You are mistaken about the JBS position on MLK Jr.
In every imaginable way possible (literature, pictures, postcards, billboards, speakers), the JBS described King in terms calculated to evoke fear, hostility, contempt, and revulsion -— and ALWAYS in the context of him being a Communist or Communist sympathizer.
More importantly, the Birch Society sought to discredit, demonize, and de-legitimize our entire civil rights leadership and ALL of our civil rights organizations.
The JBS repeatedly made these assertions:
(1) June 1965 JBS Bulletin, Mr. Welch observed:
“Our task must be simply to make clear that the movement known as ‘civil rights’ is Communist-plotted, Communist-controlled, and in fact...serves only Communist purposes.”
(2) In August 1965, the JBS ran a full-page ad in many U.S. newspapers entitled “What’s Wrong With Civil Rights?” One of the answers provided by the JBS was:
“For the civil rights movement in the United States with all of its growing agitation and riots and bitterness, and insidious steps toward the appearance of civil war, has not been infiltrated by the Communists, as you now frequently hear. It has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists patiently building up to this present stage for more than thirty years.” [HQ 62-104401, serial #2621, 8/31/65 airtel from SAC Birmingham to J. Edgar Hoover with attachment of ad from Sunday 8/29/65 Birmingham AL News.]
(3) In the November 1966 JBS Bulletin, Robert Welch declared:
“We have said many times, and we repeat now, that if you can fully expose the civil rights fraud, you will break the back of the Communist conspiracy. But the word ‘fully’ is important in that sentence. It calls for bringing a preponderant majority of our fellow citizens really to grasp the fact that the ‘civil rights’ program has been designed by Communists, is controlled by Communists, and will be used by the Communists as a vital part of their total strategy for taking over our country.”
(4) And as recently as in the May 2008 JBS Bulletin:
“Just as the John Birch Society showed in the 1960’s that the communists basically ran both the civil rights movement and the KKK, the strategy was nothing new...”
Regulator: HOW MANY DIFFERENT WAYS CAN SOMEBODY LIBEL YOU WITH VICIOUS STATEMENTS AND INNUENDO BEFORE YOU ARE WILLING TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT DEFAMATION AND DESTRUCTION OF YOUR CHARACTER AND INTEGRITY IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN THE INTENT OF THAT PERSON??
Lastly, FYI, the FBI employed speakers who gave hundreds of speeches around the country (i.e. the JBS American Opinion Speakers Bureau). Those speakers made it perfectly obvious that they considered MLK Jr. to be a Communist! And they ALWAYS referred to King “attending a Communist training school” — which was a reference to Highlander Folk School in Monteagle TN.
HOWEVER, the person who originally characterized Highlander as a “Communist training school” was a self-described racist segregationist (Edwin Friend) who, incidentally, was the official photographer for the Georgia KKK!
THAT is the quality of evidence which the JBS relied upon to destroy MLK Jr!
In my reply to Regulator (message #52) I made a typo. I stated that the “FBI” employed speakers via the American Opinion Speakers Bureau —but I should have typed “the JBS employed...”