Source: Newsmax
Black History Month brings to mind Rosa Parks refusing to walk to the back of the bus; Freedom Rider John Lewis being beaten to the ground by bigoted mobs, then rising to spend more than a quarter century in Congress; and Clarence Thomas refusing to let Democrats subject him to a “high-tech lynching” to keep him off the U.S. Supreme Court.
We may have a black president serving his second term, but in recent months, African-American Republicans have been making the biggest history, and may be making even more in the days ahead.
In January, Mia Love — a charismatic, Brooklyn-born, Haitian-American, Mormon, small-city mayor and mother of three — was sworn in as the first GOP black congresswoman ever. South Carolina, the cradle of the Confederacy, gave the once-despised Party of Lincoln a victory by electing Tim Scott, the South’s first black senator since 1881.
And while presidential campaigning may not be brain surgery, we are weeks away from a likely announcement of a White House run by Dr. Ben Carson, who went from the streets of Detroit to extracting tumors from the skulls of toddlers at one of the world’s top hospitals.
Those on Newsmax’s 2015 100 Most Influential African-American Republicans list have bucked the trend and aligned themselves with the party that once fought slavery, and now fights enslavement to state dependency (or is supposed to), range from the famous and powerful to behind-the-scenes rainmakers, local chieftains, and energetic rising stars.
Within the list’s top tier is, of course, Justice Clarence Thomas, who proved again just this month the potency of his devotion to the Constitution as written. He blasted his liberal colleagues on the high court for refusing to grant a stay to Alabama’s attorney general on a federal injunction against multiple state laws recognizing marriage solely as the union of one man and one woman.
It was “yet another example of this Court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the states,” Thomas warned, and “a signal of the Court’s intended resolution” on same-sex marriage later this year: the declaration that it is a constitutional right.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley has been proving the power of the pen since the release of his best-seller last summer, “Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks To Succeed.” The suffering of millions of blacks for decades, both economically and at the hands of criminals within their own community, is paved with the good intentions of big government, Riley compellingly argues.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain came from near-anonymity in 2012 and briefly led the polls for the Republican presidential nomination with his message of flat tax rates and individual initiative. He may not be running for anything again anytime soon, but he is more impassioned and articulate than ever in his critiques of the political status quo of both parties.
Scholar and columnist Tom Sowell of the Hoover Institution has built up a library of dozens of volumes, pivoting from race relations to immigration to economics to the destruction waged against society by leftist intellectuals. That his more than a half century of polemical scholarship has been ignored by the Pulitzer and Nobel judges illustrates what is at stake when a great black mind refuses to remain on the ideological plantation.
Further down the list are familiar names from the entertainment and sports world that will surprise you, plus introductions to local officials, activists, and future leaders determined to change society for the better for Americans of every complexion.
The days of comedian Eddie Murphy joking on “Saturday Night Live” in the early 1980s about African-American Republicans being an exotic species whom few have glimpsed are long gone.
Listed below are Newsmax’s 100 Most Influential African-American Republicans. A caveat: not everyone on the list may be actually registered Republican. But these are individuals who have a public identity as Republican or ones who lean Republican.
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Ben Carson — renowned pediatric neurosurgeon; likely 2016 presidential candidate
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Colin Powell — former secretary of state; U.S. Army general
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Condoleezza Rice — former secretary of state
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Clarence Thomas — Supreme Court justice
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Mia Love — U.S. congresswoman, Utah
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Tim Scott — U.S. senator, South Carolina
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Jason Riley — Wall Street Journal editorial writer; author, “Please Stop Helping Us”
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Michael Powell — former chairman, Federal Communications Commission; president, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
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Will Hurd — Texas congressman
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Herman Cain — businessman; 2012 presidential candidate
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Thomas Sowell — economist; author
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Allen West — former congressman, Florida; ex-Army officer
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Janice Rogers Brown — D.C. Circuit judge
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Shaquille O’Neal — retired NBA star; actor
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Michael Steele — former chairman, Republican National Committee
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Antonio Williams — director of government relations, Comcast
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Deroy Murdock — nationally syndicated columnist; businessman
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Lynn Swann — NFL Hall of Famer; 2006 Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee
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Elbert Guillory — Louisiana state senator; former Democrat
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Dwayne Johnson — athlete; actor
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James “Bo Snerdley” Golden — producer, “The Rush Limbaugh Show”
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James Earl Jones — Oscar-winning actor
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Artur Davis — Montgomery, Alabama, mayoral candidate; former Democrat
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Walter Williams — economist; guest host, “The Rush Limbaugh Show”
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Judge Lynn Toler — star of “Divorce Court”
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LL Cool J — rapper; actor
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Herschel Walker — retired NFL running back and Heisman Trophy winner
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Joseph C. Phillips — “The Cosby Show” co-star; Christian commentator
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Shelby Steele — author, “The Content of Our Character”; documentary filmmaker
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Joseph Louis Clark — former high school principal portrayed by Morgan Freeman in “Lean On Me”
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Prince — pop star
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Alveda C. King — pro-life activist; former Georgia legislator; ex-Democrat; niece of Martin Luther King Jr.
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Boyd Rutherford — Maryland lieutenant governor
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Nolan Carroll — Philadelphia Eagles cornerback
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Richard Ivory — founder, HipHopRepublican.com blog
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Larry Elder — talk radio host; columnist
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Jimmie “J.J.” Walker — stand-up comedian; iconic comic actor on “Good Times” in 1970s
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Peter Kirsanow — member, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
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Robert P. Young Jr. — chief justice, Michigan Supreme Court
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Don King — boxing promoter
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Star Parker — president, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE); columnist; congressional candidate
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Alan Keyes — former presidential candidate
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Raphael “Raffi” Williams — deputy press secretary, RNC
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Ward Connerly — former University of California regent; affirmative action foe
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Crystal Wright — conservativeblackchick.com blogger
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Armstrong Williams — radio commentator; author; media entrepreneur
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Kevin A. Ross — host, “America’s Court with Judge Ross”; former Los Angeles Superior Court judge
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Stephen N. Lackey — corporate philanthropist; GOP fundraiser
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Michael L. Williams — Texas commissioner of education
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B.J. Penn — assistant secretary of the Navy under George W. Bush
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Conrad James — scientist; member, University of New Mexico Board of Regents; former state legislator
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Robert J. Brown — CEO, B&C Associates
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Harold Doley — Doley Securities
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Logan Delany — Delany Capital; treasurer, Ben Carson Organization
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Alvin Williams — Black America’s Political Action Committee
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Robert A. George — New York Post editorial writer
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Amy Russell — clerk for U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. in Arkansas
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Jane E. Powdrell-Culbert — New Mexico legislator
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Karl Malone — retired NBA great
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Niger Innis — national spokesman, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Nevada congressional candidate
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Neal E. Boyd — pop opera singer; “America’s Got Talent” winner; candidate, Missouri legislature
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Kay James — president, Gloucester Institute; former George W. Bush administration official
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Erika Harold — Miss America 2003; 2014 congressional candidate in Illinois
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Damon Dunn — former NFL wide receiver; real estate investor; Long Beach, California, mayoral candidate
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Thomas Stith — chief of staff for North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, leading governor’s “Innovation to Jobs” initiative
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Robert Woodson — president, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise
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Sheryl Underwood — comedian; CBS “The Talk” commentator
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David Tyree — retired NFL wide receiver; New York Giants director of player development; pro-family activist
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Bruce Harris — nominated by Gov. Christie and defeated by state Democrats to be New Jersey’s first openly homosexual supreme court justice; former mayor of Chatham, N.J.
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Orlando Watson — black media communications director, Republican National Committee
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Scott Turner — Texas state legislator; retired NFL defensive back
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Dale Wainwright — attorney, Bracewell & Giuliani; former associate justice, Texas Supreme Court
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Stacey Dash — actress; Fox News commentator
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Jackie Winters — Oregon state senator
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Patricia Funderburk Ware — HIV/AIDS expert who served in Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations
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Chidike Okeem — Nigerian-born, London-raised blogger
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J.A. Parker — president, Lincoln Institute; publisher, The Lincoln Review
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Nadra Enzi — “The Hood Conservative,” New Orleans-based anti-crime activist
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Mike Hill — Florida state legislator
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Sonja Schmidt — PJTV commentator
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Chelsi P. Henry — entrepreneur; political strategist
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Joseph Perkins — columnist, Orange County Register
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Carson Ross — mayor, Blue Springs Missouri
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William Barclay Allen — former chairman, U.S. Civil Rights Commission; candidate for U.S. Senate in California
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Clarence M. Mitchell IV — “C4,” Baltimore talk radio personality
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Deneen Borelli — author, “Blacklash”; FreedomWorks outreach director
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John Meredith — lobbyist; son of civil rights pioneer James Meredith
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Bill Hardiman — Michigan state veterans services administrator; former mayor, Kentwood, Michigan; former state senator and congressional candidate
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Jill Upson — West Virginia legislator
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Ken Blackwell — former Cincinnati mayor, Ohio secretary of state, and GOP gubernatorial nominee
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Vernon Robinson — campaign director for Draft Ben Carson movement; former North Carolina congressional candidate
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Amy Holmes — news anchor, TheBlaze TV
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Dr. Elaina George — otolaryngologist; ObamaCare critic
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Tony Childress — sheriff, Livingston County, Illinois
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Larry Dean Thompson — George W. Bush deputy attorney general
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Kevin Jackson — host, “Black Sphere” radio show
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Michel Faulkner — retired New York Jets defensive lineman; New York City pastor; 2010 congressional nominee against Rep. Charles Rangel
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Ryan Frazier — investment consultant; Colorado congressional candidate; Mitt Romney adviser
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Brian C. Roseboro — international banker; George W. Bush Treasury Department official
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David Webb — talk radio host; political columnist