Blacks Must Step Up to Fund King Center, Monument
Pacific News Service, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Posted: Feb 24, 2005
Editor's Note: The deteriorating King Center in Atlanta could be fixed in no time if wealthy blacks would pitch in.
LOS ANGELES--A recent report detailed the physical deterioration of the King Center in Atlanta and the faltering drive to fund construction of a King National Monument in Washington, D.C. These financial crises are inexcusable. The mountainous wealth and income of many blacks should quickly repair the center and build a monument to the man who did so much for so many of them.
King's home has been mortgaged to help pay the bills at the center, and half the workers there have been laid off. An estimated $12 million is needed for repairs. As for the King Monument, its design 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. Nearly $70 million still need to be raised, and time is running out.
The King family must bear some blame for the King Center's financial woes. 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. Bush upped the funding to $1 million last year. In addition, millions of paying tourists annually visit the King Center, Ebenezer Baptist Church and the King home. That should have generated enough cash to at least keep up basic repairs.
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 a significant share of revenues goes to salaries. The King family has kept a tight grip on whatever dollars the center takes in.
The King family has been accused by many blacks of profiting from the King legacy. That may or may not be true, but outsized 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. He 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. Though the civil rights movement benefited all Americans, blacks benefited the most. Nearly half of all blacks now earn middle-class incomes. There are thousands of black 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, Denzel 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 those of whites, a growing number of blacks have substantial stock 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 much of 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. My blacks feel disconnected from King and his legacy. That legacy has now become the stuff of nostalgia, history books and the memoirs of aging former civil rights leaders. Even the King holiday is still the least celebrated of the national holidays by businesses and some public agencies.
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.
Still, it shouldn't take seven days, or even seven minutes, for blacks of means to pay for a monument for the man who did so much for so many of them. It's the duty of these African Americans to ensure 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 ensure that it is.
PNS contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is author of the forthcoming "Beyond Michael Jackson: The Clash of Celebrity, Sex and Race" (AuthorHouse Press, April 2005).
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