Interview With a Black Republican 2: Theron Bell (2005)

This is the 2nd of two interviews I conducted in 2005 with prominent Colorado Black Republicans.  Theron doesn't like the term "Black Republican" — he's a "Republican" just like any other — but his record as a Black man in government positions as early as the 1960s is a testament to the vision of both Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party.

Please also read my interview with Arniter Jamison and my analysis of who really made the 1964 Civil Rights Act possible (well-meaning people, Black and White alike, were on different sides of that Act, but the point is the Democrat claim that they were the only champions for civil rights in the '60s is a lie).

Theron Bell: A Black Republican for Reagan in 1966

“Can you go down to Santa Barbara?” asked the voice on the phone. “What for?” asked Theron Bell, sitting next to his friend Herb. “To meet with Ronald Reagan.”

They had gotten an inkling to get involved in local politics. Herb was a Democrat, but Bell convinced him that if they could find a good Republican candidate to back for Governor of California, they would both volunteer.

That’s how these two black men in 1966 ended up spending an hour riding horses and talking with Ronald Reagan at his ranch. And that’s how Bell ended up committing most of the rest of his life to implementing Republican policy from Sacramento and Washington D.C..

Most of Bell’s experience had been in middle and upper management in auto sales, insurance and trucking. His only experience in politics had been campaigning for Alaskan statehood. But that planted a bug in him that would be with him for the rest of his life.

Bell was asked to chair Reagan’s speaker’s bureau. He would call up Reagan’s movie star friends, and ask if they’d speak for him. But if no one could, then the task fell to Bell.

At one such appearance in Sacramento, Bell arrived late and hung out at the back of the room as the other candidates made their pitches to the audience. Bill Bagley, a state legislator who was speaking for one of the other candidates, told the crowd what a racist Ronald Reagan was – that was the angle his opponents were using. Then, to great effect, Bell took the stage on Reagan’s behalf and said, “It’s obvious Mr. Bagley doesn’t know what he’s talking about!” Reagan got the endorsement that night.

Because of Reagan’s positions on welfare, and his support in 1964 for similarly tarred presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, the charge of racism would not go away. But opponent George Christopher once called Reagan a bigot within his hearing. Reagan’s response was, “If you say that about me one more time, I’m going to knock you right on your ass.”

For that matter, Bell says, Goldwater wasn’t a racist either. The Goldwater’s department store was the first in the country to hire a black man as vice president.

Much of the charge of racism for both Goldwater and Reagan stemmed from their opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But Bell said he, himself, had mixed feelings about the Act. “I was the first black business manager in the country,” Bell said of his time as an auto dealer. “It’s still a mixed bag,” he says. “I think [the Act] probably set blacks back about 10 years in their progress, because people were already beginning to make inroads into decent jobs and into the professions on their own merits, without the legislation.”

“Obviously, the legislation helped open doors, to the restaurants and things like that, in certain parts of the country. And broke down some of the racial barriers in the south... I’m not sure that wouldn’t have happened anyway. Especially after World War II and the Korean Conflict, when they integrated the armed services. It was already taking place.” Bell was one of those pioneers who forged a path for the future, on his own, without the Civil Rights Act.

Governor Reagan tapped Bell to head up his California Office of Economic Opportunity. “Reagan ended up appointing more blacks to policy-making positions than all of the previous governors of California combined,” Bell said.

As Director, he helped generate business and jobs. “We had put together in California a program to increase the number of minority owned businesses,” Bell said. It was so successful that Richard Nixon used it as a nationwide model when he became President.

Partly because of that notoriety and experience, Bell was appointed as state director for Nixon’s ACTION agency, where he served through most of the '70s.

Bell was called back into service by President Reagan in 1981. He took over as Director of the Minority Business Development Agency — the federal agency Nixon had created on Bell’s California model.

Ironically, President Carter had slashed funding for minority business development. Its budget had fallen to $20 million. Bell’s connections with Reagan and his team paid off. “We tripled the budget each year for three years,” he said.

Bell helped set up national and local business groups, such as the Denver Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which still helps local minority firms today. He funded 100 centers to lend support to minority-owned businesses. He helped owners network between themselves to their mutual advantage. He set up an international export program, and launched several trade missions. It was all more ambitious than what previous administrations had tried, and it got to the root of the needs of struggling minority-owned companies.

Bell also got Reagan to proclaim “Minority Enterprise Development Week” to pay tribute to their economic contributions. That recognition, Bell said, “means a lot when it comes to getting new business, especially with major corporations. They do a lot of networking at those events... They tend to increase their revenues, hire more people, and pay more taxes.”

And he’s proud of having ended a form of corporate welfare. There was a program that gave taxpayers’ money to major corporations to encourage them to help minority businesses. “They can fund the program,” Bell said to himself. “They just throw away that much money. So I told them they weren’t going to get renewed.”

Reagan and Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldridge ignored complaints, backed Bell’s decision, and the corporate welfare died away. Bell says the program still supports minority businesses, but today it’s funded entirely with corporate money.

After Reagan left office, Bell worked for President George H.W. Bush, and then for the governor of Virginia. Once, Bell ran unsuccessfully for Mayor of Alexandria, Va., on a Republican platform. Then he and his wife moved to Littleton, Colo., where they remain very involved in local Republican organizations.

Bell believes in Republican philosophy, and he feels those concepts of individual rights, free enterprise and opportunity are beneficial to all Americans — black and white alike. To Bell, few people represent the very best of Republican philosophy as well as Ronald Reagan.

“There is only one man that I admired and respected more than Reagan,” Bell says. “And that was my Dad. The man [Reagan] was sincere, he was a delegator, he had a vision for this country, and what you saw was what you got. I just loved him. In my opinion he was the best president we’ve ever had.”

Bell doesn’t understand why most black people today identify with the Democrat Party, rather than with Republicans. “Many people have forgotten that it was Abraham Lincoln who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It was Dwight Eisenhower who established the Small Business Administration, and also made certain that discrimination in the military was reduced, and eventually eliminated. It was Nixon who established the Office of Minority Business Enterprise. And it was Ronald Reagan who funded that same program at an increased level and created minority enterprise development, which opened the doors up for a lot of minorities to now become big companies.”

“The Democrats’ approach is a joke," Bell says. They act like if you're Black you have to be a Democrat, like there's no choice. Like they "own" Black people. Successful Blacks are a threat to the stereotype the Democrats promote. "I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve been called an Uncle Tom by some of those so-called honorable black Democrats.”

What do Republicans need to improve? “The Republicans don’t reach out like the Democrats do. It’s almost as if they’re afraid to reach out. The door is open, and Republicans expect blacks and other minority groups to walk in the door just like they did.” He says it doesn't always work like that.

Bell contrasts the parties like this. “The Democrats promise a lot and don’t deliver. The Republicans don’t promise a lot. They do promise the right to earn a good living.”

To Theron Bell’s mind, that’s worth everything.

Interview With a Black Republican - Arniter Jamison (2005)

Today on Facebook, I posted a quote -- part of a pro-life campaign for the month of March. I just placed the quote for today in my "status" on Facebook. And people from both sides (I have alot of conservative and alot of liberal activists as "friends" on Facebook) started bickering about it. It caused a little bit of a firestorm.

The quote was this: Abortion has affected the Black community more than slavery itself. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the Black vote will be insignificant. -Abort73

Now, I thought that was a little strong when I first saw it. But I thought about it. The Right to Life is more important than the Right to Freedom -- without life, you have neither. Black slaves in America had a positive population growth even after the slave trade ended, which means that more Blacks were being born in America than were dying. Considering that 50 million Americans have died since 1967 from abortion, and most of those were Black, it becomes an easy realization -- American Blacks have been more deeply impacted by abortion than by slavery.

So, as part of my response to the firestorm (I'm exaggerating -- most of the feedback was in favor of the quote, from pro-lifers, but some people challenged my right to speak on the issue (that's what liberals do -- I respect your right to state your opinion, but I don't think you should say things like that!)) I'm going to reprint here an interview I published in my newspaper, The Front Range Rampart. By some coincidence, this issue of the newspaper was published exactly 4 years ago -- March 4, 2005.

Arniter Jamison is a longtime friend of mine and my wife's. My wife is Black, and we became members of the Colorado Black Republican Forum (CBRF). Arniter Jamison is a strong woman who once marched in civil rights events with CORE and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and who today pursues the same basic mission of freedom and liberty and equality as Communications Director for the Colorado Black Republican Forum.

Interview: Arniter Jamison

Communications Director, Colorado Black Republicans
(reprinted from the March 4, 2005 edition of the Front Range Rampart)

by Ed Hanks

As a child, Arniter Jamison grew up in the South – a girl with dark skin in a world controlled by whites. But you couldn’t keep her spirit down. She was there, standing up for herself and her people, at diner counters in segregated St. Louis. And today she’s still standing up for herself and her people… as a Republican activist and PR director for the Colorado Black Republicans.

“I believe in the foundational principles of the Republican Party,” she says, “which is a platform for righteousness. I believe that the public policy and platform of the Republican Party offers the best opportunity for my people to overcome the socioeconomic handicaps that have been perpetrated on them over the years. And I believe in the Republican foundational position of creating an environment that develops and allows people to become the best that they can be.”


“That environment, I believe, is best not only for my people but for all American people.”

Jamison’s parents were Republicans, like most blacks were back then. Her mother was a nurse. Her father fought with General Patton’s “Red Ball Express” in World War II, and later in Korea and Vietnam. “My Dad used to explain to his daughter that she was not a Democrat. That there was no way she could be black and be a Democrat!”

But that wasn’t the direction black youth were moving. The popular perception was that Democrats were for the poor people, and for minorities. Jamison says President Roosevelt’s New Deal had begun the change, from 80 or 90 percent black registration as Republicans, to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, which wedded black culture to the Democrats.

“As a child I was a civil rights activist. As a very young, young, young girl, I joined the Congress of Racial Equality which you all call CORE. And I sat in restaurant sit-ins and got thrown out. And I marched in the protest marches.”

“That’s when the blacks switched,” she said. “The younger ones. The older ones still maintained because they understood the history of the relationship between the Republicans and the black community.”

She went on to describe two histories of both political parties, one which is taught as Gospel truth today, and the other which was obscured in her day, and is almost buried today – contradicted by the media and in most history texts and classrooms.

In what Jamison says was not a racist move, but a purely political calculation, some Republicans in the 1960s reached out to southern Democrats – the “Dixiecrats.” It won the Presidency for Richard Nixon in 1968. But she says except for that, the Republican Party has always been the obvious place for African-Americans, though that wasn’t always clear back then. “Democrats did good job of painting all Republicans as racists.”

She added, with obvious bitterness, “The Democrats are very good at using emotional issues to get an emotional response from black people. They use intimidation and fear, which is what they’ve always done, even during the 19th century. They used intimidation and fear to control and intimidate black people.”

Historically, Jamison says Republicans – not Democrats – have been the friend of black Americans. The anti-slavery movement was almost exclusively Republican – was, in fact, a major reason the Party came to exist – and was deeply rooted in the principles of the Party. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. “When blacks were freed, they became Republicans.”

Jamison herself graduated from Lincoln University – named after the president – one of many land grant colleges founded by Republicans. “All those colleges and universities were started by white Republicans. Most of them are named after white Republicans, because of the financials and insistence on creating them.”

“Republicans were responsible for Affirmative Action. Republicans were responsible for implementing the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission]. Kennedy never implemented it – Nixon did.”

And when, in 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, Jamison says it only happened because of the dogged efforts of Republicans. “It was the Republicans who pushed the law through, and insisted on it. And Democrats fought it.”

Jamison’s claim is contrary to everything students are taught in public school, but it is only necessary to go to the source – the 1964 Congressional Records – to look it up. Some very interesting findings from those records can be found on page 12 [of the Front Range Rampart - posted here - basically, it was Republicans who passed the Civil Rights Act, and most of the votes against it were from Democrat congressmen].

And, while Jamison was emphatic about the helpful nature of the Republican Party in the fight for civil rights, she did not shy away from the dark, largely hidden history of the Democrats – the party that had usually opposed those Republican efforts.

“Most of the intimidation, and the Ku Klux Klan, which was an auxiliary of the Democratic Party – it was a terrorist arm of the Democratic Party – their job was to intimidate Republicans. Period. I know you don’t read about that!” she said. But it is a verifiable fact of history, proven by investigations and primary historical sources, such as the Ku Klux Klan membership oath.

“The blacks who were not Republicans did not receive the intimidation, and they were told, literally that if they’d change and vote Democrat, they’d let them live.”

Today’s Democrat Party is not the same one it was in the 1880s or 1930s, any more than today’s Republican Party is the same as it was in the 1960s. But Jamison says she can still identify vestiges of old Democrat Party thinking. “Now instead of using a rope, instead of physical control, they now use mental and emotional control. They use the Jesse Jacksons and the Al Sharptons and the Maxine Waters, and people of that ilk that keep that emotional fear permeating within the black community.”

And, instead of seeing a Democrat Party focused on improving public education, Jamison sees more than just benign neglect in the operation of the public schools liberals have created. She sees a dim reflection of southern Democrat policies prohibiting black children from reading. “Now what they do is they just don’t teach them to read, and it brings about the same result.”

But Jamison’s awareness of the true history of civil rights came only after she began to recognize problems with Democrat philosophy on her own. She remained a Democrat through the ‘60s and ‘70s. In 1976, she worked closely with Wellington Webb on Jimmy Carter’s presidential run. Soon after, she became disenchanted.

Jamison was impressed by Carter’s ideas to require able-bodied welfare recipients to find work or go to school. “I read his welfare program, and it was excellent. And I had sense enough to understand that as black people, we could never be independent as long as we were dependent. And I saw that proposal as an opportunity for uneducated blacks to get an education.”

“They crucified him,” she said. “The Democrats, not the Republicans. The Democrats crucified him because of his welfare reform. A lot of which you see being instituted today [2005] – he was way ahead of his time.”

“When I saw that, and then when the Democrats came up with this philosophy of the disadvantaged, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said. “You cannot teach people dependency, inadequacy and failure and expect for them to grow up successful, determined and self-sufficient. And that’s when I started seeing through the Democratic Party, and that’s when I became a Republican.”

She uses a well-known analogy. “You can either feed a man a fish, or you can teach him how to fish. And if you can teach him how to fish, then he becomes an independent, self-sufficient person. The Democrats’ policy is to feed you, so that you become dependent on them. And once you become dependent on a person, then that person becomes your father or your god, take your choice. And when you couple that with a lack of education, or inadequate, incomplete education, then you see how easy it is to control.”

Further, Jamison believes the public school system perpetuates dependency. “They teach children to rely on the government and tell children they have a right to feel good, and take away their bond with parents… de-educating, re-educating, and alienating the children from their parents’ values system.” She sees today’s public schools replacing the parents’ values with atheistic values, which only cements the childrens’ dependence on government and alienation from parents. “That’s why you see children in the streets killing each other, and having babies out of wedlock, and illicit sex.”

Jamison says she had been trusting the mainstream media and educational systems to guide her outlook on life, just as they do for most people. Gradually she came to recognize fundamental problems with liberal thought. “I got it.”

She found protection for all people from dependency and inadequate education in Republican philosophy. “Ronald Reagan was the first Republican candidate that I actually got out and worked for. And I had to fight with all my friends and relatives. Besides my Dad and Mom – they were so happy.”

And she says today’s Democrat Party isn’t recognizable as the party she and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. belonged to when she was young. There was no animosity against Christianity back then. There was a common morality for all Americans. “Even when people did wrong, they knew they were doing wrong. There was a choice… They understood there was a God. When our society lost that, and the Democratic Party embraced the immoral and amoral segment of our society, and began to promote the values of that segment of our society. That’s where it became impossible to be a Democrat anymore.”

Jamison sees a bright future ahead for black Americans, but there is a choice that must be made – a break with the past. “Until black people are allowed to be totally different, and unique and individualistic, we will never be free.”

And to acquire that freedom, Jamison says blacks must unbind themselves from the prejudice of mainstream media culture. She holds out a copy of Black Enterprise. “They don’t talk about the people that you read about in this magazine -- the black people who are extremely successful. We have black people who are heads of major corporations.” She names a few – AOL, Hewlett Packard, American Express, etc. “You don’t hear about the successful black people like Condoleeza Rice and Clarence Thomas. For some reason the culture, the media, have chosen to deify the lowest common denominator.”

And Jamison suggests that Affirmative Action has begun to work against the interests of black Americans. Its original, noble goal was to require that qualified candidates be evaluated on a level playing field. “The Democrats got in control, and they made it a quota system. And that’s where they destroyed it.”

“We have a much higher educated black population, so we have a much better chance of being able to compete for jobs on a fair and equitable basis. We don’t want people looking at us and saying, ‘Oh you just got that job because you were black.’ Who needs that? That’s the stigma.”

What would she most like to see change in the Republican Party? “White Republicans have adopted the definition of what a black person is – the definition that the Democrats have assigned to us… They do not see us [black Republicans] as being distinct and different from the average black Democrat.” Because of this, some Republicans assume black Republicans are more liberal in their outlook. “We’re the most conservative Republicans in the Republican Party!” Jamison says. “We’re pro-gun, we’re anti-abortion, we’re anti-gay marriage, we’re pro-school choice, we are voucher-pro. We also believe in faith-based initiatives. We don’t believe in quota systems for education systems, job systems or anything else. We believe in affirmative recruiting.”

About gun rights, she explains, “During the Reconstruction, and during ‘Jim Crow laws,’ we had the same gun control laws that they’re trying to put in place now, which meant blacks couldn’t own guns. And because blacks could not own guns, when the Ku Klux Klan came to intimidate them, they had no way of defending themselves. So the right to arms is a very strong plank for black Republicans.”

“One of my missions is to encourage, motivate, and revive white Republicans. Because I believe a lot of white Republicans have become ‘at ease in Zion.’ They have become comfortable because they are right. And they think that because they are right, they shouldn’t have to fight. And it’s not true. They’re playing tennis on the 40 yard line, and the Democrats are playing football.”

Summing up her political and philosophical journey, Jamison describes a journey of faith in God and one’s own abilities. “Democrats had a more aggressive plan for bringing equality to all people. I didn’t know that equality meant you’re as equal as I allow you to be. Whereas Republicans say, ‘Hey, Jack. God gave you the same brain he gave me, the same muscles, the same intuition. Just like I get out there and get it for myself, you get out there and get it for yourself. That’s equality.”