Innis Urges Blacks to Dump Jackson, Join GOP

Faced with a Democratic Party that has fared poorly in recent national elections, black Americans should show their “strength, political maturity and pragmatism” and enter Republican politics, the controversial leader of the Congress of Racial Equality said Monday.

Roy Innis, national chairman of CORE for two decades, also urged blacks to drop their support for the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s “one-man” political campaigns and reject his bid to build a coalition of minorities, which has made blacks “irrelevant” to national politics.

“We cannot forever vote against the people who have won five of the last six presidential elections. There’s something stupid and untactical about that,” Innis said. “We’re the only group left out of the Bush consensus. We’re going to be ignored by the guys we keep voting against.”

Fistfight on TV

Innis appeared at a news conference at the Los Angeles CORE headquarters with state CORE Chairman Celes King III, a longtime Republican and state co-chairman of the successful California presidential campaign for Vice President George Bush.

Earlier this month, Innis was involved in a fistfight with white supremacists during the taping of a Geraldo Rivera talk show.

Innis, 54, has survived repeated ouster attempts from within CORE, a civil rights group founded in 1942. Seven years ago he threatened to arrest a man he claimed was responsible for two dozen child murders in Atlanta after police rejected the man as a suspect.

In urging a departure from past black voting patterns, Innis said blacks should spend less time blaming racism for political failures and more time “blaming ourselves.”

Innis said blacks supported Republicans from the Lincoln Administration up to the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, and have voted overwhelmingly Democratic since.

“It’s almost un-American. It’s silly. No other ethnic group has done this. We have to stop waiting around to be invited to participate,” Innis said, adding that, more than being left out, “we almost left ourselves out.”

CORE rose to prominence during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Innis cited aggressive activism as being responsible for several civil rights victories in the 1960s and said the same approach is needed to make inroads into GOP politics.

“We kicked the door in in Little Rock, and at Ole Miss,” Innis said. “We have to kick thedoor down at the Republican National headquarters.”

‘Symbolic Politics’

The CORE leader also denounced what he described as the futility of black support for a single black political figure--Jackson. Innis said Jackson, a Democratic presidential candidate, represents “symbolic politics.”

Black voters have “matured past symbolism” and must “stop chasing rainbows,” he added. “Something is very wrong when all of our political fortunes are (staked) on one man.”

Innis also called for revival of the black-Jewish alliance, which, he said, won great civil rights victories in the 1960s. And he defended his much-publicized melee with white supremacists on television, calling it battling “indecency.”

“It’s important that leaders confront evil, black or white,” he said.