King Family Takes $800K Bounty From Monument
Posted Apr 20th 2009 8:00AM by Carmen Dixon
Filed under: BlackSpin, Martin Luther King Jr., News
Now I’m not against anybody making a living. I will tell you that how you make money is important. And sometimes easy money is not good money.
Sometimes you have to sit quietly, talk it out with your higher power and walk away from dinero that’s sure to leave a bad taste in your mouth. So it is from that perspective that I am calling out the heirs of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for taking more than $800,000 from the memorial fund.
WASHINGTON – The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has charged the foundation building a monument to the civil rights leader on the National Mall about $800,000 for the use of his words and image — an arrangement one leading scholar says King would have found offensive.
The memorial — including a 28-foot sculpture depicting King emerging from a chunk of granite — is being paid for almost entirely with private money in a fundraising campaign led by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. It will be turned over to the National Park Service once it is complete.
The foundation has been paying the King family for the use of his words and image in its fundraising materials. The family has not charged for the use of King’s likeness in the monument itself.
