I have always had a problem with the black church. I feel that the amount of misguided control, by un- or undereducated 'preachers' who are out to line their own pockets, has hampered the growth of the black community. Particulary, those who encouraged their flock to suffer the indignities of racism in order to build up 'treasures in heaven,' can in no way be considered leaders.
I grew up with people who belonged to these types of churches and who were mind-controlled through them. I never understood why some people are afraid to think for themselves. If you are against abortion, pro-family, pro-working hard, and pro-clean living, how in the name of all that's holy do you vote Democrat, no matter what some so-called preacher tells you to do?
Well, the odd thing here is, in Mobile, because our municipal elections are non-partisan, blacks have often back outright Republicans, and they back them because there's no party label affixed.
I remember in 1989, it was the first campaign I ever felt the need to get involved in, we were trying to re-elect incumbent Mayor Arthur Outlaw, a man who had served as chairman of the State Republican Party, in fact, one of the first converts to the party.
Mike Dow (who to this day, remains ambiguous in regards to party affiliation) was our opponent at the time
Basically, I accompanied one of the Outlaw people as they made the various runs to the black churches.
In 1989, Outlaw was defeated, we got beat bad (my opinion, considering Dow was a political novice), but Outlaw, who we all knew had run the State Republican Party, ended up winning something like 60-65% of the city's blacks.
To make a long story short, all of Outlaw's people ended up supporting Dow in 1993, and he's been mayor since.
The point I'm trying to make here is, it's not impossible for a known Republican to win the black vote (it's substantially easier if its a non-partisan election), but the fact is, the Republicans have to learn to start playing by the rules of the black political culture, and that means you have to reach out to the black church. If the Republicans would be willing to compete with the Democrats for the black church, I think we'd make some significant gains.