No, Alveda King, Our Founders Did Not Put "God" On Our Money
Chris Rodda printable version print page     Bookmark and Share
Fri Aug 27, 2010 at 05:34:12 PM EST
Much has been written in recent days about Martin Luther King, Jr.'s niece, Dr. Alveda King, because of her hooking up with Glenn Beck and being one of the speakers scheduled to appear at Beck's 8/28 rally at the Lincoln Memorial. Most of the coverage of Alveda King has focused on her activities and remarks as an anti-abortion activist, such as her claim that abortion makes African-American children an endangered species, but there's another aspect of King's activism that has been overlooked -- her complicity in the Christian nationalist effort to rewrite American history.

I first came across the name Alveda King about three and a half years ago while writing a series on Talk2Action about the American history revisionism that's making its way into our public schools via the National Council On Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS). The NCBCPS curriculum, already being used in over five hundred school districts in thirty-eight states, contains a far more distorted version of American history than even the worst of what was proposed during the Texas textbook massacre. And who's on the NCBCPS advisory board? Dr. Alveda King -- right along with Glenn Beck's favorite pseudo-historian David Barton, whose historical lies and misquotes appear throughout the NCBCPS curriculum.

While Alveda King's complicity in Glenn Beck's agenda to distort history has primarily been confined to the distortion of the history of the civil rights movement, it is clear that she has also bought into David Barton's revisionism of early American history hook, line, and sinker.

Appearing on Beck's show on Thursday, King not only played along with the downplaying of our country's white founding fathers owning slaves, (because, of course, there were also some black founders who owned slaves too), but claimed that it was our founders who put "In God We Trust" on our money. According to King, "They [the founders] had enough sense to put on the back of that money 'In God We Trust.' You can't eat a piece of bread in America without remembering that you have to trust God to get it."

Alveda King obviously needs a little history lesson -- from somebody other than David Barton.

The national motto chosen by our founders was "E Pluribus Unum." The changing of our national motto to "In God We Trust" and the placing of this motto on our money didn't happen until the 1950s. Like adding "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, putting "In God We Trust" on our money was the direct result of the "red scare" fears of "godless" communists infiltrating our society and government -- the same fears being revived by Glenn Beck.

The irony here? It was this fear of communists, and the claims of their ties to the civil rights movement, that led the F.B.I. to start wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr.'s phone in the months following his "I have a dream" speech. Maybe Alveda King needs to do a little reading up on that.




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I'm sure Alveda King knows exactly what lies she is telling.

by sovereignjohn on Sun Aug 29, 2010 at 12:31:57 AM EST

The NCBCPS curriculum, already being used in over five hundred school districts in thirty-eight states...

I gather that's what NCBCPS claims, but had thought there was some serious doubt about their credibility in this case as in so many others.

Have these figures been independently confirmed?

by Pierce R Butler on Thu Sep 02, 2010 at 01:22:39 PM EST


At least when it comes to coinage, "In God we trust" has been around for a lot longer than 60 years.

The penny got it when we switched to the Lincoln cent in 1909, the Nickel got it with the switch to the Jefferson nickel in 1938, the nickel with the mercury dime in 1916, and the quarter, half-dollar, and dollar coins all got it in 1866.

I'd still rather not have it on the currency, but we can't blame this on McCarthy.

by BenYitzhak on Fri Sep 03, 2010 at 05:16:32 PM EST



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