THE TENNESSEE REPUBLICAN PARTY HONORS THE LEGACY OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

WHY MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. WAS A REPUBLICAN

By Frances Rice
Chairman of the National Black Republicans Association

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S’s: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.

It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan to lynch and terrorize blacks. The Democrats fought to prevent the passage of every civil rights law beginning with the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, and continuing with the civil rights laws of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, Dr. King was fighting the Democrats who stood in the school house doors, turned skin-burning fire hoses on blacks and let loose vicious dogs. It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who pushed to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and sent troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools. President Eisenhower also appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision ending school segregation. Much is made of Democrat President Harry Truman’s issuing an Executive Order in 1948 to desegregate the military. Not mentioned is the fact that it was President Eisenhower who actually took action to effectively end segregation in the military.

Democrat President John F. Kennedy is lauded as a proponent of civil rights. However, Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil rights Act while he was a senator, as did Democrat Senator Al Gore, Sr. 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. President Kennedy, through his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had Dr. King wiretapped and investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a Communist in order to undermine Dr. King.

In March of 1968, while referring to Dr. King’s leaving Memphis, Tennessee after riots broke out where a teenager was killed, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, called Dr. King a “trouble-maker” who starts trouble, but runs like a coward after trouble is ignited. A few weeks later, Dr. King returned to Memphis and was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

Given the circumstances of that era, it is understandable why Dr. King was a Republican. It was the Republicans who fought to free blacks from slavery and amended the Constitution to grant blacks freedom (13th Amendment), citizenship (14th Amendment) and the right to vote (15th Amendment). Republicans passed the civil rights laws of the 1860’s, including the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks. Republicans also started the NAACP and affirmative action with Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 Philadelphia Plan (crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher) that set the nation’s first goals and timetables. Although affirmative action now has been turned by the Democrats into an unfair quota system, affirmative action was begun by Nixon to counter the harm caused to blacks when Democrat President Woodrow Wilson in 1912 kicked all of the blacks out of federal government jobs.

Few black Americans know that it was Republicans who founded the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Unknown also is the fact that Republican Senator Everett Dirksen from Illinois was key to the passage of civil rights legislation in 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1965. Not mentioned in recent media stories about extension of the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the fact that Dirksen wrote the language for the bill. Dirksen also crafted the language for the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which prohibited discrimination in housing. President Lyndon Johnson could not have achieved passage of civil rights legislation without the support of Republicans.

Critics of Republican Senator Barry Goldwater who ran for president against Democrat President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, ignore the fact that Goldwater wanted to force the Democrats in the South to stop passing discriminatory laws and thus end the need to continuously enact federal civil rights legislation.

Those who wrongly criticize Goldwater, also ignore the fact that President Johnson, in his 4,500 State of the Union Address delivered on January 4, 1965, mentioned scores of topics for federal action, but only thirty five words were devoted to civil rights. He did not mention one word about voting rights. Then in 1967, showing his anger with Dr. King’s protest against the Viet Nam War, President Johnson referred to Dr. King as “that Nigger preacher.”

Contrary to the false assertions by Democrats, the racist “Dixiecrats” did not all migrate to the Republican Party. “Dixiecrats” declared that they would rather vote for a “yellow dog” than vote for a Republican because the Republican Party was known as the party for blacks. Today, some of those “Dixiecrats” continue their political careers as Democrats, including Democrat Senator Robert Byrd who is well known for having been a “Keagle” in the Ku Klux Klan.

Another former “Dixiecrat” is Democrat Senator Ernest Hollings who put up the Confederate flag over the state capitol when he was the governor of South Carolina. There was no public outcry when Democrat Senator Christopher Dodd praised Senator Byrd as someone who would have been “a great senator for any moment,” including the Civil War. Democrats denounced Senator Trent Lott for his remarks about Senator Strom Thurmond. Senator Thurmond was never in the Ku Klux Klan and defended blacks against lynching and the discriminatory poll taxes imposed on blacks by Democrats. If Senator Byrd and Senator Thurmond were alive during the Civil War, and Byrd had his way, Thurmond would have been lynched.

The thirty-year odyssey of the South switching to the Republican Party began in the 1970’s with President Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” which was an effort on the Part of Nixon to get Christians in the South to stop voting for Democrats who did not share their values and were still discriminating against their fellow Christians who happened to be black. Georgia did not switch until 2002, and some Southern states, including Louisiana, are still controlled by Democrats.

Today, Democrats, in pursuit of their socialist agenda, are fighting to keep blacks poor, angry and voting for Democrats. Examples of how egregiously Democrats act to keep blacks in poverty are numerous.

After wrongly convincing black Americans that a minimum wage increase was a good thing, the Democrats on August 3rd kept their promise and killed the minimum wage bill passed by House Republicans on July 29th. The blockage of the minimum wage bill was the second time in as many years that Democrats stuck a legislative finger in the eye of black Americans. Senate Democrats on April 1, 2004 blocked passage of a bill to renew the 1996 welfare reform law that was pushed by Republicans and vetoed twice by President Bill Clinton before he finally signed it. Since the welfare reform law expired in September 2002, Congress had passed six extensions, and the latest expired on June 30, 2004. Opposed by the Democrats are school choice opportunity scholarships that would help black children get out of failing schools and Social Security reform, even though blacks on average lose $10,000 in the current system because of a shorter life expectancy than whites (72.2 years for blacks vs. 77.5 years for whites).

Democrats have been running our inner-cities for the past 30-40 years, and blacks are still complaining about the same problems. Over $7 trillion dollars have been spent on poverty programs since President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty with little, if any, impact on poverty. Diabolically, every election cycle, Democrats blame Republicans for the deplorable conditions in the inner-cities, then incite blacks to cast a protest vote against Republicans.

In order to break the Democrats’ stranglehold on the black vote and free black Americans from the Democrat Party’s economic plantation, we must shed the light of truth on the Democrats. We must demonstrate that the Democrat Party policies of socialism and dependency on government handouts offer the pathway to poverty, while Republican Party principles of hard work, personal responsibility, getting a good education and ownership of homes and small businesses offer the pathway to prosperity.

EVIDENCE: A TRIBUTE TO MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

By Robin Smith
Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party

“And they said one to another, behold, this dreamer cometh.
Come now therefore, and let us slay him… and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”

These words, based on the account of the visionary Joseph from Genesis 37:20, are inscribed on the plaque affixed to the railing at the Lorraine Motel where the life of one of America’s heroes and dreamers ended. Martin Luther King, Jr. was, indeed, a visionary, whose tragic death at 39 years of age serves as a testimonial to the fact that his dreams live on and his devoted cause was an investment of good and decency that has made our nation much richer.

This young leader of hope, courage, and a commitment to live and pursue the unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, not the government, is memorialized today. Martin Luther King, Jr. provides an example that each American should apply in some way to our own lives as we reflect today on his legacy.

The government had not enforced the “rights” provided in the U.S. Constitution dating back to the 1860’s during the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Despite this inhumane fact, the rights remained ever-present for those of the black community. It was Martin Luther King, Jr. who, neither through violence nor hateful speech, pierced the heart of humankind with the sword of truth. That truth was that “a just law is a man made code that squares with moral law or law of God.” Dr. King knew that a secular approach to this issue would fail. Rather, contrasting the current law permitting segregation and blatant discrimination in the shadow of the Creator’s law and justice, Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed, “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal!’”

King’s message illuminating the truth of equality lit the way for others. One 15 year-old high school student inspired by Dr. King was Claudette Colvin. Hers is a name lost in the pages of history that preceded Rosa Parks in refusing to release her seat on a Montgomery bus by a full nine months. In the arrest report (yes, she was arrested), her charge states: “Colvin, 15 year old black female, arrested for not moving to the rear of the bus when asked to.”

The most striking visual in the arrest report is at the bottom of the page that shows Ms. Colvin’s fingerprints, the ink-stained fingers of a young lady inspired to stand for the truth serve to honor the touch of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on her beliefs and her life.

Whose fingerprints are on your life, your legacy? What trace of evidence exists to testify to your stand for truth and that dreams do come true? Each one of us answers these questions daily by the actions of our lives.

Thank you, Dr. King.

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Robin Smith is a member of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission and chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party.

A TRIBUTE TO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

By Aroll Jones and Kevin Glasco
Directors of the TRP African-American Development Council

On this day, we remember Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his vision of unifying the American people as “one nation under God with Liberty and Justice for all.” We celebrate the fact that the dream of “we shall overcome one day” has become a reality for most blacks and whites living in America today.

Now that we have overcome as a nation, we must unite to freely correct any issues prohibiting us from living the “American Dream.”

How can we honor Dr. King in 2008? Family values always were and will continue to be the key to Dr. King’s dream for his family, the black community and the United States of America. Now that the black community has arrived, we can not afford to lose the foundations we were built on: marriage between one man and one woman; more education, not less; and the ability to think freely, because we are not all alike.

As active members of the Tennessee Republican Party and Co-Chairmen of the African-American Development Council, we understand that our country is a two party system representing both capitalism and social justice. As Americans, we must understand and embrace both sides of this reality in order to move our families forward.

We the Co-Chairmen of the African-American Development Council of the Tennessee Republican Party would like to thank Dr. King for his accomplishments in paving the way for African-Americans and mankind alike.

Again, thank you!

Aroll Jones is a member of the Davidson County Republican Party (Director at Large), Co-Chairman of the African-American Development Council of Tennessee Republican Party, and is vice president of a construction products company.

Kevin Glasco is a member of the Davidson County Republican Party, Co-Chairman of the African-American Development Council of Tennessee Republican Party, and currently owns a consulting firm and small entertainment company.

SENATOR ALEXANDER ENDORSED BY PROMINENT DEMOCRATS

The Tennessee Republican Party issues the following statement regarding today’s announcement of the endorsement of U.S. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, by a group of prominent Democrats and Independents:

“Republican Senator Lamar Alexander is a statesman who campaigns on his beliefs shared with the Republican Party. He has governed and legislates to represent all Tennesseans and these endorsements support his distinguished voting record and leadership.”

Click here to view the Alexander press release