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Yeah, I debunked that article repeatedly throughout this year and an email I wrote to a local gentleman who was touting it...

Dear ******,
I’m writing this email privately to you instead of posting in the comments section as to spare any public ridicule on your link to the Frances Rice piece on MLK, Jr’s party affiliation. As a member of Free Republic, when this article came out, many were excited to have Rev. King listed as a Republican, but upon closer historical inspection, Ms. Rice’s piece included unfortunate and not very well-researched inaccuracies regarding this claim and others, including:

“In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans.”

——I’m not sure which set of years Ms. Rice refers to, but presuming we’re talking about 1960, this would be a falsehood, unfortunately. Now it was correct that up until about 1932, Blacks were overwhelmingly Republican in both the north and the south (at least in the latter case, where the few were able to be registered to vote), but with FDR, Blacks in the north started shifting to the Democrat party (though in some cases, could support the GOP up until the 1960s, such as Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a Democrat, endorsing Eisenhower in 1956), but as they became part of the overwhelmingly Democrat political machines, they were absorbed fairly heavily by the 1960s. The South was a different story, and most Blacks remained GOP until the mid 1960s, but just prior to the signing of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts, when they, too, bolted heavily into the Democrat party (despite the fact that it took Republican support to even get those acts passed, something swiftly and now almost entirely ignored). Even here in TN, supposedly Black voters that could vote in Memphis provided the margin of victory for Richard Nixon’s win in our state in 1960 (but not 8 years later when they voted for Humphrey).

“And after he became president, John F. Kennedy was opposed to the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. King that was organized by A. Phillip Randolph who was a black Republican.”

-— Asa Phillip Randolph and his wife were, in fact, not Republicans, but prominent New York Socialists, both of whom had been candidates for Congress under that banner in the early part of the 20th century. Although Randolph later became more “moderate” in his views, he was still a member of the left-wing NY Liberal Party by the 1960s.

There was no indication King was registered in either party (at least in the 1960s). Although King’s father (MLK, Sr.), was a registered (or self-declared) Republican and initially supported Nixon in 1960, following his son’s arrest that resulted in the phone call by the Kennedy campaign to the jailhouse, King’s father endorsed JFK (and if MLK, Jr. cast a vote that year, it likely also was for JFK). MLK, Sr. supported Democrat candidates from then on, including most prominently for Jimmy Carter in 1976 (8 years after his son’s assassination). Quite unfortunate and shocking given Carter’s own legacy of race-baiting in his 1970 race for GA Governor.

Although many aspects of Rice’s piece are correct, the presumption King was a Republican was an erroneous one. MLK, Jr. favored extreme federal government intervention and government-based solutions to problems facing the Black community, indeed, Socialistic solutions that contributed to and exacerbated the problems of the Black community to this day. These were the links to the discussions on the piece:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1919430/posts

...and when it was later reposted:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/1957006/posts

However, it is worth pointing out today that the niece of Rev. King, former GA State Rep. Alveda King, is a Republican and prominent pro-life activist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveda_King