Martin Luther King papers, books to be auctioned

By Gary Hill

NEW YORK (Reuters) – More than 10,000 manuscripts and books
from the estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., many in the hand of
the crusader for justice and nonviolence, will be sold on June
30, Sotheby’s auction house said on Thursday.

The collection, to be auctioned 38 years after the 1964
Nobel Peace Prize winner’s assassination, will be sold in a
single lot and is expected to fetch $15 million to $30 million,
Sotheby’s said.

The auction will be preceded by a nine-day exhibition June
21-29 of items ranging from drafts of some of King’s most
famous speeches and essays to his blue test booklets from
college. More than 7,000 items offered are in King’s own hand.

The collection includes an early draft of his historic “I
Have a Dream” speech — four typed pages with handwritten notes
– and his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Also included is a telegram inviting King to President
Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one
of his crowning achievements as a leader of the civil rights
movement. The telegram advised him to “bring your telegram as
it will be your admission card.”

King won the Nobel Prize at age of 35. In a draft
handwritten on yellow lined paper, he prepares to accept an
award in recognition of “the need for man to overcome
oppression and violence without resorting to violence and
oppression.”

Especially poignant in light of his own murder less than
five years later are King’s remarks on the assassination of
President John Kennedy. He quotes Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
and says: “The great question today is ‘What killed Kennedy?’
He speaks to each of us in his death. He is not dead.”

Sotheby’s noted in its announcement: “Thus, on one piece of
paper are linked three great martyrs of American history.”

Among the auction items are more than 50 books and
pamphlets by and about the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. Like
him, King’s spiritual quest led the Baptist minister to
confront issues beyond his original civil rights campaign, such
as the Vietnam War.

King was shot and killed on April 4, 1968. Four days later,
a bill was introduced in Congress for a national holiday in his
honor. Fifteen years later, the holiday was signed into law and
another two years later, in 1985, it was first observed.

His widow, Coretta Scott King, died in January.

“In the wake of Mrs. King’s passing the Estate believes
that it must resolve the process of finding an appropriate home
for The Collection of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Sotheby’s
reported. It said the King estate stipulated that the
collection be kept together.

The estate also runs the King Center in Atlanta, which
includes his crypt, a museum, library resources and a gift
shop. The King Center has suffered financial and management
disputes among the Kings’ children.

The collection “is without question the most important
American archive of the 20th century in private hands,” said
Sotheby’s Vice Chairman David Redden.