100 Most Influential African-American Republicans

Black History Month brings to mind Rosa Parks refusing to walk to the back of the bus; Freedom Rider John Lewis being beaten to the ground by bigoted mobs, then rising to spend more than a quarter century in Congress; and Clarence Thomas refusing to let Democrats subject him to a "high-tech lynching" to keep him off the U.S. Supreme Court.

We may have a black president serving his second term, but in recent months, African-American Republicans have been making the biggest history, and may be making even more in the days ahead.

In January, Mia Love — a charismatic, Brooklyn-born, Haitian-American, Mormon, small-city mayor and mother of three — was sworn in as the first GOP black congresswoman ever. South Carolina, the cradle of the Confederacy, gave the once-despised Party of Lincoln a victory by electing Tim Scott, the South’s first black senator since 1881.

And while presidential campaigning may not be brain surgery, we are weeks away from a likely announcement of a White House run by Dr. Ben Carson, who went from the streets of Detroit to extracting tumors from the skulls of toddlers at one of the world’s top hospitals.

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