Myth 2: He was a Republican
Somewhere in America someone is probably erecting a billboard that makes this claim: King was a Republican.
It's virtually a King holiday ritual.
"It's one of those things that will never die," says Judd Legum, editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress.
The notion, though, that King was a Republican is absurd, King scholars say.
"Dr. King never believed in any kind of party identification," Baldwin says. "He never allowed himself to become closely aligned with partisan politics. He occasionally said that that both the Democratic and Republican Party had betrayed his people."
The idea that King was a Republican is built on a historical sleight of hand. King's father, the Rev. Martin Luther "Daddy" King Sr., was a Republican. But so were many blacks in the early to mid-20th century. Then the Republican Party was the party of Abraham Lincoln, the Great Liberator. That party identification, though, started shifting in the mid- to late 20th century as Democratic presidents began championing civil rights.
(Daddy King publicly shifted allegiance to the Democrats when President John F. Kennedy displayed public sympathy for his son.)
Legum, in an essay for ThinkProgress, cited a 1958 interview where King said, "I'm not inextricably bound to either party."
King, though, was particularly critical of the Republican Party's selection of Barry Goldwater, an archconservative, as its 1964 presidential candidate.
King worked closely with President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, to help spur the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, two critical civil rights laws championed by Johnson. When Johnson ran for president in 1964, King let the public know which party he preferred, Legum says.
"He was basically campaigning for Johnson in 1964," Legum says of King.
Good Lord, the sexism was rampant. Even Malcolm [X] was a sexist.
Gwendolyn Simmons, civil rights activist, on civil rights leaders' attitudes toward women.
Would King still be nonpartisan today? Maybe. But some King scholars say he would have been sympathetic to Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders is a self-described "Democratic Socialist," a label that also has been applied to King.
King called for universal health care and education, as well as a radical redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom, Baldwin says.
"He was talking about a Democratic Socialist agenda, what Bernie Sanders is talking about," Baldwin says. "Dr. King's ideas correspond well with Bernie Sanders."
But you probably won't see a billboard this week saying King is a Democratic Socialist.
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