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60 Black Political Power in America

activities of most interest groups. The possibility of other groups determin-
ing the outcome of an election as the result of a "backlash" and the con-
fluence of other groups also lobbying with equal effectiveness for a piece of
legislation decrease one group's ability to claim sole credit for such ac-
complishments. With very infrequent exceptions, negroes have been un-
successful in all five methods.

Occasionally, they have managed to rally friends to their cause -- the
passage of civil-rights laws, the creation of the open society -- but their
success has stemmed more from their activities outside politics (demon-
strations, marches, sit-ins) rather than within the framework of the political
system. One of the greatest tragedies of the civil-rights movement has been
its inability -- or maybe its lack of understanding -- to transmit the fervor of
civil-rights activities into political activity.

Civil-rights demonstrators make good marchers, but poor politicians.

Civil-rights leaders can get up a good boycott, but they can never get out
a good vote.

Civil-rights laws provide for equality of opportunity, but do not ensure
equality of results.

Equality of results is what the science of politics is concerned with

Because they have never concerned themselves with real power in society,
civil-rights leaders have danced on the fringes of the political and economic
apparatuses that control society.

As already stated, they have feared that any diligent seeking of real
political power, resulting in the possible displacement of sympathetic
politicians, might in turn alienate those politicians. But politicians are not
primarily concerned with any ethnic group's rights as much as they are con-
cerned with their own right to survive.

In one of the most perceptive columns ever written about this paradox,
Mike Royko, a white columnist for the Chicago Daily News, commented
in his April 5, 1967, column the day after a Chicago primary:

... black power was available in sizable quantities in Chicago Tuesday. And a
person didn't have to march, sing, riot or boycott to get it.

It was inside the voting machine. By pulling a lever or using a pencil, the
Negro could have thrown a scare into City Hall.

Instead Chicago Negroes went out and gave something like 80 to 85% of
their vote to Mayor Richard J. Daley; about 10% to John Waner and just a dib
and a dab to Dick Gregory. And Daley didn't even campaign in the Negro areas.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have voted for Mayor Daley. If he is their man
-- fine. But is he their man? If so, they show it in strange ways.

They should remember that the city was in an uproar most of last summer
because of the civil rights wing of the Negro population was marching to protest
the way the Negro was being treated by the mayor's administration.

It was the mayor's house that was being picketed for the last couple of sum-
mers. It was the administration's school system that they boycotted and raged
against.

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Measuring Black Power 61

It was the mayor's police department that was accused of being unkind to
Negroes. The mayor's firemen were the ones shot at and stoned. And it was his
fire department that was accused of being segregated.

... The inconsistency mounts when you consider that the poorest Negro
areas -- the most riot-inclined areas -- were where Daley got his best support. He
didn't do much better in his own neighborhood than he did in some West Side
wards...

And finally, if there is a leader of Chicago's Negroes, he is Richard J. Daley,
that rosy-cheeked Irishman from the Back of the Yards...

So this summer, don't sing me that old refrain of "black power." The voting
machine was listening Tuesday, but he couldn't hear you even humming.

While Rotko's analysis defines the peculiarity of the Chicago political
machine with its tyrannical control over the electorate because of the crime
syndicate's enforcement powers. it is a fact that the black vote has not always
predictably followed its best civil-rights interests.* Black voters have in-
variably been more slavishly loyal to a political machine with its built-in
hostility to their best interests than other ethnic groups. Nevertheless, the
classical myth -- and fear-- of the black vote as a balance of power in close
elections has persisted.

In some quarters, recognition has been given to the appointment of
negroes to high office for the first time (member of a Federal agency, the
Cabinet, the U.S. Supreme Court, etc.) as an example of the potency of
the black vote.

High-level negro appointments are still rare, and, because they are, the
must be categorized as symbolic appointments. Symbolic negro appoint-
ments do not control power. Usually, they are more honorific than sub-
stantial and are extremely impressive to black people. The appointment of
a negro does not guarantee any improvement in the economic, educational,
or political conditions of the black masses, however. Not a single additional
negro receives an increase in his wages because one negro is appointed to
the Supreme Court.

Worse still, the symbolic negro appointment is oftentimes a promotion to a
higher position. In such an instance, the promotion is valueless because
negroes have gained no new political power.

When Carl Rowan was promoted from Ambassador to Finland to the
directorship of the United States Information Agency, a negro was not
appointed Ambassador to succeed him. Negroes thus lost that appoint-
ment. They gained no power. This has occurred repeatedly in government,
particularly under the Johnson administration. The appointment of Thur-
good Marshall to Solicitor General and then to the U.S. Supreme Court
does not mean an accretion of political power because of negro has simply
been rotated between jobs.

The only way in which black people can develop political power in gov-

* See Chapter Eight for a detailed analysis