Civil Rights Leader Rev. Walter Fauntroy Equates Tea Party with Ku Klux Klan Over Outrage to Glenn Beck's Rally

Civil rights leader Rev. Walter Fauntroy equates Tea Party with Ku Klux Klan to express outrage at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally same weekend Dr. King delivered "I Have a Dream" speech at Lincoln Memorial

Civil rights activist and former congressman Rev. Walter Fauntroy equated the Tea Party with the Ku Klux Klan Thursday as he blasted Glenn Beck's rally planned for Washington D.C. Saturday. He called on blacks to organize a "new coalition of conscience" to rebut the rally scheduled to be held at the Lincoln Memorial featuring former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others. This is where I have a big problem. It is so destructive to paint such a wide swath by condemning the entire Tea Party movement as racist. How would he have like the entire Democratic Party to be called racist because it accepted the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a one-time member of the KKK? Glenn Beck has a right to hold his rally at the Lincoln Memorial, even if it was a deliberate attempt to sully the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., with an idiot such as Sarah Palin,who clearly shows she isn't for inclusion and looking out for the people on Main Street. I would venture to say she knows very little about what Dr. King stood for. Dr. King's legacy is for all Americans, not just blacks.

Back to Rev. Fauntroy. According to ABC News, he sought to explain the comparison to white supremacists by saying the organizers behind Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally are the same people who cut audio cables from a sound system the night before the historic March on Washington and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Wow, I hope he has proof to back up those claims.

"We are going to take on the barbarism of war, the decadence of racism, and the scourge of poverty, that the Ku Klux -- I meant to say the Tea Party," Fauntroy told a news conference today at the National Press Club. "You all forgive me, but I -- you have to use them interchangeably." Source

Sorry but Rev. Fauntroy's position is the reason why many blacks don't take the NAACP and other so-called civil rights groups seriously. They don't fight fair and I am sure, given what I have studied about Dr. King, he would be appalled at the state of these organizations in this country today. Rev. Fauntroy's comments were destructive and set the dialogue on race a few steps back. I am surprised that a man, who has been credited with being one of the chief organizers of the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, could come out against the Tea Party movement in such a fashion, to say it is akin to the KKK. I don't like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin, not because of who they are, but because of the rhetoric they spew that isn't meant to improve the dialogue on race in this country. But they have a right to hold a rally in Washington D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial on the same weekend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The reality is that neither Glenn Beck nor Sarah Palin could ever come close to the stature of Dr. King.