I Cogitate
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |
Living on the legacy of Martin Luther King
To carry it on can be an unfair expectation and task for the heirs of a national and international hero.
Nobody should be expected to assume such a burden.
But if such a heirloom task is chosen, the righteous supposition is that the founder's spirit and values be foremost in any endeavor or presentation involving the legacy.
Granted, very few of us could ever reach the commanding heights achieved by Martin Luther King. But that isn't the point. What is paramount is that the bequeathal not be sullied by calculated selfishness. There will always be those ready to tarnish and sully--that they come from within is the worst of dishonors.
Unfortunately, that is what appears to have happened to the golden visions and dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Erasing Dr. King's real legacyTo read the rest. go here.
Dr. Manning Marable
March 19, 2006
The recent death of Coretta Scott King, and the massive public memorial held in her honor, which President George W. Bush attended, marked an end in a phase of Civil Rights History. Coretta Scott King had been the principal force behind the establishment of the federal holiday honoring the life and legacy of her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1986. Yet Coretta King’s death forces today’s proponents of racial justice to ponder serious questions about how Dr. King’s holiday has been subverted from its real political meaning.
Only days before Coretta King’s death, newspapers and the electronic media had widely documented the deep disarray within both the King family and Atlanta’s King Center. In December, 2005, the King Center board, controlled by younger son Dexter King, announced it was considering selling the center for $11 million to the National Park Service. Dexter’s decision immediately provoked public protests from the elder son, Martin Luther King, III, and Bernice King.
Critics noted that Martin Luther King III collected nearly $180,000 annually from the King Center, with millions of dollars more funding a for-profit company owned by Dexter. The Interior Department was already allocating $1 million annually to the center, yet its public educational activities were at best modest. The Education Department even began investigating the center’s use of federal grant funds in its development of a civil rights curriculum.
top
RSS feed
| Recent Posts | My Best Blogs | Archives | Favorite Quotes | Links | Contact |