The Steepest Climb

Norman Jewison, who directed the 1967 hit movie "In the Heat of the Night," recalled that some newspapers refused to take ads for the film, which featured Sidney Poitier as a sharp-minded detective from Philadelphia investigating a murder in a Southern town. The movie went on to earn five Oscars, including one for Best Picture. "I think [the film] woke up a lot of people in the Deep South," Jewison says. "I don't think they'd ever seen a black character on the screen as smart and talented as Sidney."

More than three decades later, actor Dennis Haysbert was cast as David Palmer, a U.S. senator who is elected the nation's first black president in the television drama "24." When Haysbert encounters strangers who recognize him, it is often this role that they want to discuss. "I've lost track of how many times people have asked me to run for president," Haysbert says, adding that he believes the role had "a major impact" on how black politicians are perceived, "simply from the feedback I get from people from all walks of life."

And yet there are statistics that are not so heartening. Less than 4 percent of the nation's elected officials are black, and 90 percent of them represent predominantly black or predominantly black-and-Hispanic constituencies. Thus, not many black politicians have won elections when the majority of voters were white. Only three black U.S. senators and two black governors have been elected since Reconstruction.

As a consequence, only a handful of blacks have even dared to run for president, and virtually all them are civic activists such as comedian Dick Gregory, whose 1968 write-in campaign garnered just over 47,000 votes, perennial third-party candidate Lenora Fulani, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, whose 2004 Democratic campaign fizzled. The Rev. Jesse Jackson? We'll get to him in a minute.

"We've always been conflicted about this issue of running, because the heavy hanging cloud has been that a black can't win," says University of Maryland political scientist Ron Walters, who was Jackson's top issues adviser during his 1984 campaign.

Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador, waded into this subject recently by saying he didn't think Obama was ready: too young, not seasoned enough, no established political network to ensure his success. "To put a brother in there by himself is to set him up for crucifixion," Young told Atlanta journalist Maynard Eaton in a videotaped interview posted on NewsmakersLive.com.

Obama, 46, a former state legislator, had served just two years in the Senate when he announced his presidential candidacy in February, his rise to celebrity status launched by a stirring keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. What Young spoke to, without using this language, was the "experience issue" that Obama has been battling on the campaign trail.

When exactly, though, is one ready to run for president?

In 1972, New York Rep. Shirley Chisholm became the first African American of stature to launch a presidential campaign. To some, her bid seemed more a statement of feminist politics than of racial politics. But its historical significance was recognized far and wide.

Richard Hatcher, then the mayor of Gary, Ind., recalls a tortured conversation with Chisholm the night before his city was to host the National Black Political Convention. The gathering would bring together thousands of black activists and officeholders from across the country to develop a black political agenda. Hatcher wanted Chisholm to come, but she was torn. The convention, she knew, would draw many militants and others who operated outside the mainstream of politics. Some, in fact, were determined to form an independent black political party. Chisholm worried that she might be rebuffed if she went, and that the rejection would hurt her candidacy.

"While Shirley had strong support in the black community, it wasn't overwhelming," said Hatcher, who added, "I remain convinced to this day that if she had come, it would have given her a tremendous lift."

Running under the slogan "Unbought and Unbossed," Chisholm arrived at the Democratic National Convention in Miami with 151 delegates pledged to her and was given a coveted speaking slot. That in itself was progress. Several black politicians recalled earlier conventions when they had no access to the backstage meeting areas where all the important deals were cut. Hatcher and others remember being reduced to passing notes into the trailers of the major candidates, hoping just to get an audience.