Reading an article posted in Townhall the other day featuring a picture of Barak Obama, http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/HarryRJacksonJr/2008/01/25/south_carolina_who_would_dr_king_vote_for poses an interesting question...Who WOULD Dr. Martin Luther King vote for?

Would it surprise you if I told you that Martin Luther King was a Republican?

And one might also want to refer to this article 
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/HarryRJacksonJr/2007/01/15/dr_martin_luther_king,_jr_conservative_or_liberal

What if I told you the NAACP was started by Republicans?

In fact, would it surprise you to learn that the Republican party itself was founded in 1854 as an anti-slavery party?  
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16500

Republicans should be proud of their heritage regarding civil rights.  It might serve you well to do a little research on the early years of state constistutions protecting the voting rights for blacks which included those of Delaware (1776), New Hampshire (1784), Maryland (1776),  and New York (1777).  The proposed US Constitution was ratified by both black and white voters in many states.  Perhaps fueled by the roots of the thirst for freedom of the American Revolution, not all blacks were allowed to vote, only free blacks (slaves were not allowed to vote in any state).  As depicted in the movie Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce was instrumental in abolishing the slave trade in England with the passage of the Slave Trade Act in March of 1807.  This action rang loud across the Atlantic ocean and might well have influenced legislators in this country.

Congressional Action
As Congress moved to grant voting rights for all blacks in the fledgling new democracy, Congress banned slavery in 1789 , in 1794 the exportation of slaves from any state was banned and in 1808 the importation of any slave was banned.

A dark cloud formed in 1820, however as the deaths of most all of the Founding Fathers became a reality.  Increasingly, a racial bigotry began to weave it's way back into our government and a new anti-civil rights attitude began to express itself .  In fact, both North Carolina and Maryland reversed their voting policies to a "whites only" policy in 1809.

The Rise of the GOP
It was in response to the strong pro-slavery positions of the Democrat party that caused several anti slavery members of Congress to form the Republican party in 1854 as an "anti slavery" party.  "The original platform had only nine planks, six of which were dedicated to ending slavery and securing equal rights for African Americans.  The Democrat platform of that year took took an opposite position and defended slavery even warning that 'all efforts of the abolitionists [those oppposed to slavery] ...are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequenses and...diminish the happiness of the people and enndanger the stability and and permanency of the Union.'  The next Democratic platform (1860) endorsed both the Fugitive Law and the Dred Scott decision to justify their anti-black position." 

Abraham Lincoln
It was the year 1861 and Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president elected president with 42% of the popular vote and no Southern electoral votes.  The handwriting was clearly on the wall as the South succeded fron the North and the Civil War commenced.  In 1865 after the war ended, Congress passed the 13th ammendment abolishing slavery and the 14th Ammendment providing full civil rights for all blacks. 
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=134

Further Advancements for Blacks with the help of the GOP despite Democrat Opposition
The Fifteenth Ammendment (1870) known as the Reconstruction Ammendment prohibits the states or federal government from using a citizen's race, color, or previous status as a slave for a voting qualification and it was passeds by a Republican controlled Congress.  In 1894 it was repealed by a Democrat controlled Congress under Grover Cleveland.il Rights Act of 1964
Coming full circle, we now have a slate of presidential candidates before us.  

White supremacists worked club in hand with Democrats for decades:

May 22, 1856: Two years after the Grand Old party's birth, U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (R., Mass.) rose to decry pro-slavery Democrats. Congressman Preston Brooks (D., S.C.) responded by grabbing a stick and beating Sumner unconscious in the Senate chamber. Disabled, Sumner could not resume his duties for three years.

July 30, 1866: New Orleans's Democratic government ordered police to raid an integrated GOP meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.

September 28, 1868: Democrats in Opelousas, Louisiana killed nearly 300 blacks who tried to foil an assault on a Republican newspaper editor.

October 7, 1868: Republicans criticized Democrats' national slogan: "This is a white man's country: Let white men rule."

April 20, 1871: The GOP Congress adopted the Ku Klux Klan Act, banning the pro-Democrat domestic terrorist group.

October 18, 1871: GOP President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched federal troops to quell Klan violence in South Carolina.

September 14, 1874: Racist white Democrats stormed Louisiana's statehouse to oust GOP Governor William Kellogg's racially integrated administration; 27 are killed.

August 17, 1937: Republicans opposed Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Supreme Court nominee, U.S. Senator Hugo Black (D., Al.), a former Klansman who defended Klansmen against race-murder charges.

February 2005: The Democrats' Klan-coddling today is embodied by KKK alumnus Robert Byrd, West Virginia's logorrheic U.S. senator and, having served since January 3, 1959, that body's dean. Thirteen years earlier, Byrd wrote this to the KKK's Imperial Wizard: "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia." Byrd led Senate Democrats as late as December 1988. On March 4, 2001, Byrd told Fox News's Tony Snow: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time; I'm going to use that word." National Democrats never have arranged a primary challenge against or otherwise pressed this one-time cross-burner to get lost.

Contrast the KKKozy Democrats with the GOP. When former Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as a Republican, national GOP officials scorned him. Local Republicans endorsed incumbent Democrat Edwin Edwards, despite his ethical baggage. As one Republican-created bumper sticker pleaded: "Vote for the crook: It's important!"

Republicans also have supported legislation favorable to blacks, often against intense Democratic headwinds:

In 1865, Congressional Republicans unanimously backed the 13th Amendment, which made slavery unconstitutional. Among Democrats, 63 percent of senators and 78 percent of House members voted: "No."

In 1866, 94 percent of GOP senators and 96 percent of GOP House members approved the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing all Americans equal protection of the law. Every congressional Democrat voted: "No."

February 28, 1871: The GOP Congress passed the Enforcement Act, giving black voters federal protection.

February 8, 1894: Democratic President Grover Cleveland and a Democratic Congress repealed the GOP's Enforcement Act, denying black voters federal protection.

January 26, 1922: The U.S. House adopted Rep. Leonidas Dyer's (R., Mo.) bill making lynching a federal crime. Filibustering Senate Democrats killed the measure.

May 17, 1954: As chief justice, former three-term governor Earl Warren (R., Calif.) led the U.S. Supreme Court's desegregation of government schools via the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. GOP President Dwight Eisenhower's Justice Department argued for Topeka, Kansas's black school children. Democrat John W. Davis, who lost a presidential bid to incumbent Republican Calvin Coolidge in 1924, defended "separate but equal" classrooms.

September 24, 1957: Eisenhower deployed the 82nd Airborne Division to desegregate Little Rock's government schools over the strenuous resistance of Governor Orval Faubus (D., Ark.).

May 6, 1960: Eisenhower signs the GOP's 1960 Civil Rights Act after it survived a five-day, five-hour filibuster by 18 Senate Democrats.

July 2, 1964: Democratic President Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act after former Klansman Robert Byrd's 14-hour filibuster and the votes of 22 other Senate Democrats (including Tennessee's Al Gore, Sr.) failed to scuttle the measure. Illinois Republican Everett Dirksen rallied 26 GOP senators and 44 Democrats to invoke cloture and allow the bill's passage. According to John Fonte in the January 9, 2003, National Review, 82 percent of Republicans so voted, versus only 66 percent of Democrats.

True, Senator Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.) opposed this bill the very year he became the GOP's presidential standard-bearer. However, Goldwater supported the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights Acts and called for integrating Arizona's National Guard two years before Truman desegregated the military. Goldwater feared the 1964 Act would limit freedom of association in the private sector, a controversial but principled libertarian objection rooted in the First Amendment rather than racial hatred.

June 29, 1982: President Ronald Reagan signed a 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Republican party also is the home of numerous "firsts." Among them:

Until 1935, every black federal legislator was Republican. America's first black U.S. Representative, South Carolina's Joseph Rainey, and our first black senator, Mississippi's Hiram Revels, both reached Capitol Hill in 1870. On December 9, 1872, Louisiana Republican Pinckney Benton Stewart "P.B.S." Pinchback became America's first black governor.

August 8, 1878: GOP supply-siders may hate to admit it, but America's first black Collector of Internal Revenue was former U.S. Rep. James Rapier (R., Ala.).

October 16, 1901: GOP President Theodore Roosevelt invited to the White House as its first black dinner guest Republican educator Booker T. Washington. The pro-Democrat Richmond Times newspaper warned that consequently, "White women may receive attentions from Negro men." As Toni Marshall wrote in the November 9, 1995, Washington Times, when Roosevelt sought reelection in 1904, Democrats produced a button that showed their presidential nominee, Alton Parker, beside a white couple while Roosevelt posed with a white bride and black groom. The button read: "The Choice Is Yours."

GOP presidents Gerald Ford in 1975 and Ronald Reagan in 1982 promoted Daniel James and Roscoe Robinson to become, respectively, the Air Force's and Army's first black four-star generals.

November 2, 1983: President Reagan established Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday as a national holiday, the first such honor for a black American.

President Reagan named Colin Powell America's first black national-security adviser while GOP President George W. Bush appointed him our first black secretary of state.

President G.W. Bush named Condoleezza Rice America's first black female NSC chief, then our second (consecutive) black secretary of State. Just last month, one-time Klansman Robert Byrd and other Senate Democrats stalled Rice's confirmation for a week. Amid unanimous GOP support, 12 Democrats and Vermont Independent James Jeffords opposed Rice — the most "No" votes for a State designee since 14 senators frowned on Henry Clay in 1825.

http://www.rightwingnews.com/category.php?ent=3479

Barak Obama
In listening to Obama's South Carolina victory speech, one might truly be inspired.  In attempting to visit Barak Obama's website one is unable to access without registering. One might ask what Obama is FOR.  While calling the policies of the Bush administration "disaterous," it seems that Mr. Obama's major priorities are; ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence and , and providing universal health care.

In conclusion, one should look carefully before jumping to the conclusion that the MLK would immidately support either the Democrat party or Barak Obama given the history of the Republican party.  One last note, recently it was learned that the Trinity Church of Christ Mr. Obama attends in Chicago honored nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakahn, one whom many could consider to be somewhat of a bigot himself based on his anti Jewish statements. http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/obama_wright_farrakhan/2008/01/14/64332.html http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/Obama_raps_Farrakhan/2008/01/17/65151.html