[Marxism] Communist Party Campaign of 1949

[Brian Shannon <Brian_Shannon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, it's about Proportional Representation . . . and more.
from Brian Shannon


New York Times, Nov. 5, 1949
COMMUNISTS PUT

DAVIS ABOVE ALL

Center On His Council Contest

Against the Negro Nominee

Of Three-Party Coalition

By Douglas Dales

The Communist party is concentrating all of its Manhattan apparatus  
in the Twenty-first Senatorial District, which includes a large share  
of Harlem, in an effort to re-elect Councilman Benjamin J. Davis Jr.,  
the only Communist party member holding an elective public office in  
the country and the only Negro member of the City Council.

Trying to make Davis the symbol for all the needs and aspirations of  
the Negro race, the party regards the campaign as of national  
importance. His re-election, it is reasoned, would also constitute a  
public repudiation of the verdict in the Communist trial in which  
Davis was one of the eleven defendants.

The Democratic, Republican and Liberal parties have joined in a  
coalition to defeat the Communist Councilman, having tapped Earl  
Brown, Negro reporter on Life Magazine, as the one to do the job.  
Davis also has the American Labor party nomination.

There have been some reports that the district leaders of the major  
parties are not doing all that could be done on behalf of Mr. Brown,  
but this was denied emphatically yesterday by Carmine G. DeSapio,  
Tammany Hall leader, and the district leaders.

Joining Mr. DeSapio in a denunciation of such reports were Joseph  
Pinckney, Deputy Housing Commissioner J. Raymond Jones, Angelo  
Simonetti, Robert B. Blaikie, Cecil E. Carter, Joseph E. Ford, Hulan  
E. Jack, Francis J. McDonald, Samuel Kanto and Mr. Brown. They called  
the reports “a typical Communist-type maneuver.”

Change in Voting System

Davis was first elected to the City Council in 1943 when he ran  
borough-wide under the proportional representation system and was re- 
elected in 1945 for a four-year term, getting 63,498 votes, which was  
second only in size to the vote of Councilman Stanley Isaacs, a  
Republican.

His problem this year will be different since under the system  
replacing PR council candidates are elected by Senatorial Districts.

The area in which he is now running includes the Seventh, Eleventh  
and Thirteenth Assembly Districts, extending from Ninety-seven Street  
to 160th Street on the West Side of Manhattan. There are 100,524  
persons registered in the area this year and a vote of around 90,000  
is expected in the council contest.

The population of the three assembly districts is roughly 40 percent  
Negro. Except for about 1,000 Puerto Ricans, the Eleventh A.D.,  
entirely in Harlem, has almost a solidly Negro constituency and is  
the principal source of Davis’ strength. There are 23,321 registered  
voters in the district.

The Seventh A.D. has 39,968 registered voters, including about 2,000  
Puerto Ricans and 5,000 Negroes. The thirteenth A.D., with 35,235  
registered, is about 50 per cent Negro and Puerto Rican.

Released on $20,000 bail Thursday pending appeal from his conviction  
on a charge of conspiring to teach and advocate the overthrow of the  
government by force, Davis immediately plunged into the campaign.  
Facing a five-year sentence, he had been confined at the Federal  
House of Detention since Oct. 14.

Stormy Campaign Entrance

His return to Harlem Thursday night was like that of a hero to his  
faithful followers. He addressed several thousand persons at two  
rallies, where he and other speakers badgered the police with charges  
of “brutality.”

Between the two rallies a disturbance broke out at 114th Street and  
Lenox Avenue, where the police were reported to have tried to block  
the movement of a caravan of campaign cars. In the melee, six  
policemen and an undetermined number of spectators were hurt, none  
seriously, and six persons were arrested.

“Police brutality” has been the principal rallying cry in the Davis  
campaign and the disturbance Thursday, the candidate declared  
yesterday, justified the theme.

Georgia-born and 46 years old, Davis is a graduate of Amherst  
College, where he was a football star, and of Harvard Law School. He  
was a lawyer in the Scottsboro case and became a Communist in 1932  
while defending Angelo Herndon, a Georgia Negro. He was editor of The  
Daily Worker, Communist newspaper, for several years beginning in 1936.

Brown Champions Harlem

His Opponent, Mr. Brown, who is 44 years old, is a graduate of  
Harvard College, where he majored in economics and won a varsity  
letter in baseball. He played professional baseball for a year after  
graduation, taught in Southern colleges for three years and then  
entered journalism with a job on The New York Herald Tribune. He was  
managing editor of The Amsterdam News, a Harlem newspaper, from 1936  
to 1940 and still contributes a column to that paper. For the last  
nine years he has been employed by Life.

Mr. Brown has been hitting hard on the subject of his opponent’s  
political affiliation and reminding the voters that, even were Davis  
elected, he would be unable to take his seat in the council in view  
of a statutory prohibition against the holding of public office by  
persons convicted of a felony.

Speaking out himself against police brutality, he charges that Davis  
has used his council office as a sounding board to advance the  
interests of Soviet Russia rather than those of his constituents.

While Davis is predicting his election, political observers do not  
believe he can overcome the political alliance against him. One  
Democratic leader declared yesterday that Davis would not get more  
than 20,000 of the 100,524 votes in the district. He based this on  
the fact that the ALP last year polled only 12,000 votes for Henry A.  
Wallace.

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