An action by the Duval County GOP aimed at correcting misinformation often conveyed in public school history classes-that the Republican Party was traditionally racist, and that all good things in civil rights legislation came from the Democratic Party-has sparked a kerfuffle in Jacksonville, and it relates to the top leader of the civil rights movement.

That disagreement manifested recently when a Jacksonville attorney sent a letter to the chairman of the Duval County Republican Party. Rhonda Peoples-Waters wrote that having learned the Duval GOP intended to distribute a brochure during voter registration at local high schools, she noted an error in the text-that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Republican. The National Black Republican Association makes the same claim. Peoples-Waters wrote: "In fact, the evidence...indicates otherwise." She cited a Washington Post article in 2006 claiming Dr. King actually voted for President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

Samuel Newby, 2^nd vice-president of the Republican Party in Duval (photo above), dispatched a written response to Ms. Peoples-Waters. Newby cited and included a copy of a letter authored by Francis Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association. Rice said Dr. King, Jr., was a Republican and that claim was affirmed by the niece of Dr. King, Dr. Alveda C. King, and Rice pointed to the NBRA website where an article and a video are posted. Rice also noted a common-sense piece of information-Dr. King, Jr., would have voted a secret ballot like all other voters and therefore no witness could confirm the civil rights leader casting a vote for Johnson. Rice cited a number of other supporting documents, rightly pointing out the racism in the Democratic Party in the pre-civil rights era.

That racism is no secret. None other than Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) has confessed publicly to his participation in the Ku Klux Klan-that story ran in the sympathetic-to-all-things Democratic The Washington Post. In addition, scholars have noted President Dwight D. Eisenhower's signature on the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Sister cheerleader to Democrats, The New York Times pointed out that was the first federal civil rights legislation to pass in 82 years-"a coalition of Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans had consistently blocked progress."

That the paper used the term ‘conservative' in that statement is appropriate for the politics of the time, but inappropriate if the term ‘conservative' is used in a truly ideological manner. It is a matter of record that Johnson was the Senate's Democratic Party majority leader in 1957. Johnson led efforts to weaken civil rights legislation. The NYT notes: "Republicans provided 37 of the 60 yes votes when the final bill passed the Senate."

A particularly favorite myth promoted by some teachers declared all the racists joined the Republican Party as a protest of civil rights legislation. This myth was reinforced in February when the Democratic Party Chairman in Duval County made remarks about 503 Democrats "defecting" to the Republican Party during the general election. Chairman Travis Bridges said, "It's just a suspicion that a lot of them were ‘Dixie-crats' who were voting Republican anyway."

When I read that, I responded with a column correcting Bridges' statement, having on hand all manner of documentation of Bridges' own party's tradition of racism, noting that the Dixiecrats were a Democratic Party product and some blacks chose not to cast a vote for President Barack Obama on a number of grounds, not the least of which is his unyielding support for partial birth abortion.

Was Dr. King a Republican? We certainly have no means of asking him now, but it is safe to conclude that had King a political affiliation as he began to champion civil rights, he would have found a far more receptive audience in the GOP. On June 24, 1958, a photo appeared in the NYT. In that photo are a number of civil rights leaders standing with President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Attorney General William P. Rogers. Among those leaders are Dr. King, A. Phillip Randolph and Roy Wilkins. I have a print copy of the photo in my office because at the time, it was an astounding moment in my country's history. I should confess that although I am Southern, I first began to lobby for civil rights as a 6th grader when I wrote a letter to the editor of our weekly newspaper in my small town.

The standard presentation of civil rights in public classrooms and often in media praises President John F. Kennedy as the champion of that movement. In reality, Dwight D. Eisenhower took concrete steps to ensure rights for all before Kennedy even thought about it. Ironically Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act when he was a senator, and a number of scholarly works claim Kennedy also directed the FBI to wiretap and investigate Dr. King. Widely available on the Web are videos of President Johnson making racist statements.While Peoples-Waters may believe she can disprove the GOP's claim to Dr. King's politics, history is replete with incidents of racism on the parts of both political parties as well as from all parts of the country.

However, it must be noted that for a 40-year period, until 1994, Democrats controlled Congress. Had it not been for a Republican president, civil rights legislation would likely have been postponed indefinitely.

My gut is that Dr. King, being an accomplished politican of sorts himself, would have placed his vote with the party that advanced the cause of his people, and that even if later on he did cast the vote the newspaper claimed, the GOP is on solid ground when it claims the civil rights leader as its own for many years.