On June 30, 2006, Sotheby’s, Inc., in New York will offer at auction a historically important set of original documents and other materials that passed from Martin Luther King, Jr. to his family upon his death. I wish to allay concerns that the auction will adversely affect the work of the King Papers Project, which is now part of the King Research and Education Institute at Stanford.

Since the late Mrs. Coretta Scott King selected me in 1985 to direct the King Papers Project, my colleagues and I have benefited from an ongoing cooperative relationship with the King Center and the King Estate. Because of this relationship, we have had continual access to the documents to be auctioned, both before and after their physical transfer to Sotheby’s.

We have photocopied and scanned these documents in order to ensure that the ideas expressed in them will be preserved and disseminated in our comprehensive edition of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Until the late 1990s, some of these documents were intermixed with Mrs. King’s papers in the basement of the Atlanta home that Dr. King occupied with her until his death. As Mrs. King’s personal property, they had remained untouched for three decades until she generously allowed us to examine them for possible inclusion in The Papers.

Recognizing the considerable public and scholarly interest in these materials, we have included more than a hundred of these newly available documents in a special thematic volume of The Papers. This sixth volume, titled Advocate of the Social Gospel and scheduled for publication in January 2007, documents Dr. King’s career as a clergyman. It will be a major addition to the literature regarding the evolution of King’s religious beliefs.

In subsequent volumes of The Papers, we will publish the texts of other documents that will be auctioned. In the meantime, photocopies of many of these documents concerning King’s public role as the civil rights leader are available to researchers at the King Center’s archive. My colleagues and I were, of course, granted access to the originals when this was necessary for our work, and our volumes of The Papers will, in turn, provide researchers with facsimiles as well as transcripts of the most significant of these documents.

Thus, whatever the final disposition of the physical documents in the King collection at Sotheby’s, the historical information they contain will be available to future generations. Moreover, the King family has stipulated in the auction terms that the collection will remain intact and that its long-term preservation will be assured.

While respecting the Estate’s proprietary rights, the Institute, through its King Papers Project, educational programs, and website – kinginstitute.info – has greatly increased researchers’ access to King’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. Our numerous publications – including print, electronic, audio, and multilingual versions – have made available hundreds of documents that had never previously been published or, in many cases, even seen by scholars.

Thus, with the cooperation of the King family and the King Estate, the King Institute have taken actions to ensure that King’s visionary ideas, as expressed in the documents to be auctioned at Sotheby’s and elsewhere, will continue to be made available to researchers, students, and other interested people throughout the world.

Clayborne Carson
Director
Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
Stanford University

Addendum (June 27): My colleagues and I are pleased by news that Morehouse College has acquired the King Papers at Sotheby's and that this important historical resource will return to Atlanta.