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Harris would have been dismayed
Last Updated: Dec. 11, 2002
I can't help but wonder what Webster Harris Jr. would have made of Trent Lott.
Harris, who died suddenly last week at the age of 67, was one of Milwaukee's most prominent black Republicans.
As chairman of the Milwaukee County Election Commission, he oversaw much of the turbulent dealings connected to the Milwaukee County recall movement earlier this year.
For those who knew him well, Harris was also known as a staunch Republican activist who encouraged other blacks to take advantage of opportunities for advancement inside the GOP.
It wasn't an easy sell.
Finding an authentic black Republican in some black communities is only a bit more rare than encountering a black Eskimo.
Basically, most blacks vote Democratic, the party they feel speaks most directly to their needs.
When the leading Republican in the Senate makes an unfortunate "slip of the tongue" in support of racial segregation, can you blame them?
Speaking at a 100th birthday celebration for retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, Lott said these now-infamous words:
"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it.
"And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Thurmond, of course, ran for president in 1948 as a Dixiecrat on a platform calling for the continuation of segregation in the South.
Apparently, in 2002, Senate Majority Leader Lott harbors a fond nostalgia for the days of Jim Crow.
Harris, although faithful to his party, would have been disheartened by this latest blemish on the GOP's image with blacks.
I used to tease Harris about his party loyalties whenever we ran into each other, most often at Mr. Perkins Family Restaurant, a soul-food place on the north side.
My favorite taunt was to quote the father of retiring congressman J.C. Watts, a black conservative from Oklahoma.
When asked about his son's political leanings, the senior Watts reportedly answered:
"Black folks voting for the Republican Party is like a bunch of chickens voting for Col. Sanders!"
The line always made Harris laugh.
But he never wavered in his main belief; black folks needed to support the Republican Party for several reasons, not the least of which was preventing Democrats from taking the black vote for granted.
For almost 20 years, I used Harris as a source for stories concerning the continuing struggle of the GOP to recruit more blacks to the ranks.
That proved to be harder than one would think, considering that polls reveal many African-Americans actually support conservative issues like school prayer, welfare reform and the death penalty in their private lives.
Those similarities beg the question: Why don't more blacks vote Republican?
Which brings us back to Republicans like Trent Lott.
Black voters may share some ideals, but they're not going to share a party with people they feel don't really accept them as human beings.
Typically, Lott tried to explain away his comments as "a poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past." He forgot to mention he was quoted as saying almost exactly the same thing about Thurmond almost 22 years ago!
Add to that Lott's appearance before a white supremacy group called the Council of Conservative Citizens in 1999, and it's hard to accept the Mississippi congressman's words as just a slip of the tongue. More like some inner truth escaping while he wasn't paying attention.
Webster Harris was a black Republican who loved black people. Even blacks who disagreed with his politics respected him, because they knew where he was coming from.
He might have voted for the occasional Col. Sanders, but only as a way to keep blacks from putting all their eggs in the same basket.
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