On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Al Sharpton accused President Trump of “undoing” the work of the civil rights leader.
In an op-ed published Wednesday by BuzzFeed News, Sharpton warned that King’s legacy was at risk of being dismantled by the Trump administration.
“Today, 50 years after his life was so viciously and violently cut short, we have someone in the White House who is committed to undoing all that Dr. King fought for,” Sharpton wrote.
{mosads}He said the White House is taking actions to curb the voting rights of minorities and has focused on “creating new ways to suppress the vote rather than protect it.”
And he hammered Trump over his call last year for law enforcement officers to be “rough” on people being arrested.
What’s more, Sharpton wrote, “this president regularly uses inflammatory language to sow divisions, and his Justice Department is literally halting progress toward justice.”
“As we mourn Dr. King’s assassination, the greatest challenge we face is to maintain his dream and all that he and others achieved after so much sacrifice — including sacrificing his own life,” Sharpton wrote. “It is not enough to memorialize him; we must continue the work.”
Trump has repeatedly faced accusations of racist behavior, dating at least back to his days voicing support for the so-called birther movement, a conspiracy theory that accused former President Obama of not being a natural-born American citizen.
The accusations resurfaced earlier this year when Trump was criticized for reportedly referring to Haiti, El Salvador and African nations as “shithole countries” during an Oval Office meeting.
He also came under fire last year after he said there was “blame on both sides” for a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.