Okay, I have tried to be nice to so called Black Conservatives... I really have. But this is the biggest crock I have ever heard.

When a black conservative group ran a radio ad proclaiming that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican, reaction was swift. "We've gotten some e-mails and telephone calls filled with vitriol," said Frances Rice, chairman of the National Black Republican Association. "They've called me Aunt Jemima, a sellout, a traitor to my race."

In the battle for the black electorate, liberals, who make up the overwhelming majority of black voters, have long disagreed with conservatives over ideology, public policy and economic strategies to better the lives of African Americans. But when conservatives placed the civil rights movement in a Republican context, black liberals said, they crossed a line.

"To suggest that Martin could identify with a party that affirms preemptive, predatory war, and whose religious partners hint that God affirms war and favors the rich at the expense of the poor, is to revile Martin," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which the slain civil rights leader helped establish.

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who marched with King in the 1960s, called the ads an "insult to the legacy and the memory of Martin Luther King Jr." and "an affront to all that he stood for."

The spot, which ran for a time in the District, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania, will soon run again in those areas, as well as in Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Rice said.

The debate surrounding the ad is the latest skirmish in the ongoing battle over the King legacy. Foes of affirmative action, for example, often cite a line from King's "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963 in which he prayed that his children would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the "content of their character," an adoption that makes black liberals fume. But in the latest fight, civil rights veterans may be surprised to find that some black conservatives agree with them.

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R), who is running for the U.S. Senate, denounced the King ad, and Donald E. Scoggins, president of Republicans for Black Empowerment and a former member of the association, said it was a terrible idea.

Black Republicans railed against the radio ads, with the sharpest criticism coming from former members of the black Republican association.

"The vast majority of black Republicans I know would not have approved of the ad," Scoggins said.

In the ad, a black woman says, "Dr. King was a real man," and a second one responds, "You know he was a Republican."

"Dr. King, a Republican?"

Isn't it enough to deny blacks the vote in Florida, and Ohio among other places? Now do you have to lie on top of that. Dr. King would likely have a lot of problems with the Democratic Party of 2006, but to imply that he was a Republican, or that he would support this administration... is an outrage! King was a man who would be outraged at the cost in human lives of the Iraq war. He was a man who would be outraged at the abandonment of human rights under the Bush Administration, and he was a man who would be sickened by the divisive and dirty politics of the regime in power. King was no Republican, and to imply that he was, or that he would support this administration, or Republican policy, is an insult to his legacy, and a betrayal of the African American people...

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