King Family Continues To Sell Out

More than 7,000 items handwritten by Martin Luther the King have been placed on the auction block by the King family. Apparently the King family had a deal with Sotheby’s three years ago to sell the items at the bargain price of $20 million. Now it is estimated that the collection will bring from $15 million to $30 million into the King coffers. The sale comes exactly five months after the death of Coretta Scott King who wanted to find an institutional home for the papers.

The papers include a draft of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, an annotated copy of “Letter From Birmingham Jail” and a program from the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on which Dr. King scribbled notes for a speech about John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

A blue spiral notebook contains a statement read to an Atlanta judge about why Dr. King chose to stay in jail after his arrest during a sit-in, and a note to the women arrested with him praising them for their faith in nonviolent methods, according to a news release from Sotheby’s.

Also among the papers are letters and telegrams from presidents and civil rights leaders, an exam “blue book” from Morehouse College containing what is described as Dr. King’s earliest surviving theological writing, and a collection of books with his handwritten scribbles and critiques.

The State Of . . . King’s legacy has been on the auction block since the family sold his image to be used in a telephone commercial a few years ago. I understand that King was never rich and left his family with very little materially. However, I think there are better, more profitably, ways to build his legacy. Why hasn’t the family allowed scholars to study the papers before? Would this not have increased traffic to the King Center, which is in dire straits now? Instead of sharing King’s words and images, the family has held them too close and unable to grow. Now they are forced to sell pieces of the dream little by little.