Tyrone and Marcella Jackson are an African-American couple and small business owners of The Good Frank in Columbus. They were not politically active, but believed the Democratic talking points. Now they are conservative Trump supporters. The Jacksons are part of the #Walkaway movement.
#Walkaway is a movement siphoning away support from the Democratic Party. It began in New York in May 2018. Brandon Straka, a hair stylist and self-professed liberal, founded the organization. Disenchanted by the far-Left’s takeover of the Party, Straka spoke out against the extreme policy positions of the Democrats and urged others to do the same.
“(The Left) will blacklist and destroy anyone who dares to fight back,” Straka said in a video explaining his decision to cut ties with Democrats. “They’ll come for me, and then they’ll come for you.”
They came for Tyrone and Marcella Jackson.
And the Jacksons wanted to share their story with The Ohio Star.
The attacks against the Jacksons began shortly after a Trump rally in August 2018 at Orange High School in Delaware County. Marcella and her oldest daughter, who was wearing a MAGA hat, were clearly visible behind President Trump as he was speaking.
Suddenly, Mr. Jackson’s business associates began receiving threatening calls. The businesses were urged to stop working with the “racist, homophobe, anti-public school” Jacksons. They lost clients, including one of their biggest accounts. Then their landlord, a proud Leftist, refused to renew their lease. They were out of business.
What the Jacksons didn’t expect was that their new connections with conservative Trump supporters would become a life line.
Eileen Watts, founder of Ohio United 4 America (OU4A), heard their story at a Virginia Women for Trump event this past winter. A member of #Walkaway Ohio was there, and told Eileen about the Jackson family.
“I was inspired by their story, their business, The Good Frank,” Watts said. “I reached out to the family through Facebook and we met in Delaware to talk about their circumstances. I encouraged them to connect with like-minded people and to fight for their business, and that’s exactly what they did.”
“We began sharing their story through social media and the overwhelming response from fellow conservatives was the encouragement they needed to persevere. They found a new location for their business and kept right on going,” she added. “I told them my motto: ‘remain calm, stay strong and carry on’ and they have!”
Those connections were what the Jacksons needed to save The Good Frank. The business is thriving in spite of the opposition.
It helps that the Jacksons are faithful Christians. Although they both attended a historically black college, Fisk University, which “focuses on turning out black socialists,” according to Tyrone, they have become very conservative in their politics.
Originally from Los Angeles, Tyrone received a full scholarship to the college in Nashville. His grandmother encouraged him to take it. But he feels like his “higher” education was mostly a waste of time.
“The school prepares people for PhD studies and government jobs all on the basis of race. They don’t champion business people or entrepreneurship,” Tyrone said. “I had no foundation. I had to start from scratch.”
“I didn’t learn about America, the western world, the wars we fought and why. I was only taught about black people, and specifically the one type of black person who was enslaved in America,” he said.
His conservatism was born out of experience.
He was completely ignorant of business practices when he started his first hot dog stand in Nashville. But with hard work and perseverance, over time his business grew. Then hardship hit when Tyrone learned about the sourcing of his products. He was unwilling to continue and shut his business down.
After losing everything, the family moved to Columbus more than ten years ago. They had to stay with Marcella’s family. Tyrone got a job washing dishes, but his drive couldn’t keep him there. He started saving to start his business again, and planned to make better, healthier, safer products. Their family and friends were unsupportive. They kept telling him, “You’ll never do it. You’ll never amount to anything.”
“They were actually hostile!” Tyrone exclaimed. “These people are not concerned about what was possible because they are all so focused on what they’ve been told ‘has been.'” He said they live out their lives with that mindset.
So the family moved out on their own and started to work on their business plan. They learned how to make vegan as well as hand-made meat sausages through classes at the Stratford Ecological Center. They created their own recipes.
But when it came to politics, Tyrone stayed out of it. He was always sympathetic to “the black talking points” but wasn’t going to vote because he believed the whole thing was rigged. As he grew his business and saw how difficult the government, the banking industry, and regulatory structures made it for entrepreneurs, he decided he had to get involved.
“When Barack Obama said, ‘You didn’t build that.’ I thought, ‘That’s it. Our country is gone.’ I got our passports and began looking for a new country to move to that would allow us to become citizens, have a life and own our own business.”
Then Donald Trump ran for President.
“We saw the Democratic Party losing their minds. Maxine Waters instigating violence, telling people to harass the Trump administration wherever they see them, telling them they aren’t wanted, since the day of his inauguration,” declared Tyrone. “When you tolerate Antifa as your base, violence will happen.”
“I supported Donald Trump because he’s a businessman and talked like a businessman and wanted to get our country moving again. We went to a rally in Delaware County and that’s when somebody saw my wife and daughter,” Tyrone told The Ohio Star. “The attacks began almost immediately.”
“I was called racist, homophobe and ironically, at the time, our vegan products were a focal point and that community is hard Left. We are homeschoolers, big on parental rights, responsibilities and traditional family structure. Because of our values, we were accused of attacking public schools too.”
Tyrone said the smears were told to businesses with whom they worked. One of his biggest clients he’d worked with for a decade was far Left politically. That had no adverse affect on their business relationship until the accusations started.
“I felt I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion. My friend was forced to choose between his financial well-being and his ethics.” Tyrone made the choice for them both and severed the relationship.
“If we don’t stand up now for our rights to have opinions and engage in the market place, we will lose these rights. If we don’t speak up, America will be murdered during our silence. I’m fighting to have a business and to educate people about the food system and their right to know what’s in their food, but my opportunity is going to be taken away if we don’t take a stand now against the radical activists who want to shut us down just because our views are different from theirs.”
After the attacks started, Tyrone said he was not enraged, but he realized two things. “This is not about left vs. right – it’s about us maintaining the spirit of America. It’s individual freedom, inalienable rights. We honor the individual but do not believe in pure democracy because we value the individual but not the mob.”
The other thing he realized is that this country is in a very dangerous situation because Americans have lost their sense of individualism.
Tyrone talked about the Democratic Party’s narrating-generating machine – the media. “Keep them (the people) focused on propaganda and keep them too emotional to look for truth. It’s difficult to attack people you know, so they have to be dehumanized.” Tyrone said that is what the Democrats and the media have been doing to conservatives for years, but it intensified after Trump was elected.
“They say, ‘Trump is inhuman, his followers are inhuman, they (Trump and his followers) treat others as inhuman.’ This is not true,” said Tyrone, “It’s projection. The Democrat Party’s insistence on slavery, Jim Crow laws, identity politics – pitting one group against another – just so they can get and maintain power. It’s not just the current crop of politicians like the Clintons, it includes their old social projects like eugenics. That’s anti-American and anti-human.”
Tyrone does not want his family or his situation to be a rallying cry for conservatives or for anyone else. His concern is the truth, and the future of the country.
“We were targeted because we’ve kept our heads down and because of our business. Our existence shatters the narrative.”
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Beth Lear is a reporter at The Ohio Star. Follow Beth on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
