Bernice King, the youngest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. said in an interview that she is “glad” that President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration falls on her father’s holiday.
King made the remarks in an interview with The Independent published on Monday.
In the interview, King acknowledged that she did not want Trump to become president again.
“I’m glad that if it was going to happen, it happened on the King holiday, because Dr King is still speaking to us,” she told the outlet.
The Independent added that King “sees the January 20 event as a wake-up call for the country and an opportunity to stand up to the incoming administration’s charged agenda items.”
“We cannot retreat or recoil,” King added. “We have to commit ourselves to continuing the mission of protecting freedom, justice and democracy in the spirit of my father.”
Reportedly, King was excited about Vice President Kamala Harris possibly becoming the first female president on Martin Luther King Jr. Day next year. The holiday is always held the third Monday of January.
The outlet wrote that King “hoped the US would elect someone who embodied the values her father did. Not ‘someone who’s spewing hateful rhetoric, who’s not been very kind-hearted and whose policies are not humane in their approach,’ as she described the president-elect.”
“A Trump win could potentially set in motion a perilous and oppressive presidential administration that would undermine and deny the hard-fought battle for civil and human rights for which my parents and so many others sacrificed,” King told The Independent.
Some of the policies that “worry” King are Trump’s plans for mass deportations of illegal aliens and “federal policies against LGBTQIA+ people and people of color.” This week, the British outlet The Times reported that Trump was already planning an executive order to remove individuals who believe they are “transgender” from the military, as Townhall covered.
In a statement to The Independent, Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP, said, “We are entering a new era of civil rights for better or worse.”
“We have not seen an assault on civil rights like I believe is about to happen since the ‘50s, maybe even the ‘20s.” Griggs claimed. He added that he’s willing to give Trump a chance but expressed concern about some of the people the president-elect has appointed to Cabinet positions, namely, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).
“We have to be ready right now,” he said. “We are already having organizational meetings, both on the national level and the state level, to prepare the units for what’s about to happen.”
“It’s interesting,” Griggs said of the upcoming holiday. “The juxtaposition of a man of immense greatness, humility and concern for the community, with Donald Trump.”
The radical left-wing American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also pledged to push back on some of Trump’s plans, including the mass deportations, the outlet added.
“I know a lot of people are angry right now,” King told The Independent. “But we can’t let that rot in us.”
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