Part Two: Freedom Summer

If you've ever wondered why it is that most blacks vote for Democrats even though the Democratic Party was the party of slavery and the Republican Party was the party of Lincoln, the answer to this question lies in the three Presidential Elections of the 1960's. African American voters overwhelmingly supported the Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, for the first six decades after the end of the Civil War. This started to change during the long Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, who managed to be popular with both blacks and southern whites. But, until the 1960's, the Republican Party earned a competitive share of the black vote. In fact, if the GOP was able to get even the 32% that Nixon got in 1960, the Democratic Party would probably have no chance at all of winning the Presidency. But in the elections of 1960, 1964 and 1968, something changed that caused generations of voters of all races to view the party in a very unflattering light. This problem needs to be fixed. But to fix it, you need to first understand it.

1960

The U.S. Presidential Election of 1960 was one of the closest ever held. That election, like the 1960's in general, marked the beginning of a turning point in American history. And in the aftermath of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Little Rock Nine, and the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the issue of civil rights was gradually coming to the forefront of the nation's attention. One of the candidates for President had amassed a significant amount of support from African American voters, including some of the most famous black celebrities. That candidate happened to be the Republican, Vice President Richard Nixon.

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson had originally been a supporter of the failed Presidential campaign of Democratic Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey. But after Kennedy won the West Virginia primary and Humphrey dropped his bid, Robinson decided that Nixon had a better civil rights record than Kennedy. And he publicly endorsed him and then campaigned full time for Nixon as an unpaid volunteer. He even suffered for Nixon - he was forced out of his position as a columnist for a liberal newspaper that didn't appreciate him supporting the Vice President. He felt that the Nixon the Republican was more sincerely committed to civil rights than Kennedy the Democrat.

Nixon had another prominent black supporter in the Reverend Martin Luther King Senior, otherwise known as "Daddy King," the father of the famous civil rights leader. King's father was himself widely known and had been the Pastor the Ebenezer Baptist Church for four decades. Daddy King had been a lifelong Republican and had publicly endorsed Vice President Nixon in the 1960 election.

And then on October 19th, less than three weeks before the election, Martin Luther King Junior was urged to participate in a nonviolent sit-in that was led by a student group at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. Their goal was to integrate the city's lunch counters. King and the students were arrested. Eventually, the charges were dropped against the participants and they were all free to go - except for King. It was determined that King had violated his probation - he had been "convicted" in May for a traffic "violation"; he had been caught driving in Georgia with an Alabama driver's license. His attorney entered a guilty plea on his behalf without his full knowledge and King was considered to be on probation at the time of the sit-in arrest. King was sentenced to six months of hard labor in a chain gang at a maximum security prison.

After sentencing, King was taken out of his jail cell in the middle of the night by guards, had chains fastened on to him down to his legs, loaded into a car and taken on a long ride. King thought that he was going to be killed. His attorney was informed the next morning that King had been transferred to the Reidsville State Prison -  an exceptionally dangerous place that left his family in fear for his life. His wife Coretta was in the late stages of pregnancy with their third child at the time.

After this happened, Senator Kennedy reached out to Coretta King and expressed sympathy for the situation and offered his assistance. His brother Bobby Kennedy called the Governor of Georgia and worked out a deal that led to King's release from prison - a secret deal that allegedly included a promise that Kennedy would not send Federal troops into Georgia the same way that Eisenhower had sent some into Arkansas. Senator Kennedy intended for his intervention to be kept secret as he feared a negative backlash in the south. But when news leaked out, it tremendously helped Kennedy's standing with black voters. Vice President Nixon also feared a negative reaction that might come with him getting involved in the King situation. But unlike Kennedy, his fear convinced him to do nothing, despite being urged to intervene by some of his staffers. Even though he had personally known Martin Luther King Junior for years.

Once the news leaked, the Kennedy campaign publicized it in the black community, using it as an opportunity to bash their opponent as "No Comment Nixon." But with or without the obvious political opportunities given to the Democrats, the impact of this incident on many black voters was very real. King's father switched his endorsement from Nixon to Kennedy and pledged to help deliver black voters to Kennedy. Daddy King was quoted as saying "It took courage to call my daughter-in-law at a time like this ... I've got all my votes and I've got a suitcase, and I'm going to take them up there and dump them in his lap."

Nixon lost the election of 1960 by one of the narrowest margins in U.S. History. Out of 68 million votes cast, Kennedy won the popular vote by less than 113,000 votes. The late shift in the allegiance of black voters, who voted two to one for Kennedy, could have possibly made the difference in the election. The day after the election, the head of the Republican National Committee stated that Nixon lost because the GOP "lost the Negro vote by a larger percentage" than they had in prior elections. President Eisenhower later complained that Nixon lost the election because of a "couple of phone calls."

King wrote the following about the incident and its impact on the 1960 election in his autobiography:

I always felt that Nixon lost a real opportunity to express support of something much larger than an individual, because this expressed support for the movement for civil rights. It indicated the direction that this man would take, if he became president.

And I had known Nixon longer. He had been supposedly close to me, and he would call me frequently about things, seeking my advice. And yet, when this moment came, it was like he had never heard of me. So this is why I really considered him a moral coward and one who was really unwilling to take a courageous step and take a risk. And I am convinced that he lost the election because of that. Many Negroes were still on the fence, still undecided, and they were leaning toward Nixon.

My father had endorsed Nixon until that call. He knew about my relations with Nixon, and I think he felt that Nixon would do a good job on the civil rights question ... After that call, he changed, and he made a very strong statement.

But even though Nixon's fear of displeasing segregationists may have cost him the Presidency, he still managed to win 32 percent of the black vote. But the perception of the Republican Party by black voters was to get much worse. From the Election of 1960 until today, no Republican Presidential candidate has earned even half the share that Nixon got.

A draft of a letter that Vice President and Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon sent to his famous supporter, Jackie Robinson, days before the 1960 election. Nixon apparently felt the need to explain why he did not intervene when the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been imprisoned.

1964

The Kennedy administration had made progress in the area of civil rights. But Kennedy himself constantly tried to simultaneously appease both the southern segregationists who were a prominent force within the Democratic Party and black civil rights leaders, who were increasingly shifting to the Democratic side. But he was slowly winning the hearts of black voters. Martin Luther King Junior wrote that had Kennedy lived, he probably would have endorsed him in the 1964 election.

But after Kennedy's tragic assassination in November of 1963, America suddenly had a new President. And Lyndon Johnson quickly became a close friend and ally of civil rights leaders and used his extensive legislative experience and the power of the Presidency to push the Civil Rights legislation toward becoming law. As President, he pressured reluctant lawmakers by advocating for the law directly to the American people. He became the face of what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Others would become perceived as the faces of resistance to the Civil Rights movement. On January 3rd, 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater announced his bid for the Presidency. And while Kennedy originally had made his position on the civil rights struggle ambiguous, Goldwater made his clear. He was opposed to the new Civil Rights legislation and was a supporter of "state's rights" to have their own laws regarding segregation and voting.

Barry Goldwater was not a racist. He had earlier supported Civil Rights legislation. He had supported the integration of the Arizona National Guard and had desegregated his own family business, But even as America was in a state in which the struggle against segregation and for voting rights was leading to murder and other bloody violence in what would become perhaps the most deadly year in the Civil Rights Era, Goldwater saw Federal efforts to secure those rights as attempts to "legislate morality." He did not believe the Federal Government had a right to stop businesses from refusing to serve customers or hire employees on the basis of race. This endeared him to many Dixiecrats and southern segregationists but alienated many others against him and against the Republican Party.

In early June, 1964, a bipartisan group managed to cut off a filibuster against the Civil Rights legislation by Democratic Senator Robert K. Byrd. The full Senate voted to approve the bill, 73-27. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans opposed the bill. But every southern Republican in both the Senate or the House voted against the legislation. And Goldwater was one of only five Republican Senators outside of the southern states to vote against it.

At the same time, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was leading a new initiative called the Mississippi Summer Project. Their goal was to help register blacks to vote in Mississippi. A large number of white voters, including many of the Jewish faith, worked bravely along with black students to help with the voter drive. The movement was met with an extraordinary level of violence. Some volunteers were killed and some were critically injured. Dozens were beaten. Thousands of people were arrested. Dozens of black church congregations and homes were burned and bombed.

Just one week after the initiative started, student workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman disappeared shortly after visiting a black congregation Neshoba County that had been burned down days before. They realized that their license plate information had been given to the local Ku Klux Klan. They called others in their organization and told them where they would be headed so that they would know to worry if they didn't show up. Their fellow civil rights workers tried frantically to locate them but they never saw or spoke with them again. Their disappearance earned widespread national attention. President Johnson forced J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI to launch a federal investigation to solve the mystery. Two months later, it was discovered that after being arrested by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the three were released to a Klan murder squad, who tortured, shot and buried their bodies in an earthen dam.

On July 2nd, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. After signing the law, the President, who was a lifelong southerner reportedly commented that his party had "lost the south for a generation."

And in the midst of all this drama, the Republicans held their National Convention in mid-July. In an environment filled with tension and party division, Senator Goldwater, against the wishes of many in his own party, became the Republican Party nominee for President. The eyes of much of the nation and most of the world were disgusted by the exploding violence over the issue of civil rights and the resistance of some to embrace it. And now the man who was part of a distinct minority in Congress and an even smaller number within his own party that opposed the legislation in favor of "state's rights," was the new face of the Grand Old party.

On July 16th, the last day of the convention, the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior, who would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a month before the election, released a statement saying that although Goldwater himself was not a racist, his nomination would aide racists. He urged black and white voters alike to vote against Goldwater. He wrote later in his autobiography:

“While not himself a racist, Mr. Goldwater articulated a philosophy which gave aid and comfort to the racist. His candidacy and philosophy would serve as an umbrella under which extremists of all stripes would stand. In the light of these facts and because of my love for America, I had no alternative but to urge every Negro and white person of goodwill to vote against Mr. Goldwater and to withdraw support from any Republican candidate that did not publicly disassociate himself from Senator Goldwater and his philosophy.”

For many reasons, including a concentrated effort by the Johnson campaign to paint Goldwater as a dangerous lunatic, the Republican Party in 1964 suffered one of the worst electoral defeats in American history. Goldwater won his home state of Arizona and five of the former Confederate states; Johnson won 44 states and the District of Columbia. But his unpopularity was most obvious among black Americans. He got only 6% of the black vote - less than one fifth of what Richard Nixon had gotten just four years earlier. From this point until today, black voters have voted at least seven to one against every single Republican Party candidate for President.

 1968 and beyond

Richard Nixon returned to national politics in 1968 and again sought the Presidency.  One of his strategists, Kevin Phillips, created a new approach that he claimed would help the GOP dominate elections from the late sixties until the turn of the 21st century. The approach was dubbed the "southern strategy." In a 1970 New York Times interview, Phillips stated the following:

"All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage. Even 'Jake the Snake' [Senator Jacob K. Javits] only gets 20 percent. From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that ... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

Nixon had decent accomplishments throughout his career in the area of civil rights. But while in the 1960 election, the Republican Party was interested in seeking the votes of black voters and even in 1964, most Republicans in Congress supported the Civil Rights legislation even though their nominee did not, by 1968, there were some in party leadership efforts who made a conscious effort to specifically not seek out black support. Phillips' strategy sought to exploit the racial tensions of the day to turn out a segment of white southern voters toward the Republican Party. Nixon ended up finally winning the Presidency that he had sought - barely. But it is interesting to observe that the same man was the Republican Party candidate in two elections just eight years apart. In 1960, he got 32% of black voters and almost certainly would have won this segment of voters and perhaps the election had it not been for the King incident. But by 1968, Nixon the Republican's popularity among black voters was less than half of what it had been eight years before. And no Republican Presidential Candidate has done any better in the forty years since. Every candidate has inherited the baggage of being associated with a party brand that now has an extremely negative association with many minority voters.

Nixon's famous black supporters from 1960 had also turned away. Jackie Robinson went on to endorse Nixon's opponent, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, in the 1968 elections. Daddy King, the once lifelong Republican, delivered the invocations at the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National Conventions.

It doesn't have to be this way - with the Republican Party losing entire ethnic groups. The southern strategy nearly worked for approximately the time period that Phillips thought it would. But it won't continue to work going forward. In fact, with America becoming more diverse than ever before, the Republican Party will not be able to survive if it continues to lose every single ethnic minority group in the country by significant margins. The GOP lost in 2006 and the party's perception by voters as an ethnically monolithic group will be partly to blame should it lose the White House in 2008.

But the three elections of the 1960's were the point in time during which many black voters developed intensely negative feelings about the Party of Lincoln. During one of the most fragile and virulent moments in history, when blacks in America were at a point of extreme vulnerability, many feel that the Grand Old Party deserted them. And this feeling of antagonism has lasted for forty eight years and passed through at least two whole generations. The majority of two generations of African Americans have grown up from childhood believing that the Republican Party is against them and full of people who don't like them. This is the root cause of the fact that although blacks and whites are much more similar in terms of political ideology than most people realize, most blacks automatically vote for Democrats and will not consider voting for Republicans.

But things can change. The Democrats were the party of slavery and Jim Crow. Many Democrats opposed Civil Rights laws and desegregation policies in the 50's and 60's. But some high profile Democratic leaders risked irking their base and reached out to black voters at a critical hour in American history and as a partial result of this, nine out of ten black voters supported the Democratic Party in the past two elections. Things can change, but they don't change on their own.

It is long past time for the Republican Party to confront this part of its past, to admit it and completely forsake it, and to develop and aggressively work a new strategy that will bring all Americans together to fight for conservative principles. But before this can be done, the party leaders and members need to understand the real underlying reason why blacks have rejected the party for nearly five decades (which is pretty much the opposite of the reasons you'll hear from your average conservative media pundit), acknowledge mistakes, and care enough to take action to change things. Once that happens, the problem can be fixed and the GOP will be able to escape the image of a party that does not seek ethnic diversity. In the next part of this series, I will make some suggestions for things that the party can do to reach black voters.

On January 1st, 2001, the first day of the Twenty First Century, our national debt stood at $5,662,216,013,697.37 - $5.6 trillion dollars. As of this past Monday, September 22nd, our national debt had risen to $9,785,866,165,910.40 - or $9.7 trillion dollars. In the nearly seven years and nine months of this century, the amount of money that we owe as a nation has risen by four trillion dollars - or 73% - not far from being double what it was at the beginning of this time period.

This is enough money to pay for the $700 billion dollar bailout being proposed by the Administration - nearly six times. It's exactly the same amount of money we would owe if we had done a massive $700 billion dollar bailout of Wall Street every 478 days. We've gone $700 billion deeper into debt every fifteen and a half months.

Think of it another way. Imagine that this was a credit card - except that it's the kind in which the debt follows your family line down the generations. Your kids, grandkids and great-grandkids will still have to make payments after you die - and the payments will be much larger. If you divided the national debt in 2001 by the population in 2001, every living American of all ages owed a balance of $19,859.62. Today, every living American adult and child personally owes a balance of $32,444.23. And all of this is before we spend any money bailing out Wall Street and the financial sector. If we end up spending $700 billion, our personal American Credit Card balance will rise to $34,765.02.

And if this isn't depressing enough, the problem isn't just that we owe a lot of money. In addition to the fact that we already owe nearly $10 trillion dollars - or 3.6 times the amount of income our government receives every year, our Federal Government will also spend $407 billion dollars more than it takes in this year. Before the bailout. Last year, we spent $410 billion dollars more than we made. As a matter of fact, during this time period, we've spent an average of $262 billion more than we've taken in. Which simply means that at the current rate, not only will we never get out of debt - we will continue at the current pace to accumulate debt until ... Well, until our credit is maxed out.

Some of our leaders have been digging us further into the hole by spending as if they were playing with Monopoly money - borrowing more and more in order to do so. In Fiscal Year 2008, our leaders authorized $16 billion dollars in earmark spending.  Despite whatever these funds were used for or how important its sponsors claim it is, the fact remains that this is money we are literally borrowing in order to pay for.

And speaking of them, a note to both of our Presidential Candidates and all members of Congress: I've heard all of you talking about almost every topic under the sun. But I have not yet heard many people talk much about how to deal with this $10 trillion dollar elephant in the room that is about to step on all of us. This isn't going to go away on its own. This is a threat to the stability and security of our country. It's only going to get worse until someone steps up and boldly and aggressively deals with it.

And if nothing else motivates our national politicians, you folks should think of it this way. The day may soon come when we can no longer afford to pay your pensions.

I can't help but wonder where the Club For Growth, the group that claimed it was on a mission to protect taxpayers - by constantly attacking politicians like Mike Huckabee, who had no role in any of this and ran a fiscally sound state government for a decade. Where are those guys? I'm a taxpayer and I badly need a higher level of protection going forward. But, by the way guys, I do thank very much for your faithful service in protecting me so far. My kids and grandkids thank you as well.

Here are the latest set of rules for how your choice of Presidential Candidate determines whether or not you are a scumbag. Pay close attention. If you're white and aren't going to vote for Barack Obama, people think you're a racist. If you're not a Mormon but didn't think Mitt Romney was the answer to world hunger, you're clearly a religious bigot. If you didn't support Hillary, you are a sexist pig. If you didn't dig Mike Huckabee, you may not be the anti-Christ but you're clearly cheering him on. On the other hand, if you're black but are voting for Obama and not McCain then you obviously dislike white people (did you go to Wright's church too?)  It's all an open and shut case, people! And if you belong to the same group as any of the above and yet won't support them, then you're a sell-out. Shame on everybody! I would explain the rest of the rules, but I feel unclean just talking to you.

A lot of people, including some in the news media, assume that for the majority of voters who aren't supporting Barack Obama, his race is a reason that they don't like him. They think this although many of these voters tend to be conservatives who wouldn't support any liberal candidate - period. Even though a number of these voters threatened to not vote for McCain if white guys Tom Ridge, Mitt Romney or Joe Lieberman got a spot on the Republican ticket. Even though most of these voters vigorously opposed the campaign of yet another white guy who was slightly less liberal than Obama four years ago. And even though a few of them formed the core of the support of another black guy running for President - Alan Keyes.

If we didn't learn anything else from the primaries this year, we learned that a lot of Americans are fine with the prospect of voting for a black candidate. Barack Obama easily won a number of primary states that had never voted for a black candidate before. He won states in which many residents may have never personally met a black person before. There are ten U.S. states in which non-Hispanic African Americans make up less than one percent of the population. Of those states, Barack Obama during the primaries won seven of them - by an average of 19.6 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. The three states in this group that Obama lost - South Dakota, New Mexico and New Hampshire - he lost by an average of only 4.7 percentage points. The black population of Prince George's County Maryland is more than twenty times the black population of the entire state of Utah. But yet Obama won Utah over Hillary Clinton by 18 points. It's not fair to simply discard the evidence that shows that many Americans are willing to support a black candidate for President.

Let's pretend for a moment that Obama had white skin but had all the same positions and background. He still would have a 100% rating from NARAL and a 0% rating from the National Life to Right Committee and would still have a history of supporting abortion under essentially all scenarios. He would still have an 89% approval rating from an organization that promotes same-sex marriage. He still would have an 8% approval rating from an organization that seeks to secure our nation's borders. Do you think that the white Obama would get the support of a huge percentage of the voters who oppose the black Obama? If so, you might want to ask John Kerry for his opinion of how white liberals get treated by conservative voters.

Of course, the Republican Party leadership hasn't make it any easier for those who oppose Obama because of his ideas to avoid being misunderstood as rejecting him for other reasons. If four decades of a severely strained relationship and general apathy toward black voters wasn't enough, three years ago, half of the Senate Republicans refused to participate in a voice vote for a measure condemning America's history of lynchings. The next year, a number of Republican House members publicly resisted the renewal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The year after that, the top four Republican Presidential Candidates declined to participate in a Presidential debate for minority voters. And this year, the Republican National Convention had the lowest level of black participation since Barry Goldwater was the GOP nominee in 1964. Don't you think that the convention speeches attacking Obama's campaign might have been perceived differently by some if the cameras showed a diverse crowd unified in that opposition - instead of a group that consisted of only 36 blacks out of at least two thousand delegates? Which leads to another point. Just as it's unfair and simplistic to accuse white people who don't vote for Obama of racism, it's also unfair and simplistic to accuse black people who vote for Obama of just simply voting on the basis of race. Black voters don't necessarily support black candidates - and if you want to confirm that, just ask Alan Keyes. If he's busy, ask Al Sharpton or Carol Mosely Braun. It's more accurate to say that most blacks don't support the Republican Party (and if you want to understand the true reasons for much of that, you might want to read here). And even if every last black person in America voted for "the black guy" this year, that would only be an 11% higher share than the two white guys running on the Democratic side got in each of the past two elections.

And of course, the rare but occasional idiot that does things like create the "Got Ammo" tee shirt (with a Democratic Donkey in the crosshairs of a rifle) or the "Obama Is My Slave" tee shirt don't help those who oppose Obama for reasons having nothing to do with his race. And when a southern Republican Congressman who has a full understanding of southern history and culture, opposed renewing the Civil Rights legislation and fought off efforts to resolve unsolved civil rights murders calls both Obama and his wife "uppity," it just makes a lot of people unnecessarily suspicious of everyone who passionately opposes Obama, regardless of their reasons for doing so.

And on that note, let's face another reality. Just as it is inaccurate to suggest that most people are going to decide their vote based on race, it is inaccurate to suggest that there aren't many people who will. I don't think these people are in the majority and I don't even think there are that many of them in terms of overall percentage. But there are people who would never vote for any black person for President. There are also some people who would never vote for a white person over a black person (unless the black person is a Republican). And to chain back in Romney and Hillary, there are people who would never vote for anyone of the Mormon faith and people of both genders who would never vote for a woman and visa versa. It is a factor in some people's minds, whether they'd publicly admit it or not.

But from everything I've observed, most people who are voting for or against someone are doing it for reasons unrelated to their race, religion or gender. And most voters who have been passionately opposed to Obama, Romney, and Hillary, for example, opposed them for a reason that's harder to scientifically analyze but a lot less troubling. They don't trust that these candidates who happen to be from another ethnic/religious/gender group share their values. And by values, I'm not re-using some stupid codeword for ethnic culture. I mean values like "should this unborn baby be allowed to be killed," "should the definition of marriage be changed by the government," or "does this person who is part of an unofficial dynasty really understand me or care about my issues?" For many people, that, along with old-fashioned party loyalty, explains almost all of the reasons why they plan to vote a certain way.

And about the question that's on the title of this entry, I want to say that my voting against John Kerry had nothing to do with him being Catholic. Huh? Am I voting for Joe Biden? Well, no, but I don't care for his position on abor .. What? What do I have against Catholics? Absolutely nothing. Hey, I always thought pretty highly of Rick Santorum. You believe me, right? Wait, guys!

I just checked the National Debt and was shocked to see that it has risen to $9.6 trillion dollars. I wrote about it a couple of months ago and it was only $9.4 trillion bucks. It's risen incredibly and I don't see anyone talking about it. Maybe I'm overreacting - what's $200 billion between friends?

Just to put some context to it, let's look at the increase of the national debt over time. We won't even go back to earlier in the decade, when the national debt was almost half the amount that it is now. We'll just go back to January 15th - eight months ago. We owed less than $9.2 trillion bucks then. We owe almost $9.7 trillion bucks now. That's $489 billion bucks in just eight months!! That's enough to give every American $1,630 bucks (hey - we pretty much almost did that, didn't we?) That's a 5.32% increase - just this year - just in the past eight months.

It's a shame that nobody is really talking about this issue, especially after we've seen giant financial institutions go broke. America needs to become fiscally solvent again. Politicians - want to impress me? Don't waste your time trying to give me a good speech. Get out your spreadsheet and come up with a plan to balance the budget and pay down the national debt, while we still can.

Seven years ago and an hour ago today, terrorists killed thousands of innocent Americans in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. I simply want to let the family members of those who perished know that their loved ones are not forgotten, and to let the members of our Armed Forces and their families know that we are grateful for everything you do for this country. We are praying for all of you.

And I want to let the terrorists know that we will never, ever run from you. We will never, ever allow you to intimidate us. We will never allow you to change the way that we live our lives, the God that many of us believe in, to abandon our friends in the world, whether you like them or not. Instead, we are going to keep pursuing you until we catch you and bring you to justice. These colors have never run and won't run now. 

Part One: There is a problem

This month's Republican National Convention featured the lowest portion of participation by African American delegates in the last 34 years. This year, the Republican Party is expected to get a historically low portion of the black vote. Many assume that the primary reason for this is the candidacy of the first black major party candidate for President - but it's not. Even if every single black voter in America were to vote for Obama, this would only be a relatively minor (11%) improvement over the portion of the black vote that John Kerry and Al Gore got. Why is it that for nearly five decades, black voters have voted nearly in unison against the Party of Lincoln? This article will be part of a series of articles that will attempt to answer that question, to show how this is hurting both the GOP and black voters and to make suggestions to any Republican Party officials who may be reading for what they can do to fix the damage. Much of the answer to the above question lies in the three Presidential elections that occurred in the 1960's. Especially the Election of 1964. And the reason for going back into history to discuss the origins of this divide is simple. You can't fix problems that you don't understand.

The Divide

One consequence of having the network-televised Republican National Convention held immediately after the network-televised Democratic National Convention is that it allowed for Americans to observe with their eyes a startling contrast in the demographics of the two major parties. 

The Democratic National Convention during which Barack Obama became the first African American major party nominee for President of the United States included many participants who were members of ethnic minority groups. It was reported that 24% of the delegates were African Americans. 11.8% were Hispanics. Asian Americans comprised 4.6% of the delegation and American Indians represented 2.5%. Just as our census statistics show that Americans come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, the DNC delegation included a mixture of Americans of many races.

In contrast, last week's Republican National Convention included little representation from minority delegates. African Americans made up a paltry 1.5% of the delegation - the lowest percentage in more than three decades. Hispanic delegates made up 5%. The extremely low number of black delegates was especially noteworthy because while the 2008 convention included the lowest percentage of black delegates in 34 years, the previous convention in 2004 included the highest ever percentage of black delegates (6.7%) for any GOP convention. Furthermore, the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimates that this year, the Republican Party may receive a historically low share of the African American vote.

People may think that the candidacy of Barack Obama and the excitement of black voters over his historic candidacy would explain the absence of support by many blacks this year for the Republican Party. But, statistically, speaking, even if Obama were to win the vote of every single black voter in America, this would represent only an 11% improvement over the portion of the black vote won by white Democratic candidates John Kerry and Al Gore. Obama can't do significantly better with the black vote than his white predecessors because the percentage of black voters who didn't already vote Democratic is low and continually trending lower. In fact, although almost all blacks once voted faithfully for the Republican Party, no Republican Presidential Candidate has received more than 12% of the black vote since 1980; none has received more than 15% since the 1964 campaign of former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.

The GOP needs to be deeply concerned about its image as a party that lacks diversity. It's not just that black voters overwhelmingly vote against the GOP (emphasized because many people feel that they are voting against the GOP and not so much for the Democrats). According to exit polls from the last two elections, Hispanic voters vote for the Democrats. So do Asian voters as well as for voters who categorized their ethnicity as "other." Jewish voters vote for the Democrats with a margin almost as wide as the margin by which black voters vote for them. At a time at which America is becoming more ethnically diverse than ever and minority voters are comprising a larger share of the electorate than ever before, the GOP is failing to win majorities in essentially any ethnic minority group categorized in exit polls.

But no division between the GOP and any group of voters is as obvious as that between the GOP and black voters. And from all indications, it appears that many blacks who actually agree with the GOP on a number of issues vote against the party in spite of the agreement. According to a survey, about 26% of black voters consider themselves to be conservative. Another 38% of black voters call themselves moderate. Only 35% of black voters are self-described liberals. But yet, no more than 15% of black voters have supported a Republican Presidential candidate in the past 44 years. 

Let's start by talking about how this situation came to be. In another article, we will give statistical information about how this hurts the GOP. And then we will later talk about some ways that the GOP can over the long term win the support of voters of all ethnic backgrounds.

The Republican Party not only does very poorly with African American voters but performs nearly as bad with Jewish voters. In fact, the Republican Party currently loses every single ethnic minority group identified on exit polls. Sources: CNN (2000 and 2004)
By failing to fix its damaged relationship with black voters, the GOP robs itself of millions of votes that go to the Democrats by default. This University of California Berkeley survey shows that over the past few decades, there have been a high percentage of black voters who are conservative or moderate but who have simply refused to vote for the Republican Presidential candidate.

How did it get this way?

We've all heard a lot of explanations for how the Party of Lincoln came to the point at which most black voters do not support it. I believe that most of the explanations are terribly incorrect. Many Republican establishment figures and pundits offer explanations that tend to shield the party from any responsibility in the way the party is perceived.

The Republican Party was founded largely on an anti-slavery platform. For decades, almost all blacks supported the Republican Party. Oscar DePriest, the first African American elected to Congress in the 20th century, was a Republican. So was Edward Brooke, who was the first black U.S. Senator elected in the 20th century. Republican President Warren Harding, who was rumored to have a biracial lineage, urged Americans in the early 1920's to ensure civil rights for all Americans. Black voters supported the Republican Party for about a century.

But something changed in the three Presidential elections that took place in the 1960's, as shown in the graph below. As late as 1960, 32% of black voters voted for Republican candidates. But by the middle of the decade, black voters were all but completely alienated from the Grand Old Party. And since no Republican Presidential Candidate since the 1960's has ever done better than Richard Nixon did in 1968, when he got less than half of his 1960 support from black voters (15%), this divide has proven to be long-lasting.

So what happened during the 1960's that caused black voters to turn against the GOP almost completely for two generations? What can the Republican Party do today to fix the problem and reverse this trend? We will begin to discuss this further in the forthcoming second part of this article: Freedom Summer.

 From 1936 until 1960, the Republicans averaged 30% of the black vote - a margin that if the Republicans held today, would prevent the Democrats from winning nationally. The 1960's and 1964 in particular were a disaster for the Party of Lincoln, which was believed by many black voters to abandon them at a time of great need. From 1964 through 2004, the Republicans have averaged 11.09% of the black vote.