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I think assigning MLK to the Republican Party needs some clarification in the interest of intellectual honesty.
Firstly, what is a Republican? I think there are three possible definitions:
1. Someone who has in some way officially associated with the Republican Party. This could include running for office as a GOP candidate, becoming a GOP campaign worker in some capacity or registering as a republican in a closed primary state. Georgia, MLK's home state is an open primary state that does not ask party affiliations of voters and to my understanding he never ran for office or worked as a GOP employee or volunteer. I do remember now MLK lived in Massachusetts, Alabama and Illinois for short periods and unlike Georgia might be closed primary states. I am unaware of any declaration of party affiliation by MLK while living outside of Georgia.
2. Someone who votes for republican candidates along strict party lines. For MLK this would have to mean he voted against the two presidents who did more for Civil Rights than any others, JFK and LBJ.
3. Someone who self-identifies as a republican. This one is in my opinion is possible but dubious. People who are highly involved in activism that benefits from having as few political foes as possible, often are wise with their political associations and either keep their political leanings secret and/or if they do live in a closed primary state say they're independent. This is done specifically to have friends and not enemies in the interest of what they see as a greater cause. I have not been able to see anything conclusive from MLK himself where he self-identified as a republican. The only evidence of which I am aware regarding an MLK GOP party affiliation is MLK's niece Alveda King, herself a GOP activist, is on record as saying her uncle was a republican coupled with no one in the civil rights leadership nor other members of the king family denying it.
Here's what I think is probably the most honest answer. MLK was politically independent who voted for republicans in southern state and local races were segregationists ran the democrat party at the time and voted for democrats in presidential elections where at the federal level the democrats were the biggest allies in the quest for racial equality.
An fun extra credit exercise would be to look into the history and see where MLK stood on the issues.
- obviously, he supported civil rights for minorities.
- he was against the Viet-Nam War
- he supported anti-poverty programs
- as a champion of non-violence he probably would have been for gun control
- he was in Memphis on that fateful day because he was helping in a worker action where black sanitation department employees were acting as a type of labor union and were on strike demanding better compensation and conditions.
...cant think of anything else off the top.
We know he stated he had traditionally voted for Democrats, if I recall correctly, for national office, as of 1956. In the following election, we have apparently some piece of evidence that he may have voted for Eisenhower by way of a meeting MLK had with Nixon the subsequent year (I haven't been able to quickly track that one down yet either). We know he had felt personally snubbed by Nixon in 1960, which makes it difficult to sell the idea that he would then vote for the man that he felt snubbed him. We know that MLK later stated that had Kennedy lived through the next election cycle, he would have publicly endorsed the candidate. We then know on top of that in 1964, MLK felt it urgent to publicly campaign against Barry Goldwater, not because Barry was somehow seen as a racist, but because his philosophy and platform seemed too congenial for racists. Then, in his final years we do know that he was very much moving toward the Left, perhaps always was, in the remaining years before his assassination.