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According to the Joint Center, the percentage of voting-age blacks who cast ballots rose from 41% in 1972 to 43% this year. The figure is still below the national turnout of 55%—but high enough to have made the difference in a dozen or so crucial states. To cite only one: in Ohio, Carter won by 7,076 votes; he received 282,000 black ballots (see chart). The massive black majority made the South almost solid for Carter (he lost only Virginia); without it, he would have won only Georgia, Arkansas and Tennessee. Ford won 55% of the white vote in the South, a highly creditable showing against a regional candidate.
To say that the President-elect is in debt to blacks is to put it mildly. During the campaign he promised to appoint more blacks to high Government posts than any previous President. The congressional Black Caucus gathered and submitted names; so did other black organizations such as the National Bar Association and the National Medical Association. Said Jeffalyn Johnson, a senior professor at the Federal Executive Development Institute who spent several months working up potential appointee lists: "There is no shortage of black talent in this country."
Packed Bags. At the top of everybody's list is Georgia Congressman Andrew Young, who served as Carter's emissary to both blacks and the white liberal community. But Young appears to be more interested in finding jobs for others than for himself. He wants to stay in the House, where he aspires to be addressed some day as "Mr. Speaker."
Other top candidates for appointment are Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who gave Carter crucial backing in the Michigan primary; Jesse Hill, president of the Atlanta Life Insurance Co.; Herman Russell, an Atlanta contractor; Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind.; John Cox, a Delta Airlines consultant who was the only well-known black to support Carter for Georgia Governor in 1970; Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Many others are hoping for a berth. Quips a black Democratic official in Atlanta: "Half the blacks here already have their bags packed to come to Washington."
But jobs are just the beginning. Eddie Williams, president of the Joint Center for Political Studies, believes the time is ripe "to assure that blacks have an equal chance to help shape the nation's policies and programs. A Cabinet post and a special assistant or two will not suffice. The need now is to integrate the policymaking process and to conquer yet another frontier of segregation."
Hooks wants blacks to gain greater access to Government regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Power Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Said he: "When you put a man on the SEC, he starts talking with all the Wall Street brokers. He says to them in private conversation: 'You ought to do something about black employment.' "
How far will—or can—Carter go in paying off his debt to blacks? Political Analyst Richard Scammon believes the obligation is exaggerated. Many more whites than blacks voted for Carter, he emphasizes. "If Carter had not had the black vote, he would have lost," said Scammon. "But if he had not had the white vote, he would have lost too."