Posted on 01/14/2006 6:57:11 AM PST by pjsbro
ATLANTA, Jan. 13 - Over the years, the city that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called home has grown accustomed to stagnation and disrepair at the institution established in his name in 1968, even as it has paid her sons six-figure salaries.
Last month, the center's board, controlled by Dr. King's younger son, Dexter Scott King, announced it was considering the sale of the King Center complex, appraised at $11 million, to the National Park Service.
That proposal and myriad other difficulties - including a federal investigation into the center's use of taxpayer money and an estimate by the National Park Service that the complex of buildings needs $11 million in repairs - have deepened a rift among Dr. King's four children.
Acknowledging that the board, which until recently had been made up almost entirely of family members, had been "remiss" in its oversight, Mr. King said the solution was to strengthen and diversify the board. Bernice King said government ownership would result in a loss of ideological independence.
For years, the Park Service has been eager to buy the King Center's physical property, partly because of visitor complaints about the center's condition.
[A] year ago, the Atlanta Journal Constitution began a series of investigative articles about its finances. The articles revealed that the King Center needed repairs and ended most years with a deficit, yet paid Dexter King almost $180,000 and Martin King $150,000 in salaries and had given millions to a for-profit company run by Dexter King.
None of the four King children responded to requests for interviews. and the center did not answer repeated requests for information. In a brief phone conversation, a center spokesman said he could not provide a list of the board members because he did not know who they were.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That might be why it's in such sad shape, ya think?
I was kind of had hoped that they would give the "International" civil rights center in Greensboro, NC to the MLK outfit so we could be done with both money holes as they slowly spin into oblivion. Actually it would be an upgrade in management if that happened and it might even get their hands out of the taxpayers pockets sooner.
Martin Luther King's children have brought nothing but shame to his hard-earned good name. They are all parasites, feeding at the pubic trough, and Loretta Scott King has allowed this sore to fester as she has done nothing but pimp for more money across the board so the other family members could take it and line their own pockets. I cannot believe each of them, from the professional widow on down, are not in jail for fraud, theft, and theft by conversion of the federal dollars allocated to the King Center. Something is rotten in Atlanta, and you spell it K-I-N-G.
"For years, the Park Service has been eager to buy the King Center's physical property, partly because of visitor complaints about the center's condition. "
Yikes! Don't let the Park Service hear about Zimbabwe!
Jesse's Rainbow will take 99% and the King center will get the balance.
These people are charlatans. They once called a law firm where I used to work, and asked that we do work for them pro bono (free.) I was asked to do this work, and flatly refused, directing the requesting partner to their website, which was espousing some pretty Marxist ideas. The partner agreed with me and we sent the King family on their way.
These people are just pimping MLK Jr.'s legacy in a very shameful way.
And that hard earned good name would be what?
Mr. Adulterer or Mr. Plagiarizer?
This is a good example of how the media can alter public policy with one word.
The word 'many' here is used by the reporter (or the editor) to give the reader the impression that there is widespread support for having the KIng Center become government run.
Exactly what number is 'many"? Five? Ten? Five Million?
The reporter could have used the word 'some' or 'few' to give the reader the impression that there is little support for moving the Center.
A balanced article would have simply omitted this paragraph altogether.
However he earned his good name doesn't hold a candle to what his offspring, and his wife, have done to besmirch it. They are lower than whale sh.. in my eyes, and should be run out of the country for being the scumballs they are. Coretta Scott King is a professional widow, and has nothing to show for all of the monies paid to her by this money-sucking King Center. She is part and parcel the main cause of the incompetence in the running of the Center, and her total lack of leadership is manifested in her children. If her IQ was 4 points lower, she would match a bowl of jell-o!
No, they are doing a good job of honoring his legacy.
Dang near everything named after MLK is a cesspool.
Be it the MLK Drew Hopital in Los Angeles, or any and every school, building and street named for him, they are almost all criminal-infested and/or homes for race whores and nepotism.
What does "her" refer to - King? Atlanta?
No, they are pimping his name for their personal gain, and using the foundation to line their own pockets. They are no better than Je$$e Jack$on, who uses a non-profit foundation that he runs to support a lavish lifestyle for himself, his mistresses, and his children.
Disgraceful.
Incompetents and worse.
Everything you said and then some!
Like I said. They are being true to the legacy.
I take it you don't know much about Dr. King.
It seems that this heritage thing does count for something. The King family is managing our government's money with as much corruption as African nations do. Nagin did the same in NO. Street does it in Philly. There definitely does seem to be a pattern here.
In New York City this week, they auctioned-off the family Bible MLK, Jr.'s family used while he was raised. I don't know what it brought.
Excuse me, but ya think, maybe, calling a contractor first might be a better path towards a solution?
Today's Left would consider MLK as a Right Wing Extremist.
Guilt-ridden white liberals will surely contribute our tax dollars to fix this.
Oops. Not until later this month.
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/metro/atlanta/stories/0113metbible.html
King family Bible will be auctioned
By MAE GENTRY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 01/13/06
The old family Bible, stained and worn and encased in black leather, is inscribed simply "Alberta W. King, Feb. 23, 1962."
Once owned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother, the holy book will be sold to the highest bidder Jan. 31 by a New York auction house.
The Bible includes Alberta King's notations of family births, weddings and deaths, including "Son Martin Luther, Jr., Apr. 4, 1968," according to a description on the auction house Web site.
No one knows exactly when or how the Bible wound up in Detroit at the home of Alberta King's sister-in-law, Woodie King Brown.
It might have been given to Brown after Alberta King was fatally shot in 1974 while playing the organ at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. Or maybe it was a decade later, when Martin Luther King Sr., known as "Daddy" King, died at age 84.
The auctioneer says the Bible's provenance is clear.
"It came from Woodie Brown's home in Detroit," said Bob Snyder, vice president of Cohasco Inc. Document Preservation Center in Yonkers, N.Y. "When she died, the family stopped paying taxes and the city of Detroit foreclosed on the property and held a municipal auction. And anybody was free to simply show up and wave their hand in the air."
Snyder declined to identify the current owner, citing privacy rights.
Alberta King's only surviving child, Christine King Farris, could not be reached for comment. But Farris' niece, Alveda King, said she was not surprised to learn of the Bible's existence.
"We all have Bibles, and we really read them," she said. "We don't have Bibles that sit on the coffee table."
Asked how she felt about the impending sale of her grandmother's Bible, she said, " There are other family things that have been auctioned over the years. I've always felt that the legacy had been commercialized, and that wasn't the intent."
The Bible is being sold in a lot that includes a 1978 newspaper article, a studio portrait of Alberta King and a handwritten list of friends — "Lillie & Howard King, Mae Bell Lowe, Carlotta ..." and hosiery needs — "5 pr. Off White, 3 Bone, 3 pr. Navy, Seamless Stretch @ 69¢."
On the Bible's endpaper, an elderly Woodie Brown shakily scrawled Proverbs 15:3 — "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good."
Historian Ralph Luker, who interviewed Brown in 1989, said he believes Daddy King might have given the book to his older sister after his wife died.
"I don't know that, but they were close," he said. "By the time Daddy King died, [the King heirs] were already pretty well retaining and conserving family material."
Woodie Brown, a widow who had no children, died in 1992 at age 95.
Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson, editor of the King Papers Project, notes that the Bible being offered for sale is unlike traditional Bibles that were passed down from one generation to the next.
King's mother only wrote Martin Luther King Jr.'s date of birth in the Bible after she acquired it, apparently in 1962.
"It's not quite as valuable as [it would have been] if it had been written in 1929, when Martin Luther King was born," Carson said.
However, Luker said he believes the Bible could offer historians, particularly King biographers, new insights.
"The Bible is of some value as an artifact, of course, and those pages on which Alberta made a record of family births, marriages and deaths would be of interest," he said. "It could conceivably add some information to what is already known."
The auction house will take bids by mail and phone, Snyder said.
"It will become live on eBay seven days before the 31st," he said. "So anyone is free to review the description and submit a bid, if they wish."
The opening bid is "half of the low estimate, which in this case would be half of $1,100," Snyder said.
He called the appraisal "a conservative current market estimate."
has any historian mustered the courage to write an honest biography of mlk?
Thanks for the info.
I wonder if the shooter was simply nuts, some sort of angry Muslim,
or over-stressed atheist...
On June 30, 1974, Marcus Chenault, a twenty-one year old, African-American man from Ohio, murdered Alberta Williams King. King was sitting at the organ in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, while a church service was in session. Chenault also killed a church deacon during this rampage. King was the mother of Martin Luther King, Jr. It remains unclear why Chenault killed King, although the murderer apparently hoped to kill other African-American leaders as well. After the incident, he stated that "all Christians are my enemies." In the subsequent trial, Chenault was sentenced to death, despite two psychiatrists testifying that Chenault suffered from schizophrenia and was insane at the time of the murders. A judge commuted Chenault's sentence to life in prison in 1995. Chenault died of natural causes on August 3, 1995.
Parasites eager to squander taxpayer money on other parasites.
I'm shocked.
I haven't read it, but the book reviewed here: http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0002,dickerson,11693,10.html
looks like it might have possibilities. Although the book appears to have been written by a fan, the author sounds like he was willing to include some facts.
Ah, now I get the import of your comment...sorry for my earlier confusion. Yes, they do indeed continue King's legacy.
The above is the COMPLETE first paragraph. The "her" refers to King's widow.
ping
Sounds like MLK was quite the ladies man, (in the tradition of Kennedy and Clinton)...
Yes.
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