They are out there, moving among us, going through day-to-day life like many Americans.

But they are different than most. And many don't want to be found out.

No, they're not aliens. They're Republicans who happen to be black. And being in a country -- and a city, Augusta -- where blacks have become the most loyal voting bloc of the Democratic Party has made some wary about making public their political persuasion.

One well-known local black politician asked a reporter that comments about his Republican conversion not be used after his wife found out. He begged out, saying: "I need to have peace in my house."

Another, a woman from Columbia County, said she didn't want to be identified because she feared backlash from her community.

Others, however, are more than happy to state their political allegiance and take to task closet black Republicans.

"Tell them that the Founding Fathers of this country would never have gotten anything done if they hadn't come out and risked all the things they had to get this country started," said Napoleon Jenkins, a Washington County native who is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic state Sen. J.B. Powell in District 23.

"It's better to just come out and not live in hiding," he said. "Plus, you're an American. You're supposed to be voicing your opinion at the top of your lungs what your opinion is because a lot of people have paid the ultimate price for you to be able to do that."

Alvin Starks, a former chairman of the Columbia County Republican Party, wasn't surprised by the reticence of some black Republicans to come forward.

"(Blacks) do not want to be outed as Republicans because they think from their fellow (blacks) that they will be essentially ostracized, ridiculed and rejected," he said.

Not that he has any empathy. His advice to his skittish compatriots: "Grow up."

These are interesting times for black Republicans. They are the minority in their political party. They are the minority in their ethnic community. And they face the real possibility of being on the wrong side of a historic presidential election that could put a black man in the White House for the first time.

JESSICA MORRIS is used to and comfortable with the first two. The latter is an entirely new proposition.

Ms. Morris, the press secretary for Republican congressman Paul Broun's re-election campaign office in Evans, couches her opinion about Barack Obama in a way that clearly delineates personal feelings and political beliefs.

"If someone had told me 10 years ago that this is possible, that we were about to see this day, who would have believed them?" said Ms. Morris, 26, who is a former television news reporter involved in her first political campaign.

"I'm so excited that, if it was any minority, it would be great," she said. "And I'm so excited that it's a black man. That said, I don't agree with his politics at all. Like I said, I'm conservative to the core."

She said she's never been shy about stating her political preference, saying she got her conservative leanings from her father, a doctor, who calls himself an Independent but she "knows is a Republican because I learned everything I know from him."

Hearing her father complain about being squeezed by taxes, malpractice insurance rates and government regulations helped her make a decision early on about what party best fits her convictions.

"Because of growing up in that environment, I'm very much for smaller government, for letting people have control of their money ..." Ms. Morris said. "I don't want someone to take my money and tell me how to spend it. I don't want someone to take it and tell me how to go give it."

Her embrace of the Grand Old Party is something that's not necessarily looked upon with favor by all of her family, most of whom she said are northern Democrats. She said some relatives were very surprised about it, demanding to know how she could be a Republican.

When that happens, Ms. Morris said, her father comes to her rescue.

"My father gets upset, and says, 'Why are you a Democrat?' And you need to be able to answer that question," she said. "You need to be able to know why you stand for what you stand for. And I'm not saying nobody knows why they're a black Democrat, but I just want to make sure that we all understand why we're embracing the political party that we are."

BLACK VOTERS once fully embraced the Republican Party, and the current political disconnect between them and the GOP has been, in historical terms, relatively recent.

It wasn't until the 1960s, when the national Democratic Party more readily supported the ideals of the civil rights movement, that blacks began to drift away in droves from the GOP.

Until 1960, 36 percent of black voters went Republican, said Lorenzo Morris, the chairman of Howard University's political science department.

By 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was signed into law by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson, the percentage had dropped to 22 percent. It dropped to its lowest recorded mark in the 2000 presidential election when George W. Bush got only 7 percent of the black vote, Dr. Morris said, adding that some want to say it was 8 percent.

History, however, often is filled with caveats, and is usually never as black and white as it might appear. This part of U.S. history has many buts.

For instance, even though the landmark legislation of 1964 became law under a Democratic administration, it took the efforts of Republican Senate Minority Leader Everitt Dirksen of Illinois to draft and pass the bill -- against the protests of most Southern white Democrats in Congress.

The black vote had been solidly Republican since soon after the party's first president, Abraham Lincoln, signed the Emancipation Proclamation that ended slavery in Confederate states. The war measure did not free slaves in border and Union states. Slavery was abolished only after ratification of the 13th Amendment on Dec. 18, 1865.

Under Reconstruction and after ratification of the 15th Amendment granting voting rights to all U.S. citizens, blacks began testing their recently earned voting rights. Two blacks being the first of their race elected to Congress in 1870 -- Hiram Revels from Mississippi and Joseph Hayne Rainey from South Carolina, both Republicans -- were early testament to that newfound voting strength.

But being put on the road to voting equality by Lincoln did not mean the trip wouldn't be bumpy. A different Republican president, Rutherford B. Hayes, effectively stalled the journey for blacks in the South by ending Reconstruction in a compromise with Southern white Democrats to withdraw federal troops from former Confederate states.

That gave white Democrats free rein to once again subjugate blacks and newly freed slaves in Southern states, eventually leading to the advent of Jim Crowism.

With no reason to support Democrats on the state or local level, many Southern blacks maintained ties to the Republican Party. The New Deal administration under Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt promoting social and economic programs chipped away at that allegiance, starting a leak that became a flood under the John F. Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Mr. Starks said the reason his father was a staunch Democrat is easy to understand.

His father served in a segregated battalion in World War II and it was Harry Truman who desegregated the military. The push for the Civil Rights Act prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that outlawed discriminatory voting practices gained traction while Kennedy was in office before eventually becoming law under Johnson.

"It's as plain as day," said Mr. Starks, a former Democrat who switched parties during the Reagan era. "My father had a terrific distrust of Republicans because everything that was accomplished that enabled him to be more of a full-fledged American happened under a Democrat."

MR. JENKINS, 32, has never been anything but a Republican. He made his political allegiance known early, once wearing a Bush-Quayle campaign button at high school in Tennille, Ga., that drew razzing from other students.

If his atypical position prompted hazing early on, it has proven to be something of a benefit on the campaign trail. Being black, and a Republican, has had its advantages, Mr. Jenkins said.

" Let's be honest. You wouldn't have called me if I wasn't African-American and a Republican," Mr. Jenkins said. "It's given me an advantage because one, for the main reason, people want to at least hear and see what's making this guy tick."

Mr. Jenkins doesn't consider himself an elitist. He just believes in smaller government and fiscal responsibility. In fact, he is critical of his party on the latter, saying, "There are some issues, especially on spending right now, I have a lot of problems with the Republican Party."

Like Ms. Morris, he grew up with a father who was conservative. His mother, he said, is now a Republican. He said his grandparents were Democrats "because that's what they were told to do'' and is something many blacks have been conditioned to become.

Though he has always been a Republican, one of his biggest breaks can be credited to a Democrat. He was nominated for his appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point by former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn.

When asked about the possibility of an Obama presidency, Mr. Jenkins tries to deflect the question. He answers it this way:

"It doesn't matter who gets elected," he said. "I am always happy at the transfer of power and how it's done peacefully. I won't be any more or less proud if he was president, and not because he's African American."

Reach Mike Wynn at (706) 823-3218

or mike.wynn@augustachronicle.com.