[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10925-2002Apr7.html]His Family[/url] that's who!! From Washington Post Monday, April 8, 2002:

Just a few snipets...

ATLANTA -- After the lights were dimmed in the elegant ballroom of a downtown hotel here this past January, a video presentation rolled. Within minutes, one of the most influential voices in American history cut through the darkness, saying, "[b]I have a dream[/b]." It was, of course, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. [@:D]

But on this occasion -- the annual dinner hosted by the King Center -- those famous words weren't meant as an introduction to King's plea for racial equality. [b]They were part of a promotion by Target Corp.[/b], which was heralding its work to help keep the dream alive by renovating the center's gift shop.

Several diners in the audience openly groaned.

King died in Memphis while planning a massive poor people's march on Washington, yet over the past few years the family estate -- led by his 41-year-old second son, Dexter Scott King -- has sought to sell the rights to his works and name to corporate bidders such as Alcatel, Cingular Wireless and AOL Time Warner.

Last year, the Kings stood in the way of an effort by the nonprofit Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., of which King was a member, to erect a memorial in his honor at the Tidal Basin on the National Mall. The family wanted a fee for the right to use King's image.

After taking control of the King Center from his mother, Coretta Scott King, in 1995, Dexter King traveled to Memphis to consult with the managers of Elvis Presley's gaudy Graceland estate for tips on how to market an icon.

Dexter King returned to Atlanta from Graceland, determined to build an interactive theme park devoted to his father. A critic viciously mocked the idea, calling the proposed park "[b]I Have a Dreamland[/b]." [@:D]

The name stuck, and the idea faded, but King went on to sign a deal with AOL Time Warner to distribute his father's works. He boasted that it might eventually bring the estate $30 million to $50 million.

Meanwhile, the King Center is falling apart. Holes in the brownish carpet leading to its display rooms are patched with silvery duct tape. Black blotches of gum discarded by tourists haven't been scraped away.


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A journalist visiting the center from Ohio this year wrote that [b]he was appalled by the stench in a men's restroom. "I had been greatly disappointed by the dismal and dirty circumstances I found at Dr. King's final resting place[/b] [@:D]," Mansfield B. Frazier wrote.

"The grounds of the building hadn't been properly maintained, [b]and the men's restroom was in deplorable condition[/b][@:D]," Frazier wrote.

The center is no longer active in teaching nonviolence, its original mission. Part of the problem is money. Dexter King laid off much of the staff to help erase a $600,000 debt when he took over seven years ago, declaring that the center was never meant to be a civil rights organization.

In subsequent years, tax records show, the center's income from donations and grants steadily fell. Nevertheless, [b]Dexter King pays himself a salary of $149,000,[/b] [@:D] the kind of paycheck his mother never received.

While the center languishes in Atlanta, its director lives 3,000 miles away in a beach house in Malibu, Calif., where [b]he's pursuing an acting career.[/b][@:D]

Last year, he portrayed his father in a television movie, "The Rosa Parks Story." In a story about Dexter King and his brother, Martin Luther King III, Gentleman's Quarterly reporter Matthew Teague wrote that [b]Dexter could not remember a few sentences from his father's speech to a church gathering. The director, frustrated, turned to cue cards.[/b] [@:D]

In a dressing room trailer afterward, Teague wrote, Dexter King -- who was only 2 during the march on Washington -- commented that the King Center, which he directs, teaches six principles of social nonviolence. Teague asked what those were. More than 15 minutes later, [b]King was able to recall only four[/b]. [@:D]

D. Louise Cook, a former director of the King Center archives and museum, said Coretta King once asked her to give her son Dexter a job after he left an Atlanta college in the mid-1980s. Cook put him to work transcribing one of his father's speeches. "[b]He didn't last the day,[/b]"[@:D] Cook said.


Preach rev, Preach!![@:D]

I can't wait until they have a vacum cleaner commercial with MLK, Lincoln, Kennedy dancing up and down stairs.

How about you?

I have a SCAM.  The apple does not fall far from the tree!  I would have rather have spent time with Malcom X.

Yeah, it's all about money with them. THEIR MONEY. They sold out the legacy. Didn't they even demand the Library of Congress (repository of our nations written history) pay them to store Dr. King's writings? Appalling. When has that ever happened before... (Of course if the Library said that they didn't want them... you can bet they would be demanding that they take them, and organize protests to that effect.[rolleyes])

I'll bet the Rearend Jerky Jackass will be all over this Indignity!

Right.