Rep. Jasmine Crockett suggested during a June 9 House Judiciary Committee hearing that Dr. Alveda King was being used as a Republican prop, a sharp exchange that turned a hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center into a confrontation over race, abortion and the King family name.
Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said the committee had invited King simply to “parade someone who has the name, Dr. King,” according to the exchange. King, who had been invited to testify, answered after Crockett left the room and said, “You have suggested that I am a bastard to the King family legacy … but I love God, and I love you.”
The hearing was held by the House Judiciary Committee to examine the Southern Poverty Law Center. Bryan Fair was serving as the SPLC interim CEO, and Republican Rep. Brandon Gill used part of his time to press questions about the SPLC and abortion. The hearing was also set against wider accusations that the group had targeted conservative organizations and maintained a list of critics, making the panel a test of how far the committee was willing to push the dispute beyond the day’s witness list.
King’s appearance carried its own weight because she has long spoken from an anti-abortion, pro-life position. During the hearing, she argued, “Pro-lifers cannot be white supremacists. Pro-lifers fight for every baby in the womb regardless of skin color,” and added that “We have been aborted as blacks in America disproportionately.” She also said, “The White Supremacists are Planned Parenthood.”
The exchange also pulled in a painful family legacy. King is the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., who was born in 1929 and assassinated in 1968, and her presence gave the hearing a direct link to one of the most recognizable names in American civil rights history. Crockett’s remark put that legacy at the center of a committee fight that was nominally about the SPLC, but quickly became a collision over who gets to invoke civil rights language and who gets dismissed as a prop.
That friction was visible in the room. King defended both her testimony and her family connection as Crockett moved on, leaving the committee with a partisan exchange that did not resolve the broader dispute over the SPLC, abortion and race. The hearing ended without any announced next step, but the argument ensured that the question of whether King was there as a witness or a symbol will linger far longer than the hearing itself.
