Chicom Plagiarist Statue Unveiled

[Dickie Billericay]

James Earl Ray may have beaten them to it.

He was great in Field of Dreams.

Oh, you mean that James Earl Ray...

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. ...

http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/mlkplaque.asp