My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King

  Dexter and I fought the deal to tear down the community center to make way for the Park Service’s visitors’ center. We went to Congress. We went to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. We tried to get the White House involved.

  I was also excited about Dexter’s plan for a high-tech museum named the Dream Center, which he wanted to build on the grounds of the community center. Using the latest technology, this museum would offer the type of sensory effects that allow visitors to feel as if they have been transported back to the major civil rights battlefields and victory celebrations, such as the victory of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. For example, in an installation showcasing the Birmingham campaign you would actually hear the police dogs barking. The centerpiece would show Martin delivering his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial via holograph, making the whole experience come alive anew.

  Meanwhile, hoping to win our support for the land swap and the visitors’ center, the Park Service was initially very friendly. They began a “wining and dining” process in their attempt to solicit my support. Top officials flew me in a private plane to the Lyndon Johnson Library near Austin, Texas, where I met with Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady and a Park Service advisory board member. She talked passionately about how the Park Service had helped make the Johnson properties one of the nation’s most popular tourist sites. The National Park Service had even more aggressive ambitions. The discussions quickly moved to acquiring the land that held my husband’s crypt. “That’s nonnegotiable” was my rather curt reply. Then they talked about acquiring Martin’s birth home. Again, I told them emphatically, “That, too, is nonnegotiable. We own it. We’re going to keep it.” I felt, and still feel, that black people have lost too much land to white people already and that we certainly should not give up anything else. What I gleaned from these conversations, all in all, was that the Park Service wanted to buy the King Center. That too, of course, was not negotiable.

  Without my knowledge, the Park Service had talked with Reverend Roberts at Ebenezer and with City Hall officials, and had also enlisted the help of Rep. John Lewis to push through legislation for funds to tear down the community center. I was disappointed that John Lewis, a movement friend, was not properly briefed on the matter. He later informed us that the Park Service had told his offices that I was on board with the changes, which of course was not true.

  In the end, after intense negotiations, the City of Atlanta donated the community center property to the Park Service, so the Park Service got the land for its visitors’ center which would house Park Service offices and exhibits by the Park Service, and the Park Service worked out a deal with Reverend Roberts for a long-term lease on the Ebenezer sanctuary in exchange for funds and land to build a new church.

  The Ebenezer sanctuary had sacred and historic value. Visitors from all over the world came there to share in a spiritual and historic experience. Four generations of Kings had worshipped or preached there. Mama King was murdered there. Martin and A.D. co-pastored and preached at Ebenezer, and their funerals were held there. The idea of ceasing worship services at the original Ebenezer Church was very painful to me.

  It might have been all right for the Park Service to take that sanctuary years hence, when Christine, Naomi, and I were no longer around and when our children were on their last legs, but to discontinue operating that church in my time when we had first-generation living heirs—I mean, it is still very painful. This is the first time I have said this publicly.

  The promises I’d believed the Park Service had made to the King Center to share in the twelve-million-dollar allocation from Congress evaporated into thin air. Like other entities in the District, the King Center really could have used a face-lift, but it did not receive one dollar for improvements.

  The community center was gone. Black businesses who had bought inventory thinking they could exhibit their wares at what was going to be our exhibition site during the Olympics lost their money. Some went into bankruptcy.

  In future years, the Park Service and my heirs may strike up a better relationship. But what happened then was that Dexter, seeing an injustice being done, tried to rectify it and got maligned, especially in the press. The National Park Service took its concerns to the Atlanta press, which then distorted our intentions. Dexter said he had funders ready to invest the seventy-five to one hundred million dollars necessary to build the interactive Dream Center. At the time, nothing like that had been done to convey the history of the civil rights movement. But the flap with the Park Service—along with Dexter’s consistent statements that James Earl Ray had not killed Martin (which I’ll talk more about later on)—created such controversy that the funders backed away. When people read negative articles, it creates a climate of hostility and ill will, which dampened some of the support the Center should have received. Cynthia Tucker, the editorial page editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, consistently wrote editorials attacking me as well as Dexter and his endeavors regarding the Dream Center. She did it for so long that I sometimes imagined she had some kind of personal problem with us, or that she was being used by others for a broader agenda. I believe also that the funders Dexter had in place were pressured to back away.

  I suppose that when you become older and wiser, you are more cautious in terms of what you say and the way you say it. I cautioned Dexter about speaking so directly on certain subjects, but he and Bernice have their father’s directness.

  As I shifted into semiretirement from the Center, Dexter and his business partner, Phil Jones, took on the challenge of safeguarding Martin’s intellectual property. Their job was to protect his words, ideas, name, and image from literary and commercial exploitation.

  In one of Dexter’s first meetings as head of the King Center, he emphasized the theme of ownership—not just of land, but of ideas and writings, too. As he emphasized in his book, Growing Up King, “The King Center is the spiritual and institutional guardian of the King legacy. Our main goal is to educate the public about, and to perpetuate and promote, my father’s message of nonviolence around the world. To achieve this goal, the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., Inc., must protect Martin’s intellectual property: the name, images, writing, and speeches that embody his message.

  “Land is the real estate of the past,” Dexter said. “Intellectual property is the real estate of the now. If you stand back and let others steal Dad’s material, then you are affecting every minority writer, every songwriter, every composer, every artist, every storyteller, every creative person.”

  It’s well known that Martin did not live a lavish lifestyle. He gave away much of what he earned in his lifetime, including the fifty-four thousand dollars he received in connection with the Nobel Peace Prize. He left hardly any inheritance. It was our family friend Harry Belafonte who took out an insurance policy on Martin and helped obtain other contributions that aided our family in the years after Martin’s death.

  However, Martin did make a clear distinction between the income he derived from his work as head of the SCLC and that from his personal efforts as a private citizen. He believed that his spiritual message belonged to the world, but his copyrighted words belonged to him legally in life and to his children and me after his death. This is why, as early as 1955, he began copyrighting his speeches and writings, including his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, and doing so under his name, rather than under the names of the organizations he represented. With no land or material possessions to leave to his heirs, Martin knew that all he had to leave behind was his intellectual property.

  Soon after he delivered “I Have a Dream,” which is widely considered one of the most important speeches of the twentieth century, 20th Century Fox Records started mass distribution of the piece in its entirety, without Martin’s permission. At that time, many people had not heard the whole speech, and 20th Century Fox took advantage of this fact, selling and profiting from Martin’s words without paying him a dime. Martin sued to stop distribution of th
e record on the grounds of copyright infringement, and won.

  In the twentieth century, millions of acres of land, especially in the South, were stolen from blacks, leaving their heirs impoverished. History repeated itself when record companies sold lyrics blacks had penned and/or sung, while giving them little or no compensation. Why should ideas and land alike be lost to blacks while the great wealth they create goes to enrich others? This historical understanding is no doubt why Martin gave the rights to distribute his “I Have a Dream” speech to Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records.

  In 1999, the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., Inc., sued CBS News on virtually the same issue that his father had advanced with regard to 20th Century Fox: copyright infringement. The network had included footage of virtually the entire “Dream” speech, along with several of Martin’s other most revered speeches, in a five-part series, and then sold the footage on home videos. They did not give the series away; they sold it for profit. They used my husband’s words, name, image, and speeches to make this money, but Martin’s heirs received nothing. It was unfair, and a court of law upheld this conclusion, ruling that the copyright laws protected Martin’s speeches. Spending millions fighting copyright infringement was something we had to do to protect the integrity of Martin’s legacy for future generations, not to make ourselves richer.

  While we won in the courts, CBS’s venerable 60 Minutes program tried to sully our reputation by running a critical piece entitled “Selling the Dream.” It basically accused our family of using intellectual property as a means of profiteering from Martin’s work. Its argument did not make sense in court; nor did it make sense in the court of public opinion. My son also appropriately pointed out in his book, Growing Up King, that during the trial it was revealed that the network charged schools and nonprofits a thousand dollars per minute to use its footage of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

  In cases large or small, we must safeguard Martin’s legacy—his name, image, and words—for future generations. To whom should we render this vital responsibility? Corporate America? The federal government? Once again, legal trials have brought clarity and have protected the dignity that is rightfully attached to Martin’s name. In the early 1980s, for example, a novelty company began manufacturing a miniature bust of Martin, claiming it was doing so in conjunction with the King Center. This was tasteless and disrespectful, a good example of why we must protect Martin’s image as well as his words. If we do not call out these violations and try to put a stop to them, our silence might be viewed as acceptance.

  With this in mind, before the formation of the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr., Inc., the King Center sued the manufacturer of the bust. A Georgia court upheld our right to protect Martin’s image, and stopped distribution of the sculpture. The law maintains, however, that it is the responsibility of the interested or potentially aggrieved parties to police how their intellectual property is being used, or their ability to prevent others from exploiting it will be compromised. Although the King Center brought that suit, it is now the King Estate that bears the burden of ensuring that Martin’s words or images are not used pornographically, indecently, or in ways incongruous to the values he presented to the world. To carry out this mission, the King Estate frequently issues licenses to businesses and individuals who use Martin’s name or likeness for profit. When the use is by nonprofit groups or schools using the material for educational purposes, there is generally not a charge, or there’s a nominal charge. Yet, in both the CBS and miniature bust cases, negative publicity against the King family continues to obscure the principles for which we are fighting. Much of this negativity emanates from Atlanta, a fact of life that dogged Martin and continues to hound my family. I think perhaps this negativity will stalk the King family in perpetuity, although it is my hope and prayer that it will one day cease.

  Sadly, even my husband often felt alienated in his own city, the place where he grew up. For instance, when he tried to establish a campaign around school desegregation, he called the city leadership together and outlined his proposal. But he couldn’t get leadership to come together. There were about twenty potential leader types, all vying for attention. So Martin forgot about Atlanta and moved on to other campaigns.

  This is the kind of situation my children and I still deal with. Too many people saw me just as Mrs. King, and assumed I was riding on the coattails of my husband’s notoriety. They did not see Coretta, who had gifts, talents, and ideas, as well as a passion to carry out Martin’s mission for all people. They saw Mrs. King, but not Coretta, who had four children to care for and a husband who was often looked at as the president of black America, but who depended on me as his soul mate, wife, and primary confidante. Even before Martin’s death, I was asked to join just about every progressive women’s group and organization of color in the United States, and expected to attend regular meetings. If I didn’t, I’d face the buzz that I was too high and mighty to relate to real people.

  For example, when we moved to Atlanta, Martin encouraged me to join the Links chapter there. The Links is a public service organization of mostly middle-class black women; it does many worthwhile community projects. Members are asked to call and explain their absence if they can’t attend a meeting or event. When we lived in Montgomery, I belonged to the Links there and was actively involved in that chapter. When I joined the Links in Atlanta, sometimes I was so busy taking care of my kids and my husband, or I was traveling for the movement, that I just plain forgot to call in my absences. Quickly, it came back to me that I was being whispered about, referred to as “Miss It” or “Miss Hot Stuff,” who thought myself too busy to call. One day, after I had rushed Martin to the airport and was trying to explain why I’d forgotten a meeting, one of the Links leaders said to me, snidely, “Well, why don’t you just try to come to one meeting a year instead of two?” Stung, I decided that this was just not an organization I could be a part of. I did end up being a member of the national Links organization instead, which didn’t require me to be subject to time-consuming rules or dues.

  All the children seemed to have inherited specific qualities from Martin and me. Yolanda has our love of the performing arts and a sense of how to balance difficult situations. Martin has his father’s name, as well as his zeal for advocacy and social justice. Bernice possesses a deeply rooted spirituality and a strong zeal for advancing God’s kingdom. And Dexter has an astonishing resemblance to Martin, as well as the tenacity that Martin and I shared.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I Will Count It All Joy

  IN MY HEART, I know what killed Martin. Hate killed him, just as hate killed President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Bobby Kennedy. Only love and the sincerest pursuit of justice can heal the wounds laid bare by the assassination of three of the best and brightest among us.

  For if Martin, John, and Bobby can be killed, how can we ever rest in peace? If Martin, John, and Bobby could not be saved—if causes both large and small can be settled by shadow agencies, conspiracies, and covert operations—doesn’t this put our nation at terrible risk? If bullets are substituted for ballots, how can we believe that democracy in America is not in jeopardy? Such actions should be unthinkable in a country that has seen so many of its men and women shed their blood to speak noble words in aid of equally noble results.

  One thing has long haunted me since April 4, 1968: I believe that James Earl Ray was not my husband’s assassin and that the U.S. government had a hand in my husband’s death.

  On August, 27, 1998, I met with U.S. attorney general Janet Reno. I asked her to open an investigation that would finally bring all the facts about my husband’s death to the forefront. There are a lot of Americans, me and my family included, who continue to believe Martin’s murder was the result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government. This is why, personally, it is hard for me to believe that President Lyndon Johnson himself was not involved somehow, either directly or indirectly.

  I was so disappointed when the statement Janet Reno issued
promised only a “limited investigation.” How can you do a partial investigation? That is nothing. I had no illusions that anything would come from such a half effort.

  I did, however, get a measure of justice. On December 8, 1999, in a civil suit I filed in Memphis on behalf of my family, a jury of six whites and six blacks implicated U.S. government agencies in the wrongful death of my husband. The extensive evidence presented during the trial convinced the jury that my husband had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis Police Department as well as local, state, and federal government agencies including military intelligence, movement insiders, and the Mafia. The jury affirmed the trial’s evidence, which indentified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and agreed that Mr. Ray had been set up to take the blame, something we had maintained all along. We requested a mere one hundred dollars in restitution to show that we were not pursuing the case for financial gain, but for the revelation of truth.

  The jury’s findings and conclusion were monumental. But what is absolutely amazing to me is that no more than a handful of reporters covered this trial from start to finish. The findings of the jury should have been published in their entirety by every major news source in America; it is not an overstatement to say that this was the trial of the century, rather than that of O. J. Simpson—which, I understand, about two thousand reporters covered. The mainstream media basically ignored the sworn testimony of former law enforcement agents and other persons who were direct witnesses at the time of my husband’s assassination. Most Americans do not know that a jury found that their own government was party to a conspiracy to end my husband’s life.

  I have had thirty years to reflect on April 4, 1968, the day I felt my heart ripped apart, and I have not talked about this in much detail. But I feel more comfortable talking about it now, after that jury decision. If such a crime and cover-up could happen to a man of my husband’s stature with no consequences, it could happen again, and I want everyone to be aware of what we know.