro district of Los Angeles. Bad weather and other difficulties reduced the arriving field to three, but further help has been pledged.