This may be the #1 hoax site on the web: Martinlutherking.org. Certainly it is a site dangerous for children, because it cleverly purports to be an accurate history site, while selling voodoo history and racism.
A racist group bought the domain name (note the “.org” suffix), and they’ve managed to keep it. The site features a drawing of Martin Luther King, Jr., on the first page. The racist elements are subtle enough that unwary students and teachers may not recognize it for the hoax site it is.
It is both racist and hoax: Note the link to a racist argument on “Why the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday should be repealed;” note the link to a hoax page, “Black invention myths.”
Students, nothing on that site should be trusted. Teachers, warn students away from the site. You may want to use that site as a model of what a bad site looks like, and the importance of weighing the credibility of any site found on the web.
Why do I even mention the racist, hoax site? Because it comes upi #3 on Google searches for “Martin Luther King.” Clearly a lot of people are being hoodwinked into going to that site. I’ve seen papers by high school students citing the site, with teachers unaware of the site’s ignoble provenance.
Update: The site is owned by Stormfront, a white supremicist organization.
Here are a few good sites on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; you can help things by clicking on each one of these sites, and by copying this list with links and posting it on your blog:
- Nobel Foundation site, biography of Dr. King for receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace
- King’s Nobel Prize Lecture
- Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute (King Institute) at Stanford University
- Lesson plans from the King Institute, on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Letter from Birmingham Jail, and more
- The King Center site; photo and video archive at the King Center
- Tribute, resources and links from the B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library at the C. W. Post Campus, Long Island University
- Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)
More resources:
- Dr. Mary Ann Bell’s list of hoax sites for teachers to use in instruction, and for students to beware of
- UCLA Library short lesson on evaluating the accuracy, authority and timeliness of internet sites
- “Millennium Project” analysis of the Stormfront site –– it appears the site went down for a while in 2003
- More on hoaxes, parodies, and downright wrong sites
- Trailfire, more instruction on avoiding hoax sites
Posted by Ed Darrell 
