One of the the things you won't read, see, or hear this MLK day - or any MLK day - is any detailed record of the thousands of speeches and articles he produced during his thirteen-odd year career as an activist.
Why? Powerful organizations and individuals - led by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI - tried and failed to shut King up. Why is is the voice of King - a national demigod - silent now?
One reason is that nearly all of his words are copyrighted, and closely held for profit by the Board of Directors of "Martin Luther King Jr. Inc." - a foundation that produces millions of dollars per year for King's descendants, and has aggressively litigated against any who in its view threaten its control and ability to profit from King-related materials.
Another reason is that King was kind of - well - kind of a commie, at least by present-day American standards. He devoted the later, tougher years of his life struggling for what he liked to call "economic justice" - by which, I suspect, he probably didn't mean hiring top lawyers for copyright suits.
The forces that have silenced King threaten to silence and strangle many other critical aspirations in our society.
I don't mean to criticize the King family. These are the times we live in. Dozens, or hundeds of other scions of fame and wealth - Liz Cheney, Luke Russert, Chris Wallace, Hank Williams Jr, Franklin Graham, to name but a few - have parlayed the achievements of their parents into a paycheck and some level of fame. Laws that were designed to protect innovation, now stifle innovation - and this is nowhere more the case than in mass culture.
The old argument had it that copyright law protected the artists and thinkers who produced our culture; but those making billions from copyrights today have little or no interest in culture or ideas - they are trading commodities, just as other traders deal in pork bellies or oil futures.
Like everything else in the post-industrial US, Kings legacy is a commodity.
Copyright protection now extends for almost a century in the US. The song "Happy Birthday", for example, remains under copyright (one of the reasons the documentary "Eyes on the Prize" is no longer circulated, I believe, is that it contains an unauthorized film of King's supporters singing the proscribed song).
The Disney Corporation is battling to extend its lucrative "Pooh" copyright into perpetuity.
In the instance of the King legacy, we have an unusual circumstance in which King's elevation to the status of a national hero caused the financial value of his artifacts to skyrocket. Again, this is the way business now works in the US: adjusting government policy to facilitate private gain is a governing principle in modern American life, whether the issue is weapons production, pharmaceutical research, education - and even civil rights.
But let's celebrate King day by remembering a different America. King put his life and his family's safety on the line - but so did thousands of other civil rights activists - many of whom died, and whose defendants collect no royalties.
And let's not forget that King was bitterly critical of American capitalism. He died demanding economic justice in his little-mentioned "Poor People's Campaign" and denouncing the Viet Nam war, as well as much of the comfy African-American establishment - facts that usually get airbrushed out of the picture as "King Day" rolls around each year. You'd think the man died in August 1963, not April 1968.
The later years of King's life were hard - and he deserves to be celebrated for the courage he showed in those bitter times, as much as in his glory days. This country was built by millions of people who struggled in desperate circumstances, clinging to their values and beliefs, clinging to a sense of individual decency.
Our science was developed largely by men and women who sought academic glory, but never expected to get rich. Our doctors were trained by physicians who understood relative poverty to the basic accoutrement of academic medicine. Our workers were served by union organizers who hoped to get home alive at the end of a working day.
I fear that our notions of greed-motivated postcapitalism threatens the integrity of many different domains of American life.
And our civil rights freedoms were won by tens of thousands of people who put their lives and convictions on the line. King stands out to be sure - but so do Frederick Douglas, Medger Evers, Eleanore Roosevelt, and many others. And there are dozens of heroes you and I have never heard of.
If he could speak, I believe King would be the first to say that he was the voice of a movement, that he, like many others, didn't want to be called to sacrifice - but he did what time and circumstance called on him to do.
Let's remember the man, the people, and the principles that continue to inspire - not the commodity.