KOPEL: Was MLK a Republican or not?
By Dave Kopel, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published August 28, 2008 at 5:36 p.m.
Barack Obama’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination was delivered on the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. At Invesco Field, a King tribute video made sure that nobody could ignore the parallel. The National Black Republican Association has put up 50 billboards around Denver, claiming “Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican.” On Tuesday, the Rocky Mountain News reported that the billboard’s claim was false, but the Rocky appears to have gone too far.
The Rocky asked the communications director at the King Center in Atlanta. As quoted by the Rocky, he said, “There’s no evidence that King was a Republican and members of have family have spoken out about this.”
The Rocky should have checked with the Web site of the group that bought the billboards. There, the Rocky would have found a video of King’s niece, Alveda King, forthrightly stating that Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his father, Martin Luther King Sr., were Republicans. So there is at least some evidence that King was a Republican, for one member of his family specifically says so.
The Sarasota Herald Tribune (Aug. 3) looked into the issue in depth. Citing historians Taylor Branch and Clayborne Carson, the Herald Tribune reports that King Sr. was indeed a Republican, but became a Democrat in 1960 when he endorsed John F. Kennedy. King Jr. “took care not to claim any political party.”
That King Sr. was a Republican in the 1950s would not be surprising. While most Northern blacks became Democrats during the New Deal, many Southern blacks remained Republican; Southern white Democrats were the staunchest supporters of segregation, and two-time Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson showed very little commitment to a civil rights agenda.
Alveda King has been in Denver this week, taking part in anti-abortion rallies. It would have been interesting to interview her and pin down the details of why she remembers King Jr. as a Republican. Perhaps before he became a famous national figure, when he just followed his father’s political habits? In any case, the evidence was insufficient for the Rocky to so conclusively label the billboard false.
The promises of the extreme left to produce huge street demonstrations in Denver did not come true. Fortunately. Were the Denver media wrong to have devoted so much pre-convention coverage to the demonstration issue?
Probably not. Covering the topic of potential demonstration violence was like covering a hurricane which seems to be moving toward one’s city. The odds are good that nothing major will happen, but the chance of a disaster is significant enough so that the story deserves plenty of coverage.
By early in the week, it was clear that the ultra-left coalition that had assembled in Denver was very small. Not only had they failed to re-create ’68, they hadn’t even matched the crowds that came to the 2004 political conventions. At that point, the local media would have done better to give less space to the demonstrators, and more to some of the positive groups that were putting on events in Denver.
For instance, at Civic Center Park on Sunday, there was a five-hour “Youth Voices 2008” performance and fair organized by Unbound Grace and other nonprofits. These groups describe themselves as “creating community through forgiveness and reconciliation.” There were readings of poetry written by homeless youths, music, arts, dancing and a performance by the Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble II.
Coverage of the Monday parades should have given more attention to Falun Gong, which had a marching band and a parade float. The group is working to raise awareness of the Chinese dictatorship’s violent suppression of religious freedom and other human rights.
The local media’s tremendous attention to the Beijing Olympics made the media unavoidably complicit in the dictatorship’s effort to bolster its international and domestic prestige, thereby giving the regime more power to suppress democratic voices. Greater local media coverage of Falun Gong at the DNC would have provided a partial corrective.
Like many large conventions, the DNC had its own specialized press. Daily convention newspapers were produced by four periodicals which, during nonconvention times, are read mainly by the professional political class in Washington: Roll Call, The Hill, National Journal and Congressional Quarterly. Some of these stories are straightforward versions of material that is available elsewhere in the media — such as a report on Sen. Edward Kennedy’s impressive speech.
But other material adds significant background understanding. For example, Wednesday’s issue of Roll Call included a guest article by the Clinton administration’s ambassador to Romania; he recalled a visit to the country by Joe Biden. Biden knew the primary and secondary political figures in Romania and neighboring countries very well. When a Romanian opposition leader said that one advantage of NATO membership would be that the Romanians could get away with persecuting the Hungarian minority in that country, “Biden, visibly angry, rose from his chair, leaned across the table, and said: ‘If that’s why you want to get into NATO, I’ll make sure you never do!’”
Romania was later admitted to NATO, and the Hungarian minority has participated freely in the government.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told the National Journal “that the fieldwork in the states was the most overlooked story of this campaign.” I think he’s right. In 2004, the John Kerry campaign ran an excellent registration and get-out-the-vote machine, and the Bush campaign ran an even better one, providing Bush with his slender margin of victory.
This year, political reporters should pay attention to candidates’ ground games: How many volunteers are they putting into the precincts on a given weekend? How many phone calls are they making in an average day? Is John McCain closing the organizational gap? If he doesn’t, the final Electoral College results may be a lot less close than pre-election media pollsters and commentators are predicting.
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August 29, 2008
4:24 p.m.
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anderson writes:
So, the billboard claim was misleading at best, eh? If we decontextualize the billboard's message--that MLK's views were akin to the Nat'l Black Republican Association of today, which of course they aren't, and find someone in the family (a niece no less) who said he was a Republican even though the King Center (who ought to know) said he wasn't, I guess we can eke out a justification for the billboards. Presumably we can next expect to see billboards that say MLK was "for" the war because somebody said that somebody said he was.
September 4, 2008
10:47 a.m.
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spencerr writes:
What did MLK stand for besides equality? Assuming equality, did he stand for hard work, or did he stand for handouts (or for you, Anderson, some mixture of both)? The only other issues that were similar at the time as now are war issues.
I don't think we would be able to label him Democrat or Republican in the context of today's politics. Might as well ask of G.W. was a Democrat or Republican in today's context. The issues were different.
September 5, 2008
5:19 p.m.
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anderson writes:
I totally agree, spencerr, with your remark that it is difficult to label MLK (or G. Washington) in the context of today's politics.
In his speech 'Beyond Vietnam' on 4-4-67 MLK railed against excessive militarism, racism, and consumerism. I don't think black people of his time knew anything but hard work, and LBJ's Great Deal was pretty new then.
September 5, 2008
6:12 p.m.
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anderson writes:
er, I meant to say Great Society.