http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-01-15-king-legacy_x.htm......
Last month, the center's board of directors broached the possibility of selling it to the National Park Service.
Former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, along with two of the Kings' children, Dexter and Yolanda, and King's sister, Christine King Farris — all lifetime board members — are in favor of it.
But Martin Luther King III and his sister Bernice object to any sale and are threatening legal action against Dexter, who is chairman of the board. Bernice and Martin III say they should have done more to prevent the center from falling more than $11 million into disrepair.
"Tearing the center's unique and essential elements apart — its physical memorial and its living legacy — only diminishes them both, thereby weakening, not strengthening, the cause to which my father and mother gave so much," Martin Luther King III said at a news conference on Dec. 30.
The Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of the SCLC's co-founders, argues that it is that organization that has carried on King's work.
"His organization is the chief proponent of his message and his work," Lowery said. "You can't reduce his legacy to brick and mortar."
Neither can it be controlled or sold, Lowery added. King's life, spirit and teachings, "all of these things belong to the people and the ages," he said.
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