Initiation

This seems a fitting theme with which to launch this blog. I have been blogging officially for only seven months now, though it seems much longer. During this relatively brief period I have amassed a total of thirty-plus posts on my New Orleans blog, a number which could have been much larger had I been more attentive. I intend to use this "Thoughts" blog as a placeholder for my thoughts at large and as a clearing house for the products of my personal literary creative process.

I will begin with a piece I wrote recently on the current Black Republican phenomenon in the U.S.

Black Republicanism

A personal Essay

Dr. Martin Luther King a Republican? Anyone who has read about the life of Dr. King will recognize that he was essentially apolitical; he never declared himself a member of either major party, although it seems clear that he voted for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1960, and certainly for President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the organization that he co-founded along with the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Rev. Joseph Echols Lowery, and others, deliberately remained neutral, not endorsing anyone in any political campaign. His father, the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr., was indeed a registered Republican who broke with tradition in order to vote for J.F.K., and this out of regard for that candidate's show of concern for Dr. King’s wife Coretta when Dr. King had been taken into custody in 1960. Dr. King went on to work very closely with J.F.K., and L.B.J., in the promotion of civil rights and voting rights legislation. The White House liaison with whom he often interfaced during the Johnson administration was Louis Martin, a man of color from Savannah, GA., Editor and co-founder of the Michigan Chronicle in Detroit. A Democrat.

I have read several books written by Dr. King, or about him by others; most notably the Pulitzer Prize winning, three volume history of the King years by Taylor Branch. Never have I read that he interacted in any meaningful way with Republicans; certainly not with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, nor with Vice-President Richard M. Nixon. His closest associates ran for office as Democrats: former U.N. Ambassador, U.S. Representative, and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, the Rev. Jesse Jackson of Illinois, Kentucky State Senator Georgia Davis Powers, U.S. Rep. Walter Fauntroy of D.C., former Georgia State Representative and current NAACP Chairman Julian Bond. All Democrats.

The Republican Party was indeed our party - in the mid-19th century. There were great Republican leaders like Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, and Senator Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania; champions of equal rights, equal education, and equal protection under law for the former slaves. All of that began to disappear with the Southern Compromise of 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, betrayed the Freedmen by entering an unwritten gentleman’s agreement with southern Democrats to re-deploy federal troops from the defeated, occupied south, thus removing vital protection for people of color, leaving them to the mercy of restored southern home rule. Incidentally, as was true of George W. Bush in 2000, Hayes had no right to the Presidency in 1876. The rightful President was Samuel Tilden, who had won the popular vote and held the lead in the Electoral College. Just as the way was cleared for Mr. Bush by decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, Hayes was essentially appointed by a Congressional commission, the only time in U.S. history that that has ever happened.

It is unfortunate that writers and commentators like Frances Rice and Larry Elder glowingly cherish those halcyon days of yesteryear when the Republican party was indeed our own, while failing to acknowledge that such former realities no longer exist. The Republican Party began to change radically in modern times with the Nixonian Southern Strategy of four decades ago. To wit:

The late Senator James Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Lifelong opponent of equal rights for people of African descent; segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate for President in 1948 (known as Dixiecrats); changed his affiliation from overtly racist Dixiecrat to right-wing Republican in 1964. It was President Harry Truman’s executive order to desegregate the U.S. armed services that prompted Mr. Thurmond to rebel against the national Democratic party and oppose the President in 1948. It was President Lyndon Johnson’s support for new civil rights legislation in 1964 that prompted Mr. Thurmond to finally leave the party permanently.

What came to be known as the Southern Strategy was actually conceived during the 1964 Republican Presidential campaign of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, but popularized during the 1968 Nixon campaign. In describing its essence, Nixon political strategist Kevin Philips stated in a 1970 New York Times interview: “From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."

I therefore find it very difficult to believe that people of color in America today can identify with the Republican Party as having their best interests at heart.

Conclusion

In a statement released through the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Martin Luther King III said: "It is disingenuous to imply that my father was a Republican. He never endorsed any presidential candidate, and there is certainly no evidence that he ever even voted for a Republican. It is even more outrageous to suggest that he would support the Republican Party of today, which has spent so much time and effort trying to suppress African American votes in Florida and many other states."

When asked about the NBRA campaign, former SCLC President Joseph Lowery said: “These guys never give up, do they?” and added, “That was not the Martin I know and I don’t think they can substantiate that by any shape, form or fashion. It’s purely propaganda and poppycock.” He concluded by stating: “Even if he was [Republican], he would have nothing to do with what the Republican Party stands for today. Do they think Martin would support George W. Bush and the war in Iraq?”

Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and one of those who marched with Dr. King in the 1960’s called the NBRA ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for."

Today, there are 43 men and women of African descent serving in congress; 42 in the House, and one, Barack Obama, in the Senate. Not one is republican.

Antony I. Martin

July 14, 2008