place an all- Negro party on a state ballot for the first time in American history.
The Michigan Freedom Now party stands as the advance guard. of independent Negro political action, Negroes in other parts of the | country are making bids for public office although they have not. organized themselves into independent parties. In the Deep South, for example, militant Negroes enter the Democratic primaries in order to gain a place on the ballot, These primary elections func= tion as nominations elections and the winners are then placed on the. ballot to run under the party name during the general elections, © For the past hundred years the Democratic party has dominated South ern politics and nomination to the Democratic ticket assures election.
Alabama
A number of Alabama Negroes ran in the primaries and most of them won places on the November ballot which is equivalent to winning the offices, The defeated candidates were Mrs, Amelia Boynton, run= ning for the U.S.Congress, and Mrs, Bernice Johnson who was running for the Jefferson County school board,
Three other Negroes were successful in the Macon County primaries and thus scored the first Negro breakthrough in Alabama. politics since the Reconstruction days that followed the Civil War, A fourth Negro drew more votes than his white opponent but did not win a clear enough majority and is in a run-off clection to determine whether he or the white politician will appear on the November ballot.
These victories at the polls were credited to the fact that civilerights fighters had waged a long and determined effort to win the vote for disfranchised Negroes, As a result of their battle, Negro voters now outnumber whites in this particular county.
Mississippi
In Mississippi three Negroes are running for seats in the U,S. Congress, They are Mrs, Fannie Lou Hamer, the Rev. J,EH.Cameron and James M, Houston, Aron Henry, president of the Mississippi National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], has announced that if the Negro candidates lose the election fney will go to Washington anyway and try to unseat the winning | white candidates,
Henry said, "We intend to challenge these congressmen for
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their seats on the floor of Congress because they cannot be legally elected where so many Negroes are deprived of voting, '
Mrs, Victoria Gray, candidate for the U.S,Senate, is a leader of civil-rights activities in the area around Hattiesburg, Mississippi. For over three years she has been teaching citizenship and voterregistration classes, Her campaign is emphasizing education issues in Mississippi, ar .
Civil-rights workers have also formed the "Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party" in order to send their own delegates to the Demo~-. cratic National Convention, These delegates will challenge the right of the official delegates, chosen and supported by raoists, to repre= sent the people of Mississippi where almost half of the population is Negro. co ; Georgia, Arkansas, North Carolina
C.B.King, a noted civil-rights attorney, is running for a seat in the U.S.House of Representatives, He has handled most of the civile-rights cases in southwest Georgia during the recent period, A Negro woman.has filed for Congress in Arkansas and is running against the white incumbent who has attacked NAACP leaders as "Communists," In Halifax County, North::Carolina, eleven Negroes have filed for local offices and a twelfth is running as a congressional candidate.
A significant political race is: taking place in Monroc, North Carolina, where a Negro woman, Mrs, Mildred Oxner, is running for the Board of Education, Monroe, North Carolina, was the city where Negroes first organized themselves for armed defense against racists, The Negro community there, under the leadership of Robert Williams, became the focus of national attention because of their militant battles: ‘during. the late 1950!s,. Police harassment and a nemo re charge of kidnapping drove Robert Williams into exile in Cuba ins. 1961, :
Those bids for Negro political power are, helping to make: 1964: an election-year landmark in the history of the United States,
THAT WEEK END MBETING: IN: HONOLULU
When a handful of Washington bureaucrats met in Honolulu June 1-2 to decide whether to escalate the war in South Vietnam at risk of plunging the world into a nuclear conflict, the Paris Le Monde spotted a flaw: "The Washington leaders seem to hope that few people. . ..will notice that most of the participants. ...are. | people who sce each other every day on the banks of the Potomac, It is doubtful that the mere fact they meet on an tsland in the Pasifig® will contribute to reinforcing their. lucidity," 7
De=~Stalinization in East Germany
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