Assailing Black Leaders

Clarence M. Pendleton Jr., the controversial chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, angered black leaders last summer when he gently chided President Reagan for catering too much to minorities. Now, in a speech delivered to an Akron business group, he has accused Democratic Presidential Candidate Jesse Jackson, former National Urban League President Vernon Jordan and N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Benjamin Hooks of encouraging blacks to vote for the losing party, thus leading them into a "political Jonestown." "No more Kool-Aid," said Pendleton, who is black, referring to the cyanide-laced drink that killed the Rev. Jim Jones' followers in 1978. "We want to be free."

Black liberals were put out by Pendleton's attack. Said Hooks: "The black community has heard the conservative gospel and rejected it." Pendleton also drew fire from Republican Francis Guess, a commission member and Tennessee's commissioner of labor. "The Jonestown analogy was disgusting." said Guess. "And I would be surprised if the President would applaud it."