MLK and Copyright

I just finished reading Jonathan Eig's excellent new biography of MLK. As you probably know, the King estate retains the copyright to his written works and is very protective of them. Thus, I was curious to see how Eig dealt with that issue.

The answer is that the parts of the book that discuss MLK's famous speeches do so in an elliptical way. Moreover, Eig goes out of his way in the notes to explain that he did not rely on the written texts. For instance, his comments on the "I Have A Dream" speech are drawn from a Motown recording of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, which is apparently the best recording of the speech.

I don't think that the King estate's demands for tight control over projects (like the movie "Selma") are doing significant harm to our understanding of MLK, but that's a hard thing to evaluate.