Stick Me for My Paper

Don't you love ambiguous titles for stuff. Take for instance this title. "Stick Me for My Paper" You think I'm about to go into my little thing about Biggie Smalls but no I'm not talking about Biggie. The Biggie argument is a moot point to me. I love B.I.G. but I think a little romanticism is going on with that. It's gotten to be real cool to shout him out, quote his lyrics and say he's your favorite of all time. I don't want to have that argument today.

Could I be talking about Lego? Lego has been making those little blocks for 2000 years or so. Now they are closing their American facility to move it to Mexico. They say times have gotten bad for them. With all the Playstations and XBoxes and gameboys kids don't want any real toys. You give a kid a Lego set you might get cussed out. ("Wha the hell am I s'pose ta do wit dat?") What is Christmas without spending 2 hours covered in little plastic blocks of varying sizes, shapes, and colors looking at a little tiny folded piece of paper trying to make a dinosaur adventure island for your G.I. Joes? I can see the benefit of moving to Mexico though. If I was in the ivory tower and somebody told me I could stop paying people $7.50 an hour with benefits and move my plant to Mexico where I could start paying people 45 cent an hour and a loaf a bread a week, there wouldn't be much discussion after that. Yet I'm not talking about sticking hard working Americans up for their paper either.

I'm talking about the King Papers. Coretta and Martin are gone. As much as we talk about how much we love them and how much respect we have for everything they did for us (especially Martin), respect and love don't keep the lights on. The King children need that cash. They don't have the money to maintain the King center, or probably to maintain their lifestyles. Unfortunately whatever gifts Martin and Coretta had they didn't quite translate to their babies. Their claim to fame is that their parents were great people. Doesn't make them great people. They really can't get the money coming to the foundation with the figure head gone now. I don't think anyone pays to go see the King children.

The solution to their problems are to let Suthebys auctions off the old documents of their father. Drafts of the "I have a dream speech", His Nobel peace prize speech. Letters. Notes to Coretta telling her not to fix Sista Rosa's jumbalaya any more because it gave him gas. All kinds of stuff. They are expecting between 15 and 30 million for the lot. Automatically people are getting upset because they say the King papers should stay in the black community. Black owned so to speak. Selling the papers is like selling our heritage to them. I agree and disagree.

I agree because Martin Luther The King was the key to the civil rights movement. If King didn't do it, it wasn't gonna happen. He got 5 million people to march on Washington and until he flew down in his pastor suit with flowing red cape and turned water in to wine we were a lost people. Victims of racist America. Maybe there is a little romanticism there too. Truth is more people marched in the Million Man March than the march on Washington. Black leaders chastised him for taking a stance against Vietnam. He was considered revolutionary and danger until Malcom came a long. History glosses over that stuff. Martin is our saint though. It would be good for us as a people to show how we can take care of our own history. Keep his papers for prosperity on display at Morehouse for all to see and be proud of.

I disagree because in addition to being black I'm also an intellectual and a realist. I know anybody that buys the King papers are not going to destroy them, hide them, or burn them. Who would pay $15+ million dollars to get some kindling for the fireplace? (Besides the paper are all digitally archived now) I know white people value King's legacy almost as much as black people do. In some cases more so. I know of all kinds of public institutions with the funds and knowledge to keep the papers in pristine condition for damn ever. Would it make me any less proud of the King legacy to see his papers in a huge elaborate display at the Smithsonian compared to somewhere not as elaborate on Morehouse campus? I don't think so.

Actually I might feel better about it. No I'm not an Uncle Tom that doesn't care about "our history". I care a great deal about it. I think it would be wonderful to walk through an archive of American history and see the King legacy proudly represented. That's what we were fighting for, right?