The Purdue Exponent


11/01/01	5 day quick link 10/31 \| 10/30 \| 10/29 \| 10/26 \| 10/25

King family tries to change public image

Perhaps the heirs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are not completely shameless. Perhaps they can be embarrassed, after all.

Perhaps.

Having endured a week of withering criticism over reports that their greed might halt fund raising for a King memorial on the National Mall in Washington, the family of the slain civil rights leader issued a statement that denied that they wanted to charge a fee for the use of King's likeness.

That's good. The family is still trying to recover from an unfortunate history of putting its private profit mongering ahead of public efforts to celebrate Dr. King's legacy. In 1995, incredibly, the family shut down the King holiday commission, which Coretta Scott King, Dr. King's widow, had spent years working to establish. The family viewed the national holiday commission as a fund-raising competitor, making it more difficult for them to get contributions to keep afloat the poorly run King Center, which employed several family members.

They have also rented out their father as a corporate hack, allowing Atlanta-based Cingular, a cellular telephone company, and Alcatel, a French telecommunications company, to use his image in advertisements. In one particularly gauche commercial, Dr. King's voice was featured along with that of Kermit the Frog.

Happily, the King memorial — planned for four acres adjoining the Tidal Basin, across from the Jefferson memorial — would make far more appropriate use of King's memory and image. Construction has been tentatively scheduled to start in 2003. Leaders of an African-American fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, have worked to build a King memorial since 1984. They finally won congressional approval in 1996.

But last week, initial reports indicated that the fund-raising effort had been halted because the King family was seeking a cut of the proceeds. King family spokesmen have since denied that charge and have stressed their eagerness to see the memorial built.

"We're very honored to see such a national honor bestowed upon a great American, who happens to be my father," son Dexter King said last week.

If you read the family's recent public statement, however, it contains a disturbing loophole. Instead of seeking a fee for use of King's image, the estate says it is negotiating a permissions agreement.

"Once an agreement is reached, any funds (emphasis added) we receive from this agreement will go toward supporting the King Center's mission," the statement said. Unfortunately, for the last decade, the center's only discernible mission has been providing salaries to several do-nothing relatives.

Dexter King claims the family's only interest is to ensure that corporate sponsorships of the memorial won't be allowed to use their father's image inappropriately. As history indicates, however, corporate sponsors can hardly do more damage than King family members have already done themselves by trying to market the civil rights icon as if he were Elvis Presley.

"The problem with the King legacy is that people perceive it to be public domain when in fact it's not," Dexter King has said in the past, with no apparent sense of irony. That pretty much sums up the family's philosophy: Dr. King's legacy exists to provide them a luxurious lifestyle.

Dr. King always said he wanted no great public acclaim, no huge memorial. He also said that he wanted his children judged not by the color of their skin, but by the strength of their character. Sadly, both wishes may come true in ways he could not have imagined.

Cynthia Tucker is a syndicated columnist from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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