Litigious legacy of King's words

The possibility of a Steven Spielberg-backed movie about the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has set tongues wagging in Hollywood.

But it also has reignited a long-smoldering debate over who should profit — and how much — from King's words and images. That battle pits some of the nation's best-known King scholars against King's three surviving children, who are skirmishing with each other in court over control of the lucrative King estate.

Millions of dollars and, some say, the long-term reputation of the King family are at stake.

"Dr. King was the moral voice of America, and some people don't think that moral people and their families need to live and eat," said California-based producer Phillip Madison Jones. "They think if they make money, they are somehow immoral."

Jones, the best friend of King's youngest son, Dexter, masterminded the recently announced DreamWorks film deal with co-producer Suzanne de Passe. Jones and de Passe also co-produced the Commander in Chief's Ball for President Barack Obama's inauguration.

He has been a key player for two decades in licensing King's work for the King estate through a company he founded called

Intellectual Properties

Management, later headed by Dexter King.

He was the architect, for example, of the high-profile $32 million deal that took a huge archive of the Rev. King's papers off the auction block in 2006 and landed them at King's alma mater, Atlanta's Morehouse College.

Jones believes King left his copyrighted materials not only as his family's legacy, but as their inheritance. He thinks critics, especially scholars who have also profited from King's work, have been given too much of a platform by the media to attack the King family.

"It was the only thing he had to pass on to his family," Jones said. "He wanted his family to be supported after his death."

A different standard?

But Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow said the estate's multimillion-dollar deals and family squabbling threaten to tarnish King's legacy. Garrow's book, "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership," is considered by some to be the authoritative King biography.

"I think you should be judged by a different set of expectations if you are the children of Martin Luther King," Garrow said in a telephone interview from England's University of Cambridge, where he teaches. "That is a legacy you have to treat differently than if you are the heir to Home Depot."

Dexter King's siblings, Bernice and Martin III, have objected to the DreamWorks deal, which they say was negotiated without their input. The pair are battling Dexter King in court over control of the King estate, which Dexter King currently oversees.

Friends of the family are trying to negotiate a peace treaty among the feuding siblings so the movie project can move forward. DreamWorks has said the film won't proceed until the family unites behind the project.

The planned DreamWorks film is the first theatrical motion picture to be authorized by the King estate. That permits the studio to utilize King's intellectual property to create a definitive portrait of his life.

Ethan Horwitz, a New York-based attorney who specializes in intellectual property cases for the King & Spaulding law firm, said epic family squabbles are not uncommon when big-name estates are involved. Horwitz said it is critical for Spielberg to get the King family behind the project before investing millions in a major film. Copyright and privacy issues could cause major problems unless the King children all sign off on the film, he said.

"One of the things you want to do is make sure [members of] the King family cannot come after you and say, 'You've maligned Dr. King by not portraying him accurately,' " Horwitz said.

Jones contends Dexter King had the legal right to sell film rights to Spielberg's company. Spielberg, he said, "just doesn't want to see the family fighting while he's trying to make a movie about unity," Jones said. "It's all spiritual, not legal."

Legality vs. legacy

Legally, there is no question that King's children have the right to profit from his words and his images. King copyrighted much of his own material before he was assassinated in Memphis four decades ago. Those potentially lucrative copyrights passed to his family through his estate.

But scholars like Garrow say larger issues are at play because of King's place in the nation's history.

"The far more important question is this: Is this the use of Martin Luther King's legacy that King would want to see?" Garrow asked. "The absolutely certain historical answer to that is: Absolutely not."

Jones said that scholars like Garrow — whom he labeled a "vile" and "bitter" man — are profiting from King's achievements at the same time they condemn the family.

"These guys are out here publishing their books and making money, and yet they do not want Dr. King's family to have the same privilege," Jones said.

Garrow, who is currently working on a Barack Obama biography, said King went out of his way during his lifetime to avoid taking financial advantage of his role in the civil rights movement.

"This is a man who gave away most of the Nobel Prize money," Garrow said. He said King would be "absolutely mortified" by his children's actions.

He added: "I fear we are at the point where the behavior of the children is doing lasting, indelible damage to King's reputation."

Jones said Garrow is trying to demean the King family because King's late wife, Coretta Scott King, refused to put Garrow in charge of a project involving King's papers. Garrow called Jones' allegations "fiction."

Jones also said much of King's work is licensed at no cost.

"The policy has been since Dr. King's death to not charge nonprofits, schools, churches," Jones said. "There have been hundreds, thousands of instances where there were no license fees."

Garrow, however, said there is no way to prove that unless Jones and the King family become more transparent about their business dealings and offer an accounting of where the money being generated by the estate is going.

Concern over papers

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who penned a trilogy of books about King and the civil rights movement, also has criticized the King heirs, not for profiting from the estate but for neglecting important civil rights papers kept at the nonprofit King Center in downtown Atlanta.

Some proceeds from the licensing of King's works should be used to protect those papers and guarantee scholars continued access to that historically important information, Branch said.

"It's in the wrong place," Branch said of the historical collections. "It's been padlocked over there with the roof leaking. It's a scandal."

Branch declined comment on the DreamWorks movie deal because he is working on his own movie project on the civil rights era, which will include some King material.

Branch said his project, which could go forward as early as this fall, will not be as "King-centric" as the project proposed to DreamWorks. And he does not anticipate any problems with the King family over the production.