America Loves to Celebrate ‘Firsts’ Like Hakeem Jeffries. It Doesn’t Always Make It Easy for Them to Lead

In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, the anthropologist turned storyteller Zora Neale Hurston wrote that there are years that ask questions and those that answer them.

Take 1972: an annum that asked. Better known as the year of the Watergate break-in and bungled cover-up that unraveled the Nixon Administration, 1972 was also the year that nearly 10,000 Black Americans—elected officials, policy wonks, community organizers, and ordinary citizens—convened in Gary, Ind., for what was dubbed the National Black Convention. Among the central questions before the group in Gary: Should Black voters remain loyal to the Democratic Party and try to wrest from it more influence, or should they break away and form their own political alliance?

 

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