Tracy Press

Commentator Jennifer Correia rebuts the politicization of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy.

During Black History Month, it’s time to get the facts straight about Martin Luther King Jr. Frank Aquila has been very busy. His opinion piece in the Jan. 17 Tracy Press makes the claim that King was a Republican.

I’m not sure if Aquila is referring to the famed civil rights activist or King’s father. Truth is, Martin Luther King Sr. was, indeed, a Republican. His son, Martin Luther King Jr. may have been, but there is no record of his ever having registered as a Republican, according to the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, housed at Stanford University.

Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of King agrees; he felt King was nonpartisan or not affiliated with any political party. Branch wrote in his "America in the King Years" trilogy that King made only one political statement on record. King denounced the 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater because Goldwater failed to vote for the Civil Rights Act of 1963 when he was a senator. King did not, however, endorse Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson, who arguably did more to further the cause of the civil rights movement than any other American president.

Republican Sen. Jesse Helms disagreed with Branch. In his oration to the Senate in October 1983, in which he argued against the establishment of a holiday honoring King, Helms claimed that King was, at worst, a Communist; at best, a man who was influenced by Communists who held high positions within King’s inner circle.

What does this mean? If King was a Republican, Aquila suggests, would he have supported the candidacy of David Duke, who switched political parties to run and eventually won a seat as a Republican in the Louisiana Legislature? Would King support the candidacy of Helms, whose views on racial segregation and the unfairness of affirmative action are well known and documented? Would he have agreed with Republican Sen. Trent Lott, who defended Bob Jones University’s right to ban interracial dating? Would he, indeed, march with Ward Connerly in the movement to abolish affirmative action, as Connerly suggests? If he were a Democrat, would he endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president?

The truth is, we simply don’t know, because someone came along and killed King before he had a chance to answer these and many other questions. This leaves his political affiliations and views as matters of pure speculation.

What is not a matter of speculation is that King believed that racism was wrong and it is America’s responsibility to stamp it out. As he famously said in his "I Have a Dream" speech, "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’"

The truth is that Democrats have failed Black Americans. But the rest of that truth is that they weren’t alone — Republicans share this failure equally. The truth is that the issue of race cannot belong to any political party; it has to belong to all of them, or no real progress can be made in the fight for civil rights. The truth is, it is wrong to politicize race, whether done by Aquila, the National Black Republican Association or former President Bill Clinton. It serves no one’s interests and hurts us all.

• Jennifer L. Correia has lived for 13 years in Manteca and is a homemaker and the mother of two children.

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written by JoeMorgan , February 13, 2008

Martin Luther King supported the quota system, the systematic and massive discrimination against whites.

He supported black leaders and black organizations, all of which support discrimination based upon skin color.

King was a "friend" of the apartheid state of Israel, a country that is a cross between South African apartheid, Jim Crow, with many laws remeniscent of Nazi Germany, (see Pres. Carter's book Peace Not Apartheid.

Does that make him a Republican ideologically?

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written by Dave Hardesty , February 13, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...01754.html

Another slant on this story from a different source.

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written by ET , February 13, 2008

Joe, As Malcolm X stated White men are in no moral postiion to call Black men racist and discrimnatory. What would you do to the very people who enslaved and discriminated against you for 200 years? It is very easy for people like to to forget the past and make judgements as though the past never occurred.

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written by Brawley , February 14, 2008

written by ET , February 13, 2008
Joe, As Malcolm X stated White men are in no moral postiion to call Black men racist and discrimnatory. What would you do to the very people who enslaved and discriminated against you for 200 years? It is very easy for people like to to forget the past and make judgements as though the past never occurred.

ET Like I say to all negros when they cry about discrimination, that it is a case of mistaken identity because I was not there at the time. So quit wyning and doing the race and blackmale card on society to get what they want. It isn't that people are racist it is because we can stand hearing the crying. My eyes roll when I hear that crud. Malcom X, gimmie a break would you?

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written by ET , February 14, 2008

Brawley,
You truely need a break you mistake your whining for another point of view. Try to broaden your education it may help to open your mind. You were not there but are here and have the same type of mind that was there. Ask me how I know? It comes through loud and clear in your writing. You tur any other point of view that differs from yours into whining. I don't have to whine I do very well in this society and need nothing from the likes of you.

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written by ET , February 14, 2008

The further my comment to Brawley's comments, I was responding to another comment that took a story on politics and brought up the race card. As usual when a person of color does so its whining, however, if a person of non color does its defense. Appears to be quite a double standard where discussion on race are concerned. I see that in numerous posts in this town given that the first posts accused Martin Luther King of discrimination. Now who's the whiner?

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written by Brawley , February 14, 2008

Dear ET, I studied black history in school, I was always fair and not a racist. I even love Motown music. But on the real, I am sick and tired of all the belly aching 'because I am a black man' with Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton and followers. There are decent black people on earth but there are those who stretch the issue of being a victum. You know who we are referring to.