It is remarkable the hubris with which the Democrats adopt Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as their icon for a fundraising potluck dinner (Herald, Jan. 15). If you are very young or have been living in a cave, Martin Luther King Jr. was the apex hero of the civil rights movement.
He was a peaceful man who simply sought equal rights for all. He was a soaring and inspiring orator and was also black. In one of the worst moments in this nation’s history, this great man was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Now, as a further insult to this man’s memory, the Democrats claim him for their own.
The reality is far different. King was a registered Republican. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 with the objective of ending slavery, and Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president.
It is the Republican Party that, from the end of the Civil War through modern times, has championed civil and voting rights laws and the end to Jim Crow and segregation.
It was Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower who sent troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce integration of that city’s schools, years before John and Robert Kennedy faced off with George Wallace.
The Democrat Party was the party of segregation, Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and rabid resistance to equal rights and voting rights legislation.
The movie “Birth of a Nation” was a celebration of the Klan, and it premiered in Democrat President Woodrow Wilson’s White House.
The Democrat Party today continues to wreak havoc on the black American community with its promises of more and more largesse. The destruction of the black family in America can be laid at the feet of the Democrat Party, yet the hypocrisy allows the Democrats to ignore reality and the memory of this American hero, Martin Luther King Jr.
George Thompson
Durango
