Published: March 1, 2005
TROUBLED KINGDOM
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
BlackNews.com Columnist
The
recent report that the King Center for Nonviolence Social Change in Atlanta
is physically deteriorating and the drive to raise the millions to build
the King National Monument in Washington D.C. is languishing is sad and
troubling. King's home has been mortgaged to help pay the bills at the
Center, and half the workers there have been laid off. The estimate is
that it will take $12 million to make the needed repairs on the Center.
As for the King Monument, the design for it was officially approved a few years ago. But the cash to build it had to be raised in seven years. There is no government funding for it. Nearly $70 million still needs to be raised. Time is fast running out.
The King Center and King Monument's financial crisis is inexcusable. The King family must bear some blame for the King Center's financial woes. The Center is run by a non-profit board and since the early 1980s the U.S. Park Service has paid the Center a half million dollars to protect the King landmarks and conduct tours through the Center. Bush upped the funding total to a million last year. In addition, millions of tourists annually visit the King Center, Ebenezer Baptist Church, and the King home. They are paying customers. That should have generated enough cash to at least keep up basic repairs on the Center.
But all the money isn't being plowed back into the Center's upkeep. King's sons bag fat salaries from managing the center. Tax records show that a significant share of the revenue that comes in goes for salaries. The King family has kept a tight grip on whatever dollars that the Center takes in. The King family has been accused by many blacks of profiting off the King legacy. That may or may not be true, but fat salaries, and lavish spending, were certainly abhorrent to King. He railed against the penchant for lavish personal spending, luxury apartments and fancy homes by some staffers in his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King increasingly incorporated anti-capitalist rhetoric in his speeches, and denounced American society as greedy and materialistic. King would be revolted by the self-indulgent grab for expensive cars, clothes, and dollars, and the distancing from the plight of poor blacks, by many well-to-do African-Americans.
In the decades since the collapse of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the black middle class has grown bigger, and more prosperous than ever. It owes an eternal debt to King and the civil rights movement for helping increase its security and prosperity. While the civil rights movement benefited all Americans, blacks benefited the most from it. Nearly half of all blacks now earn middle-class incomes. There are thousands of businesspersons and professionals who earn incomes far above that.
The civil rights movement also opened the door to undreamed of fame and fortune for many African-Americans. Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, Colin Powell, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Denzil Washington, Bob Johnson, and thousands of athletes and entertainers bag colossal incomes and contracts. They have the wealth and income to pay for dozens of King monuments. The top 100 black corporations annually have sales in the billions. While stock and mutual fund investments by blacks still drag behind that of whites, a growing number of blacks have substantial stock and bond investments.
A handful of black celebrities have cut public service announcements, and made public appeals for funds, and have even pledged to make generous personal contributions to the King Monument. But many more haven't given a nickel to the Monument fund. They, and other prosperous blacks, must bear the blame for the King Monument funding debacle.
Greed, selfishness, and self-indulgence only partly explain the reasons why the King Center crumbles, and the King Monument goes a begging. King's legacy has now become the stuff of nostalgia, history books, and the memoirs of aging former civil rights leaders, and they are dying off fast. Even King's holiday is still the least celebrated of the national holidays by businesses and some public agencies. The perception is that it's still a holiday by, of, and for blacks.
Then there's the plight of the black poor. The civil rights movement largely passed them by. They remain locked in crumbling inner city neighborhoods, often torn by gang and drug violence, and their children attend miserably under-performing schools. They are no closer to realizing King's dream today than when King was alive.
With the mountainous wealth and income of many blacks, it shouldn't take 7 days, or even 7 minutes, for blacks to pay for a monument for the man who did so much for so many of them. It's their duty to insure that the Monument is built. And the King center should be a shining, physically well-maintained tribute to the civil rights movement. It's the King family's duty to insure that it is.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a columnist for BlackNews.com. He is the author of the forthcoming: Beyond Michael Jackson: The Clash of Celebrity, Sex and Race (AuthorHouse Press, April 2005).
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