Father's dream, son's mission

~ Martin Luther King III puts poverty, criminal system in the spotlight.

Martin Luther King III is coming to Southeast Missouri State University's Show Me Center for a speaking engagement today, just one week after the federal holiday honoring his father.

2005 was a difficult year for the King family: Coretta Scott King had a debilitating stroke that prevented her from making public appearances, family in-fighting over the future of the King Center for Nonviolent Change in Atlanta divided the King siblings, and a new biography of the slain leader has chipped away at King's sanctified image.

With all this swirling around him, King's second-oldest child, who introduces himself as Martin King, has tried to stay focused on furthering his father's legacy. A speech he is giving around the country is titled "My Father's Dream, My Mission."

"I'm going to talk about the work we must still do to accomplish the dream my father had for this nation," King said in a phone interview. "And there is work to do. We have 36 million people living in poverty and 45 million people living without health insurance. My father identified three evils during his life: poverty, racism and violence or militarism. He hoped to find a way to eradicate them all, and unfortunately we don't seem too much closer to achieving that."

King said he hoped that Hurricane Katrina would be a wake-up call, but he hasn't yet seen the evidence.

"It was Katrina that put poor folk on the radar," he said. "But if you go through the Ninth Ward today it looks just as bad as it did right after the hurricane hit. We're going on almost five months and there's been no change, very little effort to restore that ward. That's because it was primarily poor people who were affected."

King said that while race relations in this country are far better than in his father's day, there is still a long way to go.

"I would have to say that race relations are OK in some communities. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people of color, it is still very challenging. Prejudice still exists. Race relations are good if you are an attorney or a manager or a CEO. Things are OK for those people, but if you are a young person who wears hip-hop clothing, you are still going to face discrimination because of how you look."

King said he believes blacks have made progress toward representation in government and other arenas but, he said, the achievements of individuals have not yet translated to lifting up African Americans as a whole.

King cites the prison system as an example. "The vast majority of people in jail are black today," he said. "Police officers target African Americans, and I mean both black and white police officers do this. If you stop proportionately more African Americans than other races, it has an effect on their psyche -- it has to -- so I think the criminal system is biased.

"You notice I say criminal system. I won't say criminal justice system because it can't be a justice system when 70 or 80 or 90 percent of those incarcerated are of one minority."

There can be little doubt that King inherited much of his mission from the father he lost at the age of 10. King said, however, he does not consider that legacy to be a burden. "I've had challenges with it," he said. "There's been ups and downs, but for the most part my life has been very fulfilled. I'm very thankful that my mom taught me to be the best Martin that I could be, as an individual."

King said that although he has sometimes followed in his father's footsteps by attending Morehouse University and leading the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for seven years, he's always been conscious of doing things his own way. "If I tried to be my father, I would have failed. It would be impossible," he said.

The future for Martin King will be intertwined with that of the King Center in Atlanta. Martin's older brother, Dexter Scott, is now chairman of the board of the foundation that controls the center. Dexter has publicly considered selling the center to the National Parks Service. Martin King and his younger sister Bernice believe the center, which needs an estimated $11 million in renovations, should stay in the family.