Owens took issue with Democrats' voting rights legislation that, among other provisions, would water down voter ID requirements that states have passed. The freshman lawmaker said Democrats' assumption that ID requirements would hurt Black communities is disrespectful.
"Black Americans, just like Italian Americans or Polish Americans, all we want is fairness," Owens told Fox News Digital. "We want to know that our vote counts. To say that we're the only race of the whole country… that if we have to get an ID that we cannot pull it off – I cannot articulate how demeaning that thought process is.
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"Sadly we have too many Black people that go along with it," Owens continued. "They'd rather have power for themselves than to empower our race."
Owens, 70, grew up near Tallahassee, where his dad was a professor of agriculture at Florida A&M, a historically Black university. King represented the type of pride of his father's generation where they "commanded respect," Owens said.
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Growing up in the days of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan, Owens said he had no relations with White Americans until he was 16-years-old. Despite segregation, Owens talks kindly of how his Black neighborhood in the 1960s differentiated itself by building a proud middle class and business community because of an entrepreneurial spirit.
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Owens said he paraded in protest of segregation when he was just 12 years old in Florida. He admires how the King-inspired protesters of that era dressed nicely, were disciplined in their message, and were uplifting.
Today's Black Lives Matter activists are far different, he said. "They're angry. They don't build, they destroy. They don't unify, they divide. It's a totally different strategy. And it's unfortunate," Owens said.
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King "was not about dividing us. He was about unifying us. And it was because, at the end of the day, his source was God."
Biden cited King during a heated speech in Atlanta Tuesday where he pressed lawmakers to pass voting rights legislation and implied those who were against the bills were on the side of racists.
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"Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace?" Biden said Tuesday. "Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?"
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