Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP

[cal04]

Assertion About Civil Rights Leader Angers Liberals -- and Conservatives
When a black conservative group ran a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, reaction was swift. "We've gotten some e-mails and telephone calls filled with vitriol," said Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association. "They've called me Aunt Jemima, a sellout, a traitor to my race."

In the battle for the black electorate, liberals, who make up the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to better the lives of African Americans. But when conservatives placed the civil rights movement in a Republican context, black liberals said, they crossed a line.

"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that affirms preemptive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich at the expense of the poor, is to revile Martin," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which the slain civil rights leader helped establish.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who marched with King in the 1960s, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html

[jobycom]

1. I have a dream that one day a man will be judged not by the color of

his skin but by the content of his stock portfolio? Maybe they are just thinking of a different Martin Luther King?

Wow. They've ruined Jesus, now they are after MLK.