Of the NNPA
WASHINGTON – In the time it takes to cook minute rice, Washington-based National Black Republican Association has managed to stir up some serious controversy with a radio commercial claiming Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican and that the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats.
The 60-second spot features two Black women—one purporting to tell the other about a history of Republicans defending civil rights legislation, starting the NAACP and launching Historically Black Colleges. The radio ad made its debut last week and has run on radio stations in Maryland, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and will start airing in Florida this week, according to NBRA Chairwoman Frances Rice.
“We’re delighted that we’ve gotten a dialogue started,” Rice said. “For far too long it had been a one-sided conversation in the Black community Democrats have been running our inner cities for the past 30-40 years, they have hijacked the civil rights record of the Republican Party and have taken Blacks down the path of socialism that has turned our inner cities into economic and social wastelands. And blacks have been complaining about the same problems for the past 30 or 40 years and the Democrats incredibly blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in our communities so we decided, rather than us complaining, as Black Republicans we would try to do something.”
In the commercial, the two fictional voices of “Tina” and “Pam” started a “dialogue” indeed with their discussion on how Democrats were responsible for releasing the dogs and fire hoses on Blacks during the civil rights movement and how the “Party of Lincoln” freed Blacks from slavery.
Critics note that in its early years, the members of the GOP were known as “Radical Republicans” because they supported social programs favored by Blacks. During that period, a majority of Blacks were Republicans. But that changed, beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” program. Since then, Blacks have been closely aligned with Democrats and Republicans, at least in the last four decades, have been viewed by most African-Americans as the enemies of civil rights.
Black Republicans are trying to paint a different picture. Their controversial commercial contains the following exchange:
Pam: Dr. King was a real man.
Tina: You know… he was a Republican.
Pam: Dr. King, a Republican? Really?
Tina: Democrats passed those Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan.
According to historians, White supremacists – not the Democratic Party – started the KKK. And many of the Southern Democrats – known as Dixiecrats – have switched to the Republican Party.
But it is the assertion that Dr. King was supposedly a Republican that has drawn the strongest response.
Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), a former civil rights leader, called the commercial an “insult to the legacy and memory of Martin Luther King, Jr.” and “an affront to all that he stood for and to everyone who worked with him and followed him.”
Lewis, former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), explained, “I knew Martin Luther King, Jr. He was my friend. He was my colleague. We worked together, and I know he voted for John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for President in 1960. I know he voted for Lyndon Johnson for president in 1964 and not Barry Goldwater. And if he had lived, he would have voted for Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and not the Republican candidate Richard Nixon.”
Joseph Lowery, considered the “dean of the civil rights movement” and co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Dr. King, dismissed the
Black GOP claims.
“Election time is when the Republicans seem to fire weapons of mass distraction and mis-direction,” he wrote in a column. “They have used same sex issues, abortion, prayer in school, immigration and now Martin Luther King, Jr., a Republican! I have often proclaimed that I am neither Democrat nor Republican, I’m Methodist! Martin was neither Democrat or Republican, he was Baptist,” Lowery wrote.
Lowery said today’s Republicans are not in the Party of Lincoln, but the Party of “[Trent] Lott, [Tom] Delay, [Dick] Cheney, and George W. Bush,” all ardent conservatives. Under questioning, Rice could provide no proof that Dr. King was a Republican.
Even some Black Republicans object to the commercial.
Michael Steele, Maryland’s first African-American Lieutenant Governor and his Party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate, said: “NBRA’s current radio ad is insulting to Marylanders and should come down immediately. Although they may have had good intentions, there is no room for this kind of slash-and-burn partisan politics in the important conversation about how to best bring meaningful change to Washington, D.C. and get something done for Maryland…My campaign has already contacted NBRA and demanded the ad be removed from the air immediately.”
Rice says she has no plans to comply with the request.
“I can understand candidates wanting to stay above the fray,” she said. “But we’re telling the truth. We founded the NBRA for the sole purpose of shedding a light of truth on the Democrat Party. And we recognize that we will suffer some slings and arrows.”
This is not the first time Republicans have tried to appropriate Dr. King’s name and reputation. After affirmative action foe Ward Connerly repeatedly asserted that he was acting in the spirit of Dr. King, the King family publicly disputed that notion and demanded that Connerly stop misrepresenting Dr.King’s views.
In an interview with the New York Times last August, Tom Houck, an Atlantan who worked with the King family, said movement insiders always joked about Andrew Young’s conservative nature.
Houck recalled, “Dr. King used to say, ‘You know now Andy is my favorite Republican.’”
Critics of Black Republicans cite that as additional proof that not only was Dr. King not a Republican, he teased those around him who had conservative leanings.