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University Daily Kansan Thursday, Oct. 29, 1964
Negroes Expected to Give Johnson Great Support
WASHINGTON—(UPI) Negroes apparently intend to give President Johnson the most solid bloc vote they have ever accorded a candidate for the White House.
No one pretends to know if northern white voters who resent or fear Negro militancy will support Sen Barry M. Goldwater in large numbers.
That, in brief, is the pre-election picture of the "Black Vote" and the "White Backlash."
THERE IS LITTLE disagreement over the proposition that Johnson can expect overwhelming support by Negroes this year. And there are indications the Negro vote will be the largest in history.
Item: A Gallup Poll a month before the election showed that 94 per cent of the Negroes who intended to vote would cast their ballots for Johnson.
Item: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), declaring for Johnson in its first endorsement of a Presidential candidate, spoke in terms of a 90 per cent Negro turnout for the Democratic candidate.
BUT WHAT ABOUT the "White Backlash?" Will it produce enough votes to offset Johnson's Negro support?
White voters in the North haven't given the polltakers enough solid information to make confident predictions of the backlash effect on the Presidential race.
The pollsters and the professional politicians do know there is resentment in the big cities of the North, where Democratic strength has been taken for granted in the past.
ITEM: Gov. George Wallace of Alabama waged an only thinly-disguised segregationist campaign for Presidential primary votes in Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland. He lost the primaries but got enough votes to thoroughly frighten local Democrats who had been supporting civil rights.
Item: Voters have turned down civil rights ordinances or propositions in five out of seven local referenda in the last two years. California has a statewide referendum
on a fair housing law coming up, and the experts say the statute probably will be repealed.
However, the racial unrest of the "long, hot summer," has all but vanished in the cool of the fall. There have been no racial riots since the outbreaks of the late summer and Negro leaders put a lid on almost all demonstrations.
GOLDWATER HAS made no overt pitch to capitalize on "White Backlash." But his vote against the Civil Rights Bill, his stand against school busing, and his statement that forced integration is as bad as forced segregation provides a haven for the potential anti-Negro vote.
The Negro vote probably was sealed long before the campaign began. The NAACP, in an official policy position, said in effect that whatever Goldwater did in the field of racial relations in past years, his vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill was the overriding issue.
The top-heavy Negro vote could
help Johnson in close elections in both northern industrial states and in the South where Negro registration is steadily increasing.
THE NAACP said that about 500,000 Negroes are registered this year in Illinois. If 90 per cent of these votes went for Johnson, he would start with 450,000 in a state which cast 4.7 million votes in 1960.
The NAACP spokesman said the biggest switch of Negro voters from the GOP to the Democratic party would occur in the South.
For years Negroes found a partial home in the Republican party. But this year the Goldwater factions in the southern states virtually threw the Negroes out. In Georgia, for example, they were purged from their seats to the GOP convention.
Again using the NAACP's figures, 265,000 Negroes are registered in Florida. If all the Negroes voted and 90 per cent voted for Johnson, the President would start with 220,500 in a state which cast 1.5 million votes in 1960.
Business Group Visits K.C. Board of Trade
Members of Delta Sigma Pi, professional business fraternity, toured the Board of Trade in Kansas City. Mo., yesterday.
More than 30 KU business students went on the trip, accompanied by Harold C. Krogh, proprofessor of business administration.
the Kansas City Board of Trade, founded in 1923 by the United States Department of Agriculture, deals primarily with grain. There are only two other boards like it in the U.S. The others are located in Minneapolis, Minn., and Chicago, Ill.
Jerald Long, Humboldt junior, and publicity chairman of Delta Sigma Pi, said the Board of Trade was located in Kansas City because 12 major railroads from an agricultural area go to the city.
"We spent much of the time watching the business in the 'pit' where trading takes place," Long said.
"The common conception of the Board of Trade is that it fixes prices," Long said. "But our speaker, Wallace Tice, president of a member grain firm, said this was not true. The market varies according to supply and demand."
Long said that as soon as a transaction is made in Kansas City it is transmitted by teletype to the Chicago Board of Trade.
Delta Sigma Pi will meet again at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in Room 306 of the Kansas Union. The speaker will be Max Cline of Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., who will speak on "College Training for Future Telephone Employees."
Topeka Municipal Auditorium
7:30 p.m., Nov. 8, 1964
All Seats Reserved. Prices =
$3.00, $2.50, $2.00
Send Check or Money Order For
Municipal Auditorium Box Office
Topeka, Ransax, Enclose self-addressed Envelope.
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