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It is both racist and hoax: Note the link to a racist argument on “Why the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday should be repealed;” note the link to a hoax page, “Black invention myths.”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
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Using a renowned person’s name and attaching false information with it is degrading. I think they just do this to attract the attention of others since they don’t have anything else to do.
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I agree with George to a high degree. Internet smarts aren’t so much different from street smarts. By third grade, kids ought to have a pretty good idea that the ads on television aren’t there benignly, and that one need be careful about bias.
They need to be careful about bias in internet sites, sermons in church, views teachers express, ads on television, and in everything else.
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LOL< dude that is pretty funny!
RT
http://www.privacy-web.tk
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Maybe I went overboard, but I brought my kids up mocking TV commercials and schoolbooks. And watching The Simpson’s.
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Good material, thanks.
Question for all, but especially grade school/high school teachers:
a) When should students have specific instruction on critical thinking for the Internet?
b) And what exercises are good for that?
(More resources has some, maybe others have more?)
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Good grief – it’s ham-handed!
they excerpt from a book by “European American civil rights activist David Duke”.
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Whether a site ends in .com or .org or .whatever isn’t a good enough rule of thumb—and it never was. It’s just as easy to sign up for a .org or .net as it is to sign up for a .com. There is no reason to believe that .org is anymore sacred than .com.
It just leaves you open for when something ridiculous like this comes along. I think that the only educational purpose martinlutherking.org is as a non-example.
I agree with mpb. It’s annoying when a legitimate government or education institution does not opt for the appropriate suffix.
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[…] Watch out for #1 hoax site on the web Cross posted with permission from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. […]
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[…] Beware the #1 hoax site on the web Cross posted with permission from Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. […]
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PS– as noted on another comment, try to deaden the links. Strip the html coding or break up the URL with spaces. The information is still there but it won’t give credit to the other site, won’t boost their Google rank, and won’t take readers to the other sites automatically. e.g., http:// www. martinlutherking. org/
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The State of Alaska still uses the dot com address for their homeland security/preparedness homepage. This makes it even harder to find out essential governmental information related to preparedness, etc. Maybe that’s the point, or just laziness or ignorance.
Thank you for providing more guides to careful thought.
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This is very thoughtful of you. Thanks for the info.
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A group may claim to be a non-profit to get an “.org” suffix. Some racist organizations are non-profits organizations. Non-profit does not mean “unbiased,” nor “accurate,” nor “good.”
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I cannot tell you how many of my English Comp I (and II, sadly) students have told me that a site cannot be trusted if it is a .com, but can be trusted if it is a .org. Sigh.
Thank you for giving me another example of why this is not necessarily true.
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Thank you for posting this! The racist elements are subtle on the home page, but much plainer on the inner pages and downloadable flyers and brochures. It’s really ugly stuff.
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