NEGROES’ VIEW OF CANDIDATES

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 13

NEGROES’ VIEW OF CANDIDATES

(N.ZP. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

MEMPHIS, August 16.

Negroes were not enthusiastic about Mr Richard Nixon as a Presidential candidate and might be even less enthusiastic about Vice-President Humphrey, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy said today.

Speaking at the annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Council in Memphis—where Dr Martin Luther King was assassinated last April—Dr Abernathy said: “Negroes are not enthusiastic about Nixon be cause he is led by a man like (Senator) Strom Thurmond They may be less enthusiastic about Hubert Humphrey for fear he will be controlled by Mayor Daley, Senator Eastland or President Johnson.”

Senator James Eastland has been an opponent of civil rights for a long time, and Mr Daley, the Mayor of Chicago, has been severely criticised for his handling of Negro demonstrations in Chicago.

Dr Abernathy, who threatened increased picketing and boycotts to obtain “black control of slum area businesses,” said the S.C.L.C. would no longer act as “baby-sitter” during racial troubles. “If they want to stop the rioting, let them find jobs for the jobless and feed the hungry,” he declared. Dr Abernathy added: “The black man must control the economic life and the institutions of the slums. We’re tired of Mister Charley, working from nine to five, making his dollars in the slums and taking them home to the sophisticated part of town. If they do business in the black community, then their money must remain there.”