The reason that I believe Kirk was not a saint was because he harshly criticized the 1964 Civil Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on July 2, 1964. Johnson and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s legally continued when Reconstruction and enforcement of the 15th Amendment (1870) ended in 1877.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act, initially advocated by President John F. Kennedy, ended Jim Crow in the South and throughout the U.S. Like South African apartheid, Jim Crow allowed racial segregation in schools, hospitals, restrooms, transportation, and restaurants. It disenfranchised African-Americans, primarily in the South, through literacy tests, poll taxes, intimidation, lynchings, and cruel violence (e.g., Isaac Woodard, Jr.)
The Jim Crow Museum, located in Big Rapids, Michigan, clearly displays and enumerates all the unspoken and spoken indignities of what life was like for the average African-American under Jim Crow. Charlie Kirk could have benefited greatly from an hour spent at this museum.
He also could have benefited highly from reading a basic understanding of African American history entitled “Charlie Kirk’s dastardly attack on Martin Luther King, Jr,” written by Armstrong Williams on January 19, 2024.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act specifically forbade all “discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The Act also outlawed unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools and public accommodations, and employment discrimination.”
Kirk’s views on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1964 Civil Rights Act seem to have changed and coincided afterhis malignant professional association with the bigoted Blake Neff, a 2013 Dartmouth graduate, who began work as a producer for the Charlie Kirk Show in 2022. In fact, he still works for Turning Point USA today, and I recently listened to him as a producer co-hosting the Charlie Kirk Show with executive producer Andrew Kolvet from noon to 2 p.m. (EST) on both September 30 and October 2.
Neff’s resignation from Fox News occurred after the network fired him in July 2020 while working as a top writer for Tucker Carlson Tonight from 2017 to 2020. Neff resigned for making online racist, bigoted, and misogynist remarks, which he posted under the pseudonym of “Charles XII.”
According to Wired magazine, Kirk earlier in his evangelical career actually admired Martin Luther King, Jr. He called him a “hero” in 2015 and “‘civil rights icon’” in 2022.
However, during Kirk’s annual American Fest rally on December 16-19, 2023, held at the Phoenix Convention Center, Kirk dramatically changed his opinion about King. He said,“‘MLK was awful,” and added that “‘he’s not a good person.’” Kirk also stated that MLK “said one good thing he actually didn’t believe,” never once specifying what that “one good thing” was.
In my opinion, Kirk’s views on King were extremist, ignorant, and wrong.
Kirk stated at that same rally, “‘We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.’” It strongly appears that the bigoted and racist views of Blake Neff had strongly influenced Kirk for the worse.
I agree with Kirk that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, along with subsequent Civil Rights legislation, will never be a substitute for the Constitution, but an important appendage. Kirk firmly believed that the “federal courts … [yielded] to the Civil Rights Act as if it [were] the actual American Constitution.” He may be partially correct.
There is no question that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was long overdue legislation and necessary in ending racial discrimination regarding African Americans and non-Whites.
Kirk also mistakenly believed that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was “an antiwhite [sic] weapon” ad nauseam. He stated in 2023, “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.” He believed that the Civil Rights Act brought about a “permanent DEI-type bureaucracy,” which only began in the mid-2010s.
Kirk also believed in 2023 that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was “awful,” stating “he [was] not a good person.” I think that he and Van Jones would definitely have had a big disagreement over that statement.
As an Independent, I voted for President Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024. If I had been a Congressman, I would have voted “present” for House Resolution 719 despite agreeing with much of the legislation, even at the risk of incurring the wrath of President Trump, which passed the House of Representatives on September 19.
Trump supporter Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City, who candidly admitted that he knew nothing about Kirk on September 10, rashly and hyperbolically compared Kirk to “a modern-day Saint Paul” after doing some research. He concluded that Kirk was a “‘missionary,” “‘evangelist,” and “‘hero,’” which was mostly true. However, Dolan was incorrect because Kirk did not merit comparison to the New Testament saint because Kirk adamantly opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and for other mistaken reasons.
May Turning Point USA be a positive force in the future. Good luck to Erika Kirk.
Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk.
Robert L. Maronic
