Whether he was or wasn't he can't say either way.
Seems there’s some preacher in Houston claiming Dr. Martin Luther King was a Republican. He even put up a billboard to tell the world of this revelation.
Shouldn’t a preacher know better than to tell big fibs?
This isn’t the first time it’s been suggested King had mad love for the party of Abe Lincoln, Richard Nixon and Jesse Helms. Frances Rice of the National Black Republican Association was writing about it two years ago in Human Events and said, “It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a 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.”
There’s no proof mind you that Dr. King was a Republican or expressed any political affiliation with the Republican or Democratic Party. Taylor Branch has written a three-volume trilogy chronciling King and the Civil Rights era, Parting the Waters, Pillar of Fire and At Canaan’s Edge and after 2,912 pages of research if he couldn’t find the evidence there’s a strong likelihood it isn’t there to be found.
Steve Klein, a senior researcher at The King Center dismissed the “King-was-a-Republican” rumor when the GOP ran radio campaign ads in 2006 targeted at Black listeners.
“I think it’s highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there’s really no evidence,” Klein said.
Wouldn’t Black Republicans would have better luck trying to find a few live Black folks who would rather be part of a party that caters to Sarah Palin and old Southern White guys instead of trying to co-opt a dead Black icon? Frederick Douglass had mad love for the Republicans back in the day. Why don’t they brag about him or Booker T. Washington? Hell, if you want a righteous Black Republican what’s wrong with Condoleeza Rice?
Wait—don’t answer that question.
The nice thing about claiming Dr. King was a Republican is with his kids too young at the time to know and Dr. King and Coretta too dead to confirm or deny it, some asshole can make up anything they want and it will have some plausibility.
An unsubstantiated claim on a billboard don’t mean dick.
Whatever his party affiliation was (and nobody has offered any evidence King was a Republican or a Democrat) there’s no doubt he was a liberal.
Saying it don't make it so.
