GREELEY, Colo.—A school board member in northern Colorado is using his radio station to broadcast a commentary claiming Martin Luther King Jr. is a plagiarist, sexual degenerate and “modern-day plastic god” as a lead-up to the day that marks the slain civil rights leader’s birthday.
The Tribune reports that the commentary is a letter Brett Reese says he received from a listener three years ago. He plans to continue broadcasting the commentary twice daily on his Greeley radio station, 104.7 FM Pirate Radio, until Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Day.
The city of Greeley and the University of Northern Colorado are sponsoring the 15th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. March and Celebration on that day.
Reese, who’s been on the Greeley school board for a year, said he began airing the commentary three years ago.
While Reese said he sees King as “a symbol that was necessary” for the civil rights movement, he doesn’t believe he should be put on a pedestal and supports an open discussion of history.
“It’s not a bad thing to explore the truth,” Reese said.
Tobias Guzman, chairman of the Human Relations Commission for city of Greeley, said he believes that Reese is perpetuating hate by repeatedly reading the letter.
“He’s continually putting anger in the minds of people and hate in the minds of people, and it’s unfortunate that that is his method of operation,” Guzman said.
Reese insisted that he is “100 percent in favor of equality in America,” but isn’t sure a holiday celebrating that effort should honor King.
“I think it should be freedom day,” Reese said. “What about Rosa Parks Day?”
Clayborne Carson, founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and the editor of King’s papers, said people shouldn’t focus on Reese’s commentary, but on the good King did.
“As a historian, all that is irrelevant,” Carson said in a telephone interview with The Tribune. “King is considered a great person not because he was born a great person but because he was part of a great movement that achieved a major change. To say he was not perfect or had flaws doesn’t matter.”
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Information from: Greeley Daily Tribune,
