Where Do We Go From Here?: Debate Continues Over MLK Jr's Papers

Atlanta’s Former, Current Mayor Trying to Buy MLK Papers at Auction
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com

The famed Sotheby’s auction house at York Avenue and 72nd Street in New York will place the archives of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on display for nine days beginning this Wednesday, June 21, and already the collection has stirred a flurry of calls from potential bidders and others who want to make certain the treasures end up in a good home, said David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s.

“All things sold here have special significance, but the King collection goes way beyond because it really does speak to the soul of America,” Redden told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “These are not just documents of the past, but sacred relics. The papers are qualitatively important to our history and our culture.”

The papers, which include everything from sermon notes to a draft of King’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, are expected to bring $15 million to $30 million -- money that will go to the estate of the slain civil rights leader.

Redden, who will serve as auctioneer for the bidding, expects the sale on June 30 to be completed within six or seven minutes. Just last week, Sotheby’s auctioned a Revolutionary flag that sold for $12 million, Redden said.

The King collection includes more than 7,000 handwritten documents from King, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who inspired a movement that changed America’s view of race and the world’s view of America.

Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Paper’s Project at Stanford University, is well acquainted with the documents in the King collection. In 1985, Coretta Scott King, wife of the civil rights icon, selected Carson to edit the King papers, which included publishing volumes of his work.

While people are most familiar with King’s life as a civil rights leader, the collection gives a look at King the minister. He wrote hundreds of sermons and kept notes on index cards, Carson said. He wrote letters to friends, activist and ministers across the country and around the world.

Carson said he is surprised that the King collection has not been acquired before now.

“The best solution would have been for the Library of Congress or the National Archives to acquire the collection,” Carson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. It would have happened several years ago had it not been for “short-sighted squabbling” and concerns about the price, Carson said.

Sotheby’s has discussed the auction of the collection with the King family for about nine years, officials said.

“Millions of dollars went to the Nixons for the Nixon papers. Nixon was a public official and those documents should have been given away, but the family received millions and there was no public outcry.

“For some reason, even though the Kings own this valuable property, some think the family should just give it all away, Carson said.”

In 2000, the government agreed to pay former President Richard Nixon’s estate $18 million for his presidential papers, tape recordings and other materials. The family had asked for $35 million 25 years of interest, which would have brought the total to about $200 million, according to documents on file with the U.S. Justice Department.

Carson said potential bidders might include institutions such as the Smithsonian or the New African American Museum.

And it is reported that former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and current Mayor Shirley Franklin are working to put together a group to acquire the collection and keep it in Atlanta.

"I've been talking to a lot of people," Young said in an Associated Press article. "There are a number of people trying to find ways to get a group together. But, if you can do it, you can best do it if it's kept quiet."

Efforts by BlackAmericaWeb.com to reach Young and Franklin were unsuccessful. But Franklin told the Associated Press: "It's accurate to say that the King papers in Atlanta and the capital city of the South would be a slam dunk -- if we could figure it out."

Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and Africana studies at Vassar College said regardless who acquires the collection, it is important that the documents are accessible.

“I hope the papers are kept together in one collection, and I hope that an academic institution or library gets them,” Mamiya told BlackAmericaWeb.com. In the 1960s he was a member of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and admired King and his teachings. “If the papers are acquired by a wealthy individual, that person may not make them assessable.”

Carson said that because scanned versions of the King papers are available through his project at Stanford, the collection will continue to be available to scholars, and additional volumes of King’s works will be published, regardless of what happens at the auction.

“There always has been a mystique about saying, 'I have the originals,'” Carson said. But there is no need to fear that “a part of history would be lost forever.”