King Family Evicts National Park Service : Historic site: Relatives allege deceit by the federal government. The bitter conflict over plans for birthplace, tomb has split the black community.

Accusing the National Park Service of trying to usurp an important piece of black history, the family of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. banished the agency from the King birthplace and tomb Wednesday, escalating a conflict that has split the African American community and threatens the future of one of the city’s biggest tourist draws.

At the center of the dispute is a Park Service plan to build an $11.8-million visitor center, parking facilities and a pedestrian promenade to accommodate the 5 million tourists that are expected to visit King’s crypt in 1996 when Atlanta hosts the Summer Olympics.

The King family is eyeing the same site--across the street from the family-owned and operated King Center for Nonviolent Social Change--to build its own high-tech, interactive, virtual reality center to commemorate the slain civil rights figure.

The family is also seeking a larger share of federal funds that go to maintain the site.

“What we are witnessing . . . is a classic encroachment and annexation of a people and their history by the federal government,” said Dexter King, son of the civil rights leader and president-elect of the King Center.

“The National Park Service was invited into this community and district by my mother Coretta Scott King to be a tour guide for the Martin Luther King birth home and serve in a support role to the King Center’s programs, vision and purpose,” he said. “They began as a tour guide but have become landlords.”

Eventually, Dexter King said, the King Center will operate its own tours of the birth home. Complying with the family’s wishes, the Park Service said that beginning today it would conduct tours of the King birth home without venturing inside.

Troy Lissimore, the Park Service superintendent of the historic site, said park rangers would maintain a presence in the historic site and would continue with ambitious construction plans in the area. “We will not leave,” he said.

The dispute has divided Atlanta’s black community.

A statement issued through the office of Mayor Bill Campbell on Wednesday said the King Center “did not meaningfully participate” in the Park Service’s two-year planning process and shouldn’t seek changes now.

In a Dec. 18 column, Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker called the King family’s proposed virtual reality center “a sort of I Have a Dreamland, to make a profit from a Disneyesque trip through the civil rights movement.”

That brought a rebuke last week from Coretta Scott King, who said, “The same evil forces that destroyed Martin Luther King are now trying to destroy my family.”

Dexter King on Wednesday denied accusations that the family was motivated by profit.

“The National Park Service has pitted neighbor against neighbor, leader against leader, in the African American community. For this I am saddened,” he said. “I haven’t taken office yet as chairman and CEO of the King Center and already I stand on the opposite side of the community leaders who I grew up (respecting).”

More than 3 million people visit the historic site yearly. Included in the 23-acre area are King’s crypt, his birth home, the church he pastored and the family-run King Center that opened in 1980 to preserve his legacy and advance his social goals.

The Park Service took over operation of the historic site in 1983. The Park Service paid $500,000 a year to the King Center to conduct the tours, said spokesman Paul Winegar, but that contract expired in September after the King Center sought to triple the fee to $1.5 million a year.

In addition to its plans for a visitor center, the Park Service has arranged to lease the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father had been pastors. It would operate the church as a museum.

Meanwhile, a new $7-million church is being planned next to the visitor center.

Criticism of the King family for its actions has been intense.

In the Auburn Avenue Rib Shack, three blocks west of the King Center, owner Dorothy Clements just shook her head as she discussed the controversy.

“She is making a mistake,” she said of Coretta Scott King’s plans for an interactive museum. “What kind of legacy is that for Dr. King’s memory. That’s a circus. We don’t want a circus down here. That’s not representing anything Dr. King stands for. To make money off of him. She’s been getting a half million from the government. Now she wants to turn around and charge people to come to a museum. That’s greed.”

Phil Hickman, who was sitting on a stool at the Rib Shack, said King “cut her nose off and shot herself in the foot at the same time” when she gave an ultimatum to the Park Service. “She doesn’t know what compromise means.”

Tourists flocked to the center Wednesday as workers prepared for next month’s celebration of the federal holiday honoring King’s birth.

“This is something people all over the world should come and visit,” said James Martin Jr., assistant football coach at South Carolina State University who visited the center with his players. “I really hope the King Center and Park Service can come together. That’s what everybody would want.”