If he were alive today, the Rev. Martin Luther King would call for peaceful, nonviolent protests in the wake of the deadly white power rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the civil-rights legend's niece, Dr. Alveda King, told Newsmax TV on Wednesday.
"My uncle during his lifetime, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the brother of my dad, the Rev. A.D. King, often said we must learn from this together as brothers, and I add sisters," King said to Rita Cosby, guest host of Newsmax's "The Todd Schnitt Show."
"One of my favorite quotes from my uncle is 'I have decided to stick with love because hate is too great a burden to bear.' Examine your own heart and mind as to where you are and negotiate peacefully and nonviolently.
"If you haven't quite gotten to that solution, then demonstrate peacefully and nonviolently because we want a win-win situation and we want to reconcile. That's what my uncle would say if he were here today I'm almost sure of it because he said it for his whole lifetime."
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Martin Luther King, considered the most important civil-rights voice in America, was assassinated April 4th, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Alveda King, a civil rights activist and founder of Alveda King Ministries, said Saturday's horrific violence in Charlottesville, in which one young woman died after being struck by a car as white supremacists and counter-protesters clashed, "is not new. It's just uncovered."
"They overplayed their hand. They thought it was okay to come out and show again what racism looks like. Racism will never be acceptable on the planet not just in America. And we're one blood," King told Cosby. "So we're going to have to use the nonviolent conflict resolution principles for reconciliation here."
She said she believes President Donald Trump gave the proper response in saying both sides were at fault, despite the belief of some that he was siding with white supremacists.
"It was very important for the president of the United States to take time to let the American people know that he's interested, he's engaged and he cares. He also repudiated the Ku Klux Klan and said there was violence on every side," King said.
"What he means by that you got an alt-right and you have an alt-left. Black Lives Matter is part of the alt-left and so we've got alt-left, alt-right and they get engaged to disturbed people and have people so upset that they cannot think.
"And so I believe that the president's calling us to reason and saying let's get the facts and then act. Of course, he does not support segregation, the Ku Klux Klan and all of that. He's very clear and he said that over and over and he said it several times yesterday."
King said she is also in favor of leaving Confederate memorials in place instead of removing them from public spaces.
"A good friend helped me to consolidate my thoughts on that. She tweeted me and she said no, leave the statues up. Let me tell you why. People will forget their history if they don't see it. And people are emotionally attached to them," she said.
"So leave them up, but then put up another statue as well and name it ‘liberty' or ‘everybody's equal' or ‘we love everybody' -- whatever you want to name [it]."
"We don't want to forget our history, but we want to see how far we have come and how far we can go together. There's a scripture: 'be not overcome evil, overcome evil with good.' So if you erase your history, you'll forget it and you may have to repeat it. So we do not want to erase our history."
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