Bookeristas Comment On Jack Kemp's Death

The now-late Jack Kemp, who passed away last night, was/is well-liked and well-respected in Black America. He gets his props goes across ideological and party lines. Even back in my college days in the early 1990s when I was a socialist, I still had a soft spot for Mr. Kemp. This blog's first post - after a "welcome, this is what Booker Rising is all about" post when Booker Rising debuted on May 11, 2004 - was about Mr. Kemp discussing the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education. Apparently, he gets his props outside of America's borders too:

Sophia Nelson, a black moderate Republican pundit, on her longtime friend and mentor: "I first met Jack Kemp in 1988 during the Presidential campaign. I was a college [s]ophomore. At that time he was running for the GOP nomination. He is the reason I became a Republican. He later went on to become HUD Secretary to President George H W Bush and I had a chance to get to know him better once I graduated and moved back to Washington in the early 90s. In short, Jack Kemp was a special kind of Republican. He was a fiscal conservative, a military [h]awk, but he understood the plight of inner city people and that [g]overnment has a role to play in helping people out of poverty and want. My heart goes out to Joanne and the Kemp children and grandchildren. I will never forget Jack’s support of me as an aspiring young black [R]epublican who wanted to change the party from the inside out. I last corresponded with him when he read my Washington Post article last November 2008 about the GOP and how it is a party that is not very welcoming to blacks, and people of color. He was supportive as always and kept pushing me to fight the fight to make our 'grand old party' once again the party of Lincoln."

Felix Taylor, Jr., a Canadian black moderate-conservative blogger, discusses Mr. Kemp's influence in his political work: "He proved eloquently more than anyother [sic] U.S. conservative Republican of his time (even until now) that one can be a conservative Republican and firmly believe you can have concern for the poor, the economically disenfranchi[s]ed and struggling. Being a conservative and having social concern were not mutually exclusive issues in the mind of Jack Kemp. Other things I appreciated about Jack Kemp that Republicans like him and Bill Bennett (Booker Rising’s Shay may sharply disagree on the Bill Bennett part but that’s another story for another time) had a real concern and sincere care for the African American community. Much as I liked then President Reagan (he was my one of my teenage heroes for better or worse), in retrospect he just seemed aloof and if I may be blunt he was too 'Dr. Manhattenish' (let those fans of either the comic book or movie 'Watchmen' understand) when it came to the black struggle in America. Again, that cannot be said in anyway about Jack Kemp who was not afraid to go to the inner city to congregate, dwell, eat and even visit the churches of African Americans....Jack Kemp in many ways provided a system. It is a system of unity and exclusion, not polarization and negativity. It is a system that included wealth and equality of opportunity for all Americans and rejected the sad propensity of some conservatives to embrace Social Darwinism. It is this progressive conservatism that I believe is the ONLY salvation for the Republican [P]arty. For the Republican [P]arty to perversely ignore this fact, they deserve political irrelevance in American politics forever! The Kemp legacy demands better than that! As a 39 year old African Canadian who aspires public office in the coming decades of the 2010's and 2020's that it will STILL be my mission and duty to bring Kemp`s principles the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party and Conservative Party of Canada, hell or high water!"

DarkKnight, an American black conservative, twitters: "I can't name on Republican in the House as important, as vital, as innovative, or as intellectually provocative as Jack Kemp was"

Devone Tucker, a black conservative Republican from the Boston area, writes: "RIP Jack Kemp--first vote I ever cast was for the Dole-Kemp ticket in '96"

UPDATE: More commentary from black moderates John Hope Bryant and DarkStar. Robert George, a black moderate-conservative Republican journalist, weighs in as well.