Former President Donald Trump has made it a point to do something that most, if not all, previous Republican presidential candidates have failed to do in recent years: actively engage the black American community and try to earn their vote.

On Saturday, in Philadelphia, Trump is doing exactly that by holding a rally in a predominantly “black and brown” (as the Left likes to say) neighborhood. And it seems to be a historic rally given that no other Republican candidate has seemingly held such a campaign event in such a neighborhood in Philadelphia in recent memory.  

The rally will be held at the Liacouras Center at Temple University. The university features a student body with a majority of white students, but it, too, has quite a diverse population. However, Temple is on summer break, and most of its students are not on campus. Temple is located in a neighborhood in Philadelphia with a demographic of primarily black and Latino Americans.

As a lifelong resident of the Philadelphia area, I had many friends who went to this school and have been here plenty of times. I had to pass the university on my subway trip to high school every morning. The ZIP code for the Liacouras Center is 19121. It is situated in what is known as the Cecil B. Moore section of north Philadelphia, taken from a street in the area by the same name in honor of a former civil rights activist from the city. 

According to UnitedStatesZipCodes.org, 80.9% of the residents in the 19121 ZIP code of Philadelphia are “black or African American.” In addition to personal experience and first-hand accounts of being in the neighborhood, various sources report that the majority of the residents of the Cecil B. Moore neighborhood are “African Americans and Puerto Ricans.”

This is significant, given that no other Republican presidential candidates have campaigned in such a neighborhood in Philadelphia in at least 50 years. It may even be longer than 50 years, but there didn’t appear to be any information available to research beyond that time frame. There seem to be some conflicting reports about some events that may have occurred in Philadelphia during the Republican National Convention in 2000. However, most accounts show no such campaign events in predominantly black neighborhoods.

This would include not one Republican candidate from 2016 who visited any black neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Mitt Romney didn’t do this in 2012, and John McCain didn’t do this in 2008. While the available information was relatively scarce, there also doesn’t appear to be any records of Bob Dole going to a predominantly black neighborhood in Philadelphia in 1996, nor of former President George H.W. Bush in 1988 or 1992 or former President Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.

The only presidential candidate who came close to such an event in recent years was former President George W. Bush, who attended a July Fourth event in 2001 at a church in north Philadelphia hosted by former Philadelphia Eagles football player and longtime pastor Herb Lusk. Technically, this was not a campaign event, but even so, it was approximately 23 years ago.

Now, given the stronghold that Democrats have over black voters in the country, especially black voters in Philadelphia, expecting a big turnout of black voters to attend the rally is unrealistic. However, the fact that Trump is trying to acknowledge black voters in black communities should be applauded. For far too long, Republicans haven’t even tried to make any inroads in these communities and have essentially abandoned them to the Democrats. Making any change in the black community, now and in the future, is obviously going to be hard work, given the decades of left-wing political brainwashing that has occurred. However, as the saying goes, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” And it certainly will not change if no one tries. 

For years, many black American voters have said that one of the reasons they vote for Democrats so consistently, despite all of the damage that the political party’s left-wing policies have had on their communities, is because no Republicans show up for them.

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Well, with the rally on Saturday, Trump will change that. It is up to voters in the black community to start being the change many claimed they wanted to see. Or they can continue to vote for Democratic candidates who have accomplished next to nothing for them for decades. 

Nevertheless, Trump deserves credit for at least trying. He has already done more than every other previous Republican. All voters, black, white, Latino, or Asian, should recognize that. It is arguably a historic event and indicative of the change Trump said he will bring.