North American Fire Hose

When a black conservative group ran a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, reaction was swift. "We received a few e-mails and telephone calls filled with vitriol," said Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association. "They called me Aunt Jemima, a sellout, a traitor to my race."

In the battle for black voters, the Liberals, who form the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to improve the lives of African-Americans . But when conservatives placed the civil rights movement in a Republican context, black liberals said, they crossed a line.



The debate on advertising, led by a group of black conservatives, is the latest in the battle over the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Jab - AP)

Political Ads Database
Announcement: "Martin Luther King was a Republican"


Who's Blogging?
Read what bloggers are saying about this article.
Some facts ashamed of the Democratic Party

"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that says preventive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich over the poor, is to vilify Martin," said Rev. Joseph Lowery, former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, including the leader of slain civil rights helped to establish.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who marched with King in the 1960s, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to everything he stood for."

The place, which lasted for some time in the district, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania, will soon run again in those areas, and in Miami, Orlando and Tampa, said Rice.

The debate about this announcement is the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle on the legacy of King. Enemies of affirmative action, for example, often cite a line from King's "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963 in which he prayed that his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content "of their character, "an adoption that makes black liberals smoke. But in the last battle, veterans rights may be surprised that some black conservatives agree with them.

The Lieutenant-Governor of Maryland Michael Steele (R) is running for U.S. Senate, denounced the announcement of the King, and Donald E. Scoggins, president of Republicans for Black Empowerment and a former member of the association, said it was a terrible idea.

Black Republicans rebelled against the radio ads, with most criticism from former members of the association black Republican.

"The vast majority of black Republicans I know would not have approved of the ad," Scoggins said.

In the ad, a black woman says: "Dr. King was a true man" and a second responds: "You know he was a Republican."

"Martin Luther King a Republican?"

The women go on to say that Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan, lumping together those in the South with others in the North who reached the African-Americans with New Deal programs and by desegregating the armed forces.

The reaction was so fierce that Rice stopped answering telephone calls. "We expected some controversy, but my goodness, we struck a nerve," she said in an interview from Sarasota, Florida

"I absolutely do not regret the ads," said Rice, 62, a native of Atlanta, King's hometown. He "absolutely was a Republican," she insisted. "We were all Republican at the time . The Democrats were training fire hoses on us, siccing dogs on us. "

It is true that S.