Darryl Paulson: Republicans and race: From Lincoln to Joshua Black

Some background about Republicans and race is in order after a black Republican candidate for a Florida House seat embarrassed the party with his Tweet calling for the hanging of President Obama.

The Republican Party formed in 1854 to combat slavery.  Six years later, Abe Lincoln became the first Republican president.  Within months of Lincoln’s election, the Civil War began. The North won, Lincoln was assassinated, but slavery was ended and the union preserved.

During Reconstruction, from the end of the Civil War to the mid-1880s, Republicans dominated Southern and national elections with the almost universal support from black voters.

The end of Reconstruction led to white political control of the South and the elimination of most blacks from voting rolls.  From the mid-1880s until the 1930s, the few blacks who could vote primarily voted Republican.

That would change with the election of Franklin Roosevelt and his “New Deal” programs.  Although FDR never introduced any civil rights legislation, his economic policies cemented the relationship between blacks and the Democratic Party.

The implementation of the minimum wage, Social Security, welfare programs and public jobs programs were equally available to white and black citizens.  As Republicans continued their policy of benign neglect, black voters were increasingly attracted to the Democratic Party.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s profoundly altered social and political conditions.  Although the Republican Eisenhower administration introduced and passed the first two civil rights bills in 75 years, the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts, neither produced significant changes.  It was the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations that truly transformed political alliances.

From the 1960s on, blacks cast more than 90 percent of their vote to Democratic presidential candidates.  Richard Nixon, to the surprise of most, was the last Republican presidential candidate to win a fifth of the black vote.  As vice president, Nixon actively worked to pass a strong civil rights bill.  John F. Kennedy, as the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, sided with Southerners in supporting a “jury trial” provision that gutted the 1960 bill.  Southerners knew that no jury in the South would convict a white official of denying blacks the right to vote.

Only four years later, Nixon’s 20 percent of the black vote was reduced to just two percent for Republican Barry Goldwater.  The Republicans would never recover and seldom came close to winning 10 percent of the black vote.

Not only would Democrats win 90 percent of the black vote, but the black share of the electorate continued to grow along with their growing turnout rate.  In the most recent presidential election, the percentage of black voters exceeded white turnout,

Republicans are now the party of whites, off-whites, ivory and bone.  That has not proven to be a winning political strategy.

In the 2012 presidential election, Republicans won the white vote by 20 percent, the largest margin in history.  Obama and the Democrats easily won the election.  By 2020, nonwhites will comprise over a third of the national electorate and 40 percent of the Florida electorate.

To make matters worse for Republicans, one of the few black Republicans has embarrassed the party with his call to “hang” President Obama.  Joshua Black, a candidate for Florida House District 68 in the St. Petersburg area, tweeted that “I’m past impeachment.  It’s time to arrest and hang him high.”

Another Republican candidate, Chris Latvala, running in House District 67, immediately responded to Black’s Tweet.  “You aren’t seriously calling for the killing of Obama are you?  I know you are crazy, but good heaven.  UR an embarrassment.”

Black, a taxi cab driver and former street evangelist, defended his comments by saying that Obama was responsible for ordering drone attacks that killed a U.S. citizen.

“I think the appropriate punishment is death.  They killed Benedict Arnold. [Obama] shouldn’t be allowed to kill Americans without a trial.”

Besides the stupidity of Black’s comments, they are factually incorrect.  Benedict Arnold fled to England where he lived the rest if his life.

Black resigned his position on the Pinellas County Executive Committee, but turned down Gov. Rick Scott’s request that he “immediately withdraw his candidacy.”

Republicans will continue to be an afterthought of black voters unless they seriously attempt to reach out to them.  They must stop trying to impede blacks in voting.  They must stop the stupid, embarrassing and racist statements that have been made too frequently.

From Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, to Joshua Black, the Great Bigot!  The Republican Party must realize it is moving in the wrong direction.  Unless Republicans do, they will continue to win white voters and lose elections.