Political affiliation
Time and time again, liberals claim that MLK was a
Democrat. Liberals point to the people he associated with or that he opposed
Barry Goldwater as proof that MLK was a Democrat. There is considerable evidence that he was not a Democrat. Martin Luther King Sr. was a
Republican, that would almost certainly make his son a Republican. Only after his son was arrested did King Sr. plead to
President Kennedy for his safe release. It is noted at that point MLK Sr. switched parties to support Kennedy. This despite Kennedy voting against the 1957
Civil Rights Act and being initially opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King. The March on Washington was organized by A. Phillip Randolph, who was a black Republican. In addition,
Robert Kennedy allowed the
FBI to wiretap MLK Jr's phone on a trial basis due to suspicion that Dr. King's associates were
Communist; this was later expanded during Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency; which undermined King.
[11][12]
It was the Republicans who led the way to free the slaves nearly one-hundred years earlier, that fact was not lost on his generation. Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association said, [he] "absolutely was a Republican," and "We were all Republicans in those days. The Democrats were training fire hoses on us, siccing dogs on us."
[13] In the 1960s, King would have witnessed the Democrat parties position on pro-
segregation, against the Civil Rights Act. King was most likely aware of high profile Democrats such as
Al Gore Sr. and
Robert Byrd voting against repealing segregation. Southern Democrats rallied around
Jim Crow laws and Black Codes which were targeted against King's message.
Dixiecrats blocked the social and political progress of black Southerners for decades. Was King unaware? Doubtful. It was Republican
President Eisenhower who began the push for integrating all white schools and the desegregation of the military. To think King was a witness to all the upheaval Democrats caused and then became a champion of Democrats is a stretch.