First Since Reconstruction

During this year's campaign for governor of Illinois, Republican Candidate William G. Stratton promised to appoint the first Negro to the state cabinet. Last week Stratton paid up in heaping measure. He named an able Chicago Negro, Joseph Bibb, to one of the state's most sensitive and important posts, director of public safety.

This bold move in a state that contains areas of high racial tension (e.g., Chicago, Cicero) may win back to the Republican Party many Illinois Negroes, who continued to vote Democratic through the 1952 election. Bibb will be the first Negro to occupy a cabinet post in any state since Reconstruction days in the South.

Though a longtime Republican, 57-year-old Joseph Bibb is no professional politician. Born in Montgomery, Ala. where his father taught Hebrew and Greek at a theological school, he is a practicing lawyer (Yale Law School, 1918) and managing editor of the Pittsburgh Courier's Chicago edition. As safety director, Bibb will boss four state penitentiaries, the 500-man state police force, all state parole agents and the Division of Criminal Investigation and Identification.

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