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  • 2003-01-20 (xsd:date)
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  • James Earl Jones vs. James Earl Ray Mix-Up (en)
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  • Most of the public mistakes we make in life can be dismissed with wry chuckles, and our faux pas generally cause nothing more than brief moments of red-faced embarrassment, but every once in a while someone commits a gaffe so unseemly that it sends everyone involved scurrying for rocks to crawl under. The Dr. Martin Luther King Day holiday of 2002 was the unfortunate object of one such blunder. For their annual Martin Luther King Day celebration in 2002, the people of Lauderhill, Florida, invited deep-voiced actor James Earl Jones to be their featured speaker. Wanting to provide their guest with a special gift, members of the city's Martin Luther King task force turned to local promotions company AdPro Specialties, who in turn contracted with Merit Industries of Georgetown, Texas, to produce a plaque with an inscription thanking Jones set amidst a display of several USPS Black Heritage postage stamps depicting prominent African-Americans, headed by one of King himself. Merit faxed AdPro a list of 15 African-American stamps to choose from and a rough sketch of what the finished product would look like; all AdPro had to do was choose which stamps they wanted displayed on the plaque. Or so they thought. Four days before the celebration, Lauderhill officials received their plaque and were horrified to discover that it bore an inscription thanking James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive — not James Earl Jones, but James Earl Ray, the man who pleaded guilty to assassinating the renowned civil rights leader at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in 1968. It's a real outrage, said Commissioner Margaret Bates, who also chaired the city's Martin Luther King task force. To confuse James Earl Jones with James Earl Ray — just think of the significance. If all this seemed an unnecessary brouhaha over a small mix-up of names, consider the plaque again, this time from the perspective of who James Earl Ray was. The plaque showcased commemorative stamps issued in honor of four prominent African-American figures. And in its middle it thanked the murderer of one of them for keeping the dream alive (as in, getting rid of one and suggesting by implication that others should be similarly dispatched). AdPro hastily checked to ensure that the blunder hadn't been the result of a mistake on their part: Mr. Miller assuaged nobody's feelings by blaming the error on some of his poorly educated employees and terming the mix-up an innocent mistake that had been blown out of proportion: While charges (and denials) of cultural insensitivity and accusations that the mistake had been a deliberate one flew back and forth, AdPro opted to have the plaque repaired locally in time for Lauderhill's Martin Luther King Day celebration. As for the unfortunate mangling of his name, James Earl Jones said through his agent that I think we have much bigger things to worry about. (en)
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