Can the G.O.P. Ever Attract Black Voters?

ON the morning of March 6, 1989, students began to gather at a flagpole on the campus of Howard University. Then they entered the administration building, chained doors shut, locked arms and announced that they would not leave until key demands were met. A dozen or so stragglers — I was one of them — climbed in through a second-story window to join the protest. By nightfall, more than 2,000 students occupied the building.

We had learned that Lee Atwater, the Republican National Committee chairman and the manager of George Bush’s presidential campaign — which had made use of race-baiting ads featuring Willie Horton, a black convicted rapist and murderer, to scare white people into voting Republican — had been appointed to the school’s board of trustees.

Inside the building, Ras Baraka, who is now the mayor of Newark but was then a third-year political science major, grabbed a bullhorn and shouted, “The problem isn’t Lee Atwater, it’s Lee Atwaterism!” After three days of protests, Mr. Atwater resigned from the board.

Those events of 25 years ago have gained renewed pertinence, as Reince Priebus, the Republican National Committee chairman, has begun an effort to attract more African-American voters — starting on college campuses. 

In April 2013, Senator Rand Paul spoke to students at Howard, asking, in a particularly awkward exchange, whether they knew that many of the early advocates of racial equality were Republicans. (They did, and didn’t care for the patronizing question.) That May, Mr. Priebus announced the formation of a College Republican chapter on the campus of Central State University in the critical swing state of Ohio. Late last year, Morehouse College in Atlanta rechartered its dormant Young Republican chapter. All three are historically black institutions.