King family fight #2

I'm better informed than I was when I wrote the last blog about the King siblings squabbling over whether to auction off their father's bible and his Nobel Peace medal.

The brothers had filed a suit for the court to order sister Bernice to turn over these two valuable items to the King Estate.  I learned that the three siblings are the sole trustees of the Estate, and they had voted 2 to 1 in favor of selling -- with sister Bernice casting the no vote.

So legally they are within their right.  Bernice is not exactly denying the legality;  she's just holding out for a moral solution that seems right.

I think the judge's decision was Solomonic in its wisdom:  Bernice is to turn the items over to the estate;  and he ordered that the estate place them in a safety deposit box with the judge holding all the keys to the box while they enter a period of negotiation to arrive at a solution.

I don't know details of the finances of the King Estate, but these should be the last two assets sold if it's necessary to sell assets.   Martin Luther King, Jr. is such an icon to this country and to the global non-violent approach to social change that these highly symbolic items should not just go on the commercial market.

Although I have no knowledge at all of their motives, the only possible redeeming motive would be if someone wants to buy them and then donate them back to either the estate -- or, given the apparent greed of the brothers -- to some other institution that would make them part of some permanent public display, like the Smithsonian Institute or the upcoming Civil Rights Museum.

The thought of some greedy private individual owning and hoarding Martin Luther King's Nobel Peace medal is simply unacceptable in a civilized world.

The public outcry suggests that the world learned King's message better than did his own two sons.  But then we never know the private conflicts behind public behavior:   perhaps this is the revenge of sons who got less from their father than the world did.

Ralph