ABC Cites Only Democrats as the 'Warriors' in the Civil Rights Movement

"And on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we thought it would be appropriate to look back at all the warriors, black and white, who made this moment where we are today possible."

All the warriors? The piece went on to feature clips from eight Democratic politicians in addition to a number of non-political civil rights pioneers. Republican Abraham Lincoln went unmentioned, so did New York Governor Thomas Dewey who signed one of the nation's earliest civil rights laws in 1944 and President Ronald Reagan who made Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a federal holiday in 1983. In fact, no Republican was mentioned.

That's particularly egregious given the (evidently inconvenient) fact that a higher percentage of Congressional Republicans voted for the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act than did Democrats. Another point left unmentioned was the heroic effort by the conservative GOP minority leader in the Senate, Everett Dirksen, in supporting that legislation (see a December 14, 2002 article by Diane Alden on NewsMax.com.

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