The composition and organization of the military is a matter of federal law...not state law. The state governments of the south had nothing to say about the armed services...other than possibly their state militias... which if called up would have been subject to federal law. To the extent that there was conflict between state and federal law...federal law would have superseded under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
Even if Dr. King were a Republican, his membership in the "party of reform" did not seem to do much good. Otherwise there would have been no need for his protest marches. The problems only became vocal during the Kennedy administration. They had been festering for decades before that regardless of which party was in power...including the Reconstruction era of the Republican administrations. Remember...it was federal law that guaranteed civil rights. The federal government was fully empowered to strike down conflicting state law.
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