However, by early April, when the Congressional Black Caucus held its forum on national priorities at Harvard, it was clear that no such neat, coherent, and subtle strategy as he proposed would or perhaps could be followed by blacks in 1972. Many old-line black politicians had already aligned themselves in the party center, backing either Humphrey or Muskie. Shirley Chisholm had announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination, with a spare and eloquent appeal for black support. Her entry into the race had upstaged the male members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were then forced to abandon their idea of promoting John Conyers, the handsome, young black Congressman from Michigan, as their candidate. Although officially neutral and internally divided, several Caucus members, led by Louis Stokes of Cleveland, favored, supporting Humphrey again, but this time, extracting concrete pledges from him in advance. The pledges were to be in the form of the black political agenda the Caucus was preparing to present to the Democratic Platform Committee. The agenda was to embody the spirit of the National Black Political Convention, held earlier in the year at Gary, and chaired by Caucus member Walter Fauntroy. It was the strategy of the Stokes faction of the Caucus to get Humphrey to publicly endorse the agenda in exchange for getting the support of a solid black delegate bloc.

But, George Wallace's smashing victory in the Florida Primary outdated, undermined, or reversed several of these black strategies. His victory not only thrust Hubert Humphrey far to the right of the position he held in his halcyon days, but it also made it more difficult for many blacks to believe that they could afford to withhold their support any longer from the more liberal Democratic contenders in hopes of getting more for that support later. If Wallace built momentum unchecked in the primaries, later might be too late.

Still, Julian Bond adhered o his own strategy, keeping his distance from the frenetic whirl of the primaries.

Then, George McGovern won in Wisconsin, and joined Wallace as a coming contender. Bond had known and liked McGovern from the time they had both been supporters of the antiwar movement and Robert Kennedy's aborted campaign. Although Bond felt that he and McGovern were in "pointed disagreement on a number of things," he thought that of all the candidates McGovern was "most right on most of the issues that I'm interested in." However, among other things. Bond was not' yet sure that McGovern could win. But, unlike other politicans who refused to support McGovern because of their doubts of his political viability. Julian Bond saw in the McGovern campaign a chance of "building a new kind of politics" and of exerting precisely that kind of political impact he had previously hoped to achieve by remaining neutral before the Convention.

Up until this point, McGovern's most glaring weakness had been has inability to draw a substantial share of the black vote. Eventhough he won in Wisconsin, he was unable to crack Humphrey's hold on Milwaukee's black wards. Although this did not make a critical difference in the Western primary McGovern's inability to reach the black vote promised to present more of a problem in the upcoming primaries in states where the black population was large enough to swing the election. In fact the problem of McGovern`s poor relationship with black voters and pol`s was thrown into high relief when he lost the Ohio- primary.

The race against Humphrey in Ohio has been rated a toss up and several McGovern people even felt their man held a definite edge. The early returns confirmed this prediction, as McGovern crept to a slim lead edging Humphrey in the industrial towns that should have been has strong ends. But, Big Labor had sunk most of its money into the Muskie campaign and when Muskie folded after Flonda and Wisconsin became wary of spending any more of its resources in the unpredictable prodigal primary run.Throughout election night in Ohio and into the dawn McGovern clung to his lead. But, then the returns from Cleveland began to come in.

In three out of four of greater Cleveland Congressional districts McGovern was clearly ahead, and it appeared as it be would win the state if he ran even close to Humphrey in Congressional district, the 21st largely black, the 21st is Louis Stokes's district. With Stokes favoring Humphrey McGovern's moguls had expected that Humphrey would beat them in the 21st, but they had not expected that precinet figures would run on the order of 109 to 1 and 120 to 3. In fact, as a steady stream of such figures came in from the 21st the McGovern people realized that they had been taken. And, they also realized that it was essential that they at least mend fences with black politicians, while at the same time attracting a larger following within the black community, if McGovern were to win.

Perhaps no one is as qualified as Julian Bond to accomplish both ends of this task. Soon after the Ohio primary, Bond met with McGovern and McGovern's minority coordinator. Yancey Martin, and an agreement was reached. In return for preachin and healin for McGovern. Bond was to get "the three things I wanted: partial control of campaigning in my area, the hon's share of the voter registration money for my area, and, after the election, patronage."

Bond started to work on his end of the bargain almost immediately. Along with John Lewis, the former head of SNCC who is now director of the Voter Education Project (VEP), he went to work on Coretta Scott King to persuade her to endorse McGovern and, equally important, campaign for him in California. Simultaneously, he scavenged the South for commitments to McGovern from previously uncommitted or Humphrey-learning blacks.

With Mrs. King, Bond toured California, urging blacks to turn their backs on Hubert Humphrey because Humphrey had turned his back on them, while praising McGovern's sensitivity and conviction. Largely as a result of Bond's activity. McGovern drew substantial black support for the first time in California, when, as it happened, he needed it most.

Returning to the South Bond turned up the charm on black delegates uncommitted to McGovern, convincing them by "sort of a mix of our persuasion and their own ability to make up their own minds" that the time was right to come out for that McGovern. "It comes down to a feeling that McGovern is going to make it with us or without us, and the general feeling is that it would be better with us," he explained.

By this time, Walter Fauntroy had also become very active in the McGovern campaign and in fact, the whole attitude of the Congressional Black Caucus was changing. Soon, they too decided to get on the McGovern bandwagon. After negotiating terms similar to those won by Julian Bond. Black Caucus leaders held a press conference to announce their support of McGovern. When Walter Fauntroy, the District of Columbia's nonvoting representative, delivered one of the speeches placing McGovern in nomination at Miami, it seemed that a mutually satisfactory alliance had at last been forged between black political leaders and the McGovern campaign George McGovern had gotten the Democratic nomination no one said he could get, and black leaders had gotten specific pledges from him about who was going to get how much of what from whom. For the moment, everyone was happy.

But, the period of enchantment was short-lived. First came the Fagleton affair, then the hassle with George Meany and other more conservative labor leaders who had been involved in the stop. McGovern campaign. Suddenly, the momentum that the McGovern campaign had accrued during the last primaries and the Convention had disappeared as unexpectedly as it had come.

Moreover, by late August, when black pols were woodshedding around the country to assess their situations and map strategy for the coming campaigns, the honeymoon of the marriage between blacks and McGovern was unquestionably over. Louis Stokes expressed the feeling of many: "We've been screwed again."

"The cat's a fraud." Congressman Bill Clay said of McGovern. Clay, a former chairman of the Black Congressional Caucus and one of the most respected black politicians in the country, and Stokes, the current chairman of the Caucus, charged that McGovern was reneging on all of his promises and wouldn't even given them an audience to discuss their dissatisfactions.