Word: fervors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What the Rev. Jesse Jackson did in last week's New York Democratic primary was to instill an almost religious fervor for the act of voting-and specifically voting for him-in blacks. Campaigning to the edge of physical exhaustion, orating in as many as five churches a day in New York City's ghettos, at the end literally marching hundreds of parishioners from a Harlem church to a nearby polling place, Jackson inspired an outpouring of black voters without precedent in the Empire State. An estimated 270,000 blacks cast ballots, easily double the turnout...
Some of this talk clearly is exaggerated. The chances of a Jackson third-party candidacy are close to zero. Jackson, whose political shrewdness matches his evangelical fervor, realizes that an independent bid is the one thing that could damage his hero status in the black community, since it would help re-elect the Republican President many of his followers are passionately eager to defeat. In a speech last week to a nearly all-black crowd of 3,000 greeting him at a railroad station in Philadelphia, Jackson seemed to be preparing his followers for a unified effort against Reagan...
...Islamic fervor of the Shi'ite newcomers worries the more tolerant Sunnis. Posters of Khomeini now hang incongruously next to credit-card signs on shop windows, while ever growing numbers of women wear head scarves. An edgy rug merchant no longer offers browsers sherry, but instead asks, "Iced tea?" The beverage arrives laced with whisky...
...ground traversed contains the grit of auto biography; Giardina grew up in Waltham, Mass., the setting of the novel. Even the reticence of his characters may reflect home truths: Henna's officemates have Italian surnames, but they scarcely discuss ethnicity. In time with their times, they share his fervor for feeling American. Yet there are hints of the conscious ness of decades to come: the widow realizes she wants to learn to fend for herself...
Despite all that, the fervor of the campaign drew an unexpectedly heavy turnout of 135,000 that prolonged some caucuses two hours past the scheduled closing time of 4 p.m. Mondale won, with 49% of the vote, but Hart took a more than respectable 31%. On Saturday, Mondale also won the greatest number of delegates in Arkansas and Mississippi. Earlier in the week, he scored victories where he had to (Georgia, Alabama) in order to survive and slow Hart's surge a bit-from 150 m.p.h. to 100 m.p.h., in Hart's offhand metaphor...