Elections: The Real Black Power

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The final, not-too-secret ingredient of success was the white vote. Though Negroes represented a majority of the population, whites held a slight edge in voter registration, and at least a few Negroes were certain to vote under organization orders. Hatcher's campaign aides recruited 2,000 precinct workers—including 400 white residents and college students—and he himself stumped vigorously in white neighborhoods. He never attacked Radigan but he cast doubt on his ability to deal with the "entities"—the powers that have made Gary the unlovely place it is.

Gold Doorknobs. Hatcher promised to reorganize the police department, drive out the gamblers and prostitutes, improve housing conditions. He said he would knock heads with U.S. Steel, which founded Gary in 1906 as a company town. The corporation's facilities, Hatcher charged, are underassessed by nearly two-thirds—12% of value instead of the required 33½%. "If we could just raise it to 20%," Hatcher said, "why, you could build schools with gold doorknobs. You could tear down all the slums." The strategy worked, but with little to spare. The biggest election-day turnout in Gary's history produced a slender victory of 39,330 v. 37,941, a plurality of less than 2%. Hatcher held 95% of the Negro vote and attracted an estimated 12% of the white electorate. Pledging a "multiracial government," Hatcher takes office in January, and if he makes good his threats to expel racketeers, cleanse the party machine and face down U.S. Steel, he should be in for a lively four-year term.

Sharing with Rats. In Cleveland, the excitement started for Carl Stokes even before his two-year term began. The tension of election night gave way to apprehension as the county elections board discovered sizable errors in the initial count, then whittled his lead practically to the vanishing point. It was in keeping with the roller-coaster life that Cleveland's new mayor has led for most of his 40 years.

Stokes was born in the Cleveland slum called Central. His handsome father, a laundry worker, died when Carl was a year old, leaving his son no legacy but looks. For the next eleven years, Carl, his older brother Louis and their mother shared one bed and one bed room with the rats. While Mrs. Stokes, now 65, worked as a maid by day, their grandmother reared the boys. But Mother Stokes managed to get across one important message: "Study, so you'll be somebody."

Carl and Louis studied, though Carl, at least, suffered some ambivalence. He would smuggle books home from the library under his clothes. "Reading was against the mores," he explains. "I couldn't let the other boys know." And in the Depression-era slums, he thought more about Joe Louis than Booker T. Washington. "All of us looked on boxing as a way of life," he says. "You had to fight." At 17 he dropped out of high school and soon found himself in the Army. His military career in Europe as the war was ending was more athletic than heroic. He continued to box, won the table-tennis championship of the European theater. He came home with corporal's stripes and a renewed determination to go back to his books.