The day the pubs successfully reclaim his legacy from the donks who stole it away will be the day black Americans vote GOP again.
Right. When voting rights were originally afforded to freed slaves, many if not most Blacks went Republicans due to Lincoln being seen as the great liberator. Not sure how it all switched. The Dems were the segregationists: Byrd, Fulbright, Al Gore Sr et al
1960 is in question, but definitely not after 1964. His father had been until 1960 (Jr. was neutral in 1960), but following Jr's sit-in arrest, when RFK helped secure his release, the father switched to the Democrats and never went back again (he later worked hard for Carter (despite Carter's own racist campaign for Governor in 1970) and delivered the invocation at the 1976 and 1980 Dem National Conventions). Jr. clearly was a liberal rodent by 1964, and denounced Goldwater, which was largely the point at which the Black community permanently estranged itself from the GOP (in the north, with little exception, that had occurred in the 1930s, but not in the South, where most Blacks were almost Republican to the last until the mid 1960s). By the time of his assassination in Memphis, he was having to play catch-up with the radical Black Power movement and was far-left by then (and people forget how polarizing a figure he was by 1968, more so than Je$$e Jack$on is today). Had he not been murdered and elevated to Sainthood status, he probably just would've become a Jack$on type figure by the '70s and '80s. As we were discussing the other day, when Sammy Davis, Jr. endorsed Nixon in 1972, he became an instant pariah (demonstrating how radical the Black community had become in less than a decade).
Also, too, MLK, Jr. largely plagarized the work of a Black Republican minister named Rev. Archibald James Carey, Jr. Very few people have heard of Carey today. But you'll recognize this speech, because it was delivered by him to the 1952 Republican National Convention:
"We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans: My country 'tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims' pride From every mountainside Let freedom ring! That's exactly what we mean-- from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia --let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the disinherited of all the earth--may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside, LET FREEDOM RING!"
Personally, the problem I've had with elevating an individual of morally dubious character to Sainthood is that it trivializes the hard work so many others made with respect to Civil Rights. Countless names of forgotten people that did indeed talk the talk and walk the walk, more than a few were Republicans, and are deliberately ignored today.