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October 6, 1970

Dear Senator Johnson,

THE BLACK SCHOLAR has chosen me to be editor of a collection of essays on black politics, to be published as its first book. The book, BLACK POLITICS, will be published by Bantam Books, in Spring, 1971.

I am pleased to ask you to submit an essay for this anthology. The essays will give a hard-minded, no holds barred examination of the condition and prospects of black politics in the United States. Caucuses, third parties, coalitions, the politics of black nationalism and the politics of assimiliation will be discussed. Historic movements will also be considered; black abolitionist, black colonists and leading trends of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction.

I would be particularly interested in your analysis of method of operation in the state Senate and your political operations in the broader arena of the city and state politics.

Quite obviously, your experience and your successes have been different from those of Representative Bob Clark in the Mississippi legislature; I am not interested in a comparsion, but a discussion of how you have operated in a sometimes hostile environment with success and while

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