MARTIN LUTHER KING, Jr. WAS A REPUBLICAN

For those of us, who did not, either, live history nor read history. 

In “A Covenant With Life: Reclaiming MLK’s Legacy”,  
Dr.  Alveda C. King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., states:
 
“My grandfather, Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., or ‘Daddy King’, 
was a Republican and father of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 who was a Republican.” 

Was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a Democrat? That is the question!
By Dr. Rich Swier on July 5, 2008 | From fromtheduke.blogspot.com
http://www.zimbio.com/Martin+Luther+King+Day/articles/462/Dr+Martin+Luther+King+Jr+Democrat+question


WHY MARTIN LUTHER KING,  Jr
 WAS  REPUBLICAN.
....... In that era, almost all black
 Americans were Republicans.
  
Why? From its founding in 1854 as the 
anti-slavery party until today, the 
Republican Party has championed
freedom and civil rights for blacks.
And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the
Democrat Party is as it always
has been, the party of the four S's:
slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.



It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in
slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes
and Jim Crow laws. 

The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and
terrorize blacks.

 The Democrats fought to prevent
the passage of every civil rights law beginning with
the civil rights laws of the 1860s, and continuing with the
 civil rights laws of the 1950s and 1960s.



During the civil rights era of the 1960s, Dr. King was fighting the
Democrats who stood in the school house
 doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let
 loose vicious dogs.

It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who 
pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent 
troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools.

President Eisenhower also appointed 
Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court,
which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
 decision ending school
segregation.
Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman's
issuing an
Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military.
Not mentioned is the fact
that it was Eisenhower who actually took action to
effectively end segregation in the military.


Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded 
as a proponent of civil rights. 
However,

Kennedy voted against the 1957 
Civil Rights Act while he was a 
senator, as did Democrat

Sen. Al Gore Sr.
And after he became President, Kennedy was
opposed to the 1963 March
on Washington by Dr. King that was organized
by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black
Republican.  

President Kennedy, through his brother Atty. Gen. 
Robert Kennedy, had
Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI 
on suspicion of being a Communist in
order to undermine Dr. King.
In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King's
leaving Memphis, Tenn., after riots
 broke out where a teenager was killed, 
Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd (W.Va.), a former
 member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a
 "trouble-maker" who starts trouble,
but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited.  
A few weeks later, Dr. King returned
to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

  

Given the circumstances of that era,
it is understandable why Dr. King
was a Republican.

It was the Republicans who fought to
free blacks from slavery and amended the
Constitution to grant blacks freedom
(13th Amendment), citizenship
(14th Amendment) and the right to
vote (15th Amendment). Republicans
passed the civil rights laws
of the 1860s, including the Civil Rights
Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction
Act of
1867 that was designed to establish a
new government system in the Democrat-
controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. 

Republicans also started the NAACP

and affirmative action with Republican
President Richard Nixon's 1969 Philadelphia

Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher)
that set the nation's first goals and timetables.

Although affirmative action now has been
 turned by the Democrats
 into an unfair quota system, affirmative action
 was begun by
 Nixon to counter
 the harm caused to blacks when
 Democrat President Woodrow 
Wilson in 1912
 kicked all of the blacks out of 
federal government jobs.

 

Few black 
Americans know that it was Republicans 
who founded the Historically
Black Colleges and Universities.

Unknown also is the fact that Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois
 was key to the passage of civil rights
 legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media
stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen
wrote the language for the bill.
Dirksen also crafted the language for
the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing.

President Lyndon Johnson could not
 have achieved passage of civil rights

legislation without the support
of Republicans.

 

Critics of Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for President
 against
Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force
 the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws
 and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights
 legislation.

 Those who wrongly criticize Goldwater also ignore
 the fact that Johnson, in his 4,500 State of the Union Address
delivered on Jan. 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal
 action, but only 35 words were devoted to civil rights. He did
 not mention one word about voting rights.
Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King's protest 
against the Vietnam War, Johnson referred to 
Dr. King as "that Nigger preacher."


Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist
 "Dixiecrats" did not all migrate to the Republican Party.
 "Dixiecrats" declared that they would
 rather vote for a "yellow dog" than 
vote for a Republican because the
 Republican Party was known as 
the party for blacks. 

Today, some of those "Dixiecrats" continue their
 political careers as Democrats, including Robert
 Byrd, who is well known for having been a
"Keagle" in the Ku Klux Klan.



Another former "Dixiecrat" is former Democrat

Sen. Ernest Hollings, who put up the Confederate

 flag over the state Capitol when he was the governor

 of South Carolina. There was no public outcry 

when Democrat Sen. Christopher Dodd praised

 Byrd as someone who would have been "a great

 senator for any moment," including the Civil War.

 Yet Democrats denounced then-Senate GOP leader

 Trent Lott for his remarks about Sen. Strom 

Thurmond (R.-S.C.). Thurmond was never in

 the Ku Klux Klan and defended blacks against

 lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes 

 imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Byrd and

 Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and

Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.



The 30-year odyssey of the South switching to the

 Republican Party began in the 1970s with President

 Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy," which was an

 effort on the part of Nixon to get Christians in the

South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share

 their values and were still discriminating against their

 fellow Christians who happened to be black. Georgia

 did not switch until 2002, and some Southern states,

 including Louisiana, are still controlled by Democrats.



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.



After wrongly convincing black Americans that a

minimum wage increase was a good thing, the

Democrats on August 3 kept their promise and

killed the minimum wage bill passed by House

Republicans on July 29. The blockage of the

minimum wage bill was the second time in as

many years that Democrats stuck a legislative

finger in the eye of black Americans. Senate Democrats

 on April 1, 2004, blocked passage of a bill to renew the

 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans

 and vetoed twice by President Clinton before he finally

 signed it. Since the welfare reform law expired in September

 2002, Congress had passed six extensions, and the latest

expired on June 30, 2004. Opposed by the Democrats are

school choice opportunity scholarships that would help

black children get out of failing schools and Social

Security reform, even though blacks on average lose

$10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life

 expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5

 years for whites).

 

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.



In order to break the Democrats' stranglehold on the black

 vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party's

 economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. 

 We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party

 policies of socialism and dependency on

 government handouts offer the pathway

 to poverty, while Republican Party

 principles of hard work, personal 

responsibility, getting a good education

 and ownership of homes and small 

businesses 

 offer the pathway to prosperity.

http://www.nbra.info/MLKWasARepublican

 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican