Glenn McCall is running for Republican National Committeeman from South Carolina. If chosen in this Saturday’s state convention, he would be the first black member of the RNC ever elected from South Carolina.
I had been told by sources in the state that he would be the first black RNC member elected from the South, but a reader corrects me:
From the 1920s through the late 1950s, Mississippi was represented by Perry Howard, an African American who lived in DC and practiced law. He ran the patronage for the state, was an ardent supporter of Robert Taft, and had his power base cut out from under him during the Eisenhower administration…There was an article about Howard in the Journal of Southern History in the 1980s called “Perry W. Howard, Boss of Black- and-Tan Republicanism in Mississippi, 1924 -1960″ that will confirm some of this.
For those lacking JSTOR access, here is a piece from Time Magazine on the black vote from 1928 in which Howard was interviewed. (Be warned, it reads like something from another world.)