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and Nobel Medal
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Bernice and her brothers, Martin III and Dexter, have been embroiled in a bitter and public battle over their father’s most prized possessions. Martin and Dexter King are seemingly in need of cash and have found an interested buyer for their father’s Bible and Nobel medal, who has promised them a quick personal profit. However, Bernice King believes selling the items instead of keeping them in the family for historical and sentimental reasons is blasphemous.
The family feud turned into a lawsuit between siblings, which escalated all the way to the Fulton County Superior Court, where Judge Robert McBurney ordered Bernice to turn over the items to the State of Georgia for safe keeping until an amicable solution could be reached. Initially, Bernice King refused to relinquish the items from her possession, however she has since agreed to cooperate with the mandate of the court.
Prior to the court ruling, Bernice King issued a message to her estranged brothers, whom she hasn’t spoken to in quite some time.
“I appeal to you to reconsider your position and not sell our father’s Bible and Nobel Peace Prize,” she said. “These two artifacts are too sacred to be sold or be bought under any circumstance. I implore you to consider the magnitude of this moment in history and how you want your individual legacies to be defined.”
Sadly, her words were ignored, as the brothers proceeded with a potential sale that their attorney has called “time sensitive” and one that can not afford to be delayed.
Bernice King was supposed to hand the items over to the state last Wednesday, but the court allowed her a final extension that expires today.
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In a news conference late last week at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father once pastored, Bernice King relented to the order of the court. “I must say it is deep-in-my-soul difficult to place my father’s prized, precious heirlooms under the custody of the state, even if only for a season,” she told supporters who gathered at the historic church. “Yet I recognize that justice and righteousness are not always aligned and there’s often a disconnect between God’s law and man’s law. As dad said, ‘We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.’ “
Martin III, Dexter and Bernice King are all equal inheritors of their father’s estate. The brothers out voted Bernice 2 to 1 to sell their father’s Bible and Nobel Peace Prize medal for their own personal gain, of which Bernice wanted no part of. “If it was about money, hey, I should have just been quiet and took my cut from the sale of these items, but I try to live my life on principle,” she said.
Unfortunately, this bitter family feud doesn’t appear to be headed toward a peaceful reconciliation. Bridges have been burned and the siblings aren’t even speaking. What’s worse: longtime family friends Andrew Young and Harry Belafonte, who could potentially provide a certain “parental” mediation, have been frozen out, as Martin and Dexter have previously filed lawsuits against each of them, too!
With their children battling each other — in public and over money — Martin and Coretta are almost certainly turning over in their graves.
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regarding his personal bible and Nobel Prize medal.
