Posted on 09/21/2006 6:07:24 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
ANNAPOLIS, Maryland (AP) -- A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers.
Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the black Republican nominee for Maryland's open Senate seat, disavowed the ad Thursday as "insulting to Marylanders." He said his campaign asked the Washington-based National Black Republican Association to stop running it.
At an event in Baltimore, Steele said, "I don't know exactly what the intent of the ad was" but that "it's not helpful to the public discourse."
The ad does not mention Steele or his Democratic opponent, Rep. Ben Cardin.
The association's president, Frances Rice, did not return calls for comment. The group, founded a year ago, promotes the Republicans to black voters.
The spot begins with one woman telling another, "Dr. King was a real man. You know he was a Republican."
Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center, said Thursday that King never endorsed candidates from either party.
"I think it's highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there's really no evidence," Klein said.
A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.
In the ad, the woman goes on to say, "Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan." Her companion replies, "The Klan? White hoods and sheets?"
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
" During the war, against the advice of his cabinet, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that freed the slaves. "
Read the document.
"Wouldn't MLK be registered as either a republican or Democrat? It seems like that would be public record."
See my post # 20. I don't think the republican party had been firmly established in Mississippi,Alabama and much of the south at that time.
They can always argue, "what's in the name?" The 'roles' seem to be exchanged. After all, nowadays the South is Republican strength, and those places that used to be the bastion of Republican party slowly turned Democrats. I wonder if at one point Republican was seen as the 'progressive, liberal' party in social issue, while Democrat was the more conservative one. On economic issue, the roles seem the same as today, I think.
It is absolutely true, that the Democratic party was the party of rich southern slave owners.
It is also true, that the Republicans in NY rioted against the draft, not wanting to die to defend a bunch of southern slaves.
No one's hands are clean.
Lot's of good first hand info of the period during and after the War Between the States here: http://memory.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
Search for "reconstruction" and "KKK" (and its variants). You will see why it was impossible for a Republican to get elected in the South for almost a hunderd years after reconstruction. Democrats were elected because they would keep the Negro down.
A good book, still available, is Charles William Ramsdell's RECONSTRUCTION IN TEXAS (copyright 1910).
It's histroically accurate.
Don't know how it'll play though....without seeing the ad...
The KKK was the militant wing of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party was the author of the "Jim Crow" racial laws, they were the party of race obsession and race repression for a century after the Civil War, and they were the party dedicated to the protection of slavery as an institution prior to the war.
The Republican Party was started by religious folk who abandoned their previous party because it refused to take a stand on slavery. The GOP was the "abolitionist" party from day one.
The abolitionist movement was a distinct minority in politics prior to the Civil War, even in the North, but from the moment the party was established to the moment slavery was abolished, only a very few years passed, only a decade; you could almost choose to see the hand of God, were you so inclined. They formed in the mid-1850s; elected Lincoln in 1860, and slavery was gone by 1865.
They opposed Jim Crow race repression all during the bad old days, and were the Civil Rights party when Civil Rights wasn't cool.
When you see old photographs of lynch mobs, of civil rights marchers being put down with fire hoses and clubs, when you see photos of crosses burning, you should understand that these are photos of Democrats in action. The men with the guns and the clubs and the ropes and the torches are Democrats, every last one of them. Thats their history. You can understand why they want so badly to re-write history. It isn't very pretty.
Of course, there is a story out there saying that President Kennedy's administration was actually wiretapping MLK because they saw him as a threat, and not because people might've thought he was a communist....
The KKK was started by Democrats....ask Senator Byrd, he was there at the first meeting I believe.
Bookmark!
Bad move, Mr. Steele.
You should have just issued a "no comment" about it.
The dam is breaking. Blacks realize that they've been had by the Rats and the historical truth is starting to emerge.
Republicans simply need to fight fire with fire.
Of course he was, that's why Bobby Kennedy bugged his bedroom.
ROFL
Iron Brigade ping.
Placemarker for the racist, white supremacist, and segragationist from W.Va.
"A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, a claim challenged by civil-rights researchers."
It would not be a surprise at all, if Dr. King registered Republican.
Back in those days, most opposition to civil rights came from southern democrats.
I recall that the Rebups. gave more support in Congress to passage of civil rights bills, than democrats.
So why wouldn't Dr. King register with the party which helped them prevail with their efforts?
Correct. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the Confederate slave states.
"No one's hands are clean."
You got that right. I am wondering why we are focusing on the civil war though. I thought we were discussing the evolution of the republican party during King's era?....lol
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