Alveda King, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece and one of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally’s keynote speakers, said if her uncle were alive today, he’d choose to attend the Aug. 28 rally that “demonstrates the spirit of love and unity and peace.”
The “which rally would Martin Luther King, Jr., attend” debate entered the discussion of Beck’s Restoring Honor rally versus the “Reclaim the Dream” rally the Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network (NAN) are putting after NAACP President Ben Jealous said if Martin Luther King, Jr., was still alive today, he’d be attending the NAN rally on Aug. 28 and not Beck’s.
Alveda King is the only member of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s family to commit to speak at either rally – but the Hilary Shelton of the NAACP said the NAACP and NAN have reached out to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s daughter, Bernice King, to speak at their rally. Shelton said Bernice King hasn’t responded to them and she did not return voicemails to The Daily Caller seeking comment on her position.
“I’m speaking at the Glenn Beck rally because Glenn and I have had many conversations about faith, hope and love,” Alveda King said in a phone interview with TheDC. “Glenn asked me about the philosophy and the strength to love that my uncle Martin had. I’ve been sharing that with Glenn and I’m hearing and seeing Glenn embrace those principles. Where those principles are bound, and they’re not just rooted in the American Dream, but in the faith of our Father.”
Alveda King said she think Beck embraces the meaning of her late uncle’s “I have a dream,” speech, and aims for trying to reach a better tomorrow, better than the NAACP.
Lloyd Marcus, composer of the “Tea Party Song” and regular Tea Party rally speaker and black conservative, said he thinks Beck’s rally is where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would be were he alive today.
“I find them [the NAACP and NAN] totally disgusting and I salute my brother Glenn Beck,” Marcus said. “Dr. King was all about judging people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. That’s what Beck is all about. The NAACP are completely the opposite. They have far abandoned Dr. King’s vision and dream a long time ago because they are totally about skin color and they have nothing to do with the content of a person’s character.”
Marcus also said that, if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were alive today, he’d be disgusted with the civil rights leaders guiding the nation.
“If Dr. King were alive today, he’d feel as if he stepped into the twilight zone,” Marcus said. “He’d feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened to my dream? And, are you telling me that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and the likes of those guys now are running the civil rights movement? Oh, good Lord! What happened?’ He would be totally appalled.”
Shelton, who is the NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy and Washington, D.C., bureau government affairs director, discounted Alveda King’s importance as a speaker for Beck’s event, saying she’s using the platform to promote her “anti-choice,” or pro-life, agenda. Shelton also said Alveda King isn’t a fit representative of the “I have a dream” message her uncle left for the nation because, he said, she’s “undeniably a very long-term committed Republican and is pro-life.”
Alveda King said she’s non-partisan, though, and has served as an elected official in both parties, Democrat and Republican, in her past. She doesn’t care which party says what, but only about her uncle’s message of peace, love and unity.
“Today, I tell people in every party God is not a Democrat, God is not a Republican,” Alveda King told TheDC. “These issues [civil rights] transcend politics and I invite America to consider it.”
Shelton said that the NAACP doesn’t have an “official” stance on abortions and Martin Luther King, Jr., didn’t either but that he’s fairly sure Martin Luther King, Jr., was pro-choice, based on deductions from several of his speeches.
Alveda King, though, said her uncle was blatantly pro-life; she said Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wife, was pro-choice, though.
Alveda King said her uncle went as far as declining to accept an award from Planned Parenthood, and wouldn’t speak, or even write a speech, for one of Planned Parenthood’s events. She said the NAACP supports Planned Parenthood, too, which is another reason she thinks the “civil rights” organization isn’t fair, effective or meaningful.
“The NAACP supports one the most racist organizations on this planet – Planned Parenthood,” Alveda King said. “They will take money, by admission, to abort black babies. My uncle definitely would not have supported that, even nonviolently.”
Shelton also said he thinks Beck will use his rally to “distort” King’s message of improving rights for all Americans.
“What Dr. King was calling for was the expansion of rights, human rights and civil rights,” Shelton said. “Glenn is pulling together people who want to eliminate some of those human rights.”
To that end, Alveda King thinks Shelton is largely mistaken – she thinks the message of her uncle’s iconic speech was to eliminate different classifications of race, not keep them around.
“Our nation is not yet past racism because our nation has not yet understood that there is one race: human,” Alveda King said.
Alveda King said racism isn’t even close to gone in this country, but there’s no way anyone, especially the NAACP, could label the Tea Party as a racist organization.
“The whole Tea Party definitely cannot be labeled as racist,” Alveda King told TheDC. “I’m in a group of African-American conservatives that had a press conference recently and they’re members of the Tea Party. If you’re going to call the Tea Party racist, you’re going to have to call us racist – and that’s ludicrous.”
Marcus said there’s no substance to the NAACP’s claims of Tea Party racism
“Benjamin Jealous, the president of the NAACP, is a disgusting, bald-faced liar because he said he saw sign that said ‘Lynch Barack Obama’ and ‘Lynch Eric Holder,’” Marcus told TheDC in a phone interview. “That man [Jealous] is a liar. Those signs do not exist. If they did exist, they would be posted everywhere.”
From the more than 200 different Tea Party rallies he’s been to, Marcus said he hasn’t met a since racist nor seen a racist sign – only signs that may have been construed as racist.
“These people [Tea Partiers] couldn’t give a hoot about Barack Obama’s skin color, they don’t oppose that,” Marcus said. “They oppose his policies and his socialist agenda. As a matter of fact, many of the people at the Tea Party rallies even voted for Barack Obama because they got sucked into the hope and change thing.”
Alveda King thinks the NAACP and similar organizations should get involved, though, when actual racism is exposed and fight it – and that means every time racism is exposed.
“Whenever you find racist acts, they need to be dealt with,” Alveda King said. “I have no problem with that, it should be. But, I’m saying it should be across the board — the NAACP selectively fights racism.”
Marcus thinks the NAACP and NAN are the ones to blame for the race card getting played this time around.
“These people [the NAACP and NAN] have the audacity to jump on Glenn Beck and call Glenn Beck a racist – they’re the racists,” Marcus said. “They’re the evil, disgusting people because they’re constantly attempting to exploit race and stir up racial tension in this country.”