Specifically, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of three statewide black Republican candidacies in 2006 in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. During the 2006 midterm election cycle, the Republican Party recruited and gave strong support to three high-profile African American statewide candidates. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and former Pittsburgh Steelers star and television sports broadcaster Lynn Swann campaigned for their state’s governorship in Ohio and Pennsylvania, respectively. Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele vied for a vacated United States Senate seat in Maryland. After five decades of miserable levels of support from black voters and numerous initiatives to increase its share of the African American electorate, the GOP estimated that credible black Republican candidacies would substantially improve its image among African American voters and, thus, garner a larger share of the black vote. State Representative James White

Reflecting on his fifty-year effort to steer the Grand Old Party toward black voters, Memphis power broker George W. Lee declared, "Somebody had to stay in the Republican Party and fight." As Joshua Farrington recounts in his comprehensive history, Lee was one of many black Republican leaders who remained loyal after the New Deal inspired black voters to switch their allegiance from the "party of Lincoln" to the Democrats. Ideologically and demographically diverse, the ranks of twentieth-century black Republicans included Southern patronage dispensers like Lee and Robert Church, Northern critics of corrupt Democratic urban machines like Jackie Robinson and Archibald Carey, civil rights agitators like Grant Reynolds and T. R. M. Howard, elected politicians like U.S. Senator Edward W. Brooke and Kentucky state legislator Charles W. Anderson, black nationalists like Floyd McKissick and Nathan Wright, and scores of grassroots organizers from Atlanta to Los Angeles. Black Republicans believed that a two-party system in which both parties were forced to compete for the African American vote was the best way to obtain stronger civil rights legislation. Though they were often pushed to the sidelines by their party's white leadership, their continuous and vocal inner-party dissent helped moderate the GOP's message and platform through the 1970s. And though often excluded from traditional narratives of U.S. politics, black Republicans left an indelible mark on the history of their party, the civil rights movement, and twentieth-century political development. Black Republicans and the Transformation of the GOP marshals an impressive amount of archival material at the national, state, and municipal levels in the South, Midwest, and West, as well as in the better-known Northeast, to open up new avenues in African American political history.

Argues that the Obama administration's policies are jeopardizing the black community and the nation at large, contending that progressive programs are actually promoting poverty at the expense of both the working and privileged classes.

Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer black college graduates than would otherwise exist. And so it goes with everything from soft-on-crime laws, which make black neighborhoods more dangerous, to policies that limit school choice out of a mistaken belief that charter schools and voucher programs harm the traditional public schools that most low-income students attend. In theory these efforts are intended to help the poor—and poor minorities in particular. In practice they become massive barriers to moving forward. Please Stop Helping Us lays bare these counterproductive results. People of goodwill want to see more black socioeconomic advancement, but in too many instances the current methods and approaches aren’t working. Acknowledging this is an important first step.

In this controversial essay collection, award-winning writer Shelby Stelle illuminates the origins of the current conflict in race relations--the increase in anger, mistrust, and even violence between black and whites. With candor and persuasive argument, he shows us how both black and white Americans have become trapped into seeing color before character, and how social policies designed to lessen racial inequities have instead increased them. The Content of Our Character is neither "liberal" nor "conservative," but an honest, courageous look at America's most enduring and wrenching social dilemma.

Radio host and NYT bestselling author Larry Elder takes on an entrenched group of politicians, entertainment figures, educators and sports heroes who promote a message of racial over-sensitivity that harms more than it helps. But he has a positive message too: that positive role models do exist, such as Tiger Woods and Bill Cosby, who want to sweep away race-based whining and urge those who listen to them to share in the hard work, smart thinking and optimism that makes the West a great place to live.