1. King Left His Family with Nothing
King once claimed he would rather be a free pauper than a rich slave. “There is nothing in all the world greater than freedom. It is worth paying for; it is worth losing a job for; it is worth going to jail for,” King said. “I would rather die in abject poverty with my convictions than live in inordinate riches with the lack of self respect.”
In the financial sense King was true to his word, even in death. There’s no question King was a successful man. Yet in spite of coming from an affluent family, writing five books, attending hundreds of speaking engagements and even winning $54,600 for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize − a hefty sum in those days − King was insolvent when he died in 1968, leaving his wife and children no appreciable assets. Coretta Scott King even asked her husband to save some of the money for their four children’s college education, but King instead donated the money to the civil rights movement. In fact, King viewed his financial sacrifices akin to the vows of poverty taken by other clergy. Of course when a priest takes a vow of property he doesn’t have a wife and four kids to support…
Because King left his family with nothing of monetary value, his children were ultimately supported through childhood and educated thanks to help from activists such as Harry Belafonte. And, in an unfortunate turn of events, King’s children thanked Belafonte for his support by not inviting him to their mother’s funeral and then legally challenging him for ownership of three documents King and his wife had given Belafonte over the years.
“The papers are symbolic,” Belafonte said. “It’s really about what happened to the children, and I feel that somewhere, in this one area, I really failed Martin.”
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