Content Is King
After the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.'s assassination, a host of civil-rights leaders made a grab for his
mantle. The Rev. Joseph Lowery laid claim to it. The Rev. Jesse Jackson waved
the bloody shirt. Widow Coretta Scott King established the Martin Luther King
Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change Inc. Martin King III made a brief stab
at a political career. But the person who has capitalized most on the legacy is
King's younger son, 36-year-old Dexter King.
Dexter emerged as the King
family spokesman in early 1995, when he succeeded Coretta as president and CEO
of the King Center. He inaugurated his tenure with a call to arms: "My father
delivered political freedom, and I would like to deliver economic freedom. ...
I'm calling home all those freedom fighters who marched with my father. Dexter
Scott King is going to be there with you this time, and we will make it to the
promised land."
The promised land, as it
turned out, looks like Graceland. One of Dexter's first acts as president was
to meet the caretakers of Elvis' image to learn how to market King like the
King. He hasn't let up since. In the last four months alone, the King family
has:
signed a contract with
Oliver Stone, who plans a movie about the assassination (just imagine the scene
where J. Edgar Hoover, dolled up in tutu and lip gloss, orders the King
hit);
made a gigantic deal with
Time Warner to market King's speeches and writings; and
sued CBS,
alleging that the network had violated copyright laws by excerpting the "I Have
a Dream" speech in a documentary.
In February, the family also made headlines by announcing
that it supported James Earl Ray's motion for a trial. Ray, who pleaded guilty
to King's assassination without trial, is dying of liver disease. He claims he
was a patsy. King family members hint at a grand and sinister conspiracy.
Dexter, it
seems, has revived the dream. Not that dream, but the American dream
that anyone can make a fortune. In the '90s version, all it takes is a catalog
of marketable data, vigorous application of copyright law, the financial muscle
of a multinational media conglomerate, a few good lawyers, and frequent
talk-show appearances.
Talking with Dexter King is a disconcerting,
demoralizing experience. Disconcerting because his voice has the same
intonation, the same accent, the same creamy richness as his father's.
Demoralizing because his message is so distant from his father's. Martin spoke
the language of protest, sacrifice, spirituality. Beneath Dexter's stentorian
tones and rhythmic tide one hears only managementese. "It makes logical
sense to align ourselves with a major player in the industry. " "We are
moving from the hardware side of the business to the software side. " His
"vision," he assures me, is "holistic."
When
Dexter took over the King Center, the Atlanta-based nonprofit needed help.
Coretta was a reliable liberal mascot, but she foundered as an executive. The
center had become a hodgepodge of unconnected programs--a day-care center, a
library, a nonviolence training school. It alienated sponsors and neighbors and
overshot its budget, amassing a $600,000 annual deficit by the early '90s. "The
programmatic impact of the King Center across the last decade has been
somewhere between small and nonexistent," says David Garrow, who won the
Pulitzer Prize for his King biography, Bearing the Cross .
Dexter, who had spent most of his professional career as a
music producer and promoter, was the one who realized that the family was
sitting on a valuable asset: the collected works of Martin Luther King Jr.
These were 24-carat golden oldies.
If content is king, Dexter
reasoned, then King should be content. Consider the Time Warner licensing deal,
which will generate as much as $10 million a year for the King estate. It
covers every angle a young media entrepreneur could dream of: highbrow
nonfiction (the first comprehensive collection of King's sermons); innovative
nonfiction (a King "autobiography" cobbled together from his writings);
audiotapes of King speeches; high-tech (a fancy civil-rights Web site); and
even a little snack for Dexter's ego (the young man's memoirs, which are to
include his thoughts on health and nutrition). Dexter and his business partner
and college friend Phillip Jones have also accelerated licensing of Martin
Luther King Jr. products: You can now buy "Keep the Dream Alive" checks and
tasteful King statuettes. (Countering a question about tackiness, Dexter says,
"You should see what we turned down--'I Have a Dream' ice cream, Martin Luther
King pocketknives.") Dexter and Jones are also seeking financing for their
pièce de résistance , the King Dream Center, a $50-million interactive
museum complete with virtual-reality games. Atlanta Journal-Constitution
columnist Cynthia Tucker has dubbed it "I Have a Dreamland."
The family
has also tightened its grip on King's work. Besides the CBS suit, it won $1,700
plus legal fees from USA Today after the newspaper reprinted the "I Have
a Dream" speech without permission. The Kings demand stiff payments from
authors and TV producers who want to republish or air King's speeches.
Not surprisingly, many King fans see something
grotesque in milking King's immortal words for cash. Both Garrow and fellow
King biographer Taylor Branch have criticized the family for its tight-fisted
control of King's papers. Civil-rights leader Julian Bond, who reprinted three
King speeches in a textbook, has denounced the exorbitant rates charged by the
King estate. Bond estimated that the King fees alone added between $10 and $15
to the price of his book. "It is a travesty in the King legacy. Did Jesus
belong to Mary?" asks the Rev. Hosea Williams, a Martin Luther King Jr.
lieutenant.
Dexter
does have copyright law on his side, a point that he makes with numbing
regularity. "It has always been our legal right [to control King's works]," he
says. America may claim King as its civic saint and "I Have a Dream" as a
national manifesto, but King's words belong to his estate. In fact, the words
are the family's only inheritance, since King left no material legacy. Dexter
also scoffs at the notion that King would be appalled. Martin Luther King Jr.
himself copyrighted the "I Have a Dream" speech two days after he delivered it,
and he sued a record company to enforce the copyright. (Not that King
père was always so scrupulous about copyright. He did, after all, commit
plagiarism when writing his dissertation.)
Dexter also preaches free-market moralism. Marketing MLK is
not merely good business--it's good, period. The real purpose of the ventures,
he says, is to revive his father's image, to spread "Kingian" thought in the
most effective way possible. Publicizing King will make him live: "His media
was marching. We are substituting the means of today--CD-ROMs, the Internet,
books--to get the message out. ... Our intentions were not for profit. The
profit happens to be a byproduct of doing the right thing."
Time Warner, after all, can
reach the entire world. A small university press can't. "The end result of what
Dexter is doing now will be to make King's ideas far more publicly accessible
than they ever have been before," says Stanford University Professor Clayborne
Carson, who is editing King's papers for the King Center.
It's an
argument that would go down easier if Dexter were promoting anything
besides commercial enterprises. After all, the King Center has
eliminated (or, in Dexter's words, "divested") the center's social-welfare and
educational programs, and Dexter rarely takes public positions on subjects that
don't concern the King family's bottom line.
Which brings us to James Earl Ray, one case
where Dexter has taken a position on a public issue. In February, Dexter and
Coretta testified at a Tennessee hearing in favor of Ray's request for a trial.
Ray has requested (and been denied) a trial seven times, and the King family
has never backed his petitions before. But this time is different, says Dexter,
because Ray is dying, and because the Ray family has asked the Kings to speak
out. (More cynical observers say this time is different because of the Kings'
deal with Oliver Stone.) Dexter says the family has always doubted that Ray was
the killer, and he cites "compelling new evidence" of Ray's innocence collected
by Ray attorney William Pepper. Biographer Garrow, himself a student of the
assassination, calls Pepper's evidence "complete, utter, hilarious bullshit.
... The fact that Dexter and Mrs. King take Pepper seriously is sad."
The Tennessee judge ruled
for Ray, calling for ballistics tests to determine if a gun with Ray's
fingerprint fired the lethal bullet. But this decision is a long, long way from
a trial. If an appeals court sustains the ruling (which is considered
unlikely), and if subsequent ballistics tests indicate that the gun did not
fire the deadly bullet, then there could be a new trial.
Not that the delay has
deterred Dexter. He's planning to visit Ray in prison this week. And he's
taking his case to the public--the King book- and audiotape- and
movie-ticket-buying public. He did Nightline . He did Johnnie Cochran's
show. He did Jesse Jackson's show. He did Montel . That's what a King
does in the '90s.
