
          South Leads in Black Officeholders
          By StaffStaff
          Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, p. 25
          
          Mississippi leads the nation in total number of black elected
officials and Alabama has the highest percentage of black
officeholders in the United_States, according to the annual Black
Elected Officials: A National Roster, published by the Joint Center
for Political Studies.
          Although blacks in the South continued to post electoral gains, the
overall increase in black officeholders slowed for the January 1986 to
January 1987 period surveyed; the nationwide increase last year was
4.1 percent, compared to 6.1 percent the previous year and 6.2 percent
two years ago.
          The ten states with the highest numbers of black elected_officials
are Mississippi (548), Louisiana (505), Alabama (448), Georgia (445),
Illinois (434), North_Carolina (353), South_Carolina (340), Arkansas
(319), Michigan (316), and California (293). Nationally, the total
increased from 6,424 to 6,681.
          Not surprisingly, the geographic distribution of black elected
officials closely parallels the distribution of the total black
population in the U.S. The South has 53 percent of the nation's black
population and 62 percent of all black elected officeholders. The
second largest concentration of black officeholders, 19.2 percent, is
in the North Central U.S., where 19.8 percent of the nation's black
population is located. The Northeast, with 18.5 percent of the total
black_population, has 10.6 percent of black elected_officials, and 5.7
percent of all black elected_officials are in the West, where 8.9
percent of all blacks live.
          Southern blacks have had good success in translating their
population concentration into electoral gains at the state and local
levels but have managed to win few federal offices. Only three of
twenty-three blacks in the U.S. House of Representatives are from
Southern_states--Reps. John Lewis of Georgia, Mike Espy of
Mississippi, and Harold Ford of Tennessee.
          A total of 71 black elected_officials were elected last year in
jurisdictions where no black American had ever before held elective
office. Also, the number of black_women elected_officials continued to
climb (to 1,564), and has now almost tripled since 1975 (530).
          Seven blacks hold statewide office and 410 serve in
legislatures. At the municipal level, 303 blacks serve as mayors and
2,485 as council members. The number of black mayors in cities larger
than 30,000 population increased from twenty-eight to thirty-four.
          There is a direct correlation, the Joint Center for Political
Studies said, between black voting age population and the number of
black elected_officials. Mississippi leads in black elected_officials
but also has the highest proportion of voting-age blacks (30.8
percent). Voting-age blacks are 66.6 percent of the total voting-age
population in the District of Columbia, where 67.8 percent of all
elected_officials are black.
          There are no black elected_officials at all in Idaho, Montana and
North Dakota, where blacks are less than .05 percent of the total
population.
          For a copy of Black Elected Officials: A National
Roster, 1987, send $29.50 to Publications Office, Joint Center
for Political Studies, 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., #400,
Washington, D.C. 20004.
        
