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In Fear Of A Black Republican, released through Shamrock Stine Productions LLC, Kevin J. Williams argues that the Republican Party is a weaker party because of its failure to recognize Urban city residents and Blacks from within the Party. Not only do mainstream, White Republicans fail to acknowledge already existing Black Republicans, but they also fail to seriously recruit new party members from amongst the Black and Urban communities. The most recent Presidential Election results reflect these failures of the Republican Party. Fear of A Black Republican tries to address these failures in a fair way by asking, Does the Republican Party really want more African Americans? and then journeying to see why the GOP and the Two-Party system shape up as they do today.
According to Tavis Smiley, one among many people interviewed by Kevin Williams for the documentary, The Democrats have fathered an agenda which is more inclusive of African-Americans. Also interviewed by Williams for the Documentary are Cornel West, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Michael Steele, Mike Huckabee, Edward W. Brooke, Ken Mehlman, Lynn Swann, Catherine Davis, Christine Todd Whitman, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, Michelle Malkin, and others.
Post Q&A Photo of Renee Amoore Chris Stigall and KevinWritten, Directed, and Edited by Kevin Williams, this 111-minute independent documentary chronicles the years leading up to the election of Barack Obama and helps to explain how the first Black President was a Democrat instead of a Republican, even given the Republican Partys long history of fighting for Blacks. Williams (the films narrator), recalls a time when it was a given that Black Americans were Republicans. This assumption existed because traditionally, Blacks chose the Party of Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves. Williams argues that at various stages throughout history the Republican Party ignored the Black community and by default over time allowed the Democrats to take the Black Vote for themselves.
The Republican Party (as the recent Steven Spielberg film Lincoln shows), was responsible for the passage of The Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, & 15th) which sought to insure that the rights of the newly freed African-Americans remained intact. Unfortunately, with Reconstructions end, the Party of Lincoln began to drop the ball and soon backed policies that allowed the Federal Government to pull out of the South permitting Democrats to abuse a large majority of the nations new citizens for many decades.
Fear Of A Black Republican maintains, that as time went on people such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who voted as a Republican for Eisenhower-Nixon in 1956), changed their allegiances and their vote in 1960 with the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to Presidency. According to Williams, on the eve of the Presidential contest between Kennedy and Nixon, Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested on a trumped-up traffic charge, then given an up to six months sentence to the terrible Reidsville State Prison in Georgia. His wife, Coretta was pregnant at the time. While Nixon chose not to get publicly involved, Kennedy wisely phoned Mrs. King to express his concern. This one act of kindness changed the relationship of Blacks and Democrats for years to come.
Miraculously, after having only served 65 days of his sentence, Dr. King was released from prison for good behavior just before the Election. The Kennedy campaign exploited this event by printing up two million blue pamphlets for Black church goers (nicknamed the Blue Bomb), which expressed support for Senator Kennedy from prominent Blacks like Dr. Kings father, Ralph Abernathy and others.
The film includes leading African-Americans in the Republican Party to get their assessment of the indifference with which they are handled in the Party. From Michael Steele, (the fmr. Republican National Committee Chairman) to Catherine Davis (a Black female candidate struggling to run for Congress in Georgia), over and over the documentary shows how Party officials treating African-Americans with an air of indifference. In the words of Ann Coulter at the Conservative Political Action Conference, We have Condoleezza Rice, Ken Blackwell and Colin Powell. Who do they have? Maxine Waters? Our Blacks are better than their Blacks!
Williams (who self-produced the film with his wife, Tamara) also speaks to many Republicans whom he asks how they plan to include African-Americans in the Republican Party. The answer he and the audience gets most often is a pat and a curt response of We will visit the African-American community where they are
including in the churches. Many Republicans, even Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist indicate that money is not needed, it is time and commitment by their Partys candidates. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee highlights in the film that he did just that and won 40% of the Black vote in his home state. But former Senator Edward W. Brooke, the last elected Black Republican U.S. Senator wisely advises that the time is over for window-dressing and that Blacks need to be an equal partner.
Towards the end of the film, when asked about improving GOP outreach efforts, Senator Brooke looks into the camera and states, It is my hope and my prayer that they [the GOP] will be wise enough to do that. Because we need, Blacks need representation, the country needs a vital Two-Party system of Government, which represents all the people. Inclusive, not Exclusive. If only the Republican Party had heeded his advice and listened to Senator Brooke and many of the diverse voices in this surprisingly non-partisan film, who knows how the past Presidential election may have turned out.
Although Kevin Williams relentlessly searches for answers to his questions about Black inclusion in the Republican Party, the answers he receives are often superficial. The answers he and the audience are given are meant to appease those who are discontented with the performance of the Party. On a scale of from one to ten, because the documentary is a bit too long, I give Fear of a Black Republican a rating of nine.
Fear Of A Black Republican is screening around the country and will make its Los Angeles Premiere on March 26th at the University of Southern California. The film is available on DVD and VOD at
http://fearofablackrepublican.com/; on DVD at Amazon and for streaming on iTunes. The films trailers are available on the films own website, YouTube and Vimeo.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Cleo Brown is the movie reviewer for HipHopRepublican.com. She lives in Manhattan and has a Masters Degree in Contemporary African-American History from The University of California at Davis and has done work on a Ph.D. in education at The University of San Francisco. She has published several poetry books and is featured in Whos Who in Poetry.
FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN ORIGINAL TRAILER
FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN ORIGINAL TRAILER - YouTube
