Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...this patchwork Smith wants to weave a new Roosevelt-like alliance. Over his kitchen table, professors and biochemistry grad students from nearby Tulane exchange political banter with a retired Negro post-office worker, and the white leader of a local labor union. They are all Ben Smith campaign workers. "Roosevelt put together a party of the farmer, the laborer, the intellectual. We're going to get the Negro, the white wroking class, and the intellectuals, and work on issues together...
...election day last Saturday over 50 people trooped into Smith's home. It was the largest--and most energetic staff of any candidate. And Smith fought by far the most dynamic campaign. He was the only one to hold a series of rallies in each of his wards. He was the only one to use a sound truck. And he was the only one to walk the streets shaking hands for votes...
...candidate with a strong civil rights record, Smith's greatest potential strength lay in the predominantly Negro areas such as Gerttown. Gerttown is one of the city's pocket ghettos--rows of low level shabby brick buildings squashed together inside a wall of light industry. But even in these wards Smith was defeated by a Catholic candidate whose campaign tactics were to approach the local priest with a certain sum of money. New Orleans is ninety per cent Catholic. "I tried to speak to the priests but they wouldn't see me. They had obviously been told not to have...
...campaign, Smith called for an open housing law. This need not spell death for a politician he argues. It can even win votes. "People are immediately worried about property values going down," he explains. "You show them that if you don't let the Negro move in next door today, he will burn down your house ten years from now. And then it won't be worth a dime...
Despite his notoriety in white New Orleans, and despite his controversial platform, the campaign was relatively quiet. At this moment the white power structure is not threatened--after all, he placed eighth. But had Smith entered the runoff, "the big boys would have been after me," he says with not a little glee. "Then they'd red bait and they'd nigger bait as usual...