From: David J. Garrow <>
Date: Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 2:48 AM
To: Meghan Ashford-Grooms <mashford79@gmail.com>


Hi--I'd be happy to talk on the phone, but lemme give you 3 parts of an answer: (1) It's simply incorrect to call Dr. King a Republican, period. (2) Without much doubt he voted for JFK in '60 and LBJ in '64 [do we know for sure that he actually turned up at his polling place? No, we don't, I believe], and he certainly *did* all but explicitly endorse LBJ in '64 *and* strongly criticize the Goldwater candidacy. (3) But I wouldn't as a result of that call him "a Democrat", for (a) he had very positive feelings about Richard Nixon in the late 50s & '60, (b) he had *extremely* positive feelings about Nelson Rockefeller, and (c) he became a *very* harsh critic of LBJ and wouldn't necessarily have backed Hubert Humphrey in '68 had he lived.