With the efflorescence of the civil rights movement in recent years, increasing interest has arisen in putting forth black Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates. In 1960, the Independent Afro-American Party ran the Rev. Clennon King for President, but he received only 1500 votes. In 1964, the Socialist Workers Party ran its first black Presidential candidate, Clifton DeBerry, who won some 28,500 votes. (The all-black Freedom Now Party of that year fielded 39 candidates for federal and local offices, but none for the two top national posts.)

The 1968 campaign saw the most activity yet. The Socialist Workers Party, with Paul Boutelle as its black Vice-Presidential candidate, won 41,500 votes in the 21 states that allowed it on the ballot. For the first time since 1940 the Communist Party put up its own candidates; Mrs. Charlene Mitchell, a black bookkeeper from California, ran for President (with a running-mate who was a dozen years below the Constitutional minimum), but got only 1100 votes.

Eldridge Cleaver, the well-known author and Black Panther official, though then two years underage, ran for President on the platform of the Peace and Freedom Party, winning 36,500 votes. Not to be confused with that party was the Freedom and Peace Party, which ran black activist Dick Gregory for President in a few states.

Then came the dramatic nomination and withdrawal of Julian Bond at the Democratic convention. It was at this same convention that the Rev. Channing Phillips was nominated for President--thus becoming the first black person nominated for the top-post endorsement by a major party--and received 67 and one half votes in the roll-call.

And so we are back to the prospects for 1972. During recent months, Jet magazine, a black weekly, polled its readership of more than two million and found that 96 per cent of the respondents thought a black person should run for President this year. Two names led the list by a wide margin: Julian Bond (who will still be underage), with 30 per cent; and Cleveland's mayor, Carl Stokes, with 27 per cent, who nonetheless says he will "never be a candidate for elective office again."

There remains the Muskie view that a ticket with a black person on it is not yet electable. In this connection, one may want to ponder a series of six Gallup polls taken from 1958 to this past fall. White Americans were asked, "If your party nominated a generally well-qualified man for President and he happened to be a Negro, would you vote for him?" The number saying yes rose from 38 per cent in 1958 to 70 per cent today. That is encouraging, of course. Yet polls are not infallible, and people will often behave quite otherwise in the privacy of a voting booth than face to face with a pollster. Anyone who says that racism and ethnic voting are things of the past in this country is indulging in hypocrisy.

Blacks clearly are nonetheless going to play a larger role in national politics this year, whether or not one of them winds up on a party ticket. By so doing, they bid fair to acquire greater leverage than ever before--which is only just. In his book Nominating the President, a scholar in the field, Gerald Pomper, wrote nearly a decade ago: "It is not unlikely that a Negro eventually--and probably sooner rather than later--will be named to a national party slate, most likely as Vice-Presidential nominee." That "sooner" could well be imminent.

Perhaps it would not be amiss for the country to adopt a position close to the one allegedly voiced by Napoleon, to the effect that "history is only a fable agreed upon." Accordingly, whatever the truth of the claims summarized above under the first aspect of our subject, we might simply agree to say: "We've had a President and Vice-President with black ancestry. So what's all the excitement? Let's get on with taking care of business, with electing the people best capable of governing. And there's no need to panic if we have black blood in the White House--again."