Why Carter Wins the Black Vote

His roots run deep and strong in Georgia redneck country. In Plains, his home town, blacks live in a section of their own and attend all-black churches. School integration came slowly, painfully and under duress. Yet in Democratic primaries this year in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, blacks have trooped to the polls and cast the largest share of their votes for Georgian Jimmy Carter. The phenomenon of blacks backing a Southern white reared in the Georgia backwoods is one of the most intriguing aspects of the campaign to date.

In Florida, Carter's share of the black vote was 70%; in North Carolina, 90%. Carter swept the black precincts in Chicago and other Illinois urban areas, and his only primary defeat--in Massachusetts--would have been far more crushing without his 40% share of the black vote in Boston, greater than that won by any other candidate. In both Florida and North Carolina, blacks had an added incentive to support Carter. His major opponent was George Wallace, whose 1960s cry of "segregation forever" had stamped him an implacable racist, despite his disclaimers. But in Massachusetts, blacks could choose from among Fred Harris, Sargent Shriver, Milton Shapp, Morris Udall and Henry Jackson, whose civil rights records range from good to excellent. Instead, they supported Jimmy Carter.

Warm Endorsements. As Carter tells it, the situation is as normal as grits in the morning or magnolia blossoms hi the spring. Says he: "I think the blacks just trust me to do what I say and run the Government in a competent way." That explanation is too simplistic. For one thing, Carter's fair treatment of blacks as Governor of Georgia won him warm endorsements from such revered blacks as Martin Luther King Sr. and Georgia's influential Congressman Andrew Young. His deputy campaign coordinator is Ben Brown, a Georgia state legislator with close ties to black leaders throughout the nation; he is one of 19 blacks on Carter's paid staff of some 200.

Carter established a bond with blacks by means of the familiar Southern homilies sprinkled through his speeches, his unashamed evocations of love and compassion, his Baptist fundamentalist evangelism. Says Chicago Black Leader Jesse Jackson: "The fundamental problem in this country today is not economic, it's spiritual. Carter is conducting a revival-of-hope campaign."

But John Lewis, head of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, believes that "Carter's support in the black community is relatively soft and shifting. It's more of a vote against Wallace than it is a vote for Carter." Many black politicians, like their white counterparts, are convinced that either Hubert Humphrey or Ted Kennedy would win over Carter's black support should either enter the race.

Carter suffers among some blacks for the same reason he does among some whites: accusations that he is vague on issues. "You can't nail him down," complains Clarence Burns, a Baltimore city councilman. "What is he going to do about unemployment?" (Carter has refused to support the Humphrey-Hawkins bill that would require the Government to reduce unemployment to less than 3%, but he vows an all-out attack on unemployment.) Still, as Burns concedes, "there's something about him that appeals to black people."

Throughout the campaign, some of Carter's political opponents have tried to depict him as a closet racist--one whose sensitivity to black causes coincided with the development of his political ambitions. The major chinks in Carter's armor:

> As Governor, he urged Georgia parents to support a resolution for a constitutional ban on busing by writing their legislators. But he insists he did so only to prevent a school boycott. Now he says he can live with, though he does not advocate, busing to establish black rights to attend any school.

> He spoke favorably on numerous occasions, when running for Governor, of both George Wallace and Lester Maddox, two of the foremost symbols of the relationship between racial hatred and political success in the pre-1970s South. More recently, Carter has bitterly attacked Maddox, now one of his most outspoken Georgia critics.

> As a member of the school board in segregationist Sumter County (Ga.) from 1955 to 1962, Carter was regarded as "liberal" by other board members, yet went along with policies that blatantly discriminated against black pupils and teachers. But he also fought--unsuccessfully--to consolidate the county's schools and thus integrate them.

These episodes have cast longer shadows with white Democratic liberals than with blacks, many of whom understand the conditions and atmosphere in which Carter grew up and launched his political career. Referring to Carter's outspoken opposition to discrimination, Andy Young says: "In Sumter County you could literally get killed for saying the kind of things Jimmy did."

Blacks tend to find more significance in Carter's performance as Governor than in his campaign rhetoric. To many, the words of his inaugural address--"I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over"--signaled a new era in racial relations not just in Georgia but in the entire South. It was more than rhetoric. Carter was the first Georgia Governor to appoint large numbers of blacks to important posts in the state. He startled Georgia's rednecks by ordering a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. hung alongside likenesses of prominent whites in the Georgia state capitol.

Obviously, the black judgment of Carter is not unanimous, and is subject to change. And since Carter's appeal crosses racial lines, it may suggest that black and white constituencies are no longer so opposite as has been supposed. Sums up Harvey Williams, a black politician: "The blacks are getting tired of all the promises by Northern liberals. They respect Carter's sound position. It's a matter of credibility--in all groups, including the blacks."

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