Siblings discuss King family rift

In a rare joint interview, Martin Luther King III and his sister, the Rev. Bernice King, spoke this week about the rift in the King family, their differences with their brother Dexter King and about the vindictive lawsuits that have made their battles public.

Speaking during a wide-ranging discussion at their lawyers’ Sandy Springs offices Tuesday, the Kings discussed how business differences have spilled over into personal hurt. Martin King sat surrounded by his lawyers and a representative of his personal foundation, Realizing the Dream, while Bernice, who said she was traveling, participated by way of a speakerphone set up on a conference room table.

Speaking through his lawyers, Dexter King, who lives in Malibu, Calif., declined to be interviewed for this story, but he will see his siblings again Friday when the three surviving offspring of slain civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. meet in court for another legal skirmish.

The immediate focus of Friday’s proceedings will be the disposition of personal papers of their mother, the late Coretta Scott King. As always, since the first lawsuits flew last July, the larger issue at hand is control of the lucrative family corporation.

“People say why can’t they just talk about it?” said Bernice King, the youngest of the four King siblings. “We tried that. We’ve gotten nowhere. For us it was a business decision to try to pursue this. … If it was just any business, I’d just say, ‘Buy me out, and we’re gone.’ But Martin and I have a responsibility to society.”

Martin King said the private letters between their parents, sought by Dexter for a biography of their mother, ought to be off-limits.

“First of all, we feel violated,” he said. “The personal papers of our mom, we haven’t had the opportunity to go through them. We have the right to see them.” Martin and Bernice said the letters are scattered among hundreds of boxes of personal property left after their mother died in 2006.

As president and CEO of King Inc., which oversees licensing and the rights to their father’s intellectual property, Dexter King negotiated a contract for a biography of their mother, to be written by author/minister the Rev. Barbara Reynolds.

That contract, with Penguin books, has been canceled, said Dexter’s lawyer Craig Frankel. But King Inc. still would like to have the letters, and alleges in a motion filed last week that Bernice and Martin have, in fact, “indexed” the letters and know where they are.

The point is germane, since the Fulton court ordered 80 boxes of Coretta King’s papers cataloged by a “special master” or auditor, at a cost of $700 an hour, to be paid by the Kings. “We have repeatedly said there is no indexing of the papers,” said Martin. “If there was, it would be easy to produce what they’re asking for.”

Yolanda, the oldest sibling, was the administrator of her mother’s estate, and, after Yolanda’s death last year, that responsibility passed to Bernice. “We are human,” said Bernice, who said she hasn’t had time to evaluate her mother’s papers. “We had two deaths, back to back. We’re going through the process of trying to grieve.”

Coretta King “kept 60 years of stuff. Clothes, shoes, dishes, papers,” said Bernice. “We can’t distribute them without knowing everything that’s there. We’ve been doing that for the last year and a half.”

She added that her mother probably had papers that she wouldn’t want anyone to see.

Bernice King’s comments reflected the criticism she has received for taking the family feud public, but she and Martin said they had no other option. King Inc. has only three stockholders, she said: Martin, Bernice and Dexter King. Yet Martin and Bernice have been unable to convince Dexter to have a meeting of the directors in four years, she said.

The corporation saw a major boost in income in 2006 when it sold an archive of King’s papers, including an early draft of his “I Have a Dream” speech, for $32 million, to the city of Atlanta.

The siblings’ personal relationship has suffered, said Martin King. Dexter has yet to see Martin’s 5-month-old daughter, Yolanda, the only granddaughter of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.

Dexter did spend Thanksgiving with Martin’s family last year, said Martin, but added that their relationship is “not good.”

“I wish and long for it to be better. When we met in the courtroom, he was almost looking through me. I don’t know that he acknowledged my presence. I talked to him after the birth of our daughter. He sent me maybe one message. He never expressed a desire to see her.”