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Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 46
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 09:09 am: | 
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Our history is being put on the action block. Sound familiar? How sad. Read on...
From: Vickie Pryor <vickie.pryor@sbcglobal.net>
Subject: Check out: MLK Auction at Sothebys.com
I'm sharing this info.
Vickie
MLK's papers and books are coming up for auction at Sotheby's on June 30th
as 1 lot of about 7000 items.
They expect to get 15 to 30 million.
They most likely will be bought by some non-black institution.
If there ever was a case for black folks with the means to pool their resources
and maintain control over the use of these historic items, this is it.
http://search.sothebys.com/about/pressrelease/06JuneKing.pdf
Minnie E Miller
www.millerscribs.com
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4681
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 12:09 pm: |
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MLK left that stuff with Coretta and their kids. They can do with it what they will. And I hope they get full value for it. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 4550
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 12:32 pm: |
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IMO, MLK papers and books should be a part of the public domain. His personal mementos should certainly be kept in the family. BTW, wonder why none of his kids ever married or had children to keep the line going? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4682
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 01:26 pm: |
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Cynique's "...wonder why none of his kids ever married or had children to keep the line going?"
Now that right THERE is the billion dollar question. Because, to me, THAT is honor that MLK life and memory has been denied. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1291
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 13, 2006 - 07:58 pm: |
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Libraries and Universities will purchase his papers. Maybe not his books. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2288
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 14, 2006 - 12:09 pm: |
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Well, Cynique, all you gotta do is pony up that 30 million and then donate the papers to the public. |
Doberman23
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 397
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 16, 2006 - 01:17 am: |
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wow none of his kids had kids? i didn't know that. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1056
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 19, 2006 - 11:50 am: |
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ajc.com > Metro > Atlanta
Franklin, Young lead bid to buy King papers
By MARIA SAPORTA, MAE GENTRY
The Atlanta Journal-Consitution
Published on: 06/18/06
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and former Mayor Andrew Young are working quietly with Herman Russell and other influential residents to raise money and find a home in Atlanta for Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal papers, which will be auctioned June 30 at Sotheby's in New York.
Historians consider the papers to be the most important American archive of the 20th century in private hands. They include 7,000 handwritten items, including drafts of King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech and his "I Have a Dream" speech, which he delivered in 1963 at the March on Washington.
"I've been talking to a lot of people," said Young, who was a close aide to King during the civil rights movement. "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."
Franklin did not want to comment on the effort to raise money to bid on the collection, which is being sold by King's children.
"Mum is the word," she said. But she added: "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."
Emory University President Jim Wagner said the school would donate money for the bid and offer to house the documents, which date from 1946 until 1968, the year the civil rights leader was assassinated.
It is expected to take about a week to determine whether an Atlanta group would be able to raise enough money to present a viable bid, people familiar with the effort said. Sotheby's auction house, which will put the papers on display beginning Wednesday, expects to fetch between $15 million and the appraised value of $30 million.
Of that amount, Sotheby's could get at least 12 percent and the remainder, after other associated expenses and taxes, would go to the estate — King's four children, Bernice, Dexter, Martin III and Yolanda. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, died Jan. 30.
Wagner said Emory would be a contributor but not a "lead donor."
"We are very interested in helping to be part of an Atlanta bid effort to see the King papers stay in Atlanta," Wagner said. "We stand ready to be part of a consortium, and we would be prepared to house, archive and curate the collection."
Atlanta is home to some of the wealthiest African-Americans in the nation, and they are being approached on this effort.
"Lots of people are talking to each other, but we just don't have anything concrete," said Russell, an influential black builder and developer who helped King in the 1960s. "Would I make a contribution? Sure I would."
Russell described the effort as "serious talking taking place."
Atlanta figured prominently in the lives of King and his family. The city is King's birthplace. It is where Coretta King raised her four children after her husband's death, and it is where she founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change to carry on his teachings. The city also is where King and his widow are entombed.
"You are talking about one of the greatest human beings that ever came our way, and he happened to be a native Atlantan," Russell said. "That's why people are working so hard. We ought to keep the papers here."
Stiff competition likely
However, the obstacles are many. For starters, Young acknowledged that "a lot of people in a lot of other places are trying to do the same thing."
Officials of public institutions from New York to Texas were quick to point out the importance of the papers after the Sotheby's announcement earlier this month, but most declined to say whether they would be among the bidders.
Institutions that have had an interest in King's papers in the past include the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History at the New York Historical Society, the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, and Boston University, where King earned his doctoral degree.
The Library of Congress is very interested in King's papers, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis, another veteran of the civil rights movement.
"But they need for us to get an appropriation from the Congress, and I don't think time is on their side," he said.
Lewis, who previously expressed a desire to see King's papers at the new African-American museum in Washington, said Friday he would do anything he can to support an Atlanta bid.
"I would love more than anything else to see the papers back here in Atlanta, in the South," he said.
Nearly a decade ago, in 1997, Coretta King unsuccessfully sued Boston University, seeking the return of 83,000 letters, documents and manuscripts her husband had deposited at the university in 1964 and 1965.
During the trial, she said her husband sent the papers to Boston to find a safe haven from increasing violence against the civil rights movement. "But Martin said he still felt that his papers should be returned to the South at some point when there was a suitable facility," she testified.
Price is anyone's guess
Don E. Carleton, director of the Center for American History at the University of Texas, said he was approached about buying the papers several years ago, before Sotheby's originally offered them for sale in 2003.
"I flew to Atlanta and spent an afternoon with Mrs. King," he said. "She took me through the library. She took me through [Dr. King's] closet, where he still had his shoes and clothes. We had tea. It was a very nice afternoon."
But Carleton said he could not justify a $15 million fund-raising effort to buy the archive.
"The very significant fact that an important body of his work is in Boston — that's an issue," he said. "If you're going to be paying something like $15 to $30 million for a collection, you'd like to have the whole thing."
The Texas center owns the papers of James Farmer, founder of the Congress of Racial Equality, and the archives of Flip Schulke, a photojournalist who had special access to King.
Lauren Gioia, a vice president at Sotheby's, said the auction house would not confirm who has made inquiries into purchasing the papers. She said the auction is scheduled for 2 p.m. on June 30.
From Wednesday until June 29, the auction house will display the collection — including, for the first time, a draft of "Letter From Birmingham Jail."
Coretta King's death this year helped speed the decision to hold an auction, Sotheby's Vice Chairman David Redden told The Associated Press.
"To be candid," he said, "the passing of Mrs. King did require that the estate put their affairs in order."
With no way of knowing how high the auction bids would go, the Atlanta group would need to figure out how much money it would be willing to offer.
Donors also might want to know where the papers would be housed and how much money would be needed to maintain and display the documents — costs beyond the bid commitment.
Russell, who cautioned that the city will have to act "real fast," said "only time will tell" whether Atlanta will be able to put together a bid.
Wagner, the Emory president, added: "Here is an opportunity for a pan-Atlanta effort, an all-of-Atlanta effort to ensure that this very important piece of world and national history based in Atlanta remains in Atlanta. There are many options once it's here. It's all at a very early stage."
Staff writer Ernie Suggs contributed to this article.
Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/0618king.html
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4704
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, June 19, 2006 - 03:34 pm: |
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Yvettep,
What I find interesting is how apparently DISCONNECT MLK's kids are from those with whom Martin most closely worked and associated with. |
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