Martin Luther King III

Martin Luther King III
Born	(1957-10-07) October 7, 1957 Montgomery, Alabama

Martin Luther King III (born October 23, 1957) is an American human rights advocate and community activist. He is the eldest son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. His siblings are Dexter Scott King, Rev. Bernice Albertine King, and the late Yolanda Denise King. King attended The Galloway School and went on to Morehouse College, which was the same school his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather attended.

Biography

Early life and career

Martin Luther King III was born in October 23, 1957 to human rights advocate Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. His mother had reservations about naming him after his famous father, "realizing the burdens it can create for the child," but King, Jr. always wanted to name his son Martin Luther III. He was raised in Vine City, an urban neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, and was ten years old when his father was assassinated. King lived with his mother in his childhood home until his adulthood. As an adult, King was a shy man who rarely socialized, and friends have claimed he tends to overwork, in part due to the pressure to live up to his father's name; one friend, Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn, said of King, “Watching him is like watching somebody trying to outrun themselves. It’s like there’s a ghost in front of him and he’s always trying to catch it.”

King served as an elected county commission member in Fulton County, Georgia, the county encompassing most of Atlanta, from 1987 to 1993. He was defeated for re-election after revealing that he owed the federal government more than $200,000 in back taxes and fines. Also in 1993, King helped found the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., the company that manages the license of Martin Luther King Jr.'s image and intellectual property. King remains a commissioner in the company as of 2008.

Southern Christian Leadership Conference

In 1997, King was unanimously elected to head the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a civil rights organization founded by his father. King was the fourth president of the group, which sought to fight police brutality and start new local chapters during the first years of his tenure. Under King's leadership, the SCLC held hearings on police brutality, organized a rally for the 37th anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech and launched a successful campaign to change the Georgia state flag, which previously featured a large Confederate cross.

Within only a few months of taking the position, however, King was being criticized by the Conference board for King's alleged inactivity. He was accused of failing to answer correspondence from the board and take up issues important to the organization. The board also felt he failed to demonstrate against national issues the SCLC previously would have protested, like the disenfranchisement of black voters in the Florida election recount or time limits on welfare recipients implemented by then-President Bill Clinton. King was further criticized for failing to join the battle against AIDS, allegedly because he feels uncomfortable talking about condoms. He also hired Lamell J. McMorris, an executive director who, according to The New York Times, "rubbed board members the wrong way."

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference suspended King from the presidency in June 2001, concerned that he was letting the organization drift into inaction. The group's national chairman at the time, Claud Young, sent a June 25 letter to King which read, "You have consistently been insubordinate and displayed inappropriate, obstinate behavior in the (negligent) carrying out of your duties as president of SCLC." King was reinstated only one week later after promising to take a more active role. Young, said of the suspension, "I felt we had to use a two-by-four to get his attention. Well, it got his attention all right." After he was reinstated, King prepared a four-year plan outlining a stronger direction for the organization, agreeing to dismiss McMorris and announcing plans to present a strong challenge to the George W. Bush administration in an August convention in Montgomery Alabama. He also planned to concentrate on racial profiling, prisoners' rights and closing the digital divide between whites and blacks. However, King also suggested in a statement that the group needed a different approach than it had used in the past, stating, "We must not allow our lust for 'temporal gratification' to blind us from making difficult decisions to effect future generations."

Later career

King left the SCLC in January 2004 to serve as director and co-owner of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change with his brother, Dexter Scott King. Scholars like Taylor Branch have criticized the King siblings for neglecting a large cache of historical documents at the Center. In 2005 and 2006, Martin, Dexter and their sister, Bernice Albertine King, became involved in a highly-publicized battle over whether to sell the poorly maintained institution to the National Park Service, but ultimately opted against the sale. In 2006, King and his siblings sought to auction some of King's documents at Sotheby's for as much as $30 million, but a group of philanthropists and business leaders bought the documents for an undisclosed sum just prior to the auction; the buyers promised to keep the collection intact at Morehouse College, Martin Luther King Jr.'s alma mater in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 2006, King founded and currently heads an organization called Realizing the Dream. Dexter King has accused Martin of establishing the foundation to make money off their parents' legacy which should go to the King Center. On March 29, 2008, King threw out the first pitch at the MLB Civil Rights Game.

Martin Luther King III spoke on behalf of Senator Barack Obama, the 2008 Democratic Party presidential nominee, at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, 2008. The event marked the 45th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech and the first time an African American accepted the presidential nomination of a major party. King said his father would be "proud of Barack Obama, proud of the party that nominated him, and proud of the America that will elect him." But he also warned that his father's dream would not be completely fulfilled even if Obama wins the presidency. King said the country was suffering from a poor health care system, education system, housing market and justice system and that "we all have to roll up our sleeves and do work to ensure that the dream that he shared can be fulfilled.”

Criticism

Fellow civil rights workers have critiqued Martin Luther King III as lacking of his father's vision, passion and drive, as well as the senior King's oratorical skills and ability to inspire others. Tommie Miller, president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, which once worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. in guiding the Montgomery bus boycott, asked the Los Angeles Times of King III, "What's he really done in life?" Friends of King said he has always been expected to live up to the high standards set by his father; Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn said, "Every day people come up to him and say, ‘Oh, your father was this, and, oh, your father was that.’ If you’re around Martin much, you can tell he never gets used to it." African-American columnist Larry Elder has defended King, commending him for resisting the styles of more extreme civil leaders like Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson.

King, and other members of his family, have also been criticized by scholars and historians for limiting access to Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers and commercializing his legacy, including an instance in which the family accepted a payment to allow a digital image of King's I Have a Dream speech to appear in television and print advertisements for electronics company Alcatel Americas, including a commercial with the Muppet, Kermit the Frog. King and his siblings have also been criticized for suing news outlets for using his father's I Have a Dream speech without permission, such as their suit against CBS in 1999. In 2003, Atlanta columnist Cynthia Tucker wrote that the King family, "converted King's legacy into a profit center -- I Have a Dream Inc."

King has publicly stated his belief that James Earl Ray, the man who killed his father, did not act alone, but as part of a conspiracy involving the United States government. On the 40th anniversary of the assassination, King told the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "I think James Earl Ray was a total patsy. He was hired to move around the country to give the perception that he was following my dad. There was an elaborate plan with some levels of the government involved.... It's far bigger than what we've been told." King and his family have been criticized for these positions.

In 2007 King was criticized by the influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz for not taking a definite stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Family

Martin Luther King III's mother, Coretta Scott King died January 30, 2006. At her funeral on February 7, former President Bill Clinton described her children's responsibility to carry on their father's legacy as "a terrible burden" and asked the audience to pray for them. In May 2006, Martin Luther King III married longtime girlfriend Arndrea Waters. On May 25, 2008 the couple had a daughter, Yolanda Renee King, the first grandchild of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. She was named after her aunt, the late Yolanda King, who had died of a heart attack at age 51 in Santa Monica, California the previous year.

Lawsuits involving Dexter King

In July 2008, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King filed a lawsuit against Dexter King, accusing him of improperly taking money from the estate of their late mother and transferring it to the Estate of Martin Luther King Jr. Inc., where Dexter King serves as president. According to the suit, Dexter failed to keep Martin and Bernice informed about the company's financial affairs. It alleged the company's assets were being "misapplied or wasted," and demanded Dexter to produce documents pertaining to the 2006 sale of some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s documents. In response, Dexter King accused his siblings of continuously using their parents' legacy for their own benefit and "to further their own personal and religious agendas." Although critics said the lawsuit was at odds with their father's message and legacy, King III maintained it was in keeping with his history of negotiation and nonviolent direct action, claiming, "My father also used the court system."

Dexter filed a similar counter-suit against Martin and Bernice on August 18, 2008, claiming they breached their duties to the King Center and their father's estate, misused assets belonging to the center and kept money that should have gone back to the center and estate. Among the claims in the suit were that Martin improperly kept a $55,000 Lincoln Navigator SUV donated to the King Center for his own personal use, and that he "commandeered a reception" being held at the King Center and "turned it into his own wedding reception." Dexter claimed he made numerous attempts to get his siblings to stop such misuses of power but was unsuccessful. King III's lawyer, Jock Smith, denied the allegations as petty and misguided, and said the suit demonstrates Dexter King's misuse of power and history of making poor decisions involving center without seeking proper input from his siblings.

As of mid-October, Martin Luther King III had not seen his brother since June, and Dexter had yet to meet his niece, Yolanda. Martin, Bernice and Dexter have each expressed love for each other and hope that they will reconcile once their legal matters have been resolved.

See also

• Martin Luther King, Sr., King III's grandfather who was an early civil rights leader and an advocate for social justice.

External links

• Realizing the dream
• Martin Luther King III Biography