Dexter King, left, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III
Posted on 07/12/2008 9:44:23 AM PDT by george76
Two of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s children are suing their brother, accusing him of wrongfully taking money from their parents' estates.
Bernice King and Martin Luther King III allege that Dexter King took "substantial funds" out of Coretta Scott King's estate and "wrongfully appropriated" money from their father's estate.
The suit, filed Thursday in Fulton County Superior Court, serves as a very public fissure in an iconic family that has always professed unity, particularly as questions have swirled around some of their financial dealings.
In a written statement Friday, Dexter King called the suit "inappropriate and false."
"I'm disappointed that our personal family disagreement, as it relates to the family business, has evolved into being handled in a public legal forum," he said.
"It is my hope that this inappropriate and false claim by my siblings will be swiftly resolved and we can go about the business of focusing on our parents' tremendous legacy."
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Dexter King, left, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III
Based on TV interviews...I think each of them have fairly expensive lifestyles. Other than the family foundation....I didn’t get the idea that they had real professions to fall back on.
can't these kids all just get along?
This family is such a bunch of grafters it is not funny.
That will be $1.00 please.
--ML King Foundation
December 23, 1994
King Family Feels Pushed Aside by Park Service
By RONALD SMOTHERS,
The family of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asserted today that the National Park Service, once its partner in preserving the slain civil rights leader’s birth home and memorial here, was now trying to usurp his vision and supplant his heirs as interpreters of that vision.
At the heart of the accusation is the Park Service’s plan to build an $11 million visitors center that would be a gateway to the five-block-long Martin Luther King National Historic Site. The King family has been hoping to use the same location for a multimedia museum, and they said today that if the visitors center was built instead, Dr. King’s vision would be portrayed in a static manner.
“We feel strongly that the heritage of the civil rights movement is too important to be controlled by a government agency which has only superficial familiarity with the internal dynamics of our freedom struggle,” Dexter King, Dr. King’s youngest son, said at a news conference with Coretta Scott King and other members of the family. “They are poorly qualified to interpret the people’s history. That responsibility is better left to the people who lived it.”
The conference was held at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, a nonprofit center run by the family across the street from the site in dispute.
The family also struck back at a local newspaper columnist who had criticized their opposition to the Park Service plan and accused the family of profiteering on the dream and legacy of Dr. King. Mr. King said they were doing no more than any other family in charging modest fees for the reproduction of the civil rights leader’s words, adding, “Even the word of God costs money down at the religious bookstore.”
But it was Mrs. King, flanked by her children and supporters, who struck the most indignant tone, rebutting recent articles by Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution, that criticize Mrs. King and the center she founded in 1968.
“Not even for a moment has personal enrichment been a goal of me or my children,” said Mrs. King. Perpetuating the memory and ideas of her husband, Mrs. King said, was “a sacred responsibility and legacy borne of tragedy. It was not something we wanted, but it is also not something we will turn away from. It seems that the same evil forces that killed Martin Luther King Jr. are now trying to destroy his family.”
The Federal parks agency obtained the deed for the disputed site from the city two months ago, and workers have begun to demolish the youth center that sits there now, the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. Mrs. King had lobbied for the center years ago.
The visitors center would serve the three million people who visit the neighborhood annually to soak up the milieu in which the civil rights movement and Rev. King thrived. In addition to the King center, the historic district includes the King birth home, Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King and his father were pastors, and the crypt containing the slain leader’s body.
Troy Lissimore, the National Park Service superintendent of the King Historic District, denied that the agency was trying usurp the role of defining Dr. King or his legacy “because that dream and legacy belongs to the world.” He said the agency had tried to involve the King center officials as “a critical partner” in every phase of their planning and had thought until a few months ago that Mrs. King and others supported the planned visitors center, which would be built with public money.
Mr. Lissimore said that when the family went public with their displeasure, it seemed to be an attempt to “empower Dexter King” as he prepared to take the leadership of the King center. “I see a King center that is perhaps going through a process of ups and downs and here is an opportunity now to try to capture a way to continue fund-raising opportunities,” Mr. Lissimore said.
Representative John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat, plans to hold a meeting on Jan. 7 to try to resolve the dispute.
The King center and the historic district along Auburn Avenue, in one of the city’s oldest black communities, has long been the source of some ambivalence here. While it has been a magnet for tourists, many, even Mrs. King herself, have lamented the fact that there is not more in the area to pay tribute to the slain civil rights leader and his message. Many have accused the King center of inertia and ineffective stewardship, relegating the area to “no more than a 10-minute stop for tourists,” as Ms. Tucker, the editorial page editor, wrote recently.
In her column, Ms. Tucker criticized the creation of the “profit-making, high-tech museum” envisioned by Dexter King, calling it “a sort of I Have a Dreamland to make a profit off of a Disney-esque trip through the civil rights movement.” Today, Ms. Tucker said she stood by that column and continued to see a basic contradiction in the family’s insistence that Dr. King and his work is worthy of a national holiday while at the same time that his legacy is theirs to do with as they please.
City officials and the trustees of Ebenezer Baptist Church also seem to be arrayed on the side of the Park Service.
Atlanta’s Mayor, Bill Campbell, said the King family had been involved in the planning over the years for the area. He said the involvement of the park service in the historic district “was an important policy decision for the city” and one on which Mrs. King could not be the only one to speak. The agency’s involvement was crucial, he noted, as the city prepared for the hordes of visitors that will arrive with the Summer Olympics in 1996.
Similarly, as the Kings were holding their news conference, the trustees of Ebenezer Baptist were in the final stages of negotiations with the Park Service on a plan to lease the church building to the agency for tours. In exchange, the agency would give Ebenezer land elsewhere in the district for a new church.
CNN appears to be ushering in the age of, “Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t all that great after all.” This will accrue to Obama’s benefit, since he can’t even approach King’s rhetoric, which contained truly noble ideals.
These morons have been fighting over his estate for years. So much for content of character when it comes to his offspring.
I sort of hope this greedy bunch of creeps destroys each other permanently.
I wonder if they brought an interpreter for Lewis.
I just now realized ... MLK Jr must have been very rich. How did he get rich?
Not sure.
Taxpayers ?
After he died, we taxpayers gave his estate and his wife millions more.
“King’s rhetoric, which contained truly noble ideals.”
It should, considering that King “borrowed” much of it himself. The ‘I have a dream’ speech was lifted from a speech a black pastor made to the 1952 Republican national convention.
Too bad it's passe.
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