Situation Report

OUT of 203 million Americans, 22.7 million or 11 % are black. The most striking indicator of their political progress is the continuing rise in the number of Negroes holding elective public offices at local levels. A new survey by the Metropolitan Applied Research Center shows that there are now 1,469 black officials in the U.S. Among these are 168 state legislators, 48 mayors, 575 other elected city officials, 362 school-board members and 99 law-enforcement officials.

Most of the expansion of power has taken place in the South, though the only state in which the proportion of black legislators is greater than the percentage of black population is Ohio. It has 13 black lawmakers out of 132, although blacks constitute only 8% of the population. By contrast, blacks comprise 42% of Mississippi's citizenry, but there is only one black member in the legislature. Blacks form a majority on the councils of only two major U.S. cities: Detroit and Gary, Ind. The only large Southern city in which blacks come close to proportional representation is Jacksonville, Fla., where they hold four of nine city council seats.

On the federal level, there are now nine black Representatives and one black Senator; ten years ago, there were only four in the House and none in the Senate. On the policymaking levels of the Executive Branch, blacks now have little influence. Although Lyndon Johnson appointed the first black Cabinet member (Robert Weaver), Nixon has an all-white Cabinet. Nixon has James Farmer as an Assistant Secretary of HEW, but Johnson had more blacks in lower-level positions, topped by Carl Rowan as director of U.S.I.A.

In terms of voting power, blacks have made dramatic gains only in the South, where 52% of all U.S. blacks live. In the South there are about 800,000 more black voters registered today than there were before the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Nationwide the increase has been less than 1,000,000 (from 6,345,000 in 1966 to 7,238,000 at the time of the 1968 presidential election). This is due partly to the fact that there have been few sustained registration drives among blacks outside the South and partly to the difficulty of creating voting interest among blacks long reluctant to vote because of fear, a feeling of futility or just apathy.

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