FLORIDA: Black Ballots

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For its crusade to disinfect Miami's city hall of political dysentery, the Miami News won a Pulitzer Prize. Miami got a new mayor and, this week, a new city commission. In last week's primary for the commissioners, a lot of Miami Negroes got something they never had had before: a vote.

In the reform wave whipped up by the News Negro leaders saw their chance to improve the condition of Miami's ramshackle, malodorous Negro section on the city's east side. They stirred up such interest in the commission primary that election officials provided two extra, segregated voting machines in the chief Negro polling place, the fifth precinct fire station. Evening before primary day, certain white citizens took other precautions.

After dark, a parade of 75 automobiles, their license plates shrouded, drove through the Negro district. In the cars rode white-hooded figures, distributing threats lettered in red, twirling a suggestive hangman's noose. At 25 street corners the Ku-Kluxers paused to plant and ignite fiery crosses. From a pole they hung a black effigy labeled: "This nigger voted."

Night of the parade, policemen were conspicuously absent from the Negro section. But on primary day, spurred by Police Chief H. Leslie Quigg who was spurred by publicity, police dispersed ominous knots of white men near the polling places. Before the polls closed, more than 1,000 Negroes cast ballots, mostly for the reform candidates. By City Clerk Frank J. Kelly's estimate, this was 20 times more than in any previous Miami election. Incidental result of the primary: the reform administration elected a complete city council.