King’s Controversial Legacy of Black Communism

By Cliff Kincaid

January 16, 2026

An outfit in conservative Tennessee called the Highlander Center has issued a statement, “No ICE, No War,” opposing deportation of illegal aliens and denouncing U.S. military action against Venezuela. Do you recognize the name? This is the famous “communist training school” where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. learned how to be a “civil rights” leader.

The legacy of King is mired in controversy, since black congressional districts created under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 that was passed in response to his civil rights protests are now dominated by “progressive” and even outright communist Democrats.

Those districts, however, may all be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in a pending decision because they are racist in design and therefore illegal and unconstitutional.

The leftist NPR noted, “At least 15 U.S. House districts — concentrated in the South — are at risk. They have large populations of racial minorities and are currently represented by a Black member of Congress.”

These districts have been largely represented by black representatives under the influence of the Communist Party USA.

The late Democrat Rep. John Lewis of Georgia was transformed into a “civil rights icon,” even by conservative pundits. But his tainted legacy includes writing a 1965 article for the communist publication Freedomways, financed by the Red Chinese and the Russians, that was entitled, “Paul Robeson: Inspirer of Youth.” It was about the famous black actor and singer who had been a member of the Communist Party USA and admirer of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The problem isn’t just in the South. Consider the cases of Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and former Rep. Barbara Lee, now mayor of Oakland, California.

At a conference we held 13 years ago, Jeremy Segal aired a video showing Davis being honored at the Communist Party’s headquarters in Chicago for a lifetime of “inspiring leadership.”

Herb Romerstein’s masterful report on the “progressive” movement examined the case of former Rep. Barbara Lee, who became a top officer of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), a spin-off from the Communist Party after the Soviet “collapse.”

Another Marxist former Representative, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, traveled to Cuba with the Weather Underground-sponsored Venceremos Brigades. Her “friend and mentor,” Oneil Marion Cannon, was a top member of the Communist Party USA for decades.

The communist capture of the “progressive” Democrats, most of them black, can be linked to communist influence on Martin Luther King, Jr. A photograph exists of his participation in that notorious “communist training school” in Tennessee. We have a new section on our website examining evidence of this, still considered a taboo topic in much of the media.

In his famous speech opposing a national holiday in honor of King, Senator Jesse Helms examined those in attendance at the Highlander Center, including Abner Berry, a correspondent for the Communist Party newspaper, the Daily Worker, and Aubrey Williams, identified as a member of the CPUSA and President of the Southern Conference Educational Fund.

Its founder, Myles Horton, was a far-left activist in Tennessee who had very significant and long-standing ties to the Communist Party USA, according to Trevor Loudon’s Key Wiki site.

Horton had said, “I’m doing you just as much good now as I would if I were a member of the Communist Party. I am often asked if I am a Communist Party member and I always say no. I feel much safer in having no fear that evidence might be uncovered to link me with the Communist Party, and therefore I prefer not to become a member of the Communist Party.”

There is no direct evidence of King being a Communist Party member. But he knowingly associated with them and broke a promise to John and Bobby Kennedy to kick them out of his civil rights campaign. In addition, despite his reputation as a moderate, King paid tribute to W.E.B. Du Bois, who himself joined the CPUSA in 1961, at an event sponsored by Freedomways in New York City.

Communists have targeted black Americans for exploitation almost since the time of the Russian revolution in 1917. The article, “Black Liberation and the Communist International,” describes a Soviet campaign, launched shortly after the Russian revolution, to exploit the “Negro question” in the U.S. and manipulate blacks and members of other minority groups for communist purposes.

In addition to America’s first black President, Barack Hussein Obama, who was influenced by Frank Marshall Davis, a black communist, we could point to the first black Muslim member of Congress, Keith Ellison, who was an official of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), cited as a Communist Party front organization by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He is now Attorney General of Minnesota.

Ellison had been a vocal supporter — and attended a fundraiser for — Sara Jane Olson, a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), an off-shoot of the Weather Underground that is probably best known for kidnapping Patricia Hearst.

Then-Rep. Ellison even penned an article in the CPUSA’s People’s World published on August 29, 2014 discussing the rise of “people’s movements” in the United States.

One photograph showed him distributing the Final Call newspaper of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, which believes white people were created by a scientist named Yakub and constitute an inferior race.

In another fascinating case demonstrating communist influence in the Democratic Party, we released FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request about the Soviet connections of Carlton Goodlett, a major black figure, and his influence in the California Democratic Party. Goodlett had a long record of involvement in communist causes, including membership on the presidium of the World Peace Council, a Kremlin front, and being a Lenin Peace Prize winner.

Yet, former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi once praised Dr. Carlton Goodlett as just a civil rights activist.

In this way, thanks in part to the success the communists had in manipulating Martin Luther King, Jr., communist influence in America and on the Congress has grown exponentially. They have insidiously used “civil rights” to advance the communist cause.

The Kennedys knew about King’s association with communists because they ordered the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover to conduct surveillance of King and his associates. Those tapes, sealed for 50 years, revealed evidence of sex orgies and debauchery, as disclosed in an FBI report that was accidentally released.

Many conservatives do not want to acknowledge the tawdry aspects of King and his agenda.

But Michael Parenti of the Marxist Institute for Policy Studes (IPS) wrote this letter to the New York Times, published on November 1, 1983, defending King’s associations with members of the Communist Party USA. He wrote that Senator Jesse Helms’s accusation that Martin Luther King Jr. had Communist associations has been labeled by King’s liberal defenders as ”slanderous” and ”obscene” but “what is obscene about associating with Communists?”

He explained, “By treating the charge as something horrific, liberals once again accept the McCarthyite premise that U.S. Communists are purveyors of evil and that any association with them taints one forever. Dr. King himself would not have accepted such a defense.”

He admitted “there may be an element of truth in Helms’s contention…”

Today, the Highlander Center is still described as a place “where radical visions become a reality” and peddles books like, To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers, and Queer Communion: Religion in Appalachia. It is participating in the “Creating Change” conference from Jan. 21-25 in Washington D.C. sponsored by the National LGBTQ Task Force

Its Workshops and Trainings include courses like “Fascism 101,” promising to “Lay the foundation for deeper thinking about what it will take to build broad and effective anti-fascist resistance.”

Isn’t this what we are seeing in Minneapolis?

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net