In the early years of the conservative movement, when few black Americans supported Barry Goldwater for president, one young man stood out.
To quote Bill Buckley, Jay Parker was black and conservative and proud of it.
Born and raised in South Philadelphia, Jay moved to Washington, D.C. to begin his own public affairs firm, attracting clients here and abroad.
His signal contribution to American conservatism was to create the Lincoln Institute, publisher of the “Lincoln Review,” that defended and promoted the first principles of the American founding.
The Review and Jay spotlighted present-day black conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and members of an older black generation like George Schuyler and Max Yergan.
A special hero of Jay’s was the 20th century African-American entrepreneur, Booker T. Washington.
The Lincoln Review never had a circulation of more than a few thousand, but it justified its existence when one day Jay Parker received a telephone call that began: “My name is Clarence Thomas, and I like what you have to say.”
For 40 minutes, Jay mostly listened as Thomas, a legislative assistant to Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., talked about politics, black-white relations, and how he enjoyed reading the “Review’s” views on free enterprise, limited government, and traditional moral values.
Thomas said, “I thought I was the only one out there.”
It was the beginning of a close and enduring friendship between the young black lawyer on Capitol Hill and the founding father of the modern black conservative movement in America.
Jay was a man of many firsts: the first black to sit on the national board of Young Americans for Freedom, the first black conservative to start his own public affairs firm in Washington, the first black president of the Washington Kiwanis, the most influential fraternal organization in Washington.
Always impeccably dressed and always smiling, Jay Parker brightened the days of his friends and colleagues. I was privileged to know him, to work with him and to be inspired by him.
Justice Thomas once told a college audience how much he admired Thomas Sowell and Jay Parker for refusing to give in to the “cult mentality” that “hypnotizes” so many black Americans. “I only hope,” he said, “I can have a fraction of their courage and strength.”
Jay Parker was courageous to the last as he battled the cancer that finally took him at age 78 earlier this week. Rest in Peace, Jay, your many contributions will not be forgotten.
