It is interesting that the issue of MLK's being or not being a Republican surfaced a few years ago. Some say he was (this includes his niece, as well as the National Black Republicans Association):
The left vehemently deny this, of course. His father clearly was a Republican though.
The matter remains somewhat a controversy, but MLK Jr's political views put him on the _right_ of not only any present day Democrat, but most of the present day Republicans as well. MLK believed that people should be judged on the basis of their merit, not the color of their skin - which is in an obvious contradiction with the institutionalized racial preferences of today.
What is even more important, MLK was aware of what is now called the "whiteness" of this country, its culture, and history (yes, this country was founded and formed by white people. So what? BTW, I was once told by a certain senior HR official of my university that it is wrong to teach chemistry using textbooks that show white people as having made all the fundamental discoveries. As you can imagine, I responded that I am teaching things the way they happen and would not violate this principle for the sake of political correctness. Of course, I do not emphasize - or even mention - their race). The crucial question that MLK had regarding this was: "Where do we go from here?" And he answered that the best - or the only constructive - way to proceed would be (and still is) to _not_ emphasize the racial differences, but rather consider all of us being just Americans, members of the same tribe, so to speak. This opinion is in direct opposition to the modern "racial justice" advocates who want racial differences emphasized and used all this time. MLK understood that such an approach would lead nowhere but to a new civil war and, in any case, to a perpetual split of the country. But the "progressives" of today use it all the time as it is instrumental for them as an application of the "divide and conquer" approach. The same HR executive wrote to us that: "...every interaction with another person is intercultural..."
In addition to the above, MLK Jr was a staunch supporter of Israel, and not as an always-apologizing and retreating entity, but as a strong and assertive nation.Given the above, it is strange that MLK Jr is the person whom the politically correct crowd glorifies so much, even though they do pervert his teachings.
Another interesting issue is that the personal morals of MLK Jr were not that great. Even the leftist Snopes site, while claiming that bad things you hear about King are not true altogether, does admit several significant problems:
https://www.snopes.com/history/american/mlking.asp
Apparently, MLK Jr was a serial cheater. Also, there was heavy plagiarism in his thesis. As was reported by NY Times:
<< A committee of scholars appointed by Boston University concluded today that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized passages in his dissertation for a doctoral degree at the university 36 years ago.
"There is no question," the committee said in a report to the university's provost, "but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation by appropriating material from sources not explicitly credited in notes, or mistakenly credited, or credited generally and at some distance in the text from a close paraphrase or verbatim quotation.">>
http://www.nytimes.com/…/boston-u-panel-finds-plagiarism-by…
All in all, MLK Jr was a person of mixed legacy that is generally not broadly remembered for what it was. His political views (at least toward the end of his life) were hard to disagree with, but totally not what is popular in the "progressive" circles of today. And it is a huge tragedy that he was murdered. But his personality was not one of a saint.