Frail Black Consensus

Inside the vast gymnasium of West Side High School in Gary, Ind., a kaleidoscope swirled and shifted: elegant pantsuits vied with flowing African dresses. Brightly colored, long-collared shirts from Harlem's streets brushed past stetsons and string ties from Texas. The careful tailoring of pin-stripe suits contrasted with the bulky military garb of the separatist army of the Republic of New Africa. The politics of the assembled blacks--3,009 delegates to the first national political convention of blacks in the U.S.--were as wildly varied as their attire.

The meeting in Gary grew out of an almost year-long series of small gatherings of black politicians and community leaders. The aim: formulation of a black strategy for the 1972 elections. Delegate slates were to be made up of every black elected official, plus community workers chosen in proportion to the black population of each state. Many states did not come up with a full slate; seven states were not represented at all. Some delegates could not afford to travel to Gary, or to pay the $25 registration fee.

Resolutions and position papers were hastily compiled; organizations with greater resources were able to push their views more effectively than other factions at the convention. The result: black-nationalist groups supplanted moderates, and urban leaders from the North dominated the proceedings, instead of rural Southern black officeholders and civil rights workers.

The convention began with a searing speech by Gary Mayor Richard Hatcher, one of the first blacks to be elected mayor of a major U.S. city. Said Hatcher: "We are through believing. We are through hoping. We are through trusting in the two major white American political parties. Hereafter, we shall rely on the power of our own black unity."

Committees working on segments of the agenda encountered the full range of philosophies within the black community: militants exhorting the convention to demand freedom for "political prisoners," and conservatives in search of more law-and-order in the ghetto; separatists anxious to set aside part of the South as a new black nation and integrationists pushing for open housing and busing. The result was a platform with more than 70 separate items, cajoled and gaveled past the delegates by Imamu Amiri Baraka, the Newark black nationalist leader and poet once known as LeRoi Jones. Among the major points on the partly sensible, largely Utopian agenda:

> Congressional representation for blacks proportionate to the population. The convention called for a minimum of 66 Representatives and 15 Senators, with a comparable black voice in local and state governments.

> Free national health insurance and day-care centers.

> An increase in federal spending to combat organized crime and drug traffic; a 50% cut in military and space-program spending.

> A guaranteed annual income of $6,500 for a family of four, compared with the $2,400 minimum in the Administration's proposed Family Assistance Plan.

> "Reparations" in money and real estate for blacks, the amounts to be fixed by a national black commission.

Snuck Through. The most controversial measure passed at the convention was contained not in the original agenda but in a resolution calling for an end to busing. It was the bombshell of the meeting. Proposed by the South Carolina delegation, the resolution stated flatly: "We condemn racial integration of schools as a bankrupt and suicidal method of desegregating the schools based on the false notion that black children are unable to learn unless they are in the same setting as white children. As an alternative to busing black children to achieve racial balance, we demand quality education in the black community through the control of our school districts and an equal share of the money." After the convention, however, some black leaders backed away from that rigid a position. The black caucus in Congress issued a statement underscoring their support of busing as one way to achieve equal educational opportunity. Another politically explosive resolution passed in the waning moments of the meeting after many delegates had left the floor was a statement calling for the "dismantlement of Israel." Said Hatcher: "I think it was snuck through.It was a most unfortunate incident."

The convention left several significant things undone. It took no stand on the formation of a black third party; since nearly half of the delegates were black elected officials, any move to undermine their bases within the major parties would have caused a major rupture. Similarly, a drive to endorse the presidential candidacy of Representative Shirley Chisholm never reached the microphones.

No one can say that the agenda and resolutions passed at the convention truly represented black opinion in America. The Chicago Defender, one of the nation's most influential black dailies, raged editorially that the convention was a "babel of ideologies, half-baked dilettantism and infantile assumptions. It had a chance to be a force in the consortium of American politics, and it has muffed it." As an institution, a black convention is probably years away from having any serious influence on presidential politics. Its continuing steering committee will nonetheless push the major parties to incorporate some of its goals this year. Its most notable achievement, despite rhetorical excesses, was bringing together blacks as diverse as Birchers and the Weatherman and forging a frail but important agreement about their mutual concerns.

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