No, Martin Luther King was not a Republican

Our state partners have spotted a popular Republican talking point: the claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was a member of the GOP.

We heard it in Texas, then Tennessee and now Rhode Island.

To check it out, we checked with King biographers, including Pulitzer Prize winner David Garrow, and found that King avoided partisan identification. “It’s simply incorrect to call Dr. King a Republican,” Garrow told PolitiFact Texas.

We rated the claim False.