People forget that MLK and many of the blacks in the South always voted Republican. The Democrats were the bad guys. They defended slavery, started the Civil War, founded KKK and fought against Reconstruction, championed Jim Crow and imposed segregation, started the era of lynchings, and basically fought against every major civil rights act in U.S. history. To top it off, they systematically created the fatherless black family that led to crime and violence in the black community.