Forgotten History: Why MLK was a Republican

National Black Republican Association - DYK-Why MLK was a Republican
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.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860's, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950's and 1960's.

I'm sure if you ask any member of Generation E what political party MLK Jr belonged to, you'd get a very surprised look after you corrected the Gen E'er that MLK was not a member of the BO's party.  But that surprised look would pale in comparison if you listed the democrat party's long list of "contributions" towards civil rights (summary from the article):

• democrat George Wallace led pro-segregation at University of Alabama, and proclaimed "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"
• democrat JFK voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act
• democrat JFK was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King
• democrat JFK and brother RFK had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist  (how's that look compared to today's Patriot Act?)
• democrat senator Robert Byrd was a former member of the KKK and considered MLK a troublemaker, and later led a failed filibuster against passage of the civil rights act of 1964
  

• even further back in time, it was the republicans that amended the constitution post civil war to grant blacks freedoms and passed the first civil rights...back in the 1860s!
• republicans also helped start the NAACP.
  

Nope, your typical Gen E'r would be completely surprised about the original origins of US civil rights.  But that is just another day in the re-write of US History.

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