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Why Martin Luther King Was Republican
Human Events | 08/16/2006 | Frances Rice

Posted on 10/14/2009 4:27:15 AM PDT by Canedawg

Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous. -snip-

Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30 to 40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. More than $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans.


TOPICS: History; Society
KEYWORDS: blackrepublicans; blacks; mlk
Written three years ago, and even more relevant today.
1 posted on 10/14/2009 4:27:15 AM PDT by Canedawg
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To: Canedawg

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500


2 posted on 10/14/2009 4:28:20 AM PDT by Canedawg (FUBO)
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To: Canedawg

He would have scoffed at the idea of black poor and unemployed working for agencies such as ACORN which chooses to use them and abuse their integrity by subjecting them to the most corrupt and manipulating system, that in the end keeps them dependent on the same system....a different kind of Plantation...when will the poor black Americans wake up and become aware that the Democrat party uses them to stay in power


3 posted on 10/14/2009 4:49:07 AM PDT by Texas4ever (God is in control!)
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To: Canedawg

The poor bastards are played every election cycle.You would think thatey would wake up.Nah


4 posted on 10/14/2009 5:16:12 AM PDT by HANG THE EXPENSE (Life is tough.It's tougher when you're stupid.)
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To: Canedawg

He was a republican until Nixon didn’t call him when he was arrested in 1960 (Nixon didn’t think it was appropriate). Kennedy did call him and King put his support behind Kennedy and the democrats and blacks have supported democrats since.


5 posted on 10/14/2009 5:26:26 AM PDT by cotton1706
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To: Canedawg

It’s been debunked.


6 posted on 10/14/2009 3:25:17 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: cotton1706

That was MLK, Sr., who was a self-declared Republican prior to that point in mid-1960. We’ve never been able to ascertain which party Jr. supported prior to 1960. But clearly he never was one after 1960. He called Goldwater a tool of Southern racists, nevermind his support for Civil Rights (albeit opposed to the big gov’t aspects of the CRAs).


7 posted on 10/14/2009 3:28:03 PM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

“It’s been debunked.”

By whom? If you would be so kind as to provide a lead, I will research it. His niece claims he was Republican, as does the website: nationalblackrepublicans.com ...
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Was A Republican

During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought to stop Democrats from denying civil rights to blacks. It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican as has been affirmed by his niece, Dr. Alveda C. King.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have joined the Democratic Party, the party of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation.

Dr. King fought against Democrat Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor in Birmingham who let loose vicious dogs and turned skin-burning fire hoses on black civil rights demonstrators.

Democrat Georgia Governor Lester Maddox famously brandished ax handles to prevent blacks from patronizing his restaurant. Democrat Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the entrance of two black students at the University of Alabama in 1963 and thundered, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. All of these racist Democrats remained Democrats until the day they died. In fact, racist Democrats declared that they would rather vote for a “yellow dog” than a Republican because the Republican Party was know as the party for blacks.


8 posted on 01/19/2010 9:46:14 AM PST by beefree
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To: Canedawg

I never know what to think about King. He was either a fairly intelligent Repub who did a lot of brave things and helped many good causes, or he was an abusive thuggish Communist.


9 posted on 01/19/2010 9:49:59 AM PST by workerbee (Yes, I hate Obama because of his color: RED!)
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To: workerbee

This was discussed yesterday on Rush’s show.

I guess he was one until he wasn’t one.

I imagine he would not have been in favor of affirmative action, or least would have made it a short-term program.

But then again, our history of reversing social programs once they are implemented is not good.


10 posted on 01/19/2010 2:15:47 PM PST by Canedawg (The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.)
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To: beefree

Debunked by me, umpteen times, on this website. It is frustrating to see well-intentioned FReepers repeatedly repost it. That article was written by Frances Rice and is riddled with inaccuracies with respect not only to King, but also A. Phillip Randolph. In fact, I would go on record saying the article, the title, is one of the mostly poorly researched I’ve ever come across, and is actually more harmful to Republicans to stand by it when it is very easily refutable.

I warned a prominent local Republican in boastfully posting it on his website 2 years ago that it was riddled with errors, and he refused to take it down, or respond to my comments, which I thought very unfortunate.

Now, before I post excerpts of that letter with links to previous debates here on FR, this is what we do apparently know:

#1 MLK, Jr. would’ve been eligible to register to vote in 1950 when he was 21.

#2 We do not know how he voted (or if he voted) in 1952, and we do not know which party he belonged to, since no records have been unearthed as of yet.

#3 At least one source says MLK, Jr. claims to have voted once - once - for Republican for President, in 1956. This was not unusual, because Eisenhower received a decent % of the Black vote in 1956 and prominent Democrat Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. endorsed Eisenhower in that election. Although Nixon would receive an estimated 1/4th-1/3rd of the Black vote in 1960, 1956 was the last time a Republican received a substantial chunk of the Black vote.

#4 MLK, Jr. voted for JFK in 1960 and most likely LBJ in 1964 (and probably would’ve voted for Humphrey in 1968 had he not been assassinated). To the point, he was not a Republican when it mattered.

#5 He denounced Sen. Goldwater’s candidacy in 1964 as a tool of Southern racists and basically had little use for “Conservative” politics, burnishing it in the minds of many Blacks that Conservative Republicanism = White Supremacy. It did not matter that Goldwater was pro-Civil Rights (although opposed to the Acts measures because he believed them to be an expansion of big government interference).

My letter was as follows:

Dear Sir,

I’m writing this email privately to you instead of posting in the comments section as to spare any public ridicule on your link to the Frances Rice piece on MLK, Jr’s party affiliation. As a member of Free Republic, when this article came out, many were excited to have Rev. King listed as a Republican, but upon closer historical inspection, Ms. Rice’s piece included unfortunate and not very well-researched inaccuracies regarding this claim and others, including:

“In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans.”

——I’m not sure which set of years Ms. Rice refers to, but presuming we’re talking about 1960, this would be a falsehood, unfortunately. Now it was correct that up until about 1932, Blacks were overwhelmingly Republican in both the north and the south (at least in the latter case, where the few were able to be registered to vote), but with FDR, Blacks in the north started shifting to the Democrat party (though in some cases, could support the GOP up until the 1960s, such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a Democrat, endorsing Eisenhower in 1956), but as they became part of the overwhelmingly Democrat political machines, they were absorbed fairly heavily by the 1960s. The South was a different story, and many Blacks remained GOP until the 1960s, but just prior to the signing of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts, when they, too, bolted heavily into the Democrat party (despite the fact that it took Republican support to even get those acts passed, something swiftly and now almost entirely ignored).

“And after he became president, John F. Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican.”

-— Asa Phillip Randolph and his wife were, in fact, not Republicans, but prominent New York Socialists, both of whom had been candidates for Congress under the Socialist Party banner in the early part of the 20th century. Although Randolph later became more “moderate” in his views, he was still a member of the left-wing NY Liberal Party by the 1960s.

There was no indication King was registered in either party (at least in the 1960s). Although King’s father (MLK, Sr.), was a registered (or self-declared) Republican and initially supported Nixon in 1960, following his son’s arrest that resulted in the phone call by the Kennedy campaign to the jailhouse, King’s father endorsed JFK (and if MLK, Jr. cast a vote that year, it likely also was for JFK). MLK, Sr. supported Democrat candidates from then on, including most prominently for Jimmy Carter in 1976 (8 years after his son’s assassination). Quite unfortunate and shocking given Carter’s own legacy of race-baiting in his 1970 race for GA Governor.

Although many aspects of Rice’s piece are correct, the presumption King was a Republican was an erroneous one. MLK, Jr. favored extreme federal government intervention and government-based solutions to problems facing the Black community, indeed, Socialistic solutions that contributed to and exacerbated the problems of the Black community to this day.

These were the links to the discussions on the piece:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919430/posts

...and when it was later reposted:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1957006/posts

However, it is worth pointing out today that the niece of Rev. King, former GA State Rep. Alveda King, is a Republican and prominent pro-life activist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveda_King

P.S. The points cited about some of the Southern Democrats were correct, but that didn’t change the facts about King himself, and that he and his father DID support the party of White supremacy, without interruption beginning in 1960. Even that MLK, Sr. supported Jimmy Carter, who fashioned himself a protege of the aforementioned Lester Maddox, who ran a racist campaign for Governor in 1970 criticizing a racial moderate former Governor, Carl Sanders, who was his opponent in the primary for “shaking hands with Basketball players”, was pretty astonishing.


11 posted on 01/19/2010 5:55:17 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Thank you very much for the clarification.


12 posted on 01/19/2010 9:05:06 PM PST by beefree
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To: beefree

Sure thing.


13 posted on 01/19/2010 9:40:59 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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