MLK’s Niece Says Senator Warren Used ‘Race Card’

Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, accused Senator Elizabeth Warren on Feb. 8 of attempting to “play the race card” by using her family’s name during one of her speeches to the U.S. Senate.

Republicans in the Senate voted resoundingly to silence Warren for impugning Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama after Sessions was nominated to head the Justice Department.

Warren cited a letter written and submitted to the Senate by Coretta Scott King in 1986, which was right before the Senate was in talks to select Sessions for a lifetime appointment on the federal branch, according to Politico.

Warren referenced the speech and what it revealed about Sessions’ past treatment of minorities, immigrants, and women in an interview with reporters.

“This is about Coretta Scott King’s letter and that’s all this is about,” said Warren, according to Fox Business. “She wrote a powerful letter about an important moment in history that directly involved Jeff Sessions and is directly relevant to the question of whether Jeff Sessions ought to be the attorney general of the United States – and Mitch McConnell didn’t want me to read that letter.”

Alveda reportedly portrayed her aunt, Coretta Scott King, as having been a ”peace maker,” and said that, were she alive today, she would have advocated for Sessions for his prosecution of the Ku Klux Klan and of school segregation.

“It’s almost like a bait and switch,” explained Alveda. ”Stir up their emotions, use the name of King – and my name is Alveda King – stir up people’s emotions, play the race card, which she was attempting to do.”

“Her intentions were never to divide during her whole life,” Alveda explained of her Aunt. “And so in that letter, she would be referring to perhaps some of his comments. However, she would agree today that he of course ended some school desegregation, he worked to prosecute members of the KKK. Aunt Coretta was a very reasonable woman and she, with integrity, would have noted that he had done some great work in fighting against discrimination.”

Sources: Politico, Fox Business / Photo credit: Massachusetts National Guard/Flickr