Rep. Jasmine Crockett snapped at Dr. Alveda King during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 9, turning a session on the Southern Poverty Law Center into a public fight over race, abortion and the King family name. As Crockett left the room, King answered her with a line that cut through the noise: she said Crockett had suggested she was “a bastard to the King family legacy,” then added, “but I love God, and I love you.”
The hearing was supposed to examine allegations that the SPLC had channeled money to racist and white nationalist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations. But the back-and-forth quickly moved toward abortion politics, with Republican Rep. Brandon Gill arguing that the SPLC treats “attacks on reproductive rights” as a “tool” of “white supremacy.” He also pointed to data he said showed 40% of abortions in the United States kill black babies even though black Americans make up 13% of the population.
That shift set up the exchange between Crockett and King. Crockett said the committee had invited King simply to “parade someone who has the name, Dr. King,” a jab that turned the hearing from an inquiry into the SPLC into a fight over who gets to speak for the civil rights legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and his family. King had come to the witness table as a longtime pro-life advocate, and her testimony tied abortion politics directly to the broader argument over race.
King pushed back hard. She said, “Pro-lifers cannot be white supremacists. Pro-lifers fight for every baby in the womb regardless of skin color. We have been aborted as blacks in America disproportionately. The White Supremacists are Planned Parenthood.” Her remarks came in a hearing where the historical backdrop also loomed large: the article notes that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger attended and keynoted a Women’s Ku Klux Klan rally in 1926, and that her American Birth Control League launched its “Negro Project” in 1939.
What was missing from the hearing was any firm answer to the central accusation that triggered it. The committee set out to probe whether the SPLC had funded hate groups, but the session veered into familiar crossfire over abortion, Planned Parenthood and accusations of racism, leaving the funding claims hanging in the air. For Crockett, the June 9 exchange was a sharp public clash with one of the most recognizable voices in the King family orbit; for King, it was a chance to turn the attack back on her critics in the middle of a partisan fight that is not going away.
