How one organization is drawing parallels between Trump and Martin Luther King Jr.
About 150 people gathered In a small banquet hall at the Hilton in North Hills on Monday night to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
But they were also there to praise President Donald Trump.
Organized by Black Voices for Trump, a creation of the Trump re-election campaign, the crowd listened to speakers make parallels between what happened during the Civil Rights movement and what is happening in 2020.
“During the Civil Rights movement you couldn’t go into an establishment because of the color of your skin,” said Harrison Floyd, executive director of Black Voices for Trump. “Now, you can get kicked out of an establishment based on your politics. Back then, you couldn’t get a job because of the way you looked. Now, people are getting fired for the way they think.”
The panel and speech Monday featured members of the Black Voices for Trump Advisory Board including:
- Lynnette Hardaway and Rochelle Richardson, better known as Diamond and Silk. The North Carolina sisters skyrocketed to fame after urging black voters to switch from the Democratic Party and support Trump. They often appear at North Carolina campaign events with Trump.
- Clarence Henderson, one of the black N.C. A&T University students who participated in a sit-in at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960, which inspired similar sit-ins across the South.
- Robin Armstrong, a Republican National Committee member from Texas, who was described as the next Ben Carson and future of the Republican Party.
The event also featured a video of Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., who also serves on the board and has backed Trump.
During the panel, Henderson described life under Jim Crow laws as an indoctrination. Things that were morally wrong were seen as a way of life, he said.
“You have what you call Stockholm Syndrome,” he said. “Where you are beholden to those who are standing over you, telling you what you can and can’t do.”
“Does that sound familiar?” Diamond said.
Black people in particular have been conditioned by the Democratic Party and see no other way, she said. Black voters make up about 20% of all Democratic voters, according to 2018 data from the Pew Research Center.
“So they will put up with them wanting to kill babies,” she said. “They will put up with them wanting to take their guns, their Second Amendment rights and First Amendment rights, because they are indoctrinated and conditioned to believe this is the way I am supposed to vote.”
The Republican Party is the one that will teach a person to fish instead of promising to keep handing out food, Henderson said, adding the Civil Rights movement had been hijacked by the LGBTQ movement.
Relatively few black voters support Trump
Only 8% of black voters backed Trump in the 2016 election, and a national Washington Post-Ipsos poll released last week paints a similar picture. Out of more than 1,000 responses, 90% of black voters said they disapproved of the way Trump is handling his job as president and 76% of black voters believed what he’s doing as president is bad for African-Americans.
Eight out of 10 black voters think Trump is a racist, according to the poll.
But Diamond and Silk disagree, along with many of the people who attended the event.
“Let me tell you something about President Donald J. Trump,” Diamond said. “He is not a racist. He is a realist. And the only color he sees is green, and he wants you to have some of it.”
Silk added that Trump wasn’t racist because he’s done more for black people than former President Barack Obama, a statement that was met with applause from the crowd. The pair specifically cited the more than 1 million jobs created for black people under Trump’s term, his financial support to historically black colleges and universities and low unemployment rates for black people.
About two-thirds of the crowd was African-American, with the rest white or another race. Many drove from outside the Triangle to hear the speakers Monday.
Latarsha Richardson came from Oxford for the event after her pastor started volunteering with Trump’s campaign. She doesn’t believe he’s racist and encouraged other people to do their research before making a snap judgment.
“At the end of the day it’s not about color, but it’s about unity and being a better nation and world,” Richardson said.
Abraham Myles, second vice chairman of the Cumberland County Republican Party, said black people are “brain washed” by Democrats, and he admires the “traditional values” that Trump represents.
Traditional values, including opposing abortion and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, are some of the things Wilfred Rock likes about Trump. Rock drove from Charlotte to attend the event and learn more about the Black Voices for Trump organization.
“As for me, racism isn’t over, but I am over racism,” he said, adding that it does exist but he expects it and doesn’t let it define his life.
Black Voices for Trump officially began last November as part of Trump’s re-election efforts, with Trump promising to “campaign for every last African-American vote in 2020” during the kick-off in Atlanta.
“We’ve done more for African-Americans in three years than the broken Washington establishment has done in more than 30 years,” he said, according to The New York Times.
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 7:30 AM with the headline "How one organization is drawing parallels between Trump and Martin Luther King Jr.."
