#1061: Frances Rice

Frances Rice is the chairperson of the (rather obscure) National Black Republican Association, which seems to be, quite frankly, engaged in one of the most ridiculous efforts to promote historical revisionism in the US. Rice herself claims to be committed to rightwing policies because MLK was, in her view, committed to such. In 2008, for instance, the NBRA announced that it was going to place 50 billboards in Denver during the Democratic convention proclaiming that “Martin Luther King Was A Republican” (no one apparently saw them). Similar campaigns in Florida resulted in a bit of a backlash, but Rice, unfazed, rather doubled down, publishing a picture in the NBRA magazine of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross with the caption “Every person in this photograph was a Democrat.” Other articles in the magazine carry such enticing titles as “Democrats embrace their child molesters,” and “Democrats wage war on God.” Indeed, the political strategy of the NBRA is primarily to portray the Democrats as the racist party.

And commenting on recent history, Rice said “The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970s with President Richard Nixon's ‘Southern Strategy,’ which was an effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black.” Yes. Rice said that. You don’t need to know much about American history to realize why her efforts have won little recognition thus far. And during the 2008 elections the NBRA tried to encourage voters to “learn the truth” – though what they presented as “the truth” … well, it is discussed here.

Diagnosis: Utterly and ridiculously delusional, and we doubt that her strategies can do anything but backfire – but who knows?