Subscribe
NewsOne Featured Video
CLOSE

In December 2007, Mitt Romney was asked by “Meet The Press” host Tim Russert about the history of racism in the Mormon church, which excluded African Americans from participation until 1978. Romney claimed that his father marched with Martin Luther King. Romney would also claim that he “saw his father march with Martin Luther King” in a speech about his Mormon faith earlier that month. In 1978, Mitt Romney would tell the Boston Globe that he and his father both marched with Martin Luther King.

The problem is, Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, the former governor of Michigan, never marched with Martin Luther King. Mitt Romney would concede that fact to the Boston Globe in 2007. The Boston Phoenix could find no record of Mitt’s father, George marching with Martin Luther King at all.

Still Politfact reports that while George Romney never marched with Martin Luther King, he was supportive of King’s goals and of the Civil Rights movement,

But it’s also clear that George Romney, who served as governor from 1963 to 1969 and died in 1995, supported King’s goals at a time when few politicians did. When King visited Detroit and led a rally of 125,000 people in 1963, Romney issued a proclamation and sent personal representatives. (The Times report noted that Romney was Mormon and did not make public appearances on Sundays.) Two years later, Romney led a march of 10,000 people in Detroit to protest events in Selma, Ala. (King wasn’t there.) When King died in 1968, George Romney attended the funeral.

George Romney’s support of the civil rights movement put him at odds with the Mormon Church, whose Apostle, Delpert Stabley wrote him a letter criticizing him for helping “the negro cause” which went against the Prophet, Joseph Smith and God, who had cursed the Negro. So while Mitt Romney’s father was not a racist, Mitt Romney’s “prophet” Joseph Smith, who believed that the Black people were cursed, was.