Growing Up King

by Dexter Scott King

  And then… the laser-pointer blue light hit me.

  The beam of blue-green light hit me in the chest. I stepped forward. It rode up toward my neck, to my throat. My heart beat faster. My hands clenched into fists.

  … Unhhhh… I almost felt it, I tell you… and it changed me. Epiphany is a Christian festival commemorating the showing of Jesus to the Wise Men, celebrated January 6; or it is the appearance of a superhuman or supernatural being. In a strange way, I was feeling an epiphany.

  We left the museum without a word. I wanted to leave the city of Memphis. We caught a plane soon thereafter, but it wasn’t soon enough. It was like I was in a strange land, and after that tour, it was like I felt unwelcome, foreign, even though everybody was nice enough. I felt now there was something unresolved in me about Memphis. There was this tragedy that had occurred in this city that I didn’t quite understand. This was the place where Daddy was killed. It wasn’t about a movie, money, or a conspiracy. It was about facing what happened to our lives. I had to know about Memphis— about our father’s murder. About me. And about us.

  CHAPTER 15

  Odd Man In

  Many people do not realize that the “I Have a Dream” refrain of my father’s most famous speech was spoken extemporaneously. He had prepared his remarks but, moved by the passion of the crowd before him and the tremendous significance of that day in August 1963, his mind soared and led him to those immortal words.

  Soon after the speech was delivered, 20th Century Fox Records distributed a recording of the speech without his permission. The recording was important because many people then, as now, had not heard the speech in its entirety. My father sued the record company to stop their distribution of the record on the grounds of copyright infringement and won. Guided by his trusted advisers, he had been copyrighting his writings and speeches since he published his first book in the 1950s as a way of ensuring that the integrity of his message could be vigorously protected. He had also been represented by a New York literary agent since that first book. Daddy understood that the more important and controversial he became, the more vulnerable he would be to exploitation. Later, he in fact gave Berry Gordy and Motown the right to distribute “I Have a Dream” as well as other speeches, believing they would be in safe hands. As evidence that my father’s faith was well placed, Mr. Gordy eventually gave these masters back to my family when I was installed as head of the King Center in 1989.

  My family and I have repeatedly been attacked in the media and unfairly accused in recent years of trying to profit from my father’s legacy. The intentions behind our efforts to protect his intellectual property—his name, image, writings, speeches, and recorded voice—have been mischaracterized and distorted. In fact, as my father did during his lifetime, we have simply been protecting this property in order to maintain, preserve, and protect the integrity of his message. When Daddy died, all of his property—both tangible and intangible—descended to us as his heirs; it happens with every individual. Curiously, these attacks against us did not seem to occur until we had conflicts with the National Park Service, a federal agency, and subsequent to that when questions were raised about the possible involvement of federal agencies in my father’s death. Could be a coincidence, could not.

  In the early ’80s calls and letters started coming into the King Center about a novelty item on the market that was a miniature sculpture of my father sitting upon a base shaped like a coffin. It was disrespectful, tasteless, and tacky and an unauthorized use of his image. We brought suit against the manufacturer, and a Georgia court upheld our right to protect his image and stopped the distribution of the item. But the law requires that in order to maintain a protected image, as well as name and copyrights, you must actively and uniformly police them or risk losing them. Therefore we have been forced to police them in all instances whether that be a tacky image on merchandise or the reprinting of my father’s copyrighted words or usage of his spoken words without permission. We issue licenses to those people and entities who have our permission to use my father’s name, image, or words that establish the boundaries of that use; again, this is as the law provides.

  Yes, the King Estate does in many instances receive fees for these licenses. But when making licensing decisions, we have never put profit over principle; we have always tried to maintain the dignity and the integrity of my father’s message. Many nonprofit organizations and schools receive the use of my father’s intellectual property for free. However, in many instances where the person or company is using my father’s name, image, or words as part of an appropriate commercial use or an endeavor from which they will profit, we do require an industry-standard financial arrangement. Is that unfair?

  Even more important, the King Estate may receive monies from licenses, but for the most part these monies are not pure profit. It costs a great deal to maintain and police my father’s intellectual property. We have a staff that reviews the thousands of license and permission requests that come in from around the world. Each request requires administrative handling and assessment. And each time we are forced to legally protect and defend our rights we incur major legal expenses. Remember, if we don’t actively protect our rights, we lose them, and certainly this is not what my father would have wanted.

  Much has been made of the fact that my father gave away a great deal of what he earned during his lifetime, including the $54,000 he received in connection with his Nobel Peace Prize. This generosity is used to argue that he intended to give everything he had freely to the world. Daddy did believe that monies he got specifically for the results of his work in the Civil Rights Movement should go back into the Movement, because it embodied the work and sacrifice of thousands of other dedicated people. However, my father also very clearly made a distinction between income derived from those efforts and income derived from his personal efforts. He believed that his message belonged to everyone spiritually, but his copyrighted words legally belonged to him in life and to his heirs after his death. This is why he put the copyrights for his writings and speeches in his name rather than in the names of the organizations in which he was involved; he knew these copyrights would be passed down to us. My father died with very little money and with few material possessions to be our inheritance. He was a loving husband and father, and he knew that given the nature of his life’s work his copyrights were the only way in which he could leave something behind for us. The results of the work of the public man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., unquestionably belong to the world, but the private man, my father, will forever belong to my mother, Yolanda, Martin, Bernice, and me.

  There is an old saying that I have learned to believe, “that which does not destroy us only serves to make us stronger.” By 1994, I had pretty much gotten myself back on track. I had come to terms with the hurt and indignation I felt from my treatment by some of the board members of the King Center, and my resignation from the King Center and, as a practical matter, a few of these board members who had opposed me during my first term had by this time moved on.

  I was happy with the work that Phil and I were doing with the King Estate and my father’s intellectual property. We had created effective administration systems and developed many worthwhile projects. Most important, through this work I had developed a new and more intimate understanding of how essential it was to me to protect and perpetuate my father’s message. And I believed that in time I could accomplish what I had set out to do four years before.

  I came back on board as CEO of the King Center on December 31, 1994. After being voted in during October 1994, I wasn’t scheduled to come in until March ’95; I was supposed to get a smooth time of transition. I didn’t get a honeymoon. Due to a controversy with the National Park Service, an emergency board meeting by phone expedited my coming in three months early. Right away I made this point: “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 nonvi
olence to people around the world. To achieve this goal, we must protect my father’s intellectual property—the images, writings, and speeches that embody his message.” For lay-people, I explained that, “Land is the real estate of the past. Intellectual property is the real estate of now. If you stand back and let others steal his material, then you’re affecting every minority writer, every songwriter, every composer, every artist, every storyteller, every creative person—all of that—gone.”

  Congress, in its wisdom, created the Copyright Act to encourage and protect creative works, including those inspirational in nature. Therefore I have always been baffled by those who attack the fact that my father’s works are protected. If Congress had believed that the inspirational speeches and writings of a public figure who is not a public official (as in the case of a U.S. president) belonged freely to the public, it would not have included such works under the legal umbrella of the copyright laws.

  One of our biggest copyright battles was with CBS. They own this series called The 20th Century, hosted by Mike Wallace. On one evening, I saw a segment of a five-part series aired on the Arts & Entertainment network about the Civil Rights Movement, and there my father was, and there his speeches were, everything from “I Have a Dream” to “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” to… I lost count. I was sitting there wondering whether to call the lawyers, not really wanting to call anybody, but wanting to go have a tofu steak with onions, maybe call up Good Natured to see what she was doing. The lawyers and I talked. “We can’t let this go,” I was told. “It’s blatant unfair usage of your father’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. If you don’t say or do anything, you’re setting a precedent by your inaction, and it will be more difficult to enforce your copyrights in the future.”

  I wanted to do the right thing. So first we tried to resolve it without litigation. But CBS would not budge, so we had no choice but to file suit. CBS has a tad more resources than we do, and they had their own legal point—this was their footage. We agreed it was their footage, but it was our father on that footage saying things he had copyrighted. We believed that CBS’s usage of the speech exceeded the fair use standard under the copyright laws. The network had included over two-thirds of the speech in a program that it aired and sold on home video. It was making a profit off my father’s name, image, and words. So, happy days were here again for the lawyers; we ended up in court.

  The federal district court judge ruled at first that the speech was in the public domain; then we won a reversal on appeal, and our rights to the speech were upheld. However, the case was sent back to the lower court to decide some lesser technical issues. Eventually, we settled these remaining issues with CBS. While we felt victorious, we nevertheless incurred close to a million dollars in legal bills for our defense. But again, this was the price of protecting our property as well as an example of putting principle first over profit. We knew going into the litigation that it would be very expensive, and that in the end legal fees would more than likely not be awarded due to the complexity of the issues involved. This principle was especially important to uphold due to the fact that the “I Have a Dream” speech is generally considered to be the most important speech of the twentieth century.

  While we faired well in the court of law, we did not fair so well in CBS’s court. Less than a year and a half after our settlement was reached, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a biased piece entitled “Selling the Dream,” which accused my family, in so many words, of engaging in profiteering in connection with my father’s intellectual property. CBS put forth the same argument that had been unsuccessful for them in court, namely that my father’s words should belong to everyone. Since they lost this point in the court of law, they attempted to win this point in the court of public opinion. One respected journalist ran an op-ed piece criticizing the motives and ethics behind CBS’s airing of this piece in light of the preceding litigation with the King family, and questioned whether it was being done in retaliation. Isn’t it ironic that CBS would raise these questions about profiteering when in fact it came out during our trial that the network charges schools and nonprofits $1,000 per minute (with a thirty-second minimum) to use their footage of the “I Have a Dream” speech?

  * * *

  My mother was in the process of semi-retiring from the day-today. “With his mother around, he couldn’t be a King, only a prince.” I’d heard this had been said, and it was repeated to me for effect. “What am I going to tell people I do?” I once asked a colleague before I got the reins. Did I feel I couldn’t get respect until Mother retired? It’s not my decision, who respects me. The question is better put elsewhere. Some people said, “You’re not your father.” No, I’m not. Who is? When I went to the Lorraine Motel and the light hit me, it then came back to me that I had to focus and redouble my efforts.

  The architects of the Constitution—“Somewhere I read!” my father used to say—had intentions of creating a document and a mechanism to check tyranny. They were trying to create checks and balances, but what they did not address is that, through capitalism, the true government would become global multinational corporations. If you look at it in economic terms, every corporation, technically, is controlled by the wealthiest shareholders. The government is like a corporation. So who controls it? The wealthiest citizens. What is Congress? Congress is like a board of directors. They serve at the pleasure of the shareholders. The president is the CEO, a manager. The people who have the power are the wealthy shareholders. They determine policy. Politicians are the middlemen. Everybody thinks politicians make the decisions. But they don’t. The decision makers are insiders. When CNN says before the State of the Union Address, “We’re about to hear from the most powerful man in the free world,” remember this: the people who pay for the president’s campaign are the most powerful, if he happens to win the election. The real issue now, the Cause, is economics and institutional self-empowerment, a concept my father espoused and ultimately gave his life for.

  The King Center and King National Park site across the street drew an average of anywhere from 500,000 to 700,000 visitors a year, according to the superintendent of the National Park Service Historic Site. Many of these visitors were young people who were not inspired by the existing static exhibit and wanted a more interactive experience. In response to the numerous correspondence we received on this issue, Phil and I envisioned the nonprofit King Dream Center as a multimedia, emerging experience utilizing all of the latest technology, 3-D technology, animatronics, every kind of mood sensory technology that creates an atmosphere. You walk in, the lights go down and you’re instantly transported back to the ’60s. You have the March on Washington, where you can hear the applause and feel the energy; an animatronic Dr. King delivering the “I Have a Dream” speech; a re-creation of the jail cell where the letter from the Birmingham jail was written. More tangible than a static exhibit in a traditional museum, it would use interactive technology so people who went through it, particularly children, would feel like they were there and gain a much greater appreciation for the era.

  This was put together in a proposal by designers. I didn’t know if we could ever get the King Dream Center to the Promised Land of reality due to the fact that our initial funding sources backed away as a result of the controversy surrounding the Park Service’s planned visitors center.

  In the early ’70s, Mother traveled to Boston, reached out to Boston University to try to get my father’s papers back. You see, in the ’60s, Daddy was trying to decide on a place to house his papers, and at that time Boston University seemed like a logical place because it was in the North and the climate seemed more liberal; there was concern for the safety of the papers if they were kept here in the South. Morehouse didn’t have the facilities to do the kind of archival job the papers required. My father put some pages, about half of his papers, at BU with the intention of getting them back at some point; he didn’t realize at the time that he was “gifting” them. BU took a position that he was giving the papers to it versus loaning
them to a repository.

  It was his intention to get them back. He told my mother in the latter part of his life that he wanted to get them back because the SCLC had been talking about creating an institution to deal with the scholarly aspects of its work, and his papers would’ve been transferred to that entity. Well, he didn’t get around to documenting the SCLC’s suggestion in writing. The document BU had received originally for the actual holding of the papers was the one the court addressed.

  Mother brought suit to get the papers back. Initially, there was communication between two entities, the King Center and BU. The legal part didn’t kick in until the ’80s. But, with the appeals process, it was not until the mid ’90s that we finally lost for good; the courts in Boston decided BU had clear title to that portion of the King papers. Yet again, we had huge legal bills as a result of this fight. The copyrights were never in question. The author retains copyright, but BU owns the physical documents now, via judicial fiat. They can’t publish them without our permission. They can’t use them for any purpose other than research. Scholars can come in and read them, but the minute the words are transcribed or in any way published, they need permission from the Estate.