Martin Luther King's heirs milk a legacy: Our view

As the nation celebrates the birthday of the man who more than anyone inspired the movement to give America's black citizens equal rights, you can find the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in commercialsfrom Alcatel, AT&T, Apple, Chevrolet and Mercedes. If you want to watch his stirring "I Have a Dream" address from the 1963 March on Washington, you can pay $20 to buy the DVD from an online shop under the control of his heirs.

While there are versions of one of the most renowned speeches in American history posted on YouTube, King's heirs generally limit the reach of their father's words and his image. They have deployed lawyers to sue those (including USA TODAY, CBS and the producers of a PBS documentary) who publish or broadcast his words without first paying a licensing fee. King's heirs even challenged singer Harry Belafonte — a close friend of King who helped support King's children after their father was assassinated in 1968 — to try to force him to give up documents Belafonte said he had been given.

The family rarely comments on its aggressive marketing or its frequent litigation, but King's youngest son, Dexter, protested in his 2003 memoir that "people don't want us, as the heirs, the estate, to benefit ... or for my family to be in any way comfortable."

They should be more than comfortable. In 2006, the heirs sold King's papers for $32 million, prompting an estimate that they have made some $50 million from their father's legacy.

The cashing in continues. In 2007, the family demanded and got $761,000 to use King's words and likeness on the memorial to the civil rights leader on the National Mall. Most recently, the movie Selma, which documents King's role in pivotal civil rights marches in Alabama, had to invent much of King's dialogue because his actual words had been licensed to another film.

King left his family little when he died, and his heirs have every right to profit from their father's work. It was King himself who copyrighted the "Dream" speech and sued two companies that tried to release unauthorized recordings of it.

At some point, though, the family's attempts to obtain value crossed the line from reasonable to embarrassing. Perhaps most appalling was the children demanding to be paid when their father was honored with a statue on the Mall. It's hard to imagine the heirs of others so honored — George Washington, for example, or the soldiers who died in Korea and Vietnam — insisting on a fee. It is a tawdry shadow on the legacy of one of America's most remarkable leaders.

There may be no way to convince King's heirs that they're tarnishing their father's legacy. King's friends have tried.

Nor will the copyrights expire anytime soon. For unrelated reasons, Congress has extended the life of copyrights past rationality — currently to at least 70 years after an author's death. Barring a public-spirited buyout by someone with deep pockets and a better sense of the proper place for King's words, the family can hang on until at least 2039.

King's spirit will live on, but millions of people will be left deaf to his words — a sad footnote as the nation commemorates the great civil rights leader's birthday.

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