Right-wing radio talk master Armstrong Williams can't get over it. A caller named Sam gets on and says he enjoys the show, but finds Mr. Williams' views a bit too Republican. Say what? says Mr. Williams.
"Don't they know I'm a Republican?" says Mr. Williams, host of "The Right Side" on WAVA-FM (105.1). "Don't you all know I'm a Republican? I'm a third-generation Republican. I'm probably more conservative than Jesse Helms."
In the mostly conservative world of talk radio, this is not a notable confession. And Mr. Williams -- opponent of affirmative action, abortion rights, homosexuals in the military, welfare and capital-gains taxes -- might well be lost in the gale of conservative radio chatter but for one detail: He's black.
In the days of Democratic control on Capitol Hill, Mr. Williams played the odd man out, an African-American protege of one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond and a confidant of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who grew accustomed to the label "Uncle Tom." But with Republicans in control of Congress for the first time in 40 years, Mr. Williams is a rising star -- an African-American who supports the Republican Contract With America, a walking refutation of all that is liberal and Democratic.
And his GOP family credentials go back before anyone heard of Newt Gingrich or even Ronald Reagan, back to when blacks in his native South Carolina registered as Republicans because Abraham Lincoln had been one.
So Mr. Williams, 36, is not lost in the crowd of some 2,500 talk radio hosts in America, about 70 percent of whom lean politically to the right, according to Michael Harrison, editor of Talkers magazine.
He's only been on radio three years, but recently Talkers, a talk-radio industry magazine, mentioned him among the country's top 25 talk hosts. Last month his 10 p.m. to midnight show became syndicated on the Salem Radio Network, a Christian broadcasting outfit based in Dallas. The daily show is now carried by 11 stations. A three-hour, Saturday-night version to start later this month will be broadcast by about 100 stations in all major U.S. radio markets.
Now he's breaking into television. Last month Mr. Williams, who also writes a bi-weekly column for USA Today, taped several television show pilots and launched a one-hour talk program on National Empowerment Television, a conservative cable television channel.
Just last week, he was mentioned in a New York Times Magazine story on the new generation of conservatives. He'll get even more notice this spring when he publishes his first book, "Conscience of a Black Conservative -- Letters to a Young Black Man." The title is a play on Sen. Barry Goldwater's 1960 book "Conscience of a Conservative."
Mr. Williams' views on economic and social policy have been expressed for years by such African-American conservatives as Thomas Sowell, literature professor Shelby Steele and economist Walter E. Williams (no relation to Armstrong Williams). But none of them has enjoyed the broad media reach of Mr. Williams, whose views appear in print, on the radio and on television simultaneously.
"The Right Side," which started three years ago on WOL-AM in Baltimore and switched in January to the Arlington, Va.,-based WAVA, covers a range of topics: family relationships, race, economics, education, foreign affairs and politics.
An odd mix
To listen to Mr. Williams' radio show is to hear a clash of style and substance. The sound is definitely black, a mixed cadence of Southern pulpit and city street corner. Callers may be referred to as "my brother" and a guest may be introduced as "a baaad sistah." But if the sound calls Jesse Jackson to mind, the content, as the man says, is Jesse Helms.
Mr. Williams passes all the right-wing litmus tests. He advocates school prayer and the death penalty; he says welfare should not be reformed but abolished. While he vehemently condemns killings at abortion clinics, he says that if abortion were made illegal, doctors who perform them should be executed. A search of his USA Today columns turns up one note of moderation: After a visit to Singapore, he questions whether strict civic order and tidy streets are worth the price of living in a "police state."
Last week on "The Right Side," Mr. Williams' listeners heard writer and lecturer Brenda Verner of Chicago decry feminism as a man-hating, lesbian cabal whose advocates in academia teach goddess worship and witchcraft.
"God's army of women needs to rise up and fight Satan's army of women," said Ms. Verner.
Mr. Williams insists the radio show is more about values than politics, values of hard work, moral discipline and personal responsibility rooted in his Christian upbringing in South Carolina. His father, James, was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; his mother, Thelma, a Pentecostal. attended both as a child, but prefers the Pentecostal: "That's where I get my fire, that energy that you hear on 'The Right Side.' It comes from that fire and brimstone church that I grew up in and still remain a member of."
The name of the show, which he devised, is not about the right-wing, but "about getting on the right side of God."
The evangelical thrust is heard in the rolling cadences of Mr. Williams' rhetoric and in the content, which veers toward the inspirational, away from the anger heard from many right-wing talk masters. When the show first appeared, Mr. Williams says he confronted name calling night after night. He was "Uncle Tom" and worse, he says. None of it was new to him, he says.
"I watched my father go through the humiliation of being a Republican," says Mr. Williams. "I've heard the names that blacks called him and what whites would say to him. That's why this criticism, I'm used to it."
His father, he says, became a Republican for economic reasons: "My Dad said when the Republicans were in office, the [family] farm thrived. The family made money. When the Democrats were in, we didn't do so well."
Mr. Williams grew up on a 200-acre tobacco, soybean and swine farm in Marion County, S.C., the middle child among seven brothers and two sisters. There were prayers at breakfast, lunch and dinner, plenty of work and not much leisure time.
"I had a happy childhood," says Mr. Williams, who is single and lives in a two-bedroom condominium on Capitol Hill. "We never wanted for anything. We always had plenty."
He was close to his father, who died of cancer nearly 10 years ago at 65. His mother, Thelma, 69, says Armstrong Williams was a happy kid who had plenty of friends and always did well in school.
"He'd always be into his books," says Mrs. Williams, who still runs the family farm in Ariels Crossroads. "When he wasn't doing his work or reading the paper."
Mr. Williams studied English and political science at South Carolina State University. He was most interested in politics and figured he'd run for office someday. He had not yet entered college when he had his first personal contact with the political world to which he aspired. That happened 20 years ago in the lobby of a South Carolina seafood restaurant.
Armstrong and Strom
Sen. Strom Thurmond, the South Carolina Republican, had been the luncheon speaker at the Dry Dock Seafood Hut. As he walked out, he passed 16-year-old Armstrong Williams, who was walking in with his father. The teen-ager looked up at the erstwhile symbol of Jim Crow and posed a question.
"The first thing I asked him was whether he was a racist or not, because everyone tried to convince us that he was a racist," says Mr. Williams. "And he smiled and said, 'You seem like a bright young man. Why don't you just send me your resume and you decide if I'm a racist or not,' which I thought was a cool answer."
Four years later, he went to work as a summer student go-fer in Mr. Thurmond's Senate office. It was his first experience in Washington, and he loved it. He also liked Mr. Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 as a "States Rights" Democrat.
"Strom's my man," Mr. Williams says unapologetically. "He's my mentor. Talk about Strom all you want. I'm not worried about what was done in the past, I'm worried about what they're doing right now. That's my attitude."
Mr. Thurmond's views on race have moderated considerably since the early 1980s, and Mr. Williams believes he may have had something to with that. Mr. Thurmond supported the Martin Luther King holiday, and as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee he acquiesced to the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982.
Mr. Thurmond, 92, says he cannot recall if Mr. Williams has influenced his decisions on any specific issues, but he says he has called on Mr. Williams many times to discuss matters of race.
"I was inclined to listen to him," says Mr. Thurmond. "I thought he was fair-minded. He is a member of a minority, and I wanted to hear his views."
When Mr. Williams graduated from college in 1981, he went to work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A couple of years later, Clarence Thomas, then chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, offered him a job as his confidential assistant. The two men became close friends.
During Mr. Thomas' grueling Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, Mr. Williams was a private and public supporter. His first columns for USA Today were written in the form of letters defending Mr. Thomas against charges of sexually harassing Anita Hill while she worked for him at the EEOC.
Since then, Mr. Williams has arranged several meetings between Mr. Thomas and groups of people so they can get to know Mr. Thomas themselves instead of learning about him through the news media.
Mr. Williams worked for Mr. Thomas for about three years. He left the job and Washington shortly after his father died of cancer in December 1985 -- a death that devastated him.
"I cried for six months straight after he died," said Mr. Williams. "It messed me up real bad. I didn't think he was going to die. . . . I had to get out of D.C. I had lost interest in politics, I lost interest in administration. I lost interest."
Through a connection with former Nixon administration official Robert Brown, Mr. Williams went to work for an international public relations firm in High Point, N.C., where he met Stedman Graham. In 1990, the two men opened their own firm in Washington. Mr. Williams has since bought out Mr. Graham and become sole owner of the company, which now employs 10 people.
The firm still does public relations for a small but diverse group of clients that includes Century 21 real estate of McLean, Va., Caltex Petroleum of Dallas and Maya Angelou, the African-American poet and lecturer. Since Mr. Williams' move to radio syndication and cable television, however, he has become the firm's main product.
Mr. Williams says Cathy Hughes, radio talk host and owner of WOL-AM, gave him his start in radio after meeting him socially. After "The Right Side" became syndicated, it moved to a new time slot and WOL decided not to continue carrying it.
Greg Anderson, vice president of the Salem Radio Network, said that after hearing a tape and later meeting Mr. Williams, he agreed to syndicate the show.
"I was impressed with his enthusiasm," says Mr. Anderson. "He doesn't fit all the molds of talk-show hosts or conservative talk show hosts or black conservatives. . . . Armstrong is not an angry man. He's not an angry man on the air or off the mike. He's extremely enthusiastic. Life is an adventure for Armstrong. I don't know where he gets his energy."
Energized by the cause
Mr. Williams says he is propelled through his long workday by zeal for the message. He says it is time black Americans stop viewing themselves chiefly as victims of oppression, stop blaming others for their troubles and stop looking to the government for solutions.
"Most blacks are conservatives, as are most Americans," says Mr. Williams. "Our values are the same. But because of this victimization mentality, and this blame-athon, the choices they have accepted with the blame-athon and the victimization has separated them into their own culture of victimization."
Mr. Williams says he advocates positions that have long been embraced by many African-Americans, although these views do not necessarily translate into Republican votes.
"Black people are more conservative than they vote," agrees James Wright, a Capitol Hill reporter for the Washington Afro-American newspaper. Mr. Williams, he says, "has tapped into that."
In a recent Times-Mirror poll, 40 percent of African-Americans favored the death penalty and 65 percent wanted term limits for members of Congress. And 57 percent of African-Americans agreed that women receiving welfare should not get more money if they have more children, according to a 1992 survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Faye Anderson, executive director of the Council of 100, a 21-year-old black Republican organization in Washington, says the GOP is encouraged by the black vote for Republican candidates in the 1994 elections, but acknowledges that the GOP has done a poor job of selling itself to black voters, who began fleeing the party in large numbers in the days of President Franklin Roosevelt.
Mr. Williams doesn't deny the racism underlying the GOP's courting of George Wallace Democrats as part of its successful "Southern strategy" in the 1968 election of Richard M. Nixon. But he boasts that he has never voted for a Democrat in a national election. He voted for George Bush twice and had no qualms about the 1988 Bush campaign's advertisements featuring Willie Horton, a black man who raped a Maryland woman while on furlough from prison in Massachusetts.
"The issue was not his race," says Mr. Williams. "The issue was the fact that he was a criminal. That's what people forget about. No, they weren't playing a race card. They were playing the criminal card. . . . I never bought into that."
Alien views?
James Williams, editor of the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper and former public relations director for the NAACP, sees the issue much differently.
"You would have to be from another planet not to recognize the racial implications inherent in the Willie Horton story," he says. "If you're part of this community and don't see it, the question arises what else don't you see? Are you so blinded, are you so naive?"
Mr. Williams says he recognizes racism; he just chooses not to become obsessed with it, not "to give it power," as he puts it.
"My parents taught us not to get caught up in race," says Mr. Williams. "My father always taught us to see things for what they are."
He says that he has never personally experienced racism in his lifetime, other than the time a college professor urged him not to run for class president because it would not look good for the school to be represented by him because "you're too dark." The professor, says Mr. Williams, was a lighter-skinned black man.
James Williams says the history of the civil rights movement gives him no reason to trust right-wing politicians: "It's hard to believe that if it had been left to conservatives, the right to vote would have been guaranteed."
But Armstrong Williams reserves his harshest criticism for liberal black politicians who he believes have built careers on seeking solutions through the government. They're stuck in time, he says, and the time has come for a new approach.
"Think about this," he says, "the same rhetoric that you heard during the '60s you're hearing in 1995. You know how crazy that is? Not much has changed because the leadership has not changed. Because they have made a fortune off the ills of others. But what have they done for the masses? Not much. . . . They're still marching. They still want to protest."