By Ashley Banks
Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest daughter had a fiery exchange with a far-right senate candidate who made false claims about the Civil Rights Leader on social media.
Last week, Republican Josh Mandel who is running for U.S. Senate in Ohio, stated that MLK inspired him to make his latest anti-critical race theory campaign ad.
The 30-second advertisement used MLK imagery and at some point used a voiceover that said, “There’s nothing racist about stopping critical race theory and loving America.” Many people, including Bernice King were not happy that the senate candidate was insinuating that MLK was against critical race theory.
In a tweet, Bernice stated, “Josh: Regretfully, I do not believe that I or @TheKingCenter legitimately motivated you to film this ad, as it is in opposition to nonviolence and to much of what my father taught.”
She continued, “I encourage you to study my father/nonviolence in full.”
Instead of backing down, Mandel doubled down on his belief and said in a tweet, “Your father knew the importance of the Second Amendment when he tried to exercise his right to self-defense and was wrongly denied a gun permit by anti-gun racists. Firearms [does not equal] violence. Study your history better @BerniceKing.”
To which Bernice fired back and posted a quote from her father which made it clear that he was afraid of having firearms in the house.
“I was much more afraid in Montgomery when I had a gun in my house. When I decided that couldn’t keep a gun, I came face-to-face with the question of death and I dealt with it,” the quote stated.
Bernice told her Twitter followers that she will occasionally exchange tweets with people who misrepresent her father “to educate more people (who read the exchanges) on his teachings.”
