According to the website for the City of Ranson, the African American Heritage Festival takes place annually on the third Saturday of August. That was this past Saturday. My wife and I participated as part of the Jefferson County GOP contingent. The GOP float contained signs bearing the names of current candidates. There were also signs bearing the names and faces of prominent African American Republicans; historic figures such as Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr. However, African American participation in the GOP is not just a thing of the past.

The Jefferson County Republican Executive Committee (JCREC) states on its website that it is “the elected body established by WV state code and tasked with maintaining the Republican Party’s organization on the county level. It is comprised of one man and one woman from each of the five Magisterial Districts within Jefferson County”.

There are ten seats on the Jefferson County Republican Executive Committee - two of which are currently held by African Americans. One of those, Jill Upson, is a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. Doing the math, that means that 20% of the county Republican Executive Committee members are African American. According to the US Census, the 2015 estimate of the black population of our county is 6.8%. There aren’t any African Americans on the Executive Committee of the Jefferson County Democrats.

In fact, according to BlackDemographics.com, in 2012, the percentage of blacks registered as Republicans was higher than it had been since 1960. The site provides a new data point for each presidential election year. It will be interesting to see their update for 2016. In spite of the popularity of FDR among blacks, in 1940 black voter registration was evenly split between the Democrats and Republicans at 42% each.

More from the BlackDemographics.com website, “After the Civil War almost all Blacks considered themselves Republicans. It was the Republican Party that was started by abolitionists and of course the party of President Abraham Lincoln. Meanwhile Southern Democrats strongly opposed any rights to Blacks at the time and for almost a century thereafter. African Americans were not even allowed to officially attend the Democratic convention until 1924”. In contrast, the GOP has never embraced institutional racism. The party was founded to oppose it.

Regarding those “Southern Democrats” alluded to above, there is a quote that appears on numerous websites for which I can find no original attribution: “The less racist the South gets, the more Republican it becomes”. Again, according to BlackDemographics.com regarding African Americans, “44% consider themselves to have a moderate political viewpoint”, while, “only 28% consider themselves liberal in their political views”. The website doesn’t say how many consider themselves conservative. Could it be the remaining 28%?

A clue can be garnered by an article that was published in 2010 on the website ThinkProgress.org entitled, “Are African-Americans Conservative, or Is Ideological Self-Identification Meaningless?” It referred to a Gallup poll that revealed that 29% of African Americans considered themselves “conservative”. According to the author Matthew Yglesias, “I think that what this pretty clearly shows is that ideological self-identification surveys are not very useful.” Translation: The author believes that African Americans don’t know who they are. That’s progressivism for you. He goes on to say, “African-Americans are the most left-wing racial group in America. But African-Americans don’t seem to like the term ‘liberal.’” Imagine that!

The author then proceeds to shove his foot deeper into his mouth asserting, “And even though very few black people have conservative political opinions, 29 percent of them describe themselves as ‘conservative.’ I think this proves beyond a doubt that widely touted results about ideological self-identification are producing garbage numbers. Actual people clearly don’t understand these terms the same way political reporters understand them”. Got that? Political reporters know better. The mind boggles.

He goes on to conclude, “That these surveys produce that result doesn’t tell us a surprising new fact about black political views, it tells us that the surveys are badly designed”. Proof positive that progressives cannot accept reality, even when it bites them in the….

In the south, in recent years there has been an increase in changes of party affiliations among the ranks of African American politicians. Among those changing party affiliation from Democrat to Republican are Ashley Bell from Georgia and Elbert Guillory in Louisiana. The response from the liberal press was pretty entertaining. Regarding Bell, who was a delegate to the recent Republican National Convention in Cleveland, a Facebook Page was created called “Ashley Bell is pretending to be a Republican”. One of the reasons cited was that he was the former President of the College Democrats of America. Really.

Regarding Guillory, there was an article in the Washington Post with this headline: “Elbert Guillory is trying to help Republicans by playing the race card. It’s not working”. Hmmm. So let me get this straight, the race card only works when Democrats play it? Then the liberal blog The Daily Kos pilloried Guillory in their “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” feature. They opened the piece with “For a long while ‘Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day’ has been putting off a profile of Elbert Guillory….” Yeah, that’s right, they profiled him. You can’t make this stuff up.

Then there’s Darryl Glenn who is the Republican candidate for the US Senate in Colorado. According to Glenn, as quoted in the Washington Examiner on June 29th in an article entitled Colorado “GOP Senate candidate: Black conservatives are under attack”: “I am the Democratic Party’s absolute worst nightmare. Why is that? Well, you see, I am a black conservative Republican running against one of the most vulnerable Democrats in America in 2016.” He goes on to say, “I’m sick of hearing white liberals claim that if you call them out for their failed liberal programs, you’re a racist”.

Fast forward three weeks to the Republican National Convention and the Colorado Independent publishes an article entitled “Darryl Glenn’s no good, very bad week”. According to the article, “Darryl Glenn might not be having the kind of week he hoped for. If you saw his six-minute speech Monday night at the Republican National Convention, you might be one of the few. The…Republican U.S. Senate candidate scored a prime-time appearance at the Cleveland convention, only for the networks to cut out just as he hit the stage”.

That’s right, the mainstream television networks refused to cover a speech delivered by a conservative black man running for the US Senate. In prime time. Words fail me.

On a side note, before the parade got moving at the African American Heritage Festival on Saturday, I got a chance to talk with some of the GOP candidates. What I heard jibes with all of the above. From incidents like vandalizing Patricia Rucker’s signs to an explosion going off on the road in front one candidate’s home. That candidate will remain nameless as the matter has been referred to the police.

Riley Moore is running for the House of Delegates. He says that his house has been “egged”. Twice. He also takes umbrage that his opponent has run an ad claiming to have been endorsed by the Farm Bureau. However, it is true - his opponent was endorsed by the Farm Bureau. Oh, but that was in the Primary. A bit of sleight of hand to be sure. Moore has the endorsement in the General Election.

As the parade got moving it occurred to me that here we are, hundreds of people from all walks of life marching together because we all believe that, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. It was a wonderful day - and we all got along.