Borrowing Trouble

West Indies-born Hulan Edwin Jack was brought to New York City as a youngster by his father, a minister of the African Orthodox Church. Hulan pushed a broom at the Peerless Paper Box Co., Inc., pushed right on up to become one of the firm's vice presidents. He applied equal energy to Democratic politics in Harlem, where, as a faithful Tammany Hall wheel horse, he won seven elections to the state assembly. Jack's jackpot came in 1953 when Tammany, forewarned of Republican plans to nominate a Negro for borough president of Manhattan, dumped two white hopefuls, gave Jack the nod. Elected and re-elected four years later, Hulan Jack stood as one of the nation's highest-ranking Negro officeholders--until last week, when he suspended himself after being indicted by a grand jury on charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice and three violations of the city charter.

Embarrassing Question. Jack's troubles began last month when New York Post reporters, following up a tip, asked him an embarrassing question: Who had paid for the 1958 remodeling of his six-room Harlem apartment? Cried Jack: "I haven't a damn thing to say about it, and you get the hell out of here." But a week later Jack admitted that Real Estate Operator Sidney J. Ungar, a longtime pal and Tammany Democrat, had picked up the $4,400 tab. It was not a gift. Jack insisted, merely a friendly loan without note or collateral. But it just so happened that while Ungar was paying to have Jack's bedroom painted orchid pink, he was also seeking city approval of a $30 million slum clearance project--and Hulan Jack, as borough president, held the right of veto. Ungar's project got the green light until early last year, when newspapers identified would-be Slum Clearer Ungar as the owner of some of New York's worst slum housing; later he was denied project sponsorship, and Hulan Jack himself voted against his friend.

"Panicky" Reply. New York District Attorney Frank S. Hogan pressed the indictments against Jack under sections of the city charter prohibiting city officials from accepting favors from persons seeking or performing city business. Hogan also said that Jack, when first questioned officially about the apartment remodeling, had "concocted" a story that his wife, Almira, had paid Contractor-Painter Fred Bechtel out of her $100 weekly household allowance. "Prior to telling me this," Hogan said, "Mr. Jack had told Mr. Ungar that if he told me Mrs. Jack had made the payments . . . the investigation would be over because I would have so much confidence in what he said."

But Hogan had no such confidence in Hulan Jack's word; he took his case against Jack to the grand jury that same day. Next day Jack, shaken, was back in Hogan's office with the admission that he had gotten "panicky" and had lied. Subsequent testimony before the grand jury brought the four-count indictment, listing Ungar (who had testified under a privilege of immunity) as "coconspirator" but not as codefendant.

Under indictment on charges that could bring him four years in prison and a $2,000 fine, Hulan Jack, 52, predicted his "ultimate vindication," but had little choice other than to suspend himself from his $25,000-a-year job. Only New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller could remove him permanently, but New York Democrats were already thinking in terms of a replacement.

To New York Negroes the borough presidency is a prized possession--and one they do not intend to relinquish easily. In the early days of the Jack investigation, even Harlem's U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell, who once denounced him as "chief Uncle Tom on the Tammany plantation," expressed his faith in Jack's "integrity." But by last week Powell seemed less worried about what might happen to Jack. Said he: "I have absolute confidence that the New York Democratic Committee . . . will replace Mr. Jack with a Negro if he has to resign." And at week's end Tammany leaders, keenly aware of the importance of the Negro vote in New York City, let it be known that Powell was right.

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