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→Political affiliation: we can include this, but it should not be a replacement of the other content. Just because in one speech he chose not to endorse either party does not mean he didn't generally favor one.
It was the Republicans who led the way to free the slaves nearly one-hundred years earlier; that fact was not lost on his generation. Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association said, [he] "absolutely was a Republican," and "We were all Republicans in those days. The Democrats were training fire hoses on us, siccing dogs on us."<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP, Washington Post, October 19, 2006]</ref> In the 1960s, King would have witnessed the Democrat parties position on pro-[[segregation]], against the Civil Rights Act. King was most likely aware of high-profile Democrats such as [[Al Gore]] Sr. and the [[Exalted Cyclops]] [[Robert Byrd]] voting against repealing segregation. Southern Democrats rallied around [[Jim Crow]] laws and Black Codes which were targeted against King's message. [[Dixiecrat]]s blocked the social and political progress of black Southerners for decades. Was King unaware? Doubtful. It was Republican [[President Eisenhower]] who began the push for integrating all-white schools and the desegregation of the military. To think King was a witness to all the upheaval Democrats caused and then became a champion of Democrats is a stretch.
It was the Republicans who led the way to free the slaves nearly one-hundred years earlier; that fact was not lost on his generation. Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association said, [he] "absolutely was a Republican," and "We were all Republicans in those days. The Democrats were training fire hoses on us, siccing dogs on us."<ref>[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101801754.html Controversial Ad Links MLK, GOP, Washington Post, October 19, 2006]</ref> In the 1960s, King would have witnessed the Democrat parties position on pro-[[segregation]], against the Civil Rights Act. King was most likely aware of high-profile Democrats such as [[Al Gore]] Sr. and the [[Exalted Cyclops]] [[Robert Byrd]] voting against repealing segregation. Southern Democrats rallied around [[Jim Crow]] laws and Black Codes which were targeted against King's message. [[Dixiecrat]]s blocked the social and political progress of black Southerners for decades. Was King unaware? Doubtful. It was Republican [[President Eisenhower]] who began the push for integrating all-white schools and the desegregation of the military. To think King was a witness to all the upheaval Democrats caused and then became a champion of Democrats is a stretch.
King did at least at one point choose not to publicly endorse either party. While speaking at Bennett College in 1958, for example, he emphasized the importance of voting. However, he was careful to specify that he was not supporting either political party specifically, nor thought that either one was perfect.
{{cquote|I'm not here to tell you how to vote," he said. "That isn't my concern. I'm not a politician. I have no political ambitions. I don't think the Republican party is a party full of the almighty God nor is the Democratic party. They both have weaknesses. And I'm not inextricably bound to either party.<ref>https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/interview-bennett-college</ref>}}
=== Communist? ===
=== Communist? ===