Clarke: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown as Civil Rights Figures Desecrate Legacy of MLK

In an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas published on Sunday, Milwaukee Co., WI Sheriff David Clarke cautioned against making the likes of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown into civil rights figures, arguing doing so desecrates the legacy of figures of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.

“[N]one of these individuals deserves to have been killed, but the fact is they were co-conspirators in their own demise,” Clarke said. “They engaged in some behavior that took them to a very dark place. Things weren’t going to turn out for them and didn’t. However, how can the civil rights movement in 2014 cloak themselves around criminal behavior, people who engage in criminal behavior and say this is the face of the civil rights movement? I’ve heard people say, ‘This is a new civil rights movement.’ No it’s not. That is an embarrassment.”

“That is a desecration of the legacy of people like Rosa Parks, people like Dr. Martin Luther King,” he continued. “You know again, Condi Rice’s story – two parents, education. That’s the key. That’s the traditional vehicle for upward mobility in the United States for everybody. You got to embrace it. You got to grind it out. We’re not offering the best schools for blacks in some of these urban centers, which is a very big issue for me.”

(h/t Daily Caller)

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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