Beyond The Pulpit

The Buffalo Soldiers are invading the diners and barbershops of South Carolina. The political soldiers, named after a 19th century black Army regiment, once stormed black neighborhoods to get out the vote for Bill Clinton. This year they are canvassing for Wesley Clark, but the battle isn't so simple this time. Last Thursday, as Buffalo Soldiers in black cavalry hats and boots gathered around Rhonda Court, 40, an apartment-complex manager eating lunch at LJ's Soul Food Cafe in Charleston, she wasn't satisfied with the cowboy pitch. "What's Clark all about on Medicaid and getting lower-income families better access to health coverage?" she wanted to know.

Bill Clinton is gone, and so is Jesse Jackson. This time there is no easy or natural choice for black voters. Next week will be the candidates' first real test among this constituency in the "Southern gateway" primary in South Carolina, in which African Americans will probably make up as much as 50% of voting Democrats. This year the candidates are finding they must do more if they are going to capture the imagination and the votes of the demographic that is critical not only to a victory in the primaries but also to giving a Democrat a chance against George Bush. "Just saying the name Martin Luther King a couple of times is not enough," says Joy-Ann Lomena Reid, who writes on black issues for the Miami Herald.

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For decades, African-American voters have rallied behind one clear Democratic contender in the primary season: Jackson, then Clinton and then Al Gore. This time, though, the vote looks as if it may be scattered across the pack. "There is no messiah among them," says the Rev. Joseph Darby, pastor of the Morris Brown A.M.E. Church in Charleston and one of the city's most prominent black leaders. But is the difficulty this time caused by the message or the messenger? Or by the contemporary political landscape, where the black demographic is no longer so monolithic, and where leaders do not dutifully line up behind one candidate, and where the black church is no longer a guaranteed kingmaker?

Howard Dean, for example, has won the backing of more black congressional caucus members than any other candidate, but each candidate has his own bragging roster. Clark has the support of New York Congressman Charles Rangel and Andrew Young, and John Kerry can claim the leader of South Carolina's legislative black caucus as well as Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, who had overwhelming support from African-American voters in his 1998 re-election. All of the candidates are in the hunt for the blessing of South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, who had originally endorsed Dick Gephardt. It's not clear whether the divided endorsements mean that black politicians are getting more savvy, as many black leaders claim, or that they are diluting their strength by not working as a bloc.

So far, the strongest unifying force among most black voters is a shared rage against Bush. That resentment was ignited during the Florida recount fiasco, which many blacks perceived as rigged against them in all too familiar ways. Says four-term Georgia state senator Vincent Fort: "After Florida and four years of an extreme right-wing agenda, after seeing George W. Bush lay a wreath at the tomb of Martin Luther King Jr. and then turn around and go back to Washington and appoint a [Mississippi judge] Charles Pickering [Sr.] to the federal bench — I think the African-American voter will be energized." The anger remains strong, and no one has yet fully tapped into it. At the same time, African-American voters know that anger alone is not going to defeat George Bush.

The traditional quandary for white candidates is, Do you court black voters by emphasizing "black issues," or do you treat them like all other voters? The answer is both — especially in the South, where black voters can be more conservative on social policy. "The only important color in this country anymore is green," says Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a social worker and state representative from rural Orangeburg, S.C. "Black people have the same worries that white people do: Will I have a job, will my kids go to a decent school, and can I afford to get sick?" But in South Carolina, where the median income for blacks is $14,750--about half that of whites — and where almost half the school districts are suing the state for not adequately funding a basic public education, black voters also want some recognition of their special needs.

In the general election, the Democratic nominee has often taken the black vote for granted. In the primaries, though, the candidates can't afford to do that — they have to go to the people. "It's more of a retail rather than a wholesale vote," says Andi Pringle, Dean's deputy campaign manager. "You have to go get it." Dean has one of the best organizations in South Carolina. But when Dean visited Darby's church last fall, more white people attended than black.