The King family's latest shakedown...

First there was this:

Nothing is too small for the family to ignore. Isaac Newton Farris, King's nephew and chief executive officer of the King Center in Atlanta, demanded payments for images showing President Obama and King on the same T-shirts. "We're not trying to stop anybody from legitimately supporting themselves," Farris said. "But we cannot allow our brand to be abused." It is hard to imagine King himself demanding payment from someone who wanted to put his image alongside that of the nation's first African American president.

(Emphasis mine... think on that, though: the image of MLK is a brand -- like that British gecko that sells insurance -- says the King family. And, including MLK's likeness on a t-shirt commemorating the election of America's first Black president? Well, that's abuse.)

And now there's this:

The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. [through it's Intellectual Properties Management Inc.] has charged the foundation building a monument to the civil rights leader on the National Mall about $800,000 for the use of his words and image —- an arrangement one leading scholar says King would have found offensive.

The memorial is being paid for almost entirely with private money in a fund-raising campaign led by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. The monument will be turned over to the National Park Service once it is complete.

The foundation has been paying the King family for the use of his words and image in its fund-raising materials. The family has not charged for the use of King’s likeness in the monument itself.

“I don’t think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family … I don’t think any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a memorial in Washington,” said Cambridge University historian David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of King. “One would think any family would be so thrilled to have their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn on them to ask for a penny.”

Wow. Just... Wow.