If you've read Orwell's "Animal Farm" you must be familiar with the events surrounding a pig named Snowball. He was a small, brave, scrappy pig who lead other animals on a fictitious farm AGAINST humans and was given some sort of medal for his heroism. After the revolution ends the most power hungry of the pigs sees Snowball as a political threat and banishes him then spends the next several years using him as a scapegoat for any and all things that go horribly wrong, and then finally gets to the point where history books are re-written to where the battle in which he fought bravely against humanity never happened but the official story had been altered to where he in fact lead the humans in their charge against the animals. Such is revisionist history.
Having grown up in the American south circa the 70s and 80's I had my teachers, parents and grand parents tell me nearly ad-nauseam about the civil rights movement. I heard about the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and Martin Luther King Junior more before 7th grade than I'd imagine my white counterparts had their entire lives in suburbia. I was told how my grandfather was called "boy" so frequently into his adult life that it may as well have been his name. How schools and every other facet of your life in the south as a person of color was to remain utterly separate from everyone else solely because of the color o your skin.
I didn't harbor any grudges against anyone for this as I figured things had changed and change was frequently a good. Besides there are good and bad people of every race, nationality and religion and it will always be that way. It wasn't until was older that I learned that Dr King had been assassinated by those who disagreed with him and his message.
Earlier this year there was some flack about history books published for use in North Carolina schools which told of all black soldiers who fought for the cause of The Confederate States of America. This would have been a GRIPPING story if it were the least bit true. It was revisionist history to the point of flat out lying. In the early stages of the war a group of creole businessmen started their own militia and volunteered to fight for the Confederate cause. Let me give a little background of the definition of "creole". In those days many white men who owned slaves impregnated their female slaves with frightening regularity. It happened so frequently that man began to question rather or not those children were slave or free. It got to the point that laws were subsequently written to state that in such cases the child's freedom or slavery would be "determined by the servitude of the mother." In other words if your mother was a slave and your father literally owned her congrats your father isn't your father he's your master and you weren't considered half white but completely black. Some states would have odd definitions to determine how black someone was. If you were half black you were mulatto. If you were a quarter black you were a "quadroon" an eighth black an "octoroon". Mississippi being the bastion of free thought that it was and remains today kept it simple if you had one drop of black blood you were black no ifs ands or buts.
What became of the Creole Militia? They were told that their services were not wanted and to disband. Not only that but the confederacy went so far as to pass laws banning blacks from service to their cause. Wealthy men could bring slaves unto the battle field and many did. These slaves were valets, cooks, grave diggers and performed menial tasks. They WERE NOT soldiers. Near the end of the war there was a drastic troop shortage and some talk of conscripting slaves but it never truly materialized. What's the point of that story? Well as it stands those who would have you believe that there were black men fighting to the death to defend the rights of other men to keep them as livestock would also now have you believe an altered history in which Martin Luther King Junior was a conservative REPUBLICAN.
Martin Luther King was honored with a national holiday commemorating all he accomplished in the civil rights movement and there was stiff opposition to it. Many REPUBLICANS in Congress argued that another Federal Holiday would cost the country BILLIONS in lost productivity. Others argued that despite being a man of the cloth Dr King was a serial adulterer who cheated on exams in college. Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms (Republicans who had been Democrats) fought the legislation tooth and nail and even AFTER it became law the state of Arizona refused to celebrate it until they were told by the National Football League that the Superbowl would never be played there until they did.
The utter shortage of black Republicans has our friends in the GOP reaching at straws to attempt to recruit black faces but this takes the cake. Before any one's panties get into a bunch I want to say that I served in the military when Colin Powell (former secretary of State) was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I have the utmost respect for the general and would follow him into hell were he conducting a mission to take out the devil himself. I think former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice is a BRILLIANT woman. While I disagree with her politics I respect her intellect and will say nary a bad word about her as a person. I have no issue with black Republicans (except Clarence Thomas) so this piece isn't an attack on them. The GOP is now spreading the lie that because the old Democratic party controlled the segregated south that MLK was obviously a Republican despite never producing any documentation that he was a registered Republican.
Let's analyze that argument. It wouldn't explain why the Democratic party split in the late 60s because the Northern Democrats were in favor of civil rights laws but southern Dems weren't. Democrats back then (like republicans now) weren't a monolith to be described as having one thought process.
Republican president Dwight Eisenhower said of putting Earl Warren (who encouraged the entire Supreme Court to vote UNANIMOUSLY on Brown v. Topeka which desegregated public schools) on the high court was "the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made" and even went on to defend those who attacked the 13 black children who integrated Little Rock, Arkansas' "Central High" by saying "These aren't BAD people...but try to imagine your sweet little girl sitting in a classroom next to some hulking negro." Conservatives like William F. Buckley went so far in his Magazine the National Review to refer to blacks as "inferior" and a "servant class." Then of course there were many in the GOP in the 50s who called any one who supported civil rights a "communist."
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson MAY have very well have BEEN a racist. I never met the man and can't say one way or the other but he DID pass more civil rights legislation than ANY American President before or since. Martin Luther King met with President Johnson to discuss the civil rights issues of the 1960s. Between 1954 and 1960 Eisenhower NEVER invited him to the White House. Johnson in a presidential address in 1964 said that America needed to overcome it's racial problems and said for the record "And we shall overcome" quoting the popular civil rights anthem.
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater referred to the civil rights movement as America's "Negro problem" and let it be known that he most certainly did NOT support it. Why would Dr King align himself with causes so juxtaposed to what he believed?
Let us also consider two other things. Right before he died (according to the documentary Eyes on the Prize) Dr King prior to his assassination was organizing a "poor people's march on Washington." It was to take place in the summer of 68. Men and women would be camping out in tents on the national moll to bring attention to the fact that a good portion of America's populace lived in poverty and that there existed a great chasm between America's rich and poor. Sound a bit like the 99% movement? Anyway, King was assassinated right before this occurred and King Lieutenant Andrew Young attempted the event but it was poorly organized and most Americans paid little attention.
The week of his death King was in Memphis, Tennessee to speak out of behalf of black Sanitation workers who were in the midst of a garbage strike. City workers were still very segregated and black sanitation workers were not allowed to use the same city facilities as their white co workers to the point of not being allowed to seek shelter from cold or rain. During a rain storm a black worker sought refuge in the back of a garbage truck and was crushed to death which lead to the black workers going on strike. King came in amid death threats and was ultimately fell by an assassin's bullet.
Martin Luther King is dead today PARTIALLY because he braved death threats in order to stand up for organized labor. The GOP routinely tells us how organized labor is the worst thing to ever happen to this country. It's proudest moments include recent legislation in Wisconsin and New Jersey which strip labor unions of collective bargaining rights and most famously President Ronald Reagan firing thousands of striking Air Traffic Controllers in the 1980s.
The GOP does NOT support organized labor. One would have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt to find a Republican who did. To imply that someone who openly supported labor unions and was willing to sacrifice his life for one was secretly among their ranks is to say the least absurd and transcends being MERELY insulting. The GOP hated King in his lifetime. Former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who trashed King in the 60s if asked about him in the 80s or 90s would utter the same opinions that he had in 1964 when he was running for president and for that the late Senator has my respect. Many men and women who were on the losing side in America's civil rights era will speak with respect when they describe Dr. King and the men and women who marched and protested in their cities. They look back at the Baptist minister as a formidable and organized opponent whose methods ultimately won out.
The current GOP will smile whenever Dr. King's name is mentioned and while many may speak of him with some genuine reverence, there are others who will put on their best fake smile and tell us what the great American WOULD have thought about certain pieces of legislation or supreme court decisions. Black people do not OWN Dr. King or his legacy nor should we act as if his message wasn't universal and doesn't apply to all Americans.
The current GOP who is simply hoping to morph the civil rights martyr into a recruiting tool to serve there own ends should be embarrassed by their reprehensible and odious attempts to not only ignore a mans history but to morph it into an obvious lie. What is MOST inherently offensive about this attempt at revisionist history is the fact that they didn't even have the common decency to wait for any and all who KNEW the man OR are old enough to have lived THROUGH the civil rights movement to DIE off before they started this shameful campaign to sully a good man's name, deeds and reputation.
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