In the hoopla surrounding Sunday’s dedication of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. statue on the National Mall in Washington, Harry E. Johnson, Sr., the visionary and fundraising engine behind the project, will finally get his due. Placing Dr. King on the Mall was a project of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, but it was Johnson, a Houston attorney and former president of the fraternity, who made it all happen, raising more than $100 million.
In the
excitement of placing a statue of the first African-American on the Mall, there
are three stories that readers should be aware of, though few journalists, if
any, will cover.
The first
story is surprising. Among the million dollar-donors to the MLK memorial
project, only two African-Americans had joined that select club as of July,
according to the list of donors compiled by the Martin Luther King, Jr.
National Memorial Project Foundation. The Website list of all donors of a
million dollars or more has been removed from the site. But records examined in
July showed that Sheila Johnson-Newman, co-founder of Black Entertainment
Television (BET), and Victor B. MacFarlane, a San Francisco real estate developer,
were the only Blacks who had made personal or corporate contributions of $1
million or more.
Many
Black stars hosted fundraisers or provided other support, but only MacFarlane
and Johnson-Newman put up the super bucks. Missing in action were the big-name
athletes and entertainers. I don’t have to list them – you know who they are.
It is
also interesting to look at corporate donations. The General Motors Foundation,
under the leadership of Rod Gillum, was in a class by itself, giving $10
million. It was followed by Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation with a $5
million contribution. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, W.K. Kellogg
Foundation and the National Basketball Association each donated $3 million. The
Walt Disney Company donated $2.7 million. Contributing $2 million each were the
Coca-Cola Foundation, the Ford Motor Fund, MetLife Foundation, Toyota
Foundation and the Verizon Foundation.
The
federal government provided approximately $10 million and Alpha Phi Alpha, the
driving force behind the King memorial, donated $3.4 million.
An
additional 39 companies or individuals gave at least $1 million, including
Delta Airlines, General Electric, Star Wars creator George Lucas, and the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).
The
second story unlikely to be covered this week is the lack of donations from
certain Fortune 100 companies. More than a dozen companies contributed less
than $100,000 or nothing at all to the King memorial. They include: Citigroup,
Philip Morris, Home Depot, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, AOL Time Warner,
Goldman Sachs Group, United Parcel Service (UPS), Allstate, Sprint and American
Express, according to records available as of July.
Many of
those companies actively court Black consumers. Some even quote Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from time
to time. Yet, when it is time to honor the dreamer, they are asleep at the
switch.
The third
story you won’t be reading about this weekend is in equal parts sad and
familiar. It is yet another example of the King children’s greediness. Harry
Johnson, head of the Mall project, should be given the Nobel Peace Prize for
being able to deal with the family dysfunction.
According
to documents examined by the Associated Press, the mall foundation has paid
Intellectual Properties Management, a company owned by the King children,
approximately $800,000 for the use of Dr. King’s words and image.
Records
show that the foundation paid the King entity $761,160 in 2007 to use Dr. King
image and words in fundraising materials. It also charged the memorial a
management fee $71,000 in 2003.
The firm
representing the Kings issued a statement saying the fees would go to the
Martin Luther King Jr. King Center for Social Change in Atlanta. It said the
fees will help offset donations that would go toward erecting the memorial
instead of the King center, where both parents are buried.
The King
family has had its own version of the television show “Family Feud” for
years. Dexter, the youngest
brother, was named head of the King center but was released within months by
his mother, Coretta Scott King. In 2008, Martin III and Bernice sued Dexter,
claiming he had misused MLK center assets and failed to properly involve them
in family business matters.
Dexter
counter sued, charging that his two siblings had misused King Center funds and
kept money that should have gone to the center. Under pressure from the judge,
the Kings settled out of court.
But they
have never been able to shed the image of profiting from the name of their
father.
David
Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Dr. King, said the civil
rights leader would have been “absolutely scandalized by the profiteering
behavior of his children.”
He told
the AP, “I don’t think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family…I don’t think
any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a
memorial in Washington. One would think any family would be so thrilled to have
their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn
on them to ask for a penny.”
George
E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service,
is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his
Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter.com/currygeorge.
