MLK DAY: Hate Groups Try to Tarnish Legacy
Some will not be able to tell the site is full of hateful rhetoric aimed at discrediting King and his legacy, or that one of its goals is to have the national holiday in King's honor repealed.
One parent, who oversees a website for her daughter's middle school, spent enough time on martinlutherking.org to find its insidious underbelly.
"It is cleverly designed to appeal to and attract students. It promotes itself as a 'valuable resource for teachers and students' featuring 'historical trivia, articles and photos,'" the parent told Tolerance.org in an e-mail. "It's full of junk information, misinformation, rap lyrics to attract kids, and denigrating fliers it advises kids to photocopy and hand out at school. Hundreds of thousands of children will probably see it...."
The King hate site retrieved by Google is owned by former Klan member Don Black, founder of Stormfront, an Internet-based hate group.
The Icon
Every year white supremacists use Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to kick off a new year of hate. In many Southern states, mid-January is usually attached to a Confederate holiday, such as Robert E. Lee's birthday. Those looking to celebrate the Confederacy resent King's holiday, and many hate groups across the country hold public and private anti-MLK rallies.
One such group, North East White Pride, has planned to "protest this fake holiday the Saturday before [in Boston] so the hard working white men and women of the Northeast can come out," according to the group's online forum.
"Remember, MLK was a drug addict, a liar, a commie, wife beater, whoremonger, plagiarist and of course a filthy nigger. Why should he get a holiday? Just to keep the niggers from rioting," writes the North East White Pride forum administrator.
"Why are people still targeting him? One reason: He's been so iconicized and romanticized. They assume they can defame the icon, and he was the icon," says Georgette Norman, director of the Rosa Parks Museum, based in Montgomery, Ala., where King led the bus boycott.
Joe Roy of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors hate groups across the country, says "there'll probably be a number of anti-MLK rallies. It's a favorite [holiday] among hate groups."
He notes two reasons: Hate group members often have the day off from work, and the rallies attract new recruits.
A Teachable Moment
Parental involvement is the best way to counteract such hateful activity on the Internet, according to Roy.
The middle-school mother, outraged by Stormfront's hate site masquerading as a legitimate resource, chose to contact the technology coordinator at her daughter's school to block the website from school computers. She also contacted Google and other search engines about such listings.
In the past, Google has added a disclaimer about "offensive search results" when users search for the word "Jew."
"I don't know how realistic it is to hope that the schools can block this site entirely," the middle school mother wrote, vowing to stay vigilant.
Norman of the Rosa Parks Museum has a slightly different approach toward mitigating anti-King hate.
"These are teachable moments that give us far more to think about and discuss and exposes what work still needs to be done," she says. "That's far more salient for me as a teacher."