King's legacy soars with non-partisan ties

Paid for by the National Black Republican Association, the ad is airing in Maryland and Ohio — two states where black Republicans are running for statewide office.

In addition to making unfounded claims about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the ad blames Democrats for creating the Ku Klux Klan, says it was Democrats who released "those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks" and contends that "Democrats want to keep us poor."

It's almost tempting to laugh at this outrageously slanted version of history, but we dare not dismiss it.

The NBRA ads follow the revisionist playbook of the radical religious right — in particular, the claims of a white Texas minister, David Barton, who is seeking to persuade African-Americans to join the Republican Party based on a twisted, selective view of history. The danger lies in the appeal of these distortions to a younger generation too young to remember the struggle for civil rights.

The truth is that men and women of honor on both sides of the political aisle supported the civil rights movement. It's also true that individuals from both parties have been responsible for acts of great courage and acts of great shame in the long history of slavery, emancipation and civil rights.

But Barton and his allies at the NBRA choose only the events from history that flatter the Republican Party, ignore every piece of civil rights legislation championed by Democrats since 1964 and crown their distortions with the ludicrous assertion that King was a Republican.

Of course that's not true.

King was avowedly nonpartisan, and he refused to endorse candidates from either political party. The principles he fought for, including racial harmony, social justice and equal opportunity for all, are far removed from those currently advocated by the far-right ideologues who control the Republican Party.

Yet, there is clearly an organized and well-funded attempt to co-opt King's name and legacy for political gain.

The NBRA ads mirror the outrageous assertions Barton makes in his new DVD titled "American History in Black and White."

Barton got his start as a faux "historian" by telling audiences around the country that the Founding Fathers were evangelical Christians who supported the Religious Right's political agenda — work that was widely criticized by other experts. Then, in 2004, Barton was paid by the Republican National Committee to help bring African-Americans into the fold.

Leading African-American Republicans, as well as Democrats, have denounced the NBRA ads, as they should. But even if the ads are taken off the air, the broader problem still exists.

The deceptive strategy of rewriting history to benefit Republicans is still being carried out by GOP allies, as is evidenced by Earl Ofari Hutchinson's guest opinion column ("Republicans' claim to King has merit") that appeared Monday in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The strategy will not work in the short term — the days of segregation and Jim Crow are more than an abstraction to the millions of African-Americans who lived through them, and our memories are stronger than a cheap political ad. But there is a danger in the long run that if we fail to refute these claims, they will start to replace the truth in our nation's collective consciousness. That is why it is so important for us to stand up to this deception.