The Nation: Why Carter Wins the Black Vote

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His roots run deep and strong in Georgia redneck country. In Plains, his home town, blacks live in a section of their own and attend all-black churches. School integration came slowly, painfully and under duress. Yet in Democratic primaries this year in states as diverse as Massachusetts, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina, blacks have trooped to the polls and cast the largest share of their votes for Georgian Jimmy Carter. The phenomenon of blacks backing a Southern white reared in the Georgia backwoods is one of the most intriguing aspects of the campaign to date.

In Florida, Carter's share of the black vote was 70%; in North Carolina, 90%. Carter swept the black precincts in Chicago and other Illinois urban areas, and his only primary defeat—in Massachusetts—would have been far more crushing without his 40% share of the black vote in Boston, greater than that won by any other candidate. In both Florida and North Carolina, blacks had an added incentive to support Carter. His major opponent was George Wallace, whose 1960s cry of "segregation forever" had stamped him an implacable racist, despite his disclaimers. But in Massachusetts, blacks could choose from among Fred Harris, Sargent Shriver, Milton Shapp, Morris Udall and Henry Jackson, whose civil rights records range from good to excellent. Instead, they supported Jimmy Carter.

Warm Endorsements. As Carter tells it, the situation is as normal as grits in the morning or magnolia blossoms hi the spring. Says he: "I think the blacks just trust me to do what I say and run the Government in a competent way." That explanation is too simplistic. For one thing, Carter's fair treatment of blacks as Governor of Georgia won him warm endorsements from such revered blacks as Martin Luther King Sr. and Georgia's influential Congressman Andrew Young. His deputy campaign coordinator is Ben Brown, a Georgia state legislator with close ties to black leaders throughout the nation; he is one of 19 blacks on Carter's paid staff of some 200.

Carter established a bond with blacks by means of the familiar Southern homilies sprinkled through his speeches, his unashamed evocations of love and compassion, his Baptist fundamentalist evangelism. Says Chicago Black Leader Jesse Jackson: "The fundamental problem in this country today is not economic, it's spiritual. Carter is conducting a revival-of-hope campaign."

But John Lewis, head of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project, believes that "Carter's support in the black community is relatively soft and shifting. It's more of a vote against Wallace than it is a vote for Carter." Many black politicians, like their white counterparts, are convinced that either Hubert Humphrey or Ted Kennedy would win over Carter's black support should either enter the race.