If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, would he be in business with the likes of The Reverend Jesse Jackson, and The Reverend Al Sharpton?

I doubt it, seriously. I feel Dr. King was in a very different league then Sharton and Jackson. King had much more sincere character and finess. I also feel he spoke from his heart, not from what he thought would make him great. Just my humble opinion.

If King were alive to see what is happening today he would be rolling in his grave!

King was controversial among his peers in his own time. His fellow clergymen thought that his being an activist was going too far. His fellow activists thought that his being a pacifist meant he wasn’t willing to go far enough. I don’t know if he would have cashed in eventually—though he refused all opportunities to do so during his lifetime—but I doubt he would have played things quite the way that Sharpton and Jackson do. How close he would have worked with them is anyone’s guess, though. Just because he wouldn’t play the same way doesn’t mean he would have kept them away.

Think about the relationship between King and Malcolm X. The two became philosophically closer and closer as time went on, King becoming more radical and Malcolm X becoming more moderate (though King never abandoned nonviolence and Malcolm X never embraced it). They were also making moves to become personally closer. Perhaps they would have worked together had they not both been killed. King understood that you did not need to agree with someone on everything in order to work with them when the terms of doing so were acceptable to all involved.

I think that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be more like black Republican Senator Elbert Guillory than the likes of Jackson and Sharpton. Like Martin Luther King, Senator Guillory truly care about black people. Jackson and Sharpton are rich from keeping black people down in poverty which is not what Martin Luther King would be interested in doing,

@gondwanalon Ditto. I was going to say almost exactly the same thing!

Be funny if he’d become a member here, “I have a dream…what does it mean?”

@gondwanalon @DWW25921 You think King, who stuck to his views even when they cost him political capital, would be comparable to an opportunist who switched parties just to win an election? You think King, who openly supported reparations, redistribution of resources, and the restructuring of society, would be comparable to someone who endorses the bootstrapping rhetoric of the Republican party? You think King, who publicly criticized capitalism and embraced democratic socialism, would be comparable to a rank-and-file conservative of today’s ilk?

Or was Guillory just the first black person you could think of who agreed with your own views and who you thought could be used to appropriate King for your own cause?

@SavoirFaire Actually you’re right. Looking at it that way… King was a very smart man. This means if he were alive today he’d clearly become a registered Independent. :)

@SavoirFaire Dr. Alveda C. King, Niece of MLK says that MLK was a Republian Also check out the National Black Republican Association for many more brilliant black people who agree with my views.

No not at all, unlike Dr King Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are more akin to Pat Robertson in that they all make a fortune off of fear, hate and intolerance.

@DWW25921 The American Independent Party was founded in part on segregationism. I sincerely doubt that King would have had anything to do with it. Now, it occurs to me that you might not have actually meant “registered Independent,” but something along the lines of “unaffiliated voter” or “independent voter” (which is different). In that case, I’d agree. King was adamantly against endorsing either party. This is one of the many thing on which I agree with him.

@gondwanalon Alveda King says a lot of things about her uncle, nearly all of which are contradicted by his wife, his children, and his own words. In his autobiography, for instance, he describes the Republican party as racist, reactionary, and extremist. He also refers to the 1964 Republican National Convention as “the frenzied wedding … of the KKK with the radical right.”

This isn’t to say that he liked the Democrats much better. Though his letters reveal that he almost always voted Democratic in the presidential election, King believed that both parties had terrible weaknesses and steadfastly refused to publicly endorse political candidates. The only time he considered breaking that from that policy was for John F. Kennedy. A bullet in Dallas, however, took the question off the table.

And for the record, I’m perfectly aware that there are plenty of black Republicans. The point was simply that there are no grounds for thinking that King was one of them or for trying to appropriate his legacy.

@SavoirFaire You’re right again… (sigh) It seems you knew what I meant as opposed to what I actually said which admittedly was a little vague. I tend to lump everything that isn’t republocrat into the “Independent” category. I will make it a point to watch my terms more closely.

@SavoirFaire Karin McQuillan disputes your claim that Dr. Martin Luther King was not a Republican. Also if MLK was not happy with the Democratic party back in the 1960’s do you truly think that he would be happy with it today? The Democratic Party that has done so little to help black people rise from poverty, dependency, illiteracy, violence and moral decay.

No. In my opinion if MLK was alive today he would definitely distance himself from the likes of Jessy Jackson and Al Sharpton.