Free Republic

On the holiday commemorating his father’s epic civil rights legacy, Martin Luther King III says he is dismayed by recent violence against police, the destructive protests in Ferguson and the trashing of a U.Va. fraternity falsely accused of sexual assault because they don’t reflect his father’s own approach to advocate for change peacefully.

Looking for something to read as Thanksgiving approaches? Or a unique take on what has made President Barack Obama such a successful politician? Or perhaps an explanation of Obama as an apostle and his “politics as religion?”

Fifty years ago this week, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. But in coverage of events celebrating its anniversary, the entirety of King’s address will rarely be reprinted, if at all, nor will viewers see footage of his speech delivered in full.

When President Obama follows in Martin Luther King Jr.’s footsteps on Wednesday with an address at the Lincoln Memorial, he will face a nation where race remains the great divide.

Twentieth Century Attitudes While Elijah Abel, along with at least one other black, had been ordained to the priesthood during Joseph Smith's life, Brigham Young took a different stand. He instituted a very strict rule that no blacks were to be ordained or given temple ordinances. Elijah Abel outlived Brigham Young and the validity of his ordination was repeatedly discussed by the brethren (see All Abraham's Children, p. 216). The rationalization for restricting blacks developed over a period of years. Scholar Armand Mauss observed: . . . by 1908, as president of the church, [Joseph F.] Smith was now claiming...

Speaking in the months after her husband's assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy was so upset with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that she told a friend and interviewer that she could barely look at images of him. "I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible," Mrs. Kennedy said, as part of an oral history series of interviews released this month. The widowed first lady soured on King as a result of secret wiretaps arranged by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had told President Kennedy that King tried to arrange a sex...

Martin Luther King Jr's Niece: Dream Includes Protecting Unborn From Abortion Washington, DC -- On a day when Americans across the country are celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his desire to regard all people as Americans worthy of equal treatment, his niece says King's dream, if announced today, would also include protecting unborn children from abortion. http://www.lifenews.com/nat5888.html

It is time for conservatives to lay claim to the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was no stalwart conservative, yet his core beliefs, such as the power and necessity of faith-based association and self-government based on absolute truth and moral law, are profoundly conservative. Modern liberalism rejects these ideas, while conservatives place them at the center of their philosophy. Despite decades of its appropriation by liberals, King’s message was fundamentally conservative. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, triggered by Rosa Parks’ refusal to abide by local segregation laws, sparked King’s rise from ministering a small church in Montgomery to...