Investigation into Grisly Cemetery Case Continues
The ghoulish discovery that hundreds of bodies at a historic African-American cemetery in Chicago were dumped in a greedy scheme to resell burial plots drew thousands of concerned and irate protestors this weekend. Many of the thousands who turned out at the Burr Oak Cemetery were hoping to find their dearly departed, and Cook County officials even exhumed the body of one grave as part of the investigation involving four former employees accused in case. In addition to getting rid of some bodies, the ex-workers also stacked more than one body in a single grave, authorities say. Cook County Sheriff’s Department officials say they have gotten more than 7,000 requests for information from those whose loved ones are buried in Burr Oaks but that they’ve only processed about 400 so far. The FBI and local officials continue the investigation today at Burr Oak Cemetery, where many iconic African Americans are buried – including Civil Rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till; musicians Willie Dixon, Dinah Washington and Otis Spann; and Negro Leagues Baseball players Jimmie Crutchfield and John Donaldson. Officials said they would try to respond to families in the next week, but Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said the investigation was hampered by a lack of maps for large sections of the cemetery. Many of those his staff had found were hand-drawn and sketchy, he said. “You might as well be talking about hieroglyphics here,” he said. “This is unheard of.”

King Billboard Stirs Controversy
A billboard in Houston identifying Dr. Martin Luther King as a Republican is an outrage and an outright lie, say community activists who want the humongous sign taken down. “The party of Tom Delay, the party of Rush Limbaugh, the party of Sean Hannity, the party of Michael Savage would not be the party of Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior!” argues Quanell X, one of those opposing the billboard. But Apostle Claver, founder of the Black conservative group known as the Raging Elephants, says this the sign “is saying conservatives are coming. And we’re going to offer solutions to the problems that this neighborhood has.” Claver notes that the slain civil rights leader’s niece, Alveeta King, has mentioned in her book that MLK was indeed a Republican. However, King’s sons say their father never would have voted Republican.  X says that no one has the right to align the man who lived and died to save all people to a certain Republican or Democratic Party!”

Steven Spielberg is having second thoughts about producing a movie about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the slain peacemaker’s children won’t stop fighting. DreamWorks Studios announced Wednesday that it could renege on its plans to start filming a biopic on the civil rights leader unless Martin III, Bernice and Dexter settle their squabble over the agreement. Read more.

Ever since Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated more than four decades ago, photographs taken at the scene of the murder have languished in a Life magazine’s vault, never before viewed by public eyes. Now, the dozen or so black-and-white photographs, taken by Life photographer Henry Groskinsky, are available online. They include shots of King’s entourage gathered in the motel room of the civil rights leader and standing on the balcony. There are also photos of hotel staff cleaning up King’s blood. Read more.

Rappers, songwriters and musicians will now be able to use the speeches and other writings of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in their works, thanks to a new agreement between EMI Music Publishing and Atlanta-based Intellectual Properties Management, which oversees licensing for the King Estate. The deal also covers online and digital media, according to Dylan Jones, EMI’s vice president of corporate communications. “I think that it will cross all genres and styles,” he said. Read more.

 More than two in three Blacks say that the “dream” expressed by Dr. Martin Luther King 45 years ago is now a reality, a new poll shows. Apparently, the rise of Barack Obama has a lot to do with those attitudes, because when African Americans were surveyed last spring, only one in three were willing to say that he dream has been fulfilled. Ironically, White Americans are considerably less likely to agree with that optimistic assessment. Read more here.

‘Rhyming Out The Dream’
What rappers would make Martin Luther King Jr. proud with the message in their music today?
J. Holiday |Set to Return
What does J. Holiday have in store for 2009? Find out all about his sophomore album now!

Luther King tributes are held. Though the federal holiday in his honor is on Monday, parades, prayer breakfasts, speaking engagements and other community events nationwide are underway in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory. This weekend marks the kick-off for many churches, schools and other organizations in their celebrations of the civil rights leader’s birthday. King would’ve turned 80 years old Jan. 15 had he survived the final attempt on his life in Memphis when King was assassinated in 1968. Cities from the East to West coasts are honoring the activist. Georgia-born King is recognized by the government on city, state and national levels every third Monday in January.

One of the highest ranked Web sites on Dr. Martin Luther King is one run by a White-supremacist group whose goal is to convince youths that the slain civil rights leader was much less than a hero, scholar and peacemaker. On “martinlutherking.org” there are downloadable fliers “to pass out at your school.” One of those “educational” fliers asks: “Which holiday honors a philanderer, a drunk, a liar, a plagiarist, and a cheater?” The answer: “Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.” The operators of the site are members of a group called Stormfront, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as the largest “hate group” online. Stormfront has been co-opting King’s name for its Web address for the past decade, and it is the third most popular site that pops up when Martin Luther King is Googled, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Mark Potok, of the hate-crime-fighting law center, told the Journal-Constitution that Stormfront has about 154,000 members, an 82,000-member increase from two years ago. Don Black, the leader of Stormfront, has said that wants his Web site to reach high school students “who are forced to parrot the liberal party line about King being a great leader.” He said, too, that “The United States was traditionally a White nation, and we have the right to preserve it. If that makes me a racist, I am.” But Black’s steady stream of hate-talk, no matter how distasteful, isn’t necessarily illegal. The civil rights leader’s nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., who heads the nonprofit King Center in Atlanta, said he has decided against challenging Stormfront in court. “You can’t stop people from having opinions,” he said. “If people think my uncle was adulterous and didn’t have a Ph.D., we can’t do anything about that. The only thing we can do is stop them from using his name.” Pete Wellborn, an Atlanta lawyer who specializes in Internet law, told the Journal-Constitution, “As vile, reprehensible, ignorant and horrible as that Web site is, one could argue that it’s political comment.” The Kings could succeed in a suit, he said, if they could prove that Stormfront is making money off King’s name.

Race divides neighborhoods 40 years after King’s death. Four decades after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death and in the year of a Black man’s election to the White House, American neighborhoods are still segregated. The National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity reports that past and “ongoing discriminatory practices in the nation’s housing and lending markets continue to produce levels of residential segregation that result in significant disparities between minority and non-minority households…” Blacks and Latinos have been driven by the subprime mortgage crisis into more difficult loans than Whites, the report adds. ”When the rules break down in something as fundamental as where you can live … our system doesn’t work,” says Henry Cisneros, a former secretary for housing and urban development under President Bill Clinton. “I know the president-elect will see that as well.”

NPR axes Black-oriented News & Notes program. National Public Radio said on Thursday that it is cutting 64 jobs and cancelling two programs, including the Black-oriented News And Notes program, formerly anchored by BET veteran Ed Gordon. The move is part of an overall 7-percent work force reduction, which comes as public radio officials struggle with a projected but “manageable” $2 million deficit for fiscal 2009, on a budget of $168 million, The Baltimore Sun reports.  A drop in corporate sponsorships in a failing economy has led to a projected deficit that has risen to $23 million, officials say. In addition to the layoffs, NPR, with a current staff of 889, will not be filling 21 open positions. Many of the staff cuts were realized by canceling two shows, Day to Day and News & Notes. Both are scheduled to go off the air March 20. News & Notes, a public affairs show hosted by Farai Chideya that looks at the news from an African-American perspective.

Auction house pulls King papers from sale. Sotheby’s has withdrawn from auction three papers related to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after his estate claimed the documents that were to be sold by Harry Belafonte are really estate property. Actor and activist Belafonte himself asked that the papers be withdrawn from Thursday’s sale, said Lauren Gioia, a Sotheby’s spokeswoman. Belafonte’s documents included a handwritten draft of King’s first anti-Vietnam war speech in 1967 and had a pre-sale estimate of $750,000 to $1.3 million.