As the nation today marks the contributions of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his niece Alevda King says her uncle would be pro-life and battle against abortion if he were alive today. As the daughter of Rev. A. D. King, a leader in the Civil Right’s movement, King sees the pro-life cause as a continuation of the Civil Rights movement in which her uncle was a prominent leader.
Alveda King called her uncle “a man of great compassion, and a man of non-violence.”
“He once said, ‘The Negro cannot win as long as he is willing to sacrifice the lives of his children for comfort and safety,’” she added.
King said her uncle would understand that to include the destruction of unborn children.
“I know in my heart that if Uncle Martin were alive today, he would join with me in the greatest civil rights struggle of this generation – the recognition of the unborn child’s basic right to life,” she told LifeNews.com previously.
“My uncle Martin would agree that we cannot end poverty, hunger, or suffering by killing those who might suffer,” she explained. “We cannot claim to guarantee equal rights if we deny the rights of the helpless. And we cannot feign ignorance of the fact that those who are torn apart, crushed, or left to die on an abortionist’s table are just as human as we are.”
“My uncle said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Alveda continued.
“Abortion is genocide,” King says. “It’s killing populations. It’s killing generations and certainly the population that is most impacted by abortion in America is the black community. So I feel that as a civil rights leader I have responsibility to proclaim that black Americans are being exterminated by the genocidal acts of abortion.”
Alveda King is now a proud mother of six and grandmother of six, but she once took the lives of her own children in abortion. Now, as a Christian pro-life leader, she works with Priests for Life and Silent No More to stop abortion.
“I had two abortions and a miscarriage related to damage from those abortions,” King has said. “I realized that I was violating the civil rights of a person. When I had my abortions, we were told that it was a blob of tissue and not a person.”
“The great irony is that abortion has done what the Klan only dreamed of… Roughly one quarter of the black population is now missing,” she adds.
King, the full-time director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life, will take part in events today in honor of her late father, the Rev. Dr. Alfred Daniels King, and her late uncle. She was at book signing Sunday from 3 to 6 p.m. at the King Center Freedom Hall Auditorium and, in the Freedom Hall, screened the film “Brother of the Dreamer,” about her father, one of the main strategists behind many civil rights campaigns. King and her mother, Naomi Barber King, attended.
Naomi Barber King, mother of Alveda, is also a crusader in the battle to save African-American babies from abortion. King’s commitment to life began when she changed her mind about aborting her daughter.
“My father-in-law, Martin Luther King Sr., told me he had a vision of my child and he wanted to meet the baby girl in his vision,” Mrs. King said.
At the age of 37, Mrs. King was left a widow with five children following the untimely death of her husband, who was a prominent civil rights leader in his own right.
“God gave me the strength to do all I had to after that,” said the soft-spoken Atlanta resident.
“My mother is a woman of courage, commitment, compassion and indomitable strength,” Alveda King responds. “I am so proud to be her daughter.”
Today, the Kings joined family members at a service at Ebenezer Baptist Church that began with a wreath-laying.
Alveda King has been working full-time for the pro-life cause for nearly a decade. When she met Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, the two found themselves in agreement that “the fight for all human life, from conception until natural death, is the most pressing civil rights and human rights issue of our time.”
