John Roy Harper II

Founding Member, 1969

Knowledge Is The Key To Unity And Unity Is The Key To Liberation And Progress!

John Roy Harper II, a people's advocate and social engineer. He practiced law in Columbia for 28 years, focusing on civil rights and Constitutional law, and specializing in voting rights law. Attorney Harper handled many criminal and civil matters, counseling and representing more than 4,000 individual clients and hundreds of thousands in class action suits. During most of this time he engaged in complex federal litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the United States Supreme Court.

(Information obtained from www.scafam-hist.org/currenthonoree.asp?month=2&year=1999)

History

In 1970, the United Citizens Party (UCP) was established as the first state political party organized and controlled by blacks. At the time of its origination, there were no black South Carolinians in positions of power in local or state government. The need for creating a black led political party evolved out of the discussions of a SC Voter Education Project Study Committee. During that time, the SC Voter Education Project was a grassroots organization aggressively working to encourage voter registration and mobilization in the black community. James E. Clyburn, director of the Voter Education Project, expressed his belief that, Any plan to form a black-led third party had to be inclusive and focus on the objective of offering the party an alternative means of political expression. The United Citizens Party was formed out of a desire and a perceived need to extend political power to marginalized citizens throughout the state, who were not being represented in the current two-party political system.

John Roy Harper II, a law student at the University of South Carolina, along with a group of like-minded individuals from the SC Voter Education Project Study Committee, sought to change this lack of descriptive, and at that particular time in history, substantive representation by creating the United Citizens Party. With John Roy Harper II serving as chair, the UCP advocated for state supported day care and kindergarten, unions, living wages, abolishing the death penalty and removing the Confederate flag from atop the State House dome.

The organization was committed to electing more blacks to political office and it employed fusion voting to achieve this goal. Fusion voting allows political parties to place the same candidate's name on ballot for an elected office. Once the votes are cast they are then added together to derive the total number of votes for that particular candidate. This electoral tool enhances the ability of third parties to get their candidates elected to office by increasing the number of votes cast for a candidate and too increase voter turnout. The party first ran candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, the state legislature, and the county councils in the 1970 election. However the 1972 presidential election was the first time the UCP utilized fusion voting to run the Democratic nominee George McGovern against Richard Nixon.

Although the UCP was not successful at electing any of its candidates to office, the party was effective in getting the Democratic Party to open its doors to blacks seeking political office. During the 1972 election, blacks began to run for and get elected to political office, so the need for the UCP, as originally conceived, appeared to be unnecessary. Consequently, as blacks found electoral success in the two-party system, the UCP became defunct. The party was in jeopardy of being decertified in 1988 when the New Alliance Party of New York filed the paperwork necessary to keep the party alive. The party's name was changed to the Patriot Party and the party's first candidate, Lenora Filani, ran in the 1988 presidential election. In 1992, the party supported the Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot and in 1996the Reform Party was officially recognized by the state. As a result, Ross Perot was able to employ fusion voting as the candidate for both the Patriot and Reform parties. The emergence of the Reform Party contributed to the demise of the Patriot Party.

Contemporary United Citizens Party

In the summer of 2000, there was an effort led by Mike Avey, a political science professor at Lander College in Greenwood, South Carolina, to revive the UCP. The group began and successfully completed the process to take back the party line under its original name, the United Citizens Party. The desire to reactivate the UCP grew out of the belief that the Democratic Party was not truly recognizing the importance of the political inclusion of all minorities and other marginalized groups in South Carolina. Today the UCP continues to be the progressive political voice for many of the state's disenchanted citizens under the leadership of Retired Judge Glenn Davis Chair of South Carolina.

In an interview the party's founder Attorney John Roy Harper II was quoted as saying,

Not enough has changed. The problems and inequities the United Citizens Party identified 30 years ago are still problems today.

Information obtained from an article at SC Point, Is South Carolina Ready for a Progressive Third Party?October12, 2004 (http://www.scpronet.com/point/0006/p04.html.)

The Vision

The United Citizens Party offers the opportunity for all people to affiliate with an alternative political party with a different ideological orientation and a different base of legitimacy based on the support of working people, poor people, environmentalists, who recognize that the other political parties have not served their interests.

Mission Statement

The United Citizens Party UCP is a political organization that opens the political process to all people. We provide an alternative choice to people whose principles and ideals reflect a society that is economically, socially, and environmentally just. The party seeks to empower the powerless--ethnic minorities, the poor, the working class, women, and other marginalized citizens--with the ability to actively and effectively participate in the political system. As the United Citizens Party, we will work together to elect people, who will fight for progressive public policies that promote fair and equal treatment for all people.

Contact Information

E-mail use: theunitedcitizensparty@yahoo.com

Please send all donations to:

The United Citizens Party

P.O. Box 24403

Columbia, South Carolina 29224

We greatly appreciate your support!!!

All funds will be used as intended for the purpose of the United Citizens Party