Posted on 08/27/2003 6:10:51 AM PDT by Theodore R.
MLK papers are for sale; value put at $30 million By Bartholomew Sullivan sullivan@gomemphis.com August 27, 2003
A New York auction house put the private papers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on display Tuesday and announced they'll be sold later this year.
But when sold they should be carefully preserved and made available to the public, several civil rights advocates said. The material, owned by the King estate, has never been made public.
Reacting to news the papers are to be sold by the Sotheby's auction house this fall, some expressed dismay but all said they are a national treasure that must be available to scholars.
Rev. Benjamin Hooks, former executive director of the NAACP and chairman of the board of the National Civil Rights Museum, said he's confident the King family will assure that wherever the papers go they'll be available to the public and preserved for posterity.
Hooks and museum executive director Beverly Robertson said the $30 million appraised value probably makes the collection beyond the institution's financial means. But both said they'd like to see parts of the collection come to Memphis as a traveling exhibit.
The 7,000-item trove includes the contents of King's briefcase recovered from the Lorraine Motel after his 1968 assassination in Memphis.
"We would certainly be interested in taking a look at the collection and maybe even thinking about making an offer,'' Robertson said. But she said it's unlikely on the heels of a recent $11 million museum expansion.
Julian Bond, a student of King's and current director of the NAACP, said the papers should be available like the records of other civil rights leaders.
"They ought to end up in a public archive where they will be available without restriction,'' Bond said when reached in Washington.
Bond noted the papers of the NAACP are kept by the Library of Congress that he said might be the proper venue for King's papers.
In recent years the library was prepared to pay $20 million for King documents, including some now at Sotheby's, but Congress withheld the appropriation after a disagreement about its value to researchers, according to The Associated Press.
Bond also mentioned The Smithsonian Institution as a potential buyer and others suggested various university libraries. Bond declined comment on what he thought about the decision to place them on the auction block.
Sotheby's, in a statement, said the collection will be sold intact. It includes everything from old college blue book exams from the 1940s to credit card receipts and speeches and sermons just before his death. Sotheby's inventoried the collection over the past six years after the King estate was approached by several institutions interested in acquiring it. Much of it had been kept at King's home in Atlanta.
Among the highlights is a draft of the I Have a Dream speech delivered at the March on Washington 40 years ago this week. There are also nearly 100 handwritten sermons, including a Nov. 20, 1955, oration delivered to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., that includes early elements of his activist social commentary.
An extensive private library collection includes more than 50 books either on or about Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, a powerful influence on King's nonviolent civil rights strategy.
The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence in Memphis will not be bidding on the collection, its director, Michelle C. Naef, said Tuesday. Naef said she was concerned the papers could be acquired by someone who might not make them available to the public.
"I'm kind of shocked that they would sell them,'' she said. "It kills me. . . . They were meant for the public. They were meant for the people. They weren't meant to be locked away.''
Shelby County Commissioner Walter L. Bailey Jr., a young lawyer and adviser to King in 1968, said it initially bothered him to hear the collection is for sale.
But then he said "as long as the material is going to be perpetually available to scholars for historical and scholarly purposes'' it won't matter who the owner is.
If the King family had any respect for MLK's place in history, they'd be donating these papers to the Smithsonian, not trying to hawk them to the highest bidder.
Here's hoping Congress sticks to it's guns and withdraws even their previous (inflated) offer.
Credit card receipts? Blue books? For $20M dollars? Give me a break.
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