-Caveat Lector- http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/today/opinion_2.html King family stops at nothing in its pursuit of profits Cynthia Tucker - Staff Sunday, November 7, 1999 It was a decade or so ago that Coretta Scott King sued Boston University for possession of some of the papers that had belonged to her late husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Back then, she still held the moral high ground. She and her children had not yet attached a price tag to every piece of her late husband's legacy. Back then, they had not yet relinquished their roles as keepers of the flame to become merchants of the dream. So it was easy enough to support her quest --- though she was ultimately unsuccessful --- to acquire some 83,000 documents that her husband had donated to the university in the early 1960s. Several civil rights leaders supported her. Not that it matters much, but so did I. After all, Mrs. King --- who had retained possession of another collection of thousands of her late husband's private papers --- contended she was only trying to fulfill her husband's wish to house all of his private documents at an African-American institution in the South. At the time, 1987, it seemed a sure thing that she would either place the entire collection at the Atlanta institution she founded --- the King Center for Non-Violent Social Change --- or donate it to King's undergraduate alma mater, Morehouse College. (He received his Ph.D. from BU in 1955.) But a short 12 years later, the King family has all but abandoned any claim to keeping King's legacy as he would have wished. Never mind Mrs. King's earlier assertion, contained in the lawsuit, that King himself had believed "that the King papers should remain in the South and that a university or other institution dedicated to the education of black students, preservation of black history and promotion of the civil rights movement should be the repository of the King papers." She is now trying to sell the documents in her possession to the Library of Congress for $20 million. Dexter King, the younger son, spoke of their offer, incredibly, as a "substantial gift to the nation." Claiming that Sotheby's auction house has valued the documents at $30 million, the family will sell them, he said, "at substantially below market value." While unsettling, this development is hardly shocking. By now, King's heirs have become known for their relentless profiteering. They have gone to court to demand copyright fees from anyone who uses King's writings or speeches; they picked a fight with the National Park Service in a quixotic quest to build a for-profit King museum; they signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Time Warner to distribute King's writings as books and CDs. This flowed naturally from their efforts to market King's legacy like the estate of Elvis Presley, whose marketing representatives inspired so much admiration in Dexter King that he has called on them for advice. Given the historical significance of King's work, it's no surprise that the Library of Congress is eager to purchase the documents --- even at a hefty $20 million. And though some members of Congress have balked at the price, they are hardly in a position to play cheap, since the government paid a whopping $16 million to the heirs of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder for the 26-second film that captured the assassination of John F. Kennedy. With that precedent, it's hard to argue that King's papers are not worth $20 million. Still, it is entirely possible that the Kings' boundless greed will ruin their chance for what they've long wanted: to make a mint off the family name. Even congressional supporters of the purchase are having trouble with one of the Kings' demands: They want to retain the copyrights to the documents. (The Zapruder family retained the copyright, as well, but its claim had this difference: The government unilaterially declared the film public property.) In other words, the Kings want to sell the papers and still keep them --- retaining the right to additional millions in royalties. In hindsight, it seems just as well that Boston University was able to keep its King papers. Cynthia Tucker's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 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