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[[image - black & white photograph of Percy Sutton and two women]]
[[caption]] A highly versatile man, Sutton takes time out to teach careers class at Brandeis High School. [[/caption]]

To get an update on Percy Sutton from the few years back when we profiled him in a book, we recently spent a Saturday afternoon and evening with him. By pre-arrangement, we met him at the New York State Office Building in Harlem where he had an appointment to attend and speak before an organization of Black Elected Public Officials. On his way into the huge building, an aide told him that there was another meeting of several hundred Harlemites who were interested in restoring and preserving housing in the community. Someone suggested that he drop in at this meeting. He did and was greeted with enthusiastic applause when he entered the room, obviously a reaction to his recent announcement of candidacy. He spoke fluently and forcefully about power. No one, he stated, was going to help Harlem or the other communities of the city until people began to use their franchise and demand the reward of having done so. The cold, hard fact of politics, he declared, is that the thing that counts is political clout and that clout comes only with intelligent use of the ballot. He spoke in the clear, precise and proper manner which is his characteristic and which has been criticised by some as being too high-toned for a politician. As he left the meeting to another accolade of applause, we got on the elevator with him and asked his opinion about this criticism.

"It's just me," he said, smiling. "It's the way I was brought up by a father who had been a slave and became a high school principal in Texas. If I dared to say the word laughter without a broad "a", I got my behind whipped by my father. So that's the way I talk and I've tried to alter it some, but I still think its sort of a curious criticism in a city where we keep emphasizing that the kind of values for our kids which my father taught me have gone down the drain."

We reached the floor where the elected officials of the state were in session. When Sutton went into the room, another enthusiastic burst of applause erupted and climaxed in a standing ovation. His reception pleased him tremendously. He spoke about it as we headed uptown to an armory where he was to present a proclamation to a young musician who had once been a youth aide in Sutton's office and whose church was honoring him.

"You know, he said, "I can't help feeling tremendous about the way I'm being accepted in the black community. Over the years in political office, I've often found it necessary to tone down my natural instinct to make all the militant statements which I used to make, to try to achieve change through negotiation instead. And there were people in my own community and of my own race who began to wonder if I had been swallowed up by the establishment and forgotten my responsibilities to the people who first took me to power. So now, you can imagine how wonderful it makes me feel to arrive at places where I am to speak and to be accepted so generously.

One thinks back to the Sutton of the earlier days; the Sutton who was attorney for Malcolm X when the Black Muslim leader was being attacked as a black racist; the Sutton who was a vigorous participant in civil rights, getting arrested in the South and speaking out boldly against racial injustice. He has developed into a man who has proven the effectiveness of his background as a lawyer and his ability to negotiate, his capacity to persuade hostile people to accept a pinch of reasonableness. It is not the only change which he has made in his upward climb. He no longer uses the big chauffeur-driven Cadillac which used to pick him up daily to take him to his Municipal Building office. I was riding with him in a Pinto which he drives himself when he isn't using public transportation.

"I gave up the car a few years ago," he says. "I gave it up because in these days of stress and worry, I didn't think it was appropriate to pull up in front of a day care center in the ghetto where they'd asked me to come and observe how badly they needed funds which had been cut from their budget. I'm rather proud of the fact that I'm the only public official who rides the subways."

We had been amused, we told him, to hear a question put to him by a lady who called in to one of the talk shows on which he was a guest and who asked him if he would still visit the ghetto if elected. He has lived there in Harlem for years. He told me that he intends, not only to continue living there if elected, but also that he will not sleep nights in Graci Mansion, the Mayor's official home.

"I will use the Mansion as a place to hold meetings and breakfasts and conferences to exalt lowly people who are doing something for their city," he said.

Seasoned political observers agree that, if Sutton is to win, he will have to do a superlative job of persuading the white power structure of New York that the election of a Black Mayor at 

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