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“I have a dream that my lour liille children will one day live in a nalion where
they will not be judged by the rolor ol their skin but by Ibe conlenl of their character."
—Marlin Luther King Jr.
From 1998 until 2003, he served as president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organiza
tion his father co-founded in 1957. In 2004, he took the
helm of the King Center. “Coming here was in a sense
like returning back home," he says.
While King is comfortable meeting with national
leaders and traveling from Mississippi to Mozambique,
Africa, he admits it hasn't always been easy' being his
father's namesake. “I’ve always tried not to look at it as a
burden," he says. “There are days when it’s challenging,
but for the most part it’s been positive. There are times
when people say, “You are not like your
father.’ I’m not supposed to be, and I’m
comfortable in myself, but it is painful
when someone says, ‘You don’t sound
like your father.’ Usually my response
is, ‘l’m not trying to sound like my
father; I’m me.’”
During high school and college, he
went by the name Marty to eliminate the
obvious connection. “The tough times
were when I was in college and people
wanted to make me something I was not
prepared to be at that time," says the grad
uate of Morehouse College in Atlanta.
He came into his own at age 29, when
he was elected to the board of commission
ers in Fulton County, Ga., in 1986. It was
at this point that he began asking people to
call him Martin. “Somewhere in my mid
30s is where I came to feel confident in who
I was as Martin and that I was taking my
father’s principles and my mother's upbringing and syn
thesizing it,” he says. “While it may sound a little bit like
him, it was not him; it was Martin the third.”
However, he admits that it can be difficult grappling
with the long shadow cast by his father's accomplish
ments. “Usually we say every generation could build onto
the next," he says. “Unless I was in another arena, it
would be very difficult to overshadow what my father
did. Not that that’s what my objective is, but I’m just
saying chat's a challenge because everyone always says
every generation should be better.
The King Center was estab
lished by Coretta Scott King in
1968 to contir ue the legacy of
her late husband. More than
650.000 annually visit
the facility, which includes a
library and archives, as well as
King’s crypt. The center pro
vides educational tools for
those studying Kingian philoso
phies worldwide, and its goals
for 2005 are to launch a con
flict resolution program.. find
new funding sources and estab
lish an endowment to sustain
the institution’s work for years
to come. For more information
on the King Center, visit
www.thekingcenter.com.
“But if we can take the
vision to the next level, so
that families all over the
world are understanding and
embracing the principles of
nonviolence, then in my
own personal judgment, I
would have achieved
something great.”
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Photo Courtesy of The king Cvntei-
The birthplace of Martin Luther King jr. in Atlanta.
King, his hair speckled with gray, is now a leader in
his own right who has achieved many great things, all
done with his own style, reputation and legacy. Although
he’s shy and soft-spoken, he’s extremely warm and
approachable.
“My leadership style is to try to build a coalition and
not be confrontational unless I have to be," he says. “I try
to build support among, first of all, my staff. If the staff
doesn’t agree, I try to hear out everyone before I make a
decision. Although some leaders lead dictatorially, I
believe you can lead in a coalescing way. When you dis
agree, you don’t humiliate someone because you disagree.
You want to hear their point and then you want to bring
them around, so I try to use persuasion as a leadership
tool and try to see the best in everyone. One of the things
my dad did, I'm told, is that he was able to bring the best
out of his team.”
Although Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is cele
brated in more than 100 countries, could serve a
reminder of his father's absence, it’s not a bittersweet time
for him. “The holiday is always joyous and fun,” the
never-married King says. “The assassination day, April 4,
is usually when I’m sad. For many years, I would shed
tears when I was growing up on that day. It’s interesting
that although our father is gone, because of the holiday
and the many observances, it’s like he’s paralyzed in time.
In other words, he will be forever young. That is the one
wonderful thing.
“Tlie sad thing for me and my siblings, as adults, it’s
not having had the opportunity to have a conversation
with him, and that’s what we’ve probably missed. Those
are the things that there’s nothing you can do about, but
the 10 years that we were together were incredible.
Although he was gone often, Dexter and I went on trips
with him. He was tremendously playful with us as his
children. We all will have fond memories forever." 7}"
page 8
Photo courtesy of Georgia Department of Economic Development
