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DEXTER, NAMED AFTER the first church Martin pastored, was only seven years old when his father was murdered. He was always a deep thinker, prone to analyzing instead of accepting. Over and over in the aftermath of his father’s murder, he would ask, “Why did my daddy die? How did he die? What is going to happen to the bad people who shot him?” Sometimes I felt as though he were asking the same questions repeatedly to get attention. Being the second son and the third child can make it hard to find one’s place in a family. But it turns out he has, and always had, such an analytical mind. His sense of logic and administration, which he used to head the King Center, was demonstrated at an early age. At the Galloway School, he did very well in math. In fact, his elementary school math teacher said he had never worked with a child like Dexter, who would give up his lunch just to come in and work on math problems.
At around age twelve, he started his own photography business. He went to the Southern Rural Action Project, which was designed to help rural poor people, but Dexter attended the program one summer, and they offered him a photography course. He became a very good photographer. He took pictures for weddings and graduations and for different groups, such as the Institute on Nonviolence at the King Center. But being so young, he wasn’t yet mature enough to understand how success can turn into a nightmare. Daddy King began announcing Dexter’s picture-taking business from the pulpit. Very soon, he had far more orders than he could handle and often couldn’t deliver the pictures quickly enough to satisfy the demand. It taught him a lesson, though, about the peril of moving too far too fast.
Dexter and his cousin Isaac Farris used to work together; they’d sit around and throw around big terms like diversification, but they didn’t know what they were doing. They made a little sign that read, “K and F Sound Productions,” which later became a rather sophisticated music production company. As a student at Morehouse College, Dexter would hire himself out as a disc jockey. He purchased some of the best equipment money could buy for his enterprises.
At a certain point, though, he was spending too much time on his business ventures and not enough on his schoolwork. I tried to convince him to close down his extracurricular activities. I thought they might be the reason he wasn’t performing well in his studies at Morehouse, a prestigious, historically black private school for men in Atlanta. Four generations of Kings had graduated from Morehouse: Dexter’s maternal great-granddaddy, Rev. A.D. Williams, in the class of 1898; his grandfather Martin Luther King Sr., class of 1930; Martin, who enrolled at fifteen and graduated in 1948; Dexter’s uncle, A.D., who graduated in 1959; and Martin III, who graduated with the class of 1979.
Dexter, however, eventually dropped out. He had problems concentrating and focusing on his studies. He could read something over and over and still not understand it. He was soon diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder, or ADD, a condition that often makes it impossible to function in a controlled environment, one that does not leave room for wandering around. Doctors then were prescribing Ritalin to control ADD, which I wouldn’t allow. I didn’t want my son drugged. I had also read that some medications could produce symptoms worse than the diagnosis. In any event, Dexter felt the shame and the burden of being the son of Martin Luther King Jr. and not excelling. He left Morehouse and went back to deejaying. Music gave him meaning and a sense of well-being. But the exit from Morehouse also represented a break with a proud tradition of Morehouse graduates in the family, and this resulted in Dexter feeling like the black sheep—at least for a while.
One summer, he took a job working in a funeral home. He and his cousin started talking big. They said they were going to buy up a rundown funeral home right off Auburn Avenue and refurbish it. When he came home from work, he would tell us all about his experiences with dead people in the funeral home. He would try to sneak up behind me and put his hands on me, and I would tell him, “Don’t you put your hands on me after coming home from a funeral home.” It was all in fun, though, and another way that Dexter coped with his grief and overcame his fear of death.
In 1982, he went to work for the Atlanta Police Department, and I, a staunch advocate of nonviolence, faced a dilemma: having a policeman with a gun in my house. This was something I did not allow, so Dexter ended up keeping the gun in his car. He had always wanted to be a police officer; when he was in high school, he actually told the kids that he was a cop. He bought himself a cap that looked like a policeman’s cap and some badges, and the kids believed him.
In the mid-1980s, he began to pour his passion for musical production and organization into the King Center. He also spent hours wrestling with the thorny issues of how to protect his father’s legacy, to ensure that it was not exploited, and to endow resources for future generations. In addition, he hoped to produce more resources, eventually allowing us to contribute to other grassroots organizations. He had innovative ideas about using new technology to tell our story and promote the Kingian nonviolence philosophy.
In the late 1980s, I began to contemplate successorship. Too many leaders do not train anyone to succeed them, and this is why there’s often so much confusion when a leader is incapacitated or dies. I felt that it would take time to train whomever I put in place to head the Center. Besides, I always felt that young people ought to be trained for leadership.
Yet, even as I wanted to let go, it was difficult to actually do it. Here again was the inner tug-of-war between Mrs. King, the institutional parent, and Coretta, the mother of flesh-and-blood children, whom I innately and unconditionally loved and supported. In a real sense, I gave birth to both: the institution, with the help of many midwives; and my natural children, through the love Martin and I shared. Couldn’t I hang on to both? To all? To everything?
Of course, the answer was no. As founder, president, and CEO of the Center, I knew it had come time for me to decrease my role and allow my children to increase theirs. Subliminally, I knew they could not assert themselves as long as I remained a strong presence, but it was quite a challenge to begin letting go. Even understanding that this task would go to one of my four children did not make the decision easier.
I am the kind of person who likes to know exactly what’s going to happen, especially in a matter as serious as heading the Center. I have to have a clear picture of the outcome; if I can’t see my way clearly, I often hesitate—some would say procrastinate. After much prayer, I felt the urgency to step out and proceed on faith.
I let my children know how serious I was about the Center having an orderly line of succession. In the summer of 1988, I arranged for all of us to meet in a cabin in the northeast Georgia mountains. I picked the location for its isolation. We did not need interruptions. We all sat in a circle, and I asked each sibling about his or her interest in taking this role. Yolanda, who was well on her way to a successful acting career, said, “I’ll do it if I have to, but I sure hope I won’t.” Martin, who was contemplating a political future, said, “I guess if I had to, but I really don’t know.” Bernice, who was pursuing her doctorate of law and master of divinity, said, “I’ll handle a part of it if I have to.” Then everyone looked at Dexter, who we all agreed had the best business sense of the siblings. He had a vision and a plan for the Center, which at that time employed sixty people and managed a few million in finances.
Dexter, at twenty-eight years old, accepted the responsibility. On April 4, 1989, twenty-one years to the date after Martin’s assassination, the King Center board and I held a five-hour installation service. Appropriately, the installation was carried out at Ebenezer, a church filled with our family’s history, both joyous and painful. People came from everywhere to celebrate. Motown founder Berry Gordy attended and donated tapes of Martin’s best-known speeches. Jennifer Holiday sang. Adam Clayton Powell IV came, along with many other daughters and sons of the movement. In his installation speech, Dexter announced ambitious plans that included training one hundred thousand activists around the world in Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosop
hy and methodology of nonviolence, and to build a forty-million-dollar endowment within the next decade.
But six months later, Dexter resigned.
Some blamed me for not getting out of the way. Others blamed Dexter for getting in the way. Many other factors, including consistently negative press, especially in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, contributed to this disappointing equation. But the major problem was a flawed structure. The board made Dexter the president, I was the CEO, and the Rev. Barbara Skinner was the chief operating officer. Then there was the board chairman, and an oversight committee. Dexter soon felt he was sandwiched between competing personalities. He asked for complete authority from the board, but never received it.
There were also deep, entrenched factions on the board. Many of the members were veterans of the civil rights movement. They would not embrace Dexter, who counted hip-hop artists among his good friends and wanted to cater to a younger generation. Undercurrents of talk suggested that he did not have the proper educational credentials to command respect as president. Some thought he needed to be more diplomatic; others wanted him to be a figurehead. In the end, he felt betrayed and disillusioned.
The press reported that we were at war, which was not exactly true. After Dexter left, we went back to my being president and CEO, and appointed Dr. Cleveland Dennard the chief operating officer. Dennard, a civil rights veteran, had served as president of Atlanta University for seven years and had earned respect as a management consultant. He was a member of our church, a good friend and supporter, and he agreed to be with us through our reorganization. But five years after the reorganization, I ended up with the same dilemma: Who would lead the Center into the next generation?
It was now 1994. Once again, we looked to Dexter. If he agreed to come back, we thought, then this time things would be different. I didn’t know how much he had changed, but I knew I had. Dexter still burned with the same vision, and he had a holistic understanding of how the King entities (the Center, the Foundation, and the Estate) could work together and not against one another.
There were some actions I had to take to make this work. I agreed to take the title of founder; I would stay on the board, but not be an officer. As long as I was in a prominent position, I realized, people would not deal with Dexter; they would go around him to talk to me. This time around, when people came to me, I would tell them I was not in charge and would send them to Dexter.
When I went to the board to propose Dexter’s return, there was resistance. I was sympathetic to their concerns that we have the right leadership—we had quite a reputation at the King Center for not getting the right people—but I reiterated the importance of institutionalizing Martin’s legacy, and restated my support for Dexter.
Finally, the board agreed that there should never be a time when a King family member did not lead the Center. I had to get the young people prepared. I made it clear that, my personal feelings notwithstanding, I needed to step aside before I became too advanced in years, unable to focus, to be alert or get around. This time the board seemed to sense that we had reached the point at which change had to come.
During a very emotional meeting in October 1994, Dexter was voted in as CEO. The board made very positive statements about him and the future-looking leadership he represented. They thanked me for my dedication while embracing him. It was virtually a complete turnaround. The experience was so meaningful and humbling for Dexter that he broke down and cried. Later, he confided in me that the tears were an embarrassment. Reassuring him, I said, “Dexter, the tears helped people see you as a human being. You have feelings just like everybody else. Maybe people see you as being indifferent or cold and unfeeling, but now they see you in a different light.”
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ALMOST IMMEDIATELY UPON assuming his role as CEO, Dexter was pitched into a bruising conflict with the National Park Service as Atlanta prepared for the 1996 Summer Olympics. Years earlier, when the International Olympic Committee was considering Atlanta as a possible host city, Andy, who was the mayor at the time, insisted that the African delegation visit the King Center and meet with me. Andy told me that they were moved by their visit. When the vote was taken in 1990, the IOC chose Atlanta by a narrow margin. The African delegation’s vote was large enough to make the difference, and Andy told me that the delegation’s vote had a great deal to do with their visit with me at the King Center and the importance to them of the King legacy. It was common knowledge that Martin’s legacy, with its emphasis on goodwill and diversity and its reputation for racial harmony, was among Atlanta’s most powerful magnets, drawing strong global support to Atlanta from the Olympic board. The city motto, “The City Too Busy to Hate,” reminded many of Martin’s immemorial words on hate, a way of thinking and living often driven home by Daddy King as well. Moreover, the King Center was one of Atlanta’s top tourist sites, bringing millions of dollars annually into the city treasuries.
Starting in the early 1990s, the King Center’s board and I had been discussing how to finance necessary repairs throughout the King Center campus and expand the Center’s exhibition space in preparation for the Olympics. It turned out that the National Park Service was also looking for funds for a new visitor center. In initial meetings between me, the Park Service, Ebenezer, and officials from the City of Atlanta, I understood that the Park Service was seeking twelve million dollars from the federal government to build a visitor center and that the King Center could share in that allocation of funds for our repairs. Also, I believed that the King Center would be given control over the exhibits at the new NPS visitor center to ensure the integrity of the narrative, and that there would be space in that center for black businesses to sell their wares during the Olympics.
But when the dust had cleared, the King Center did not benefit from any largesse emanating from the Olympics. The Park Service gained precious land and properties, Ebenezer Church received land for a new church as well as significant funds, the city’s community center was entirely torn down, and the King Center received nothing at all. In fact, the Center lost ground. Dexter once said that the Park Service came in and took everything, just like the government had taken from the Native Americans. While that was not a particularly diplomatic statement, can you blame him for saying it?
Before the Olympics, the King District included the community center, a natatorium, Martin’s birth home, a few other historic homes, a nursing home, Fire Station No. 6 (where Martin chased fire trucks as a boy), and Ebenezer Baptist Church, which for decades remained the center of worship for King family members. The district also included the King Center—its administration program and archives building, Freedom Hall Complex with its auditorium, meeting rooms, bookstore, screening room, International Chapel of All Faiths, and Martin’s crypt, set in the middle of the reflecting pool near the eternal flame.
I had lobbied the city and the U.S. Congress for the creation of the Martin Luther King Historic Site and Preservation District. I had raised millions in public and private funds and worked with the City of Atlanta to restore housing in the same block as Martin’s birth home. Then, in 1980, at my invitation, the Park Service became involved with the management of the historic district. Because of the nearly a million people who visit our site annually, it was impossible for the King Center to be the sole entity responsible for the District’s maintenance. We continued to manage and operate the King Center, while the Park Service managed the birth home, the No. 6 Fire Station, and, eventually, the Ebenezer historic sanctuary and the new visitors’ center.
From the beginning, I had envisioned including all the iconic spiritual institutions in the District, such as Wheat Street Baptist Church and Bethel AME as well as Ebenezer, along with the Atlanta Life Insurance building and the SCLC headquarters, but because of insufficient resources we could not expand. My hope was that others would be inspired to complete the venture.
I started our planning for the Olympics with no knowledge of the National Park Service’s true agenda, which was h
idden from us until it was too late to make a difference. Much of the conflict that bloomed in advance of the 1996 Olympics centered on the community center across the street from the King Center headquarters and Ebenezer. I had raised about $3.5 million to build that center, with the city providing matching funds. I was happy to raise the money because the community center served the Auburn community. It housed a “gymnatory” (a gymnasium that could also serve as an auditorium that would seat about a thousand people), the King Center’s Early Learning Center, a library, community social services, as well as multipurpose rooms for activities such as tutoring, and it was just steps away from the natatorium, the beautiful Olympic-size pool. I saw this center as the city’s and the community’s portion of the King memorial. The King Center and the City of Atlanta had agreed that the city would manage the community center, and that it would be open for all to use. Initially, the National Park Service had a small office space in a neighborhood home near Martin’s birth home. We thought the Park Service would support the community building and development we had already started and would also help by conducting interpretive tours and communicating the mission of the King Center.
But what the Park Service really wanted was to purchase the choice land the community center sat on so it could build the Park Service visitors’ center, with exhibition space, there. In addition, the Park Service wanted control of historic Ebenezer, where Rev. Joseph Roberts was pastor. The Park Service proposed a land swap by which it would get control of the historic church site adjacent to the King Center through a long-term lease. Rev. Roberts would get cash plus land across the street to build a new church.
My Life, My Love, My Legacy Page 36