Growing Up King by Dexter Scott King

Author:Dexter Scott King
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

It was the fall of ’88 when my mother called us together as a family to go on retreat. By now she’d been head of the King Center for twenty years, and through her hard work, and the help of Maynard Jackson and Andy Young when they were mayors of Atlanta, and Jimmy Carter when he was governor of Georgia and president of the United States, and captains of industry like Henry Ford, the DuPonts, and others, the Center was built and completed on Auburn Avenue, adjacent to Ebenezer Baptist Church. If ever Atlanta had a historic district, this was it.

At the countryside retreat, Mother raised the issue of succession. The King Center board of directors had been raising the issue with her; it was important for any organization to have a line of succession. At first I was barely listening, then for some reason my ears started burning. It was the way Mother was looking at me. Expectantly. Me? Not me. Not with my rep, my history.

We were in a cabin in the northeast Georgia mountains, the tailpipe of the Great Smokies, sitting in a circle, and Mother first put it out there—in essence, Who’s interested in taking this on? By then Yolanda was fully into acting, directing, producing, into the life of theater, drama, film, the arts. She shook her head emphatically. “No way,” her look said. “Not here.” In fact, her mouth said it too. Yolanda has never ever been particularly shy.

Martin had entered politics.

By then Bernice was pursuing her calling to the ministry.

We gazed around the circle and everybody wore the same expression: “Not me, it’s not me, don’t look at me,” rolling our eyes at our mother, but in a good-natured way. Then everybody kind of looked at me. Bernice and Yolanda came out and said it. I don’t know if they had worked it out beforehand. First Bernice: “Dexter, you know we need you to do this…”

“It has to be you, Dexter.”

I seemed to be the one who took the most interest in the Center, they said. Plus, I was the “why” guy. We all had gotten a little bit of something from our father. Yolanda got his sense for the dramatic, for the theatrical, and his great feel for people. Martin got his name and his ability to canvass and to be diplomatic and to advocate, and also his moderacy; Bernice got his deeply rooted spirituality, his religiosity, his philosophical bent, if I can put it that way, and, I must add, his oratorical ability.

What did I get? Outside of a resemblance to both parents? Well, in the first place, the uncanny resemblance is something, isn’t it? But also, I think I got Dad’s disposition, and patience. He was the same way. I may feel upset about something, but I know it’s not going to help matters to go do something that makes it worse. Even though to a lot of people, that’s gratification.

It wasn’t a question of whether or not I wanted this responsibility anymore.

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