"Indeed" 
Posted on 09/06/2011 6:05:15 AM PDT by flowerplough
The builders of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial at the National Mall had to pay $761,160 for the right to use King's words and images, according to financial documents obtained by the Associated Press. The money went to Intellectual Properties Management Inc. -- a foundation controlled by King's youngest son, Dexter. Another $71,000 was paid out in a "management fee" to the family estate back in 2003.
I hope I'm not the only one who found the opening of this monument soured by what could be considered extortion. In any case, I'm especially ticked off, perhaps because I was an activist and organizer in the Southern freedom movement of the 1960s.
I cannot know this for sure, of course, but I doubt that the family of the murdered John F. Kennedy would charge a fee to a group organizing to place a memorial to him on the National Mall. As historian and King biographer David Garrow told the AP, "I don't think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family [or] any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a memorial in Washington."
I agree with Garrow that King himself would be "absolutely scandalized" by this kind of pimping of his life and work. When it comes to King's books or published essays, no one would quarrel with the ownership rights of his descendants. But public speeches? His image? His name?
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
It appears to me that the MLK Jr. Memorial Commission is the victim of what George Wallace said in 1958 would never happen to him again in politics:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/sfeature/quotes.html
Read the second 1958 quote - I’ll not risk an infraction or zot to reproduce it here.
“Someday they’ll wake up.”
150+ years of their stupid decision making. Not likely to change any time soon...well, not until we change the government and prevent the government from stealing from one group and giving to another. Welfare is unconstitutional: NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!!
If I were running it, I would have told them “Sorry, we don’t pay to create historical monuments” and canned the entire project. I think that’s a big difference today - instead of telling the extortionists No Deal, we cave to their every demand....Is it too late to dump the marble in the Potomac and get our money back?
‘Intellectual’ Properties? DEXTER???? LMFAO !!!!
This has been a fabulously invigorating jolt to Atlanta’s economy.
Civil rights and history and all that stuff is one thing, but bidnet is bidnet.
Intellectual Properties Management Inc.
uh ho the I word again,every time I see that word I hear a caching sound.
Looks like “Chairman” King! Where is his Little Red Book?
You are RIGHT!!! Looks like he’s “retaining a lot of water”.
Give em a break, the chinks didn’t have any negros to sit for the statue carving (actually looks like a casting out of melamine).
As far as King fam sucking up $800K, dat jes be dare culcha, ‘sides we owes it twoes em.
"Indeed"
How dare you?
Don’t you know Dr King was a conservative and here to make all things new?
A great man...one of us.
Why I hear someone actually saw him walk on the Chattahoochee in a flood once..someone I trust btw.
Racist! This forum is full of bigoted pigs..a pox on you all. Take your Booker Toms and stuff it.
/s
yeah...of course he would...which is why he was in Memphis attempting to install a public workers Union in a right to work state when Ray shot him
One good American appellation for them ——grifters of the highest order.
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