Martin Luther King, Jr., was a Republican. That's the startling claim made in a new radio ad being aired in Maryland by a new group called the National Black Republican Association in its latest attempt to attract African Americans to the GOP. The ad — which can be heard here — features a dialogue between two women who are apparently African American. Among other things, they tell each other that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan and that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican — a curious assertion immediately dismissed by King experts. Quotes from the ad and more after the jump.

The ad, an apparent effort to boost the standing in the black community of Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, says Democrats opposed all civil rights laws, "want to keep us poor while voting only Democrat," and goes after Democrats for cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage. Here are some choice quotes:

"Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan."

"Democrats fought all civil rights legislation from the 1860s to the 1960s. Democrats released those vicious dogs and fire hoses on blacks."

"Democrats want us to accept same-sex marriages, teen abortions without a parent's consent and suing the Boy Scouts for saying 'God' in their pledge."

"Republicans freed us from slavery and put our right to vote in the constitution."

The Associated Press says that Steele himself has disowned the ad, calling it "not helpful to the public discourse." AP also reports that experts on Dr. King are challenging the ad's key claims:

That assertion was challenged Thursday by Steve Klein, a senior researcher with the Atlanta-based King Center. Klein said King never endorsed candidates from either party.

"I think it's highly inaccurate to say he was a Republican because there's really no evidence," Klein said.

A King biographer, Taylor Branch, also said Thursday that King was nonpartisan.

Also from the AP article:

The KKK, never a political party, was a racist group of white men that started in the South after the Civil War, when Republicans were almost unheard of in former Confederate states. The mainstream Democratic Party never endorsed the Klan nor claimed to have founded it.