A few facts about Dr. King that many people (and I suspect Valerie Jarrett) don’t know:
1.) Dr. King was a registered Republican, as was his father Dr. Martin Luther King Sr.
(source: Alveda C. King, niece of Dr. MLK Jr., and she ought to know, if anyone)
2.) Dr. King and civil rights activists in the late 1950’s sought out and were welcomed by the Eisenhower Administration in discussions over how best to guarantee equal civil rights for ALL Americans, regardless of race, creed or color.
3.) It was the aforementioned Eisenhower Administration (Republican) who sent troops to Little Rock Arkansas in 1957 to guaranteed the civil rights (and the safety) of black high school students who were being denied entry to Little Rock High School by DEMOCRAT Governor Orval Faubus.
3.) Former Democratic Governor of South Carolina Ernest Hollings in 1960 led the fight against ‘lunch counter integration’ saying “South Carolina will not permit ‘explosive’ manifestations in connection with Negro demands for lunch-counter services” calling then President Eisenhower ‘confused’ and causing “great damage to peace and good order” by supporting the rights of minorities to protest segregation at the lunch counters. Hollings went on to be elected Senator and in the late 1980’s still referred to blacks as “darkies”. An equal opportunity bigot, Hollings likewise referred to hispanics as ‘wetbacks’, and consistently slurred Jews as well.
4.) In 1961, segregationist Democrat Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, the Birmingham Alabama Commissioner for ‘Public Safety’ ordered Birmingham police to stay away from the local Trailways bus station while Ku Klux Klansmen attacked the Freedom Riders, who were touring the South to protest segregation. In 1963, Connor ordered Birmingham police officers and firemen to use dogs and high-pressure water hoses against demonstrators. Connor was a highly influential Democrat, serving as a delegate to FIVE Democratic conventions from 1948 up to 1968.
5.) Former Democratic Governor of Georgia Lester Maddox first came to attention in 1964 when he refused to serve blacks at his infamous ‘Pickrick Restaurant’, where he also sold axe handles for the insinuated purpose of using them to beat ‘uppity’ blacks. When three black Georgia Tech students entered his restaurant, Maddox waved a pistol at them and said: “You no good dirty devils! You dirty Communists!” and joined by some of his racist customers, drove the students out of the restaurant.
6.) Former Democratic Governor of Alabama George Wallace became known for his ‘stand in the schoolhouse door’, blocking the entry of black students to a predominantly white school, it took federal marshals, a Deputy Attorney General and National Guard troops to convince him to step aside in 1963, his notorious words became likewise well known, “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”. To Wallace’s credit, he disavowed his racist positions in his later years, regaining the Governor’s Office based largely upon black voters who believed he was sincere in his repentance and forgave him.
7.) When President Lyndon Johnson was seeking to have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, he faced a filibuster by segregationist, racist Senators led by former Ku Klux Klansman Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Al Gore Senior of Tennessee among others, the bill was passed only with the support and assistance of REPUBLICAN Senators who rejected the institutional racism of many of their Democrat fellow Senators.
So there is a brief but far from finished history lesson regarding the Last Plantation, aka the Democratic Party, which has made great sport over the years by referring to black conservatives (Herman Cain anyone?) who dare to challenge the left-liberal orthodoxy as “Uncle Toms” but one need only take a good look at the current occupant of the White House to fully understand just “who” sold out to “who”.
And Valerie? Did you know that it was DEMOCRATS who were integral in the formation and organization of the Ku Klux Klan itself?
Well now you know.
Happy Martin Luther King Day.
Although King never publicly supported a political party or candidate for president, in a letter to a civil rights supporter in October 1956 he said that he was undecided as to whether he would vote for the Adlai Stevenson or Dwight Eisenhower, but that “In the past I always voted the Democratic ticket.”