Dick Gregory and Eugene McCarthy, Chicago, August 1968
Richard Claxton Gregory, October 12, 1932 (St. Louis, Mo.) – August 19, 2017 (Washington, DC)
VP candidate for New Party (1968)
Running mate with nominee: Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
In 1968 an obscure political figure, US Sen. Eugene McCarthy (Minn.), challenged incumbent President Johnson in the Democratic primaries. McCarthy's anti-war stance energized a whole new generation of young activists who were really in the first wave of voters to have grown up entirely in the shadow of the atomic/nuclear mushroom cloud and thus felt a visceral sense of urgency the older generations for the most part failed to grasp.
McCarthy became a David to Johnson's Goliath, and within a short time LBJ decided to drop out of the race, opening it up for Sen. Robert Kennedy and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. McCarthy soon found himself outspent and outflanked by the better known candidates and was marginalized to the far Left by the Democratic Party establishment. After the Party convention McCarthy waited until the very last week of the campaign to finally give a lukewarm endorsement to Humphrey.
In the meantime, McCarthy's followers were not so easily defeated. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was a bloody affair and Humphrey was seen as being too closely tied to the unpopular LBJ. McCarthy's followers were prepared to go all the way to November, attempting to get his name on the ballot in several states as a "fourth party" since George Wallace already had the primo "third party" position.
By early September 1968 it was too late for McCarthy's followers to place him on the ballot in many states, so energetic write-in campaigns were waged. In Georgia, Oregon, and Rhode Island groups sprang up to work for McCarthy. In Michigan there was the McCarthy Write-In Committee, Massachusetts had three groups pushing for the Senator-- Citizens for Participation Politics, Conference for New Political Action, and the Flag Party-- and in New York there was the Coalition for Independent Candidacy (aka Coalition Party). As far as I could ascertain, none of the above proposals included a running mate.
McCarthy had various running mates and different party banners in other states. The most coordinated effort, such as it was, concerned the New Party, formed chiefy by Marcus Raskin, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies. "If we cannot force a realignment of political structures," said Raskin, "There will be mass violence."
Raskin's document Why the New Party? included:
Across the nation there is a general revulsion for the political parties which in reality have built their power on the interests of special groups that have no base among the people, which maintain power through war and cold war, privilege selling and the granting of favors to the few.
Young people, workers on the line in the factory and in the offices, women, farmers, black and brown people have come to believe that the two political parties are far too deeply implicated in causing the basic problems of American society to do anything toward resolving them.
The Democratic and Republican parties have allowed the cities to decay, encouraged and sustained a huge military establishment, supported a reckless and morally indefensible colonial war in Vietnam, and diverted the economy for wasteful and dangerous activity.
Although the Party was born in the Left, Raskin voiced a belief his anti-Establishment message could resonate with George Wallace voters as well.
The New Party thought about nominating McCarthy, as well as considering Sen. George McGovern, actor Paul Newman, NYC Mayor John Lindsay, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Justice William O. Douglas. But in the end they decided to allow each state to nominate whatever ticket they wanted. It is difficult to say if the New Party operated under variant names across the country.
McCarthy himself disavowed this fourth party activity and took steps to keep his name off the November ballot. Raskin didn't care. He said McCarthy was going to be nominated whether he liked or not. They wanted his name and star power.
In Indiana the New Politics Party, which may or may not have been connected with Raskin, nominated McCarthy and Lindsay, who in turn had their names removed. So the Party quickly replaced the old pair with Dick Gregory and his running mate Mark Lane.
Dick Gregory was a ground-breaking African American comedian who became better known as a political activist than as an entertainer. I first became aware of Gregory in the 1960s when he protested in favor of the Nisqually Indians treaty fishing rights. For his trouble he was tossed into the Thurston County jail in Olympia, Washington where he engaged in a fast. In those days the jail was in the old courthouse across the street from the Capitol campus. The Nisqually people had set up a camp across the street on the Cap campus lawn in a show of support for Gregory. Talking with them was a political education for me and left a deep impression, so in that sense Gregory was successful in communicating his message to at least one individual.
Gregory and Lane were already running as the Freedom and Peace Party ticket, a splinter group from the Peace and Freedom Party. In Colorado Gregory/Lane found a place on the ballot running in the New Party.
However in the State of Illinois Gregory would find himself as the Vice-Presidential nominee rather than having his name at the top of the ticket. In that state there were at least three groups agitating for McCarthy: the Palatine Politics for Peace Committee, the Illinois Citizens for McCarthy, and the New Party. The latter group selected Dick Gregory as McCarthy's running mate. It could be that members of the Illinois New Party still had the fresh memory of Gregory and McCarthy addressing protesters together at Grant Park during the Democratic convention in Chicago.
Gregory was possibly addressing the Illinois proposed ticket when he said in a filmed interview why he was running as a write-in: "I feel the two-party system is obsolete. The two-party system is so corrupt and immoral that it cannot solve the problems confronting the masses of people in this country. I did agree to accept the nomination in various states from independent organizations who had already had a position on the ballot and this why I have accepted. Senator McCarthy is a Democrat and I wouldn't expect him to accept a nomination but a Democratic nomination because he is still a Democrat. He is not an independent."
As usual, McCarthy refused to have anything to do with the New Party effort and and his name was removed from consideration, but die-hard supporters would forge on anyway. The McCarthy/Gregory popular vote result is lost somewhere in the 325 "scattered" write-ins listed for Illinois.
Election history:
1967 - Mayor of Chicago (Independent) - defeated
1968 - Peace and Freedom Party nomination for President - defeated
1968 - US President (Freedom and Peace Party/Peace and Freedom Party/New Party/New Politics Party) - defeated
Other occupations: comedian, soldier (US Army), activist
Buried: Fort Lincoln Cemetery (Brentwood, Md.)
Notes:
Winner of the 1967 mayoral race was Richard J. Daley. Another opponent was Lar Daly.
"I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for eleven years. When they finally integrated, they
didn’t have what I wanted."
"I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that."
"A Klanner (KKK) is a cat who gets out of bed in the middle of the night and takes his sheet with
him."
"I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood
after dark."
"You know the definition of a Southern moderate? That’s a cat that’ll lynch you from a low tree."
"For a black man, there's no difference between the North and the South. In the South, they don't
mind how close I get, as long as I don't get too big. In the North, they don't mind how big I get, as
long as I don't get too close."
"Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and
said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' I said: 'that's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me
a whole fried chicken.'"
"Baseball is very big with my people. It figures. It's the only way we can get to shake a bat at a white
man without starting a riot."
"We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history
books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a
massacre."
When asked how activists could resist the Trump administration, Gregory responded, "You don’t
have to do nothing ... this country is not going to make four years, it’s over."
