Confederate-Friendly Ryan Zinke Likens Robert E. Lee To Martin Luther King Jr.
Ryan Zinke, the embattled secretary of the Interior Department, suggested in a confused comparison that Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general who fought to preserve slavery, was as much an American hero as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. during a speech on Saturday, drawing renewed scrutiny of Zinke’s record on racial issues.
The secretary was speaking at a ceremony designating Camp Nelson, a Union recruitment and training depot in Kentucky for black soldiers during the Civil War, as a national monument. He compared the placement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to that of Arlington National Cemetery, the military burial ground located on Lee’s former plantation, and that of the Lincoln Memorial.
“I like to think that Lincoln doesn’t have his back to General Lee. He’s in front of him. There’s a difference. Similar to Martin Luther King doesn’t have his back to Lincoln. He’s in front of Lincoln as we march together to form a more perfect union,” Zinke said at the start of a 25-minute speech. “That’s a great story, and so is Camp Nelson.”
Civil rights groups condemned the remark ― which American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic political action committee, first uncovered and which HuffPost confirmed with video posted to Facebook by a local newspaper ― as offensive and ahistorical.
“To compare Martin Luther King to Robert E. Lee is not only a dangerous comparison, it is completely historically inaccurate,” Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, said in an email. “Dr. King saved lives ― Robert E. Lee destroyed them.”
The NAACP praised the designation of Camp Nelson and said it was “unfortunate” that Zinke “decided to connect General Robert E. Lee to this story.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ryan-zinke-robert-e-lee-martin-luther-king-jr_us_5bd8d090e4b01abe6a190bb4?fbclid=IwAR1VfINqEJtOUoYTypGHbcza1_JwQhVKNH2Ttha0_HHg81PptgoFBMi3_nU
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