Two more black officeholders have switched to the GOP on the heels of Senator Guillory’s announcement: Mayor Pro-Tempore Ralph Washington of Central (in East Baton Rouge Parish) and former Baton Rouge Metro Councilman Darrell Glasper. And apparently additional party switches are coming. http://thehayride.com/2013/06/now-that-ralph-washington-has-switched-lets-talk-about-lord-bob/
Speaking of black Republicans, Northwest Florida Tea Party President Mike Hill won a special election to the state House of Representatives from a 35%-black Pensacola district yesterday, making him the only black Republican currently in elected office in Florida. http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/mike-hill-wins-florida-hd-2-race-becoming-legislatures-only-black-republican
In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us… I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone, don’t disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, — your interference is doing him positive injury.
January 26, 1865-Frederick Douglass, abolitionist and Republican