by Wayne Perryman
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Edition: Hardcover
Posted on 06/01/2003 7:49:07 AM PDT by Fixit
There has been a lot of attention on race and politics since Trent Lott praised Sen. Strom Thurmond's unsuccessful 1948 bid to the presidency as a pro-segregation Dixiecrat candidate at Thurmond's 100th birthday.
Lott, a Republican senator from Mississippi, stepped down as Senate majority leader after the ensuing media attention to his track record of opposing civil rights laws and amidst pressure from the party to distance itself from the comments.
More attention may be drawn to the issue with the release of ``Unfounded Loyalty: Questioning the blind love affair between blacks and Democrats'' next month by the Hara Publishing Group and Pnuema Life Publishing.
Penned by Mercer Island resident Wayne Perryman, an associate minister at Mount Calvary Christian Center in Seattle, the book highlights the significant role the Republican Party has played in bringing about key civil rights legislation.
A community activist and former radio talk show host, Perryman, 57, is an investigator in labor and discrimination cases. The book is a fact-finding investigation from 1832 through 2002.
Calling himself neither a Democrat nor a Republican, Perryman served on the Washington State Clergy to re-elect President Clinton in 1996 -- something he said he apologized for -- and co-hosted a show on Republican Radio.
Like many African Americans, Perryman said he voted Democrat most of his life and assumed that Democrats represented the black community.
But the two-year investigative process led Perryman down roads that he never knew existed because of what he described as a biased education system.
``In the process of doing this investigative research to write the book, I was shocked, I was angry, I was frustrated to find out information that has been kept from the general public,'' he said. ``The only thing I could conclude was that it was deliberately excluded from books.''
Perryman characterized ``Unfounded Loyalty'' as a book that addresses history without eliminating the role the black church played in developing that history.
``The book puts whites, Christians and Republicans in their rightful place in black history,'' Perryman said.
As noted in the book's introduction, Perryman wrote that the aim of the book is neither to condemn nor endorse either party, but serve as a reminder of some historical truths that tend to be overlooked.
But looking back on history, Perryman said that Republicans have more to boast about than Democrats.
Democrats, he said, have not done as much for blacks except talk a good game to get the black vote; Republicans, in fact, have done more to empower blacks.
Included in the little-known history that Perryman learned was the fact that the Republican Party was founded to emancipate blacks from slavery and that white Republicans founded many black colleges and universities. The abolitionist movement to end slavery was a faith-based movement.
Prominent African Americans, such as Sojounor Truth, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass, were all Republicans. Blacks that were elected to Congress during and after Reconstruction were Republican.
Republicans helped lead the way in passing Constitutional amendments abolishing slavery (13th), giving citizenship to blacks (14th) and giving blacks the right to vote (15th), as well as civil rights acts.
President Eisenhower's Republican administration passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and Perryman noted that more Republicans than Democrats supported the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act passed under Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. Perryman called President Nixon the father of affirmative action.
``Today, the facts of our history are hidden from the average African American, the average Republican and I'm not too sure it's hidden from the average Democrat,'' he said. ``I don't think they want the past brought up.''
As part of that past, Perryman likened the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan as the ``terrorist arm of the Democratic Party'' and compared the KKK to the militant Muslim groups al Qaida and the Taliban in terms of using violence to accomplish its goals in intimidating, beating and killing blacks at the voting polls.
``So when they talk about Trent Lott and the chads (in the 2000 presidential election in Florida), there's absolutely no comparison to what the Democrats did,'' he said. ``Yes, Trent Lott made a very stupid, ill-advised statement. But he has never been responsible for the number of murders the Democrats and their terrorist supporters have caused and brought about on the African American community.''
While neither party can point fingers at each other, Perryman said he thinks that both parties need to do more to address issues affecting blacks in America.
And Perryman conceded that modern Republicans are distant cousins of the radical Republicans that opposed slavery and said the party needs to regain that compassion again.
Meanwhile, he said the Democratic Party has resorted to manipulation over violence to court minority votes.
Perryman said he hopes the book challenges the Democratic Party to no longer pretend like it's the party of compassion and caring, and to confess to its violent, racist background by formally apologizing for ``the atrocities their party have committed to hurt the people of my race.''
Perryman also issued a challenge to the Republican Party: ``You started the fight on our behalf, you should finish it in honor of your forefathers who lost their lives fighting on behalf of African Americans.''
``Republicans need to re-learn compassion,'' Perryman said. ``The Democrats need to repent and be sincere.''
Chic Hendricks, past president of the Eastside Republicans, said the book will upset a lot of people.
``We're all probably going to have a good lesson in real American black history,'' Hendricks said.
According to Perryman, those who have read the book -- including people in the White House whom Perryman said took an interest in the chapter on faith-based programs -- think it can change the political structure of America.
Perryman said he thinks that the black community will see a major shift toward the Republican Party in the 2004 election because of President Bush.
``I don't see a carte blanche endorsement (by blacks) of the Democratic Party,'' he said.
After his appearance it is now in the top one hundred. (Currently #92!.)
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Priceless.....
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What's so little known about this? I've known this stuff for years. BTW, Andrew Carnegie was a very big donor to black colleges in the South, including Tuskegee.
YEAHHH!! Woo-hoo! You go, Mr. Perryman!
It won't be too long, of course, before the words "Uncle Tom", "Oreo Cookie", and "Sellout" start cascading from the lips of the Usual Suspects.
The most important thing Perry has done is to have identified the Klan as an instrument of State Terror. During Jim Crow, the Democratic Party ran the South with an iron hand. Election Day was the Democratic Primary. Only whites could vote. Blacks, like Condi Rice's father, John, were registered, if at all, in the Republican Party. Literacy tests abounded. The entire edifice, of course, came apart when Johnson decided to go after black voters by pushing for the Civil Rights Act.
But he has highlighted the Klan's role as an instrument of political terror, and that is all to the good.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
If Bush who nationwide got less than 10 percent of the black vote constantly has Rove talking about how to get 20 percent of the black vote. If Bush and Rove what to know how to get 30 to 40 percent of the Black vote they had best emulate Thurman and Lott. They consistantly have done it.
If Thurman and Lott are racist.. someone needs to tell a the black voters who know both of them first hand. A much larger number of blacks in South Carolina think Bush is racist than think Strom Thurman is racist.
Strom was never as racist as Senator Byrd of West Virginia was. When the supreme court ruled in 1954 Strom followed the ruleing. Strom was the first southern senator to hire black staffers in the senate. Strom gave a lot of Black people their first chance. Ask Black Columnist Armstrong Williams what he things of Strom.
When Strom retired there were black staffers at the party where Lott spoke. In fact at that party Strom's son recognized a black staffer and said this staffer was more than just a senate employee, he was family.. And although he would not be working for Strom anymore (the son phrased it as "not having to put up with Dad anymore") they wanted him to stay in touch with his Thurman family.
How many black staffers will be at Teddy Kennedy's retirement party?
I'd like to be able to repeat that fact, but I have searched the web and only found a press release from Sen Lott that claimed 25% of the black vote in 2000 and an ABCnews story that says he got 11%.
Could you please give a source for your figure?
But here is the logic. There are several counties in Mississippi that are almost entirely black. I examined the returns from those counties. If Lott only had 10 percent of the black vote you would expect these counties to go 86 to 88 percent for Lott's Democratic opponent. If we assume that all whites and 10 percent of the blacks voted for Lott that would make Lott's expected percentage of the vote in those nearly all black counties to be in the 10 to 14 percent range.
Yet the vote in those counties ranged from 37 to 49 plus percent for Lott. There is no way lott got less than 35 percent of the black vote even if you assume Lott got 100 percent of the white vote. If you assume that some 5 or 10 percent of Whites voted for the Democrat, then Lott was close to 40 percent or more of the black vote in 2000.
When a candidate gets no less than 35% and as high as 48% percent of the votes in counties with with very few white voters, the conclusion to me seems sound.
Yes it does.
You are absolutely correct the numbers don't add up. VNS claimed that blacks comprised 37% of the total 2000 Miss vote for President. I doubt the percent of black vote for US Senate was a lot smaller. Lott won with 68% of 915,000 votes for the US Senate. If ABC was correct and only 11% of the blacks voted for Lott, then Lott must have gotten 101.7% of the white vote by my calculations.
Thank you for the explanation.
I also wanted to mention I’m enjoying your columns at www.raymalone.com immensely.
Thanks for posting your wisdom
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