Negroes Win County

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32054, 31 July 1969, Page 15

Negroes Win County

(N.Z. Praia Alan.—Copyright) EUTAW (Alabama), July 30.

Negro candidates in a special election yesterday won political control of rural Greene County in a possible prelude to black gains in surrounding counties of Alabama.

The six Negro candidates won narrow victories for four County Commission seats and two school board seats. With one Negro on the five-member board already, the election gave Negroes control of both major governing bodies—a first in Alabama.

Complete unofficial returns were released by Judge Dennis Herndon, chairman of the five-member County Commission, and after the new commission takes office, the only white member.

Negroes Barred It was Judge Herndon who ruled that the black candidates, running under the National Democratic Party of Alabama (N.D.P.A.) banner, failed to qualify properly and barred them from the ballot in the general election in November, 1968. The N.D.P.A. candidates won despite a dispute over the absentee ballots which went 204-1 for the white office holders, who had defeated the Negro candidates in the 1968 Democratic primary.

It was after that defeat that the Negro candidates tried to qualify under the splinter party banner which won in today's election, held as the result of a United States Supreme Court order. A crowd of Negroes, gathered on the courthouse lawn in Eutbn, yelled and cheered wildly when they heard the election results. The victors will take office as soon as they have been certified after the official canvass of votes next Friday. United Press International quoted Judge Herndon as telling a caller after the returns were in that “it looks like a bad day for Greene County, AU the white candidates lost and all the coloured candidates won.” Negro leaders had said the election was the most critical

test of Negro voting power in the. South in years. County authorities announced a few hours after the polls closed that 4190 people had voted, and the six Negro candidates were victorious by margins ranging from 98 to 288 votes. The New York Times News Service reported that Negro voters, equipped with felt pens with green ink, poured from the fields and forests of Greene County in unprecedented numbers to vote out the all-white government that had prevailed in the county since 1816. , Many of the men, some of them voting for the first time in their lives, wore dark wool Sunday suits despite the

fierce Alabama summer sun. The pens with green ink were supplied to Negro voters by officials of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference . (S.C.L.C.) and the National Democratic Party of Alabama

The use of green felt pens was suggested by an official of the N.D.P.A. as one method of preventing any tampering with ballots after the polls had closed. Fifty Federal vote-observ-ers seconded to the Justice Department by the Civil Service Commission, were in the county to watcty the proceedings. Two observers were stationed at each of the 19 booths in the 11 precincts in Greene County.