The Knox County Republican Party has continued to struggle with outreach into the African American community. While there are some African Americans that are active in the local organization, it is because of their commitment to smaller government and conservative principles, not because the local party does anything to reach out to them. In fact tomorrow on the day that we as a community, state and nation observe Martin Luther King day. The Halls Republican Club will conduct their monthly meeting. Knox County Deputy Election Administrator Scott Frith will be the featured Speaker. While the Knox County government and it’s employees are supposed to be observing the day honoring King. Frith will be representing Knox County and the Election Commission. While the Halls club will postpone the December meeting to join the West Knox club at it’s annual Christmas dinner and will sometimes reschedule to an alternate week, this year in January they have not.

UPDATE Monday 1/17/2011 8:00 p.m.: I received a comment that could not be posted due to the profanity. Thanks to sitemeter the ip address has been recorded. Anyway, the commenter wanted to know what I had done for the African American community as Chairman. Well, as a matter of fact, I appointed at my election as Chairman a Minority Outreach Coordinator that in fact was African American. The commenter asked what I did for the female population of the party. As a matter of fact, there were two Republican women clubs while I was Chairman and today there is only one. The commenter mentioned that Ray Jenkins put out an email about Martin Luther King day. Well, yes he did, at 10:19 p.m. on Sunday after this blog post went up at 8:13 p.m. Nice to see Mr. Jenkins responds as quickly as he can.