The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation has raised about $104 million, mostly from foundations, corporations, and private donors, for the construction of the memorial. But King's children and cousin, who own King's intellectual property and likeness through companies and foundations they control, have demanded more than $800,000 in licensing and management fees for the use of King's words and images in the memorial foundation's fundraising materials, the AP reports.

According to financial documents reviewed by The Associated Press, the foundation paid $761,160 in 2007 to Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an entity run by King's family. Documents also show a "management" fee of $71,700 was paid to the family estate in 2003.

The foundation—run by King's son Dexter, while Bernice and Martin Luther King III sit on the board children—has profited by claiming ownership over their father's legacy for years. They successfully sued USA Today and CBS in the 1990s for publishing his "I Have a Dream" speech without paying, and have since charged CNN for exclusive rights to broadcast it.

But skimming off funds destined for the memorial itself is too much for some King scholars, who are calling the kids out for it.

"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."

The King kids told the AP that they charged the fees because the memorial's fundraising drive has cut into contributions to their own King Center. According to the King Center's Form 990 tax returns for 2006, Dexter drew a $186,000 salary from the King Center, which also paid $1 million consulting fee to Intellectual Properties Management. Clearly the kids need money more than they need a monument to their father's memory.

Blame lazy librarians. Google's PageRank algorithm determines a website's relevancy to a keyword by crawling the Internet to find out how many times that particular site is linked to on other sites and how often that keyword is used to describe the link. Most of the pages that used to link to MartinLutherKing.org were written by librarians, hoping to package good source lists for researching students.

(Black cat photo by Gúnna. White cat photo by timhill2000)

Here's my opinion: Instead of getting rid of him, I wonder how someone can help him better understand WHY he said what he said. While firing him is a satisfying short-term solution - I think there's an opportunity to make bigger change by working with him to change his mind-set. Think about it: He's almost 70 years old. That doesn't excuse what he said - but to put it in context: When he was a kid, our country was a very different place with regard to race. Even if he IS a flat-out racist (and this wasn't just a one-time show of poor judgment) as you know, he's not the only racist person out there.

Perhaps if he can learn something through this tense situation, he can share it with his listeners. Whether we like it or not, there are many more like him - and plenty of them listen to him, literally, every day. Like attracts like.

[A]s Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his "I Have a Dream Speech" in 1963: "We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity..." There may not be "For Whites Only" signs on stores anymore but with caustic comments like the one Imus made, there may as well be one on his radio show.

Do You Think Imus Should Be Fired? [Atoosa's Space]