
          White Politics in a Black Land
          By Minor, BillBill Minor
          Vol. 5, No. 5, 1983, pp. 1-5, 7-9
          
          It was the sort of affair which a few years ago would have been
unthinkable in Mississippi: an NAACP fundraising luncheon in
Vicksburg, the Civil War "Gibraltar of the Confederacy," and almost
half the crowd consisted of white politicians, eager to make points
with local black leaders and pay their respects to Dr. Benjamin Hooks,
the NAACP national director.
          Among the white politicians on hand was State Representative
Clarence Benton "Buddie" Newman, the Speaker of the Mississippi House
of Representatives, the man whom many regard as the most powerful
figure in Mississippi government. Newman's legislative district has
been altered as a result of recent reapportionment to include a
section of the suburbs of Vicksburg (embracing several north Warren
(County white residential areas), as well as his longtime political
base--the two tiny cotton and soybean plantation counties of Sharkey
and Issaquena--tucked in a bend of the Mississippi River.
          For most of the thirty-six years that the stubby, bespectacled
Newman has served in the legislature he has been one of the most
influential lawmakers in suppressing civil rights for blacks. His role
as a close advisor to Governor Ross Barnett during the 1962 James
Meredith crisis at the University of Mississippi has never been widely
known, but insiders to that sad episode of state history say that
Newman advocated the most extreme of the measures taken by Barnett to
defy federal authority.
          By trading some of their influence for black support, old time
segregationist politicians in Mississippi such as Newman have
displayed an amazing agility in adapting to an integrated political
milieu without losing any of the power they had back in the days of
segregation. Even in a number of legislative districts with decided
black majorities, black candidates have found that it is often

impossible to win against seasoned white politicians who can shrewdly
maneuver the black vote.
          Now, at age sixty-two, the raspy-voiced erstwhile soybean farmer
from Valley Park is at the top of a political system in Mississippi in
which the legislative branch dominates state government, virtually
holding governors hostage in their ceremonial office in the
magnificent eighty-year-old capitol building in Jackson.
          At the Vicksburg NAACP luncheon, Newman was seated at the head
table close to Dr. Hooks. The affair came just a few days before the
August 2 Democratic primary in Mississippi, wherein Newman had drawn
surprisingly stiff opposition from a thirty-six year old white woman
accountant named Phyllis Farragut.
          Ms. Farragut, known for her activity in the League of Women Voters
and the Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs, is
highly regarded in the Vicksburg black community for her demonstrated
social concerns. She had come to the luncheon at the invitation of
several local NAACP leaders who privately had given her assurances of
support in her race with Newman.
          Longtime Mississippi civil rights leader Aaron Henry of Clarksdale,
state president of the NAACP, and for the past three years a member of
the Mississippi House of Representatives, was asked to say a few words
at the Vicksburg luncheon. To the amazement of the local NAACP
leaders, Henry turned his remarks into a virtual endorsement of Buddie
Newman for reelection.
          "This is MY speaker," said the sixty-year-old Henry, "through the
years we've developed a wonderful working relationship." The bitter
irony is that in years past, Henry had picketed outside the State
Capitol against many of the repressive laws which Newman helped to
pass to keep blacks out of the political process.
          Capping off the event, the evangelistic Hooks stirred the two
hundred blacks present to shore up the NAACP as a civil rights force
in Mississippi and challenged everybody, including the white
politicians, to match his twenty dollar contribution to the Vicksburg
chapter. Among the first to come forward and plank down his twenty
dollar bill was Buddie Newman.
          Perhaps the episode at the Vicksburg luncheon was a precursor of
what would happen in Farragut's campaign to unseat Newman with the
help of the black vote in Sharkey and Issaquena Counties. The 1980
population census showed Sharkey with 65.7 percent black population
and Issaquena with 55.7 percent.
          "We really worked hard trying to get black votes in Sharkey and
Issaquena counties. A lot of black persons there were very nice to me
and seemed to be sympathetic to my campaign," Ms. Farragut said later,
"But a week before the election, I realized we hadn't gotten to first
base."
          Every time she spoke with some influential black in the two
counties, Newman would come along behind her and find out what
problems the black person might be having. . . with the PIK program or
Social Security, and the like. "Then Newman would pull his strings and
get the person's problem taken care of," said Farragut. "I couldn't do
anything like that."
          When the votes were counted on the night of August 2, Farragut and
Newman had run almost a deadheat in Warren County, only twelve votes
separating them. But in the two black-majority counties of Sharkey and
Issaquena, Newman piled up his winning margin of nineteen hundred
votes, getting almost ninety percent of,` the black vote.
          "What was so discouraging is that my candidacy offered a choice for
the first time between the old ways and a new way," she related. "It
was the old way that had given them a thirty-two percent illiteracy
rate in those two counties and held back the state. We offered them a
change."
          Farragut also came out of the election experience disenchanted with
black leader Aaron Henry, whom she said had given her strong
indications at the beginning of her candidacy that he would use his
influence to help her. "He is one person I will always be wary of,"
she declared.
          Newman considers himself a "farmer" because of the several hundred
acre soybean and cotton farm he has lived on and operated for a number
of years in the tiny village of Valley Park. But for at least
twenty-five years he has been on the payroll of Southern Natural Gas
Company, a gas transmission line based in Birmingham, which maintains
a pumping station in Valley Park. Variously, Newman has described his
connection with Southern Natural as that ,of "public relations" or
"industrial development" representative.
          Because Newman has only rarely performed any visible function for
Southern Natural (once or twice he has gone before the state tax
commission seeking to hold down the company's tax assessment in
Mississippi), it is widely assumed that he must be one of the
"friends" that Southern Natural's president, Peter G. Smith, referred
to 

in remarks before the Alaska Public Service Commission several
years ago. At the time, Southern Natural Gas was seeking rights to the
trans-Alaskan pipeline. and Smith bragged about the influential
buddies the company had in Southern legislatures, specifically
referring to Mississippi.
          When Ms. Farragut raised the issue of Newman's questionable
relationship with the natural gas utility company during the election
campaign, Newman explained it away by saying "everyone knows I give my
salary (from Southern Natural) to charity during the months the
legislature is in session." The Mississippi legislature raised the
salary of the Speaker of the House to $34,500 in 1980, on the premise
that the job was fulltime.
          Newman's formal education consists of high school and a year and a
half at a junior college before he went into the Army in World War
II. After the war, he was elected to the Mississippi State Senate from
Issaquena County, becoming part of the. "Class of 1948" which is
looked upon as one of the brightest group of freshman legislators ever
to sit in Jackson. Newman, however, was not one of those who showed
signs of providing a more moderate, intellectual leadership for the
future.
          He began his climb to political power when he moved over to the
Mississippi House in 1952 and became one of the young lieutenants in
the Old Guard of then Speaker Walter Sillers, a courtly Delta
plantation statesman-lawyer. With Sillers in mind, William Winter, the
current governor and another member of the Class of '48, had written
in A History of Mississippi, compiled in 1973:
"Although the office of speaker is less glamorous than that of
governor, the real power in Mississippi lies with the legislature."
Sillers is still regarded as the most powerful single legislative
figure of this century, in a career that spanned fifty years in the
Mississippi House.
          In the Dixiecrat rebellion of 1948, when Mississippi Democrats,
along with those of three other Southern states, bolted the ranks of
the National Democratic Party and voted for the States' Rights ticket
of Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright, one of the chief architects of
the movement was the grey-maned Sillers. The 1948 bolt put Mississippi
on a course of alienation from the national party that would last for
the next quarter century, finally ending in a unified bi-racial party
in 1976.
          During the latter half of the 1950s, following the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Sillers and
his loyal followers in the Mississippi House ran roughshod over the
then moderate governor, J. P. Coleman, who, though a supporter of
segregation, opposed putting the state on a collision course with the
federal government.
          When Coleman sought a new state constitution in late 1957 to
replace the state's 1890 document, the Sillers forces, with Newman a
leading spear-carrier, soundly repelled the Coleman effort, implying
that he was seeking to undermine the foundation of the state's
segregated society. Instead of a new constitution, the Delta
conservatives pushed through a constitutional amendment providing that
the legislature by a majority vote could abolish public schools if
they were ever integrated.
          A quarter of a century later, Mississippi still has its same
antiquated constitution. Newman. who became Speaker of the House in
1974, has been one of those largely responsible for perpetuating the
old document with its school abolition provision and a one-term
limitation on governors, putting chief executives at a distinct
disadvantage in dealing with the legislature.
          For years, the legislature has been encroaching upon the executive
branch of government in Mississippi, putting lawmakers by statute on
the most powerful state boards and commissions. When the state's
attorney general, Bill Allain, precipitated a showdown with the
lawmakers last year, Newman rallied the legislative forces to resist
by going to court with their own attorney, a Newman crony.
          A lower court judge ruled last January that the lawmakers were
violating the state constitutional provision on separation of powers,
and the case is now pending before the Mississippi Supreme Court. In
the meantime, Allain has become the Democratic nominee for governor
and is heavily favored to win the November 8 general election.
          In the Mississippi House, the Speaker apoints all committees, even
designating the chairs and vice-chairs. On key committees, almost
invariable, Newman's most loyal lieutenants sit in charge:
Representative H. I,. "Sonny" Merideth of Greenville, his closest
confidante, on Ways and Means; Representative Ed "Stump" Perry of
Oxford, on Appropriations, and Representative Jim Simpson of Long
Beach on Rules. With a brief word or even a nod from Newman, these
chairmen know which bills "Mr. Speaker" wants brought out or left to
die in their committees. Since the committee chairs control which
bills will be considered and which will not, they hold the power of
life and death over legislation.
          Under the "deadline" system for considering legislation, which the
Old Guard pushed through in the early '70s (and which is now
untouchable), a convenient graveyard is provided for three-fourths of
the bills introduced at each session before they get any real
consideration.
          And, when a committee fails to stop some measure Mr. Speaker
doesn't want, he has other devices--his Rules Committee which can put
bills up or down on the calendar, or his own gavel.
          With the fall of his gavel, Newman, in the 1982 session, 

choked off
a drive launched by Governor William Winter to create the state's
first system of free public kindergartens. Winter hoped to fund the
kindergartens with an increase in the state's severance tax on oil and
gas production, a tax which had remained unchanged since 1944. Not
surprisingly, Newman has been a longtime foe of increased oil and gas
tax.
          Newman had taken refuge on the kindergarten issue for several years
by saying that the only way he could support kindergartens was if they
were funded largely by local school districts. Yet, because of a
taxation straitjacket placed upon school districts by the legislature,
such a system of funding was virtually impossible.
          Kindergartens had also become a last line of defense among oldtime
segregationists in the Mississippi Legislature who privately regarded
the proposed system as "nothing but a babysitting service for black
kids."
          With the kindergarten bill awaiting action on the House calendar,
Newman called for a voice vote on adjournment which would have the
effect of killing the measure. Despite a heavy chorus of "no's,"
Newman rapped the gavel and ruled the House adjourned. He then stalked
off the podium, amid shouts by kindergarten backers for a roll call
vote.
          Newman's action brought down upon him the wrath of public school
forces as never before and became a focal point four months later for
an ABC-TV 20/20 feature making him the culprit for depriving children
in the nation's most educationally deprived state of the opportunity
to attend kindergartens. The 20/20 segment tied Newman's outside
interest as a gas company representative to his willingness to kill
kindergarten.
          The ABC show forced a turn-around in Newman's attitude and
triggered a succession of events which, in a winter special session,
culminated in the passage of the Educational Reform Act of 1982.
          Newman, stung by national exposure, created a special House
committee to draft the school reform act containing the features
wanted by Governor Winter, together with a financing plan. To the
surprise of critics, the House committee brought forth a package which
included an increase in the oil-gas tax, plus a laundry list of other
tax hikes providing $140 million for the education measure.
          What some have termed the "Christmas miracle" in Mississippi
happened in mid-December, 1982 when the Educational Reform Act won
enactment after unprecedented editorial pressure from the Jackson
Clarion-Ledger, which later won a Pulitzer Prize for
its efforts. The final version of the financing plan, however,
eliminated any oil-gas tax increase, and shifted most of the burden to
consumers through a one-half cent increase in the state sales
tax. (Mississippi does not exempt groceries from the sales tax, thus
placing a large portion of the tax increase on the poor.) Nonetheless,
the way opened for Mississippi public kindergartens by 1986 and for
other education improvements. (See "Mississippi Makes Up Its Mind,"
Southern Changes, March/April 1983.)
          The arrogance of Newman in killing the kindergarten bill in 1982
precipitated formation of a statewide bi-racial organization called
"Mississippi First" to elect a more progressive legislature. Out of
this came Ms. Farragut's candidacy and a dozen or more foes for Old
Guardsmen. While Mississippi First failed to unseat Newman, it did
manage to topple seven of his committee chairmen and remove some other
deadwood members.
          How Newman, despite his old identity as a strong racist in the
heyday of the white Citizens Councils and afterwards, has been able to
establish rapport with the black power structure is one of the
Mississippi political anomalies which Ms. Farragut discovered at first
hand.
          It was not until the early 1970s, after black voting strength began
to show in Mississippi politics, that Newman discovered any need to
communicate with blacks, even though he had always represented a black
majority population area.
          His first perceptible move came in 1974 when he shrewdly
outmaneuvered several other able legislators to gain the House
speakership. As one of those to nominate him for the post, Newman
picked Representative Robert Clark of Ebenezer, who, in 1967, had
become the first black member of the Mississippi Legislature since
1888. Three years later when the chairmanship of the House Education
Committee became vacant, Newman rewarded Clark with the post.
          Perhaps the true indication of how much Newman trusted Clark to
pass on major education matters came afterwards when Newman began
referring such measures to both the Education Committee and the
Appropriations Committee--headed by a faithful lieutenant of the
Speaker.
          The most powerful black figure in Newman's home county of Issaquena
is Mayor Unita Blackwell of Mayersville. Many have wondered why
Ms. Blackwell had not challenged Newman for his legislative seat,
since she would have swept the black vote in the district.
          Newman evidently began courting Ms. Blackwell several years back so
as to dissuade her from launching an opposition movement. Observers
remember the occasion of the Third Congressional District Democratic
caucus in April 1980 when Newman sat at Blackwell's elbow for eight
solid hours, voting down the line with her to make certain she would
be a delegate from the district 

to the Democratic National Convention.
          For weeks before the August primary contest with Newman,
Ms. Farragut had tried to contact Blackwell and enlist her support. "I
was never able to see her," Farragut said, "but she sent word she was
going to be out of the state working on an advanced college degree
most of the summer and would not take part in the campaign." This,
Farragut later discovered, would not exactly be the case.
          "I found I had been led down the primrose path, and that Unita
Blackwell had organized her forces for Newman before she left," she
declared. "A lot of people say you can't get the black vote by getting
to the leaders anymore. I don't think that is so in Sharkey and
Issaquena Counties."
          In a number of instances where old hands in the Mississippi
legislature were turned out of office this past summer, it was said to
be a case of their having lost touch with their constituents. A
notable exception came in State Senatorial District Thirteen, a
decidedly black-majority district in the heart of the Delta where
Senator Robert L. Crook, fifty-four, won his sixth successive term in
the Legislature even though he doesn't really reside among his
constituents.
          Crook, a white attorney, lists Ruleville as his hometown, but it is
common knowledge in the legislature and among many in his alleged home
county of Sunflower that he and his family have resided in Jackson,
120 miles to the south, for the past twenty-three years. Once a dry
cleaning establishment operator in Ruleville, Crook had gone to
Jackson in 1960 to take a job as state civil defense director in the
Ross Barnett Administration. With no formal education beyond high
school, Crook had gotten a law diploma from a night school in Jackson
and became a member of the state bar, getting elected to the
Mississippi state senate from Sunflower County in 1963 when only
whites voted in the black-majority county.
          In most of the election years since, Crook has encountered only
token opposition, usually a little-known black candidate. This time,
he was put to his sternest test when the district was reshaped to
include a substantial chunk of neighboring Coahoma County and the city
of Clarksdale, giving the district a fi3.6 percent black voting age
population.
          Not only did he have a rather prominent black opponent,
fifty-year-old Elijah Wilson of Clarksdale, the president of the
Coahoma County NAACP, but also fifty-two-year old Turner Arant, member
of a prominent Delta cotton farming family.
          Crook was fresh from having led Senate forces in blocking Governor
Winter's proposed reforms in the prison system. Winter sought to
provide alternative sentencing and decentralization of prison
facilities as a solution to overcrowding at Parchman Penitentiary and
county jails around the state.
          Labelling the Winter proposals "soft on crime," Crook had mounted a
campaign which almost destroyed the model state corrections board
created in 1976 in response to a federal court order directing
modernization of the penal system. For years. Crook has considered
Parchman Penitentiary, located in Sunflower County, his personal
fiefdom, involving himself in who is hired and fired, and serving as
the "outside world" lawyer for inmates.
          Significantly, when prison guards living on the premises at
Parchman didn't want to send their kids to integrated public schools
in Sunflower County, Crook got through a bill providing tuition grants
to send them to private, segregated academies.
          In the old days of the Citizens' Councils. Crook had been a loyal
supporter of the segregationist organization. In 1966 he sponsored the
CC's bill for a "Mississippi Relocation Commission," to provide
one-way bus tickets for blacks to go North. It would offer assistance
to any families who believed "they can improve their economic and
social status by relinquishing residence and citizenship in this state
and by going to and residing in another state."
          Prospective clients for relocation would be taken from the county
welfare rolls. Funds would be provided to any family to move their
belongings and transport themselves to another state, but acceptance
of the funds would constitute a lien against any property the
expatriated family may have in Mississippi. The debt would be
cancelled after a certain number of years.
          The "one-way ticket" measure never passed the legislature, and
veteran lawmakers now concerned about their image with black voters
don't like to talk about the bill. When the Relocation Commission
proposal was brought up by Crook's opponents in the past summer's
campaign, he shrugged it off as "just newspaper talk."
          Wilson, the black opponent of Crook in the August 2 Democratic
primary, had the backing of Mississippi First, which considered Crook
to be one of the negative forces in the legislature. The organization
put its 

maximum help to the tune of $2500 in cash, printing and
consultant services behind Wilson, but he was unable to raise more
than one thousand dollars beyond that from black political activists,
even though a majority of the residents of the district were in
Coahoma County, and that part of the district was seventy percent
black.
          Coahoma County and Clarksdale happen to be the home of Aaron Henry,
the state NAACP president. However, as Wilson's campaign developed, it
became evident that he was not getting the support from Henry which he
would expect from a fellow black leader.
          Six months earlier, Wilson had been elected president of the
Coahoma County NAACP chapter, replacing Henry, who had held that title
for nearly thirty years. "I didn't campaign for it. The nominating
committee came back with the recommendation that I be elected
president, and that is what happened," says Wilson.
          Sources of campaign funds Wilson expected to tap in the black
community "just didn't come through . . . I don't know if Aaron had
anything to do with that or not." The lack of money didn't give him
the kind of exposure he needed, especially in Sunflower County, which
has seven small municipalities, the largest being Indianola with a
population of around nine thousand.
          Although Sunflower County has a fifty-five percent black majority,
Crook got four to one the number of votes Wilson received, and almost
double the number Arant received. Even with a clear majority over his
two opponents in the 2900 votes Coahoma cast in the election, Wilson
finished out of the money in third place, setting up a runoff between
Crook and Arant.
          Crook contends the utility companies went after him "with all the
money and influence" they could throw into the second primary on the
side of his opponent because of Crook's stand for strong utility
regulatory laws and his opposition to rate increases in recent
years. "It's unbelievable what they tried to do," he says, "they spent
$160,000, I believe, trying to defeat me."
          If the figure of $150,000 were accurate, it would be the largest
amount ever expended in a single legislative race in Mississippi. In
any case, Arant put on a major campaign for a largely rural area,
utilizing phone banks, billboards and special spots on regional
television stations during the three-week runoff campaign.
          Crook, despite his heavy black constituency, has never learned how
to pronounce the word "Negro," or use the word "black."
          "This nigra woman called me," Crook said
later, "and said she had been in a meeting with the Arant folks that
morning and she was offered $350 to work at the polls on election
day." The black lady had been told that she and some twenty-five
others at the meeting would get the $350 plus $150 if Arant carried
the voting precinct.
          "She told me," says Crook, "'Mr. Crook, I don't have 

anything
against you . . . you tried to help me one time, and I don't know what
to do.'" His advice, she told this reporter, was to accept the money
"and let your conscience tell you how to vote."
          In the runoff Wilson decided to do a radio spot endorsing Arant
because of some underhanded tactics he had learned that Crook used
against him in the first primary. "He's [Crook] a good manipulator. I
thought I had all of the black mayors and aldermen in Sunflower
County, but he went around after me and said Aaron Henry was
supporting him. I never had a chance to counteract that," Wilson
said.
          Wilson came out of the political race critical of his longtime
black colleague, Aaron Henry. "He doesn't speak for black folks in
this state, but a lot of white folks think that he does," Wilson
declared. "Aaron is looking out for himself, not for the rest of
us."
          Nobody underestimates the fact that Crook is a tiger when it comes
to waging a campaign to hold on to his political base. "He has the
qualifications," said James Robinson, an alderman and black
businessman in Indianola, who voted for him, "even though he might not
have been the best man."
          Sylvester Ingram, a black grocery store operator at Moorhead,
admitted he had voted for Crook. "I've known Senator Crook a long
while, and I think he has made us a good senator. I don't think he has
said too much against the blacks. He's for poor people, and that's
okay with me."
          
          Four years ago, state senate district thirty-seven in southwest
Mississippi had more or less been tailor-made for Fayette Mayor
Charles Evers. Many whites felt it better to give him a forum in the
legislature rather than have him as a constant critic from the
outside. The district had a 61.5 percent black voting age majority and
included Jefferson and Claiborne Counties, considered "Evers
Country."
          But the charismatic black political figure did not campaign very
hard, assuming that his name recognition was all he needed to win
handily. A year before, Evers had run as an independent for the
U.S. Senate in the race won by Republican Thad Cochran and polled over
8600 votes in the four counties (Jefferson, Claiborne, Franklin and
Copiah) in the senatorial district. That was believed more than
adequate to win the seat in the state senate.
          Meanwhile, however, some other factors entered the political
picture. Significant opposition developed around Fayette because of
Evers' high-handed style of governing. In addition, he lost the
backing of Mississippi AFL-CIO President Claude Ramsay for
discouraging unionization of a new industry in Fayette.
          Organized labor, which is not strong in southwest Mississippi,
nevertheless proved to be a critical factor in defeating Evers and
electing white Hazlehurst attorney Jay Disharoon, who had made an
all-out bid for labor support. Disharoon, thirty-four, also had
developed good relations with area blacks in a previous race for a
U.S. congressional seat.
          Evers fell some thirteen hundred votes below what he had received
the year before in the U.S. Senate race in the four counties, and
Disharoon wound up the winner by nine hundred votes in the November,
1979 general election.
          This was the first of two political setbacks for the veteran
Mississippi civil rights leader in his supposed stronghold. A year and
a half later, Kennie Middleton, a thirty-year-old black attorney, came
along and upset Evers for the mayor's job in Fayette.
          Disharoon kept his fences mended with his black constituents and
when this year's elections rolled around, he drew no opponents.
          
          Newly created house district twenty-nine, a 67.1 percent majority
black voting district in Bolivar County was considered almost a
certainty to elect a black this year. The race pitted two white
incumbent representatives, Ed Jackson of Cleveland and Hilliard Lawler
of Rosedale, both of whom had rather good "moderate" credentials,
along with a black candidate, Reverend Henry Ward, Jr.
          Ward led the field in the August 2 first Democratic primary, going
into a runoff with Jackson, forty-one year old printing company owner,
on August 23. Jackson had done a lot of personal favors for his black
constituents and was able to pull enough votes out of the black
community to edge Ward by three hundred votes in the second
primary. Ward's defeat was blamed largely on a poor turnout of black
voters in the runoff.
          
          Jealousies and divisiveness among black leadership in Mississippi
continue to plague efforts of blacks to win political offices that are
within their grasp.
          The classic example was the failure of State Rep. Robert Clark of
Ebeneezer to win the Second Congressional District seat last year
after impressively capturing the Democratic nomination in the first
Democratic primary of June, 1982. The fifty-three year old Clark, a
popular black legislative figure, was given strong endorsements by
Governor William Winter and all leading white Democrats in the state
in his general election face-off with Republican Webb Franklin last
November.

          Clark's own campaign organization estimated he needed only about
twelve percent of the white vote in the twenty-one county district to
win comfortably. The district, embracing eleven Delta counties, had a
53.6 percent black population majority, and unofficial voter
registration figures indicated blacks made up a fifty-five percent
majority of registered voters district-wide.
          The white vote that Clark needed materialized, but he fell two
thousand votes short of winning when the black vote failed to reach
expectations in a half dozen counties where he ran significantly below
the black vote Jimmy Carter received in 1980.
          Many of Clark's campaign supporters blame the defeat of the Holmes
County legislator on a few black political leaders and office-holders
in the Delta who feared that the election of a moderate like Clark
would diminish their local power and make him the consummate spokesman
for the black community.
          Instances were found where close supporters of former Tchula Mayor
Eddie Carthan, now serving a federal prison sentence for falsifying
statements to receive federal funds, discouraged blacks from voting
for Clark because the Ebeneezer lawmaker had not defended
Carthan. Several black mayors were also believed cool toward Clark
because he was chosen by an informal caucus of blacks to be the
candidate, rather than they.
          Since the not-too-distant past when Robert Clark was the one black
to sit in the Mississippi Legislature, there has been a dramatic
increase in the number of black lawmakers. Four years ago, following
creation of single-member legislative districts under federal court
guidelines, the black legislative contingent rose from four to
seventeen--two in the Senate and fifteen in the House. As a result of
this year's elections, to be completed on, November 8, blacks are
assured of two additional seats in the House, and possibly a third,
with a good chance of increasing the number of senators to three.
          However, this total of twenty or twenty-one black lawmakers in
Mississippi still falls considerably below the potential of black
representation based on the number of legislative districts with
majority black voting age populations. Ten Senate districts have a
black VAP of fifty percent or more, four of them over sixty
percent. Among House districts, a total of twenty-six districts have
fifty percent or more black VAP, sixteen of them more than sixty
percent.
          Although they represent only fifteen percent of the total
membership of the Mississippi House, the bloc of black lawmakers has
been effective by standing together on several mayor issues, primarily
against increases in taxes which hit the poor and blacks
hardest. Reluctantly, some of the younger, more aggressive black
lawmakers have come around to the philosophy of Robert Clark that they
must first work within the system before they can change it.
          Because Buddie Newman and his "Delta barons" have once more
consolidated power, the prospect looms for at least four more years of
waiting for change. What impact the black legislators can have in the
meantime depends upon a dole system, in whose features lie a glimpse
of plantation days.
          
            Bill Minor, a longtime observer of Mississippi polities,
lives in Jackson. 
          
        