NEGROES GAIN POSTS

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31215, 12 November 1966, Page 15

NEGROES GAIN POSTS

(N .Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, Nov. 11.

Americans shattered records when they elected a new Congress and 35 state Governors last Tuesday.

In some states the political colour bar was torn down for the first time.

A still incomplete unofficial count showed 55,103,944 people cast ballots, compared

with 53,734,985 in 1962, the last “off year” election when the Presidency was not at stake.

The figure will be larger be-' cause the count is not complete in some isolated areas and the absentee ballot has not been tallied.

The Republican gain of 47 seats in the House of Representatives, three in the Senate and eight governorships was hailed as “sensational” by the party chairman, Mr Ray Bliss. Big Cities He said the party won a far bigger share of the Negro vote and mad' impressive gains in the big cities which “if we keep moving could elect a President next time.” Negroes across the country won local posts such as member of the State legislature, sheriff and judge. The most prominent was a

Republican, Mr Edward Brooke, of Massachusetts, the first Negro to be elected to the Senate since reconstruction days of the Civil War when slavery was abolished. Other Negro gains were: Lucius Amerson, a former serviceman who fought in Korea, was elected sheriff of Macon county, Alabama, over two white opponents. He is the first Negro sheriff in this Deep South state since postcivil war days. Six Negroes were elected to the Tennessee legislature.

Nine Negroes were elected to the Ohio Assembly and two to the State senate. Robert Lee Williams, a 33-year-old carpenter, was elected a member of the Board of Education in Fayette County, Mississippi—the first of his people to be elected to public office in Mississippi this century.

Negroes were also elected for the first time to state legislatures in Philadelphia, Connecticut, Arizona, Texas, and Nevada.