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43 In several municipal elections between the late 1960s and the end of the century , African American mayoral candidates won three different types of contests . First successes came in Northern minority-majority cities such as Newark, Gary, Detroit, and East St. Louis. Several African American mayoral candidates followed the wins gained in these urban centers by succeeding in southern municipalities where African Americans outnumbered whites. A revolutionary shift of control, this demographic transitioning of political power from Caucasian to African American in Dixie followed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The transparent results of this legislation elevated African American office seekers to take command of city halls in New Orleans and Birmingham—two municipalities where favorable population breakdowns had become most helpful to African Americans gaining power. Finally, in some notable exceptions, there was another smaller group of African American mayoral contenders with minority -minority status, who adroitly managed to convince enough whites in their electorates that they deserved leadership opportunities. Among the cases of this phenomenon occurring, Chicago’s was the one most observed and discussed of all the examples. Perhaps compared to the win in the Windy City, the two victories by a pair of African American mayoral candidates in New Haven and Seattle are easier to explain because their outcomes were certainly more predicted to transpire. This chapter devotes attention to these three categories as its prelude to more intensive case studies of the African Americans mayors from Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis. It concludes with an overall assessment of how specific black municipal chief executives have fared both as minority and as urban leaders. Chapter 3 Retaining White Power with Black Mayors 44 From Edward Brooke to Barack Obama Elmo Bush’s Failure in East St.Louis,Illinois As the more racially partisan African American voters in East St. Louis, Illinois , found to their dismay from a 1967 mayoral contest involving white incumbent Alvin G. Fields and black challenger Elmo Bush, some essential factors other than the clearly more obvious advantage of favorable demography could affect a municipal election. In this city, where 59 percent of all voting came from overwhelmingly African American precincts, neither Fields nor Bush tried especially hard to court voters of the opposite race. The white candidate ignored an invitation from the NAACP to attend a Q&A session, while his African American opponent avoided door-to-door canvassing in white neighborhoods. An analysis of the election reveals the degree to which Bush failed to connect with voters of both races. Among whites, he gained only 12 percent support, whereas in African American-populated areas of East St. Louis, Fields outpolled his foe by 40 to 60 percent. Many contributing factors accounted for Bush’s defeat. One of the most significant reasons was African American dependence upon the winner’s political machine. By exerting tight control of the St. Clair County Economic Opportunities Commission under the federal antipoverty program, the mayor, through political allies, had charge of public assistance to needy black residents. Moreover , many African American church leaders held appointments on public committees and depended upon municipal jobs, and the incumbent mayoral regime doled out both as patronage. Even after Bush had arranged to share a campaign platform two days before the election with Stokely Carmichael, chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the city’s militants preferred to recall 1963 when the candidate had abandoned a leadership role in civil rights demonstrations . Among conservative churchgoers, Bush’s unsavory reputation as a heavy drinker, playboy, and womanizer hurt his chances, too. Hence the vote among African Americans reflected more or less the cynicism of one African American East St. Louis resident who had the following reaction to the two mayoral aspirants, “I don’t trust the man, but I don’t the boy either.”1 Carl B.Stokes in Cleveland,Ohio In several other Northern cities, as whites were fleeing in large numbers to suburbs and as African Americans were significantly growing in urban population percentages, a favorable shift to minority empowerment logically followed. While the rapidly deteriorating Illinois river town was rejecting an African American mayoral candidate in 1967, Cleveland and Gary residents elected Carl B. Stokes and Richard Hatcher, respectively. A division among white voters in the Democratic primary was the significant factor affecting the African American politician’s victory in the preliminary round of the Ohio mayoral contest. After a Retaining White Power with Black Mayors 45 losing effort in 1963 to become his city’s top...

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