WASHINGTON�In his final State of the Union address, President Clinton called for an increase in funding for many programs, including Head Start, more youth programs to prevent violence, a $1 minimum wage increase, help for low and middle-income families to pay college tuition, health care reform, and hiring new teachers and more police officers.

For 89-minutes, the president spoke Jan. 26 to both houses of Congress, perhaps the final time, saying Americans are "fortunate to be alive at this moment in history."

But as the Clinton years are assessed, and Y2K presidential elections inch closer, are there lessons to be learned from how Black America dealt with Mr. Clinton and can they be applied to those seeking the White House?

"While it is true that he brought more Blacks into his administration than any other president, more Black men also went to prison than ever before and more Blacks were executed under capital punishment," observed Dr. Bart McSwine, chairman of the African American Studies program at Chicago State University, who called the Clinton presidency a mixed bag.

Dr. McSwine says the next president must do a better job in addressing the "digital divide," the gap between access to computers and technology between non-white students and their Caucasian counterparts. Under Mr. Clinton, the problem worsened, and Blacks have suffered the most because of it.

"This will effect the African American community�s ability to become economically viable. For example, in the next 10 years, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of home businesses. People without computers and access to the Internet cannot start and maintain a successful home businesses," he said, questioning the agenda behind hiring more teachers. Mr. Clinton said he would like to hire additional 100,000 teachers for the nation�s schools.

"I don�t see any emphasis on recruiting minority teachers to offset the increasing enrollment of Blacks in majority schools. The number of minority teachers has gone down while the number of minority students has risen. As a result, most Black students are now being taught by white teachers," he noted.

Dr. McSwine offers economics and education as election issues for Blacks and favors curriculum reform to root Black students in their "historical culture" and show them how to thrive in modern society. "Under Clinton, the number of hate groups has increased. African-centered education will introduce many to the culture and eliminate the ignorance surrounding Africans and African Americans," Dr. McSwine said.

"We have a problem as Black people because we have taken from the Clinton administration whatever we were given in terms of cabinet appointments and some policy. But we have not yet driven a hard enough bargain with respect to making use of the leverage we have as a significant minority within the Democratic Party," according to Dr. Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor.

"We have traded loyalty for leverage. That puts us in a position of taking the least of what we could get. I think that lesson is still on the table, which is to say, that even where we have a president who appears to like us, and who wants to give us symbolic public policy victories, we ought to reject those in favor of using the maximum leverage against that administration to extract the public policy our people need. That is what we need to do with (Vice President Al) Gore, and that is what we have not done yet with the Clinton administration," he said.

Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, agrees. "No matter how friendly an administration is, you have to really hold them accountable," she said, adding that the Clinton administration did some good, but had stumbles "disastrous for Black people."

The Lani Guinier debacle, rectified by appointment of Deval Patrick as assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, was a terrible fight and the White House dropped the ball in California, where affirmative action opponents won major victories. The administration is on the wrong side of Gov. Jeb Bush�s "One Florida" anti-affirmative action plan, she added.

"Unfortunately, I think that a lot of the mark of the Clinton administration is going to be gone quickly because they did not take steps to make their policy changes lasting. If in fact a Republican administration came in, you would see a quick turnover of all those policies, because of a failure to do a lot of the groundwork," Ms. Arnwine said.

Hugh Price, president of the New York-based National Urban League, feels Mr. Clinton�s talk of tax cuts for working people and poor people, higher minimum wage, and helping families afford higher education sounds good.

Mr. Clinton�s record number of appointments of Blacks and people of color�among them Franklin Raines, head of the Office of Management and Budget, Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, Labor Secretary Alexis Herman�helped advance interests of those groups, said Mr. Price. With "the general rebirth of the American economy, we�ve seen the vital signs of the African American community are stronger than they�ve been in recent memory because our unemployment rate overall is at record lows, and our teenage unemployment is at record lows," he noted. Though youth unemployment is still too high, the Black middle class has grown and emphasis on improving public education is correct, said Mr. Price.

In Mr. Price�s view, presidential candidates should be pressed to make "serious commitments" to better urban schools, rural schools, pre-schools and qualified teachers, an investment that pays off later in life.

He gave Mr. Clinton an "incomplete" on the White House race initiative.

Discrimination in lending, access to capital for business, home and mortgage loans persist, and police brutality has to be brought under control and Africa faces challenges with AIDS, and foreign debt�other areas for presidential vote seekers to address.

Thad Mathis, a professor of Social Administration and associate dean at Temple University, noted the speech lacked talk of the people who lost entry-level and low wage jobs in the high-tech, high-skill level jobs created by the economy and talk of the fate of those on welfare. Many former welfare recipients bounce from temporary job to temporary job, Mr. Mathis said. "They�re just going someplace to get a check instead of going to the welfare office. But they aren�t in better economic circumstances as a result of these changes. In fact some of them may get less benefits than they had before."

Calling most Clinton contributions symbolic, Mr. Mathis gave him credit for the race initiative historian John Hope Franklin chaired, opposition to flying the Confederate flag, the apology for the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, and speaking out on the right side of major race issues�even if he didn�t aggressively do much on the issues. If anyone benefited during Mr. Clinton�s tenure, it was middle class Blacks, whose access to power was expanded, he said.

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members have gripes with Mr. Clinton on welfare reform, the death penalty, mandatory minimum jail sentencing guidelines, the lack of financial aid to sub-Sahara Africa, among other issues.

CBC Chair James Clyburn of South Carolina admits that despite some "kicking and screaming" by administration officials: "The White House has been very, very good. We don�t think it�s been all that we�ve wanted, but when you compare what the legislative response has been to so many of our initiatives, and what we were able to do when we were able to get the White House to veto the budget; those kinds of things lead us to feel that this president�s initiatives have been the basis for us to build a launching pad."

"We are going to ask the president to make some �in your face� appointments," continued Rep. Clyburn. "We�re going to put judicial appointments out here in the presidential campaign. We�re going to put affirmative action into the presidential campaign.

"We�re going to put mandatory sentencing into the presidential campaign. We�re going to put the restoration of voting rights for felons into the presidential campaign. We�re going to talk about a woman�s right to choose and whether or not we�ll have three Supreme Court justices appointed by the next president."

One of the first tests of the CBC direct action agenda will take place on March 7, according to Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), who is planning a massive march in support of affirmative action at the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee.