Dr. King was not a Republican

July 6, 2008

Two years ago, in the midst of a competitive Senate race in Maryland, the National Black Republican Association went to work in support of Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a conservative black Republican. As part of the group’s efforts, the NBRA ran ads insisting that Democrats were responsible for Jim Crow laws, the KKK, and releasing vicious dogs and fire hoses on black people. Martin Luther King Jr., the group said, was a Republican, and it was Republicans who “freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the Constitution.”

Voters were not fooled, the African-American community in Maryland found the ads deeply offensive, and Steele was easily defeated. This year, with the first African-American presidential nominee on the ballot, the National Black Republican Association has an even more difficult task, so it’s pushing the old talking points even more aggressively.

A black Republican group has put up billboards in Florida and South Carolina saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim that black leaders say is ridiculous.

The National Black Republican Association has paid for billboards showing an image of the civil rights leader and the words “Martin Luther King Jr. was REPUBLICAN.” Told about the billboards, the Rev. Joseph Lowery let out a soft chuckle that grew stronger as he began to think more about the idea.

“These guys never give up, do they?” said Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King. “Lord have mercy.”

The NBRA’s message is unusually stupid, and will almost certainly fail miserably, but as long as the group is going to the trouble of making up ridiculous claims, we might as well go the trouble of explaining why.

Two years ago, Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said that King never endorsed candidates from either party. “I think it’s highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there’s really no evidence,” Klein said. A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.

[The SCLC’s] Lowery, who knew King well, said there is no reason why anyone would think King was a Republican. He said King most certainly voted for President Kennedy, and the only time he openly talked about politics was when he criticized Republican Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

“That was not the Martin I know and I don’t think they can substantiate that by any shape, form or fashion. It’s purely propaganda and poppycock,” Lowery said. “Even if he was, he would have nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for today. Do they think Martin would support George W. Bush and the war in Iraq?”

In “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” which was published after his death from his written material and records, King called the Republican national convention that nominated Goldwater a “frenzied wedding … of the KKK and the radical right.”

“The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism,” King said in the book.

What’s more, given that the NBRA’s ads are not grounded in reality, the King Center asked the group to remove the billboards. Not surprisingly, the National Black Republican Association declined. If they didn’t care about the truth before pushing the bogus message, it stands to reason that the group wouldn’t care about the truth after the fact.

I’d just add that in some ways this right-wing group’s message reveals more than it should. When Republicans want to demonstrate to the African-American community that the GOP can be trusted, it doesn’t point to its agenda, its values, or its candidates. And why not? Because it wouldn’t make any sense — even putting aside the GOP’s humiliating record on civil rights and race relations, today’s Republican Party has very little to offer black voters.

So, we end up with stunts like these. It’d be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

The National Black Republican Association has paid for billboards

The underlying anarchist in me is forced to beg the question: “Can someone be criminally prosecuted for defacing a lie?”

Pass the paintbrush, please….

  • Do they think Martin would support George W. Bush and the war in Iraq?”

    That demolishes their propaganda in one short sentence.

  • Just drop the “Jr.” Martin Luther King senior was a Republican.

    It does have to be remembered when talking about the South, the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and kept a good deal of African-American loyalty into the 60’s (not that they did anything for them after Teddy Roosevelt decided the Republicans needed to overcome their image as the Negro party).

    Likewise, by default, the Dems were the anti-Lincoln party and were responsible for the KKK, Jim Crow and segregation (George Wallace anyone?).

    To claim any significant African American aliegence to the Republicans after about 1964, however, is totally dishonest. A fittingly Republican trait these days;>

  • When Republicans want to demonstrate to the African-American community that the GOP can be trusted…

    They have to lie! But it’s not just African-Americans. Conservatives have adopted the tactics of misrepresentation, distraction, and deception because their real agenda would repulse the vast majority of votes — and did, before they resorted to those tactics.

  • Couldn’t they wait until people who remember the ’60s are all dead before they start making up their own reality about them?

  • As if the GOP brand isn’t damaged enough these days – with blatant dishonesty high on the list of their offenses! I can’t wait for their next ad blitz.

    Maybe something like…. If not for the leadership of George Bush and the GOP, we’d be mired in a lousy war for no real reason!

    Or maybe… Remember how high gas prices used to be? If not for the GOP, gas prices would have more than doubled in the last 6 years!

    But the one they need to run would go like this: We’re the GOP. Please stop us before we shoot our other foot!

  • It’s purely propaganda and poppycock,” Lowery said. “

    Ya know, Barbara Bush used to love poppy cock.

  • How many Poor People’s Campaigns have the republicans run? Oh wait, I forgot, tax cuts for the rich are really aimed at helping the less fortunate. Not being an economist, the nuance of the argument often eludes me.

  • Basically, there are three political movements in America: the national progressive movement, the national conservative movement, and the southernists. The southernists are a regional grouping favoring racism, militarism, and genocidal nationalism, a piratical worldview they got from their Barbadian pirate forebears.

    The two major national movements are fairly evenly divided at 40%+ – each, so the southernist element – which is basically parasitical – allies with whichever one of the majors will give it what it wants: a free hand in its region and national support. The southernists jump back and forth. In the 19th Century when the conservative movement was in favor of industrialization and urbanism (anathema then to the south), and not in favor of spreading the southern system, they allied with the Democrats. This stayed after the civil war until the national progressive movement decided to throw off the parasite beginning after World War 2 (which the progressives won). By the 60s, the conservatives indicated willingness to welcome the southernists and we know the rest.

    As far as the modern Republican Party being anything African Americans should be part of, my abolitionist great-great-great grandfather, a founder of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, would spin in his grave to see his enemies (the southern Confederate traitors) having taken over his movement for progress and equality.

    Martin Luther King Jr. was well aware of who was who in this political history. He never endorsed a Republican from the Bus Boycott on. And his characterization of the Goldwater party – when the fascists openly took the Republican party (not that Goldwater was one of them, he later denounced them) and then welcomed their racist soulmates – is exactly right.

    BTW – just for clarity: a southernist and a southerner are two different things.

  • People started altering the reality of Martin Luther King, Jr. almost as soon as he was buried. How many now remember that he had become a vocal opponent of the Vietnam war in the last years of his life? How many remember that he argues for economic justice just as much as for political justice? Those memories, if allowed to live, would be terribly inconvenient to those who can turn him into an icon who only ever said “I Have a Dream” and use him for their own purposes.

  • I’ve said this elsewhere, but my family were Republicans before realignment. Most black folks were. The Dems were once the party of the KKK, just ask Woodrow Wilson, who though D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of A Nation was “history written with lightning”. But you’d have to be real ignorant of history not to see how that changed.

    And MLK was sure as hell not a conservative, whether he was a Republican or not. He was a radical liberal whose death has beatified him even in the eyes of people who would hate him and call him a traitor were he alive today.

    But seriously, I’d love to sit down with NBRA and some of Pat Buchanan’s Nixon memos.

  • the shift to the democratic party by southern blacks began with franklin roosevelt and was cemented by lbj, tho black southern republicans – like daddy king and condi rice’s father – remained loyal despite the take-over of the republican party by racist former democrats…
    like the late, unlamented jesse helms and strom thurmond.

    just remember the words of j.c. watts’ father: “a black man voting republican is like a chicken voting for colonel sanders.”

  • I can’t imagine there is a Black person older than 21 out there who would believe or be swayed by such a claim. White racists who see such a billboard would have to reevaluate their political allegiances, so one has to wonder exactly whom is such a campaign aimed at?

  • Martin – I made the mistake of entering into a debate with a couple of rightwing ferrous cranuses that started with this claim and that Democrats, the party of slavery dontcha know, if they couldn’t literally keep blacks in shackles, then they kept them there economically. I pointed out the same MLK Jr. / Sr. positions, and then when I began to explain the whole Strom Thrumond / Southern Strategy geopolitical shift of the 60’s, they responded as if I had called ALL REPUBLICANS EVERYWHERE AT ANY POINT IN HISTORY INCLUDING THEM to be racists.

    Mud wrestling with pigs.

  • As someone who works in advertising, I’m left shaking my head at the thinking behind the billboard (apart from the fact that it’s a palpable lie).

    I assume what they’re saying is ‘Remember, we used to be the party that was more sympathetic to African-Americans’. Obviously, in the days that they were touting themselves as more sympathetic, Republicans wouldn’t have called them ‘African-Americans’.

    But doesn’t that just point out that after the early sixties that they were anything but caring of the concerns of black voters? Isn’t the billboard just a huge sign saying ‘For 40 years, we’ve managed to get ourselves elected precisely because we’ve positioned ourselves as the white man’s party with the Southern Strategy’.

    Surely it would have been a more successful billboard if it trumpeted the current and recent achievements of the Republican party on behalf of African-American constituents.

    But then……….hmmmm…….it’s okay, I think I understand the billboard better now.

  • More important than the fact that Dr. King wasn’t a Republican is that Dr. King was not a Conservative.

    Dr. King was about change.

    Dr. King was about justice.

    Conservatism is about looking to the past. Neoconservatism is about “what’s in it for me?”.

    Dr. King was concerned about making the future a better place not just for a few but for society as a whole. The contrast could not be greater.

  • He was also one of the main reasons FISA was created. To stop illegal spying on Americans without a warrant AND to make telecoms responsible for refusing to spy even if requested by the government without legal warrants. Telecoms praised the FISA bill because there was now a legal requirement to involve them or they would not have to comply just because a government agency told them to.

    That FISA has been updated to keep up with modern communications and remains in place today but is about to be replaced by a new FISA bill granting the government unchecked and unregulated domestic spying powers without accountability or oversight of any kind other than if the president tells you to do it then you better do it.

    The only connection between MLK and the republicans is that he is now in the only place where these radical republicans can be trusted.

  • Apparently, they did not recieve the memo that Dr. King advocated Democratic Socialism during his career and became known in his later years for his strong anti-war stance.

  • So everyone agrees…MLK was not a republican. Fine.

    But what has the modern Democrat party done for the black community in the past generation or two? Are our central cities better off compared 50 years ago? Are our central cities safer than they were 50 years ago? After the trillions that have been spent on the “War on Poverty” has life become any better for those that were fought for? Why does the black community continue to vote in representatives (democrats) who have done little to nothing to help change their plight? Campaign promise after campaign promise after campaign promise and still NOTHING.

  • Since they cannot campaign on past success (GW Bush, anyone?), current policies, future proposals, fundamental American values, or character. the Republicans have resorted to what they always resort to… unmitigated slander. Usually it’s by making up some spurious charge against a Democrat. This time, it’s by smearing the Reverend King by associating him with their sinking ship.

  • Look, I’m not saying the Republicans have done a good job in selling themselves to the black community (remember, George W Bush hates black people)…but at what point will the black community begin to call out their elected Democrats who have done virtually nothing to improve the situation in their communities? Overwhelmingly, Democrats represent major cities, central cities, inner cities, etc yet life in those areas continues to deteriorate with no end in site. More murders, more poverty, more joblessness, more teen pregnancies despite the trillions that have been spent. It’s sad but at what point will these elected Democrats be held to task?

  • Asking in the wrong place, Chris.

    Few here are Clinton worshipers and also in short supply would be those who claim Clinton did much for the progressive movement. Elected by 43 and 48%, Clinton was an atypical Democrat who lacked the support of many of us who saw, like you, that he too often was all talk and no action.

    Other than Clinton, we got one term with Carter since 1968.
    Kinda tough to ask Democrats to improve things when America keeps voting for their opponents because they can afford more TV time (and the stations that air them).

    If Obama lets us down too, I’ll climb on your bandwagon and wag my finger at my party with you. He might be for real. I believe. Enough so that I’m voting for him rather than third party this time.

  • Are there any policies that Obama has stated or supports that will help with anything Chris was talking about. I have never voted for a democrat or a Republican. I do not believe I am a neo-con, but I do not think redistribution works. A monetary helping hand just requires another monetary helping hand. From what I have seen, any household making more than 40-50,000 dollars per year should not vote for Obama. My wife and I have no children and cannot afford cable, internet, or even decent cars, but it looks to me that if either McCain or Obama get elected our tax bill will climb while our income will not. The Obama tax bill seems significantly higher though. I have little problem supporting the disabled, but I do have a problem supporting anyone of any color who doesn’t work if they are able to. I do have a problem supporting illegal immigrants simply because they vote Democrat.

    For the record I do not think MLK would identify with either party today either. I THINK, MLK was too religious to embrace the extent to which gays and minorities are pushing rights. I think he was a supporter of the ‘fair shake’ and ‘equal opportunity’ not Government handouts and favortism. I think he was a believer in personal responsibility, a very conservative trait (NOT a Republican trait). While I think he would condemn the war, it is not a clear cut thing like Vietnam. IF the US could leave a stable form of Democracy in Iraq, only fools would condemn the outcome or the investment. (Not believing that is possible is a very valid thought process, but most liberals seem to think of the war as a Bush/Republican thing and therefore utterly wrong and horrible for no thought out reason.)

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