Racist callers flood C-SPAN for MLK 50th anniversary: ‘James Earl Ray had a dream and it came true’

Racists C-SPAN viewers on Wednesday reacted to the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s death by calling in to express their bigotry and hate.

Fifty years after King was murdered, C-SPAN host Pedro Echevarria asked callers to describe the civil rights icon's legacy.

While many callers spoke of King in glowing terms, a number of other callers expressed racist views.

A caller named Anita from Arkansas complained that there was not enough focus on the death of white President John Kennedy.

After Echevarria explained that the show was focused on the 50th anniversary of King's death, Anita said that "his legacy was that people need to try to work together and get along."

"And I will tell you, here in Magnolia, the black people are more prejudiced against whites than we are against them," Anita grumbled as the C-SPAN host hung up the call in mid-sentence.

Patrick from Trenton, New Jersey told Echevarria that King's legacy is that "blacks burned the town down after he was killed."

"So this idea that King was a man of peace and gentle and wanting just to do things the peaceful way -- our town got burned down," Patrick said. "What you do is when you raise one group up -- the blacks' so-called civil rights -- you're taking privileges away from another group."

"Today's real meaning of this day -- you have to look at it," he continued. "It's James Earl Ray, the lone-wolf assassin. He had a dream and James Earl Ray's dream came true."

With that, Echevarria cut off the caller and took another call from Robert in Florence, Kentucky.

Robert said that he wanted to present viewers with "some of the facts about Martin Luther King that aren't going to be shared by the news media today or as long as the people who control the news media have control of it."

"The fact that he's known as a doctor, his doctorate was actually plagiarized," Robert opined. "He is actually known as a plagiarist for also stealing the 'I have a dream' speech from another black pastor. He also was a communist agitator. That's his legacy."

"And also being a philanderer," Robert added as Echevarria readied his finger on the cut-off button. "There's a reason the FBI -- I'm sorry, a judge, a pro-King judge sealed the FBI's files on Dr. King or should I say Michael King, which is actually his real name. He actually didn't have his real name legally changed. The fact that he was bugged in that hotel the night before [he was murdered], there's a reason why the judge sealed the file because he was beating up on prostitutes which he routinely saw. This was known..."

"Okay, we'll leave it there," Echevarria interrupted, ending the call.

Watch the video below from C-SPAN's Washington Journal.