In the second installment of “The Negro in Peoria,” Bill Conver of the Peoria Journal Star tackled black involvement in Peoria politics.
Conver suggested that blacks had made more progress, in terms of political representation, on the federal rather than the local level.
Harry Sephus, president of the Peoria chapter of the NAACP and a recent City Council candidate, explained that “a spirit of lethargy” in the black community helped explain black underrepresentation in Peoria city politics. Only one quarter of eligible black Peorians had voted in the primary for City Council, Sephus said.
The answer to this lethargy, Conver adduced, was “political education”.