Last week King’s estate and Time Warner Inc. announced the formation of a unique partnership to publish his works as books and as audio books, and to create interactive educational tools and a Web site on the Internet. The project, which both sides will describe only as a “multimillion-dollar deal,” includes reprinting five previously published books by King, audio books of his speeches and a volume of his sermons, some of which have never been transcribed from tape. There are plans for a King autobiography, to be cobbled together from his writings by Clayborne Carson, the Stanford University historian currently editing a 14-volume edition of King’s papers. Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, will also write a new autobiography (her first was published in 1969), as will King’s youngest son, Dexter, 35. Discussing the family’s decision to work with Time Warner, Dexter argues that even though his father’s birthday is a national holiday, King’s true legacy–his writings and his thoughts–has been neglected: “The media focused on the “I have a dream’ speech, and that became the commercial sound bite that could be used time and time again. That was the top-40 version of him.”
Time Warner plans to spend about $5 million on the project in the next two years (the sermons and the “autobiography” are scheduled to be published in 1998), and expects that the King estate will earn about twice that in the same period. Time Warner itself hopes eventually to see its revenues climb to about $10 million a year. But does the market for King material exist? Booksellers and scholars say probably. “I have a lot of requests for Martin Luther King tapes, especially around his birthday,” says Donna Stokes-Lucas, owner of X-pressions (“as in Malcolm X”) Bookstore and Gallery in Indianapolis. “People feel safe with him.” And King scholars agree that some systematizing of King’s written and spoken words would be welcome. According to biographer David Garrow, “The most valuable part of King’s corpus is the sermons,” many of which, particularly the later, more personally revealing works, have never been available to the public before. Historian Taylor Branch agrees. “There’s a whole new generation of people who haven’t heard about Dr. King. This is the kind of thing the family ought to be doing, and I hope it signals better relations with the scholarly community.”
In the past the King estate has gone to court repeatedly to make anyone who uses King’s works or his image pay for the right, and they have been as litigious with scholars and documentary filmmakers as they have with merchants who want to put King’s face on refrigerator magnets. The family insists this has to be done to protect King’s reputation. Their critics say it has more to do with making money. Disparaging the deal with Time Warner, Garrow says, “If Dr. King were alive he would be nauseated that money earned is going seemingly only into private hands and not for use in any political change.” Carson, author of the “autobiography,” is more charitable. “King did not leave money behind. What he left behind were his ideas. So, in a sense, Mrs. King is saying to her children, “This is your legacy: your father was taken away, but he left behind a literary property.’ They are now exercising the ownership of that property. You can either see it as selfish or, what better way to get the word out than make a deal with one of the largest communications companies in the world?”
At least in teaming up with Time Warner, the family can retain control of the material. The last big deal they struck, some months ago, was for a biographical film about King–made with none other than Oliver Stone, a director never accused of slavish devotion to facts. The good news, so far, is that Stone has been too busy with “other projects,” according to a spokesman, to pay much attention to the movie of Martin Luther King.
