King & Republicanism ...

Earl Ofari Hutchinson muses about how Martin Luther King mused:

While King can never be considered a political conservative, the snippets of conservative thinking in his musings on the black family, economic uplift and religious values blend easily with the social conservatism of many blacks. In the decades after his murder, it has blended just as easily into the GOP’s prescription for black ills. And that evidently is more than enough for black Republicans to say that today he’d be a big player on the GOP team.

We supposed most a curious for a straight answer on whether he was actually a registered Republican or not, which is what is being asserted (or implied) lately. Was he - or was he not? And, if he was, does it really matter at this point? Do you feel us on this?