Robert Harlan, from blue-eyed slave to Republican activist


Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than SEVENTEEN decades of Republican heroes and heroics.

Today, I salute Robert Harlan, born in Kentucky, December 12th 1816. Though his father was white, his mother being a quarter-black slave made the pale, blue-eyed boy a slave too. He grew up at his father's home along with his half-brother John Marshall Harlan, the future Republican Supreme Court Justice who dissented to the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision.

Age eighteen, Harlan went into business for himself, as barber then grocer. Emancipated by his father the year before, he earned $50,000 in California as a Forty-Niner. After a decade in England, he settled at Cincinnati. This conscientious reformer established the city's first school for African-American children and its Colored Orphan Asylum.

Harlan voiced eloquent support for ratification of the 15th Amendment, served on the state GOP central committee, and was delegate at the 1872 Republican National Convention. President Ulysses Grant named him a Post Office special agent. After recruiting a battalion of African-American volunteers, Governor Rutherford Hayes commissioned him a colonel.

Delegate at the 1884 Republican National Convention, Harlan won election to the state house two years later. He was invaluable for repealing the Democrats' racist Black Laws. President Chester Arthur made him a customs inspector. He again was delegate at a GOP national convention, in 1888, after which President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to a Treasury Department position.

Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more Democrats will worry about the future of theirs. For more information, see www.grandoldpartisan.com. 

Here is a YouTube Video about this article.

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Here is my Substack about this article.

Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.


Each day, his YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Rumble videos and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states.

Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.

"This is the most amazing book about politics that I have ever read. The Overview should be required reading for anyone with even a minor interest in government. The remainder is an enthralling history lesson that I will never forget. For years, we have all been misled about the true nature of the GOP. This is the real deal! Read it and be proud!"

"Your book is a national treasure. I'm always recommending it."

"Michael Zak wrote the definitive history of the GOP."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is the most significant contribution to the Republican Party in the last twenty years apart from Ronald Reagan."

"Back to Basics for the Republican Party is more important to our party now than ever before."

and

"one of the best books I ever read" 

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