The Black History of the White House (44 page)

Outsiders: Independents, Third Parties, and the Fringe

A key difference between the mainstream candidates and the third party/independent aspirants is that the latter are mainly unconstrained by the prospects of winning and from the prevailing political status quo. They are also free from the politics of running in the primaries and caucuses, and then, after losing, free from pledging support to the candidate who did win even if there is a fundamental difference in values and views.

Black Third Party and independent candidates for presidents have been numerous. This includes comedian Dick Gregory, former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, National Alliance Party activist Lenora Fulani and Dennis Serrette, jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie, Ohio activist Ron Daniels, and candidates from the Workers World Party, Socialist Workers Party, and other small parties. These candidates were not running to exert leverage necessarily on the major parties but to carve out a political space for alternative and more radical voices in presidential politics. While they were marginal to non-existent for most whites in America, they did resonate with some, though few black Americans voted for them. Some campaigns were more whimsical than serious, but all raised critically relevant issues and concerns.

In terms of tone, popular receptivity, and impact there is also a sharp political dividing line between those who ran in the 1960s and 70s and those who came later. In the earlier period, the campaigns took place when the Black Liberation Movement was at a height, a movement that had dissipated by the end of the 1970s. While the Civil Rights Movement found itself in what has often been called a “crisis of victory” in the mid-1960s after achieving many of its goals, the Black Power Movement spread from East to West to Midwest. Not satisfied with civil rights legislation that gave formal equality but did not change
the fundamental power relationship between blacks and whites, more urban-based activists demanded black control of the institutions in the black community, including schools, stores, businesses, cultural activities, political inclusion, and other sites where whites dominated. Candidates for political office in this era were much more likely to have come from an activist background, and even if they did not, they felt an accountability that was not always present in their successors.

These candidates, perhaps more than anything, helped to expose the narrow political range that the two major parties offer to Americans. It is still nearly impossible for third party and independents, black or otherwise, impoverished or wealthy, to break through the barriers that have narrowed the political arena to a very few. From ballot access to media exposure to fundraising, these candidates were at a fatal disadvantage. Regardless of the odds, they ran.

Dizzy Gillespie

The first campaign in this era came from jazz-activist John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie in 1964. With escalating protests against the Vietnam War, turmoil following the assassination of John Kennedy, the emergence of radical black voices within the jazz community, and his own history as a musical outsider, it was not all that illogical that Dizzy would be interested in the 1964 presidential race.

As a jazz trumpeter, Gillespie was known for the rapid chord changes he and Charlie Parker played during the bebop era. In 1963 and 1964, in his short-lived presidential campaign, he sought to bring changes in the way the country was run. Beginning somewhat as a joke, the campaign grew as Dizzy's supporters began to organize support for him. They formed an organization called the John Birks Society. This was a clear
rebuke to the John Birch Society, the ultra-conservative, anti-government, anti-United Nations group that supported Rep. Barry Goldwater and other right-wing politicians and movements during its heyday in the 1960s. The John Birks Society, on the other hand, was a free-spirit network of jazz fans and civil libertarians.

They initially began to circulate a petition to get Gillespie on the California ballot. The petition stated, “We, the undersigned, hereby petition the Secretary of State of California to place the name of John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie as an independent candidate for the Presidency of the United States.”
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Although people from about twenty-five states had demonstrated interest in supporting the campaign, it was later decided to conduct a write-in effort focused on California. The whole idea was initiated by and grew from the efforts of jazz critic Ralph Gleason and his wife Jeanne, who managed the campaign.

Gillespie stated that he ran “to take advantage of the votes and publicity I'd receive and to promote change. It wasn't just a publicity stunt. I made campaign speeches and mobilized people.”
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He was also critical of the state of political affairs where, when it came to racial justice, presidents and public officials “were dillydallying about protecting blacks in the exercise of their civil and human rights and carrying on secret wars against people around the world.”
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To demonstrate his concerns beyond just the black community, he chose Native American Ramona Crowell of the Sioux tribe to be his running mate for vice president.

Dizzy promised that his closest advisors would be comprised of jazz and music luminaries, including Dick Gregory, who would later make a presidential run himself. Gregory sent a note of support that read, “I am sure you know that Diz has my vote but I would like to make one suggestion . . . How about
Miles Davis for Secretary of State? With best wishes, Dick Gregory.”
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Rather than “secretaries” he would have “ministers” including drummer Max Roach as Minister of Defense, bassist Charles Mingus as Minister of Peace, Malcolm X as Attorney General, composer Duke Ellington as Minister of State, pianist Mary Lou Williams as Ambassador to the Vatican, Louis Armstrong as Minister of Agriculture, and singer Ray Charles would be in charge of the Library of Congress. Other positions were to go to Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, Woody Herman, and Count Basie.

Dizzy's campaign raised many issues. His platform included “the need to eliminate racism in music, and all other fields.” He wanted Africa and the developing world to be treated more fairly: as he noted in his autobiography, he began to wear African clothing signaling that his “candidacy meant a more progressive outlook toward Africa and the “third world.” He also wanted to abolish the FBI, and have the anti-democratic Senate Internal Security Committee “investigate everything under white sheets.” He also called for total disarmament, free health care, and free education. He developed a stump speech that opened with, “When I am elected President of the United States, my first executive order will be to change the name of the White House to the Blues House.”
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On the more serious side, money raised through sales of buttons and other materials went to civil rights organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

As the campaign picked up some steam, Dizzy states that there was some pressure for him to withdraw. There was some fear that although he had no chance of winning, he could be a spoiler especially in a key state such as California. And his popularity was certainly a wild card. He thought about pulling out, however, as he evaluated the leverage that he was accumulating,
he decided he would wait until after the Democratic National Convention that was being held in Atlantic City in August 24–27, and review the plank in the Democrats platform that related to civil rights.
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Presumably, if he thought it insufficient, he would not withdraw and would directly try to pull votes from Johnson.

The 1964 Democratic National Convention was marked by a controversy over the seating of the Mississippi delegation. The Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) was an affiliate group formed in Mississippi to challenge the legitimacy of the all-white delegation that was being sent to the Convention. Comprised of both whites and blacks, the MFDP contended that the racially segregated election in Mississippi was undemocratic and that those elected should not be seated. MFDP leader Fannie Lou Hamer's riveting testimony before the credentials committee on live television exposed a mass audience to the oppressive and brutal conditions that African Americans and poor people endured in the South. She graphically described how she was arrested and savagely beaten for trying to organize black communities to register and vote.
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She stated that Alabama State Highway Patrol ordered two black prisoners to beat her, “I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted.”
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She laments, “I question America, is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings in America?”
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After a fierce fight that threatened not only the Convention but Johnson's election chances depending on what decision was made, a negotiation was worked out between the party leaders and civil rights leaders including SCLC's Martin Luther King Jr., NAACP's Roy Wilkins, and Bayard Rustin. It was agreed that the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party would get two
delegate seats; the all-white delegation would be required to pledge to support the party ticket; and from that point forward, delegations to the national convention would have to be selected in a non-discriminatory manner. The decision left many Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party activists disenchanted.
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Though mostly forgotten in the United States, in 2004, the legacy of the campaign was highlighted in a play in London titled,
Vote Dizzy!.
It was produced by American actor Jack Brooder and ran for a brief period around the time of the 2004 November election.
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Any future runs by Gillespie were forestalled after he adopted the Baha'i faith. According to Gillespie, the religion forbids its adherents from seeking political office because they believe that “to aspire to any political office in this age is below our station.”
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Eldridge Cleaver

In 1968, two of the most familiar names of the era, Eldridge Cleaver and Dick Gregory, ran what were mirror campaigns. Cleaver ran as the candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP), an organization that promoted itself as:

committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality. We represent the working class, those without capital in a capitalist society. We organize toward a world where cooperation replaces competition, a world where all people are well fed, clothed and housed; where all women and men have equal status; where all individuals may freely endeavour to fulfill their own talents and desires; a world of freedom and peace where every community retains its cultural integrity and lives with all others in harmony.

The harmony was somewhat broken in 1968 when after the party's Ann Arbor convention selected Cleaver for its nominee, a group broke from the PFP and formed the Freedom and Peace Party and selected Dick Gregory as their presidential candidate. Thus both Dick Gregory and Eldridge Cleaver ran for president on competing tickets with almost identical platforms.

Already popular in the San Francisco Bay area due to his articles in
Ramparts
magazine, Cleaver achieved national fame with his 1968 book
Soul on Ice
, an essentially biographical track of his violent life of crime spiced with black liberation theorizing and rage at whites and women. The book became a bestseller. He argued, “Black people in North America have always been plagued by a dual status. We were both slave and Christian, we were both free and segregated, we are both integrated and colonized. . . . Yesterday we were black and oppressed; today
our blackness is a tool for our liberation.”
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His writings not only attracted the white left but also the newly formed Black Panther Party.

Formed in October 1966 in Oakland, California, and originally called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Panthers recruited Cleaver to become their Minister of Information. The Black Panther Party was a complex organization whose members ranged politically from socialists to black nationalists to anti-ideological radical reformers. Founded and led initially by Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, David Hilliard, and a few others, it sought to first defend the black community from the abusive activities of the Oakland police force, abuses that were common in many black communities around the United States. When Newton discovered that under California law, it was legal to carry a loaded rifle in public, the Panthers began to do so, which escalated the growing tensions between the Party and hostile local, state, and, ultimately, federal law enforcement agencies. The situation remained mostly a local phenomenon until March 2, 1967, when approximately thirty Panthers marched on the California legislature in Sacramento brandishing their weapons and their rhetoric. This brought them national attention from other black communities—and from the FBI.