    
Msprissy
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Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 50
Registered: 03-2006
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 24, 2006 - 11:16 am: | 
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Yes!!!
June 24, 2006
Morehouse College to Inherit King Papers
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 4:34 a.m. ET
ATLANTA (AP) -- A collection of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers, manuscripts and books that was set for auction next week will instead be given to his alma mater, officials said.
A group of Atlanta businesses, individuals and philanthropic leaders bought the lot of more than 10,000 items from the King family for an undisclosed amount, Morehouse College President Walter Massey said Friday.
The civil rights leader's handwritten documents and books were expected to sell for $15 million to $30 million at Sotheby's auction house in New York on June 30. Massey said the Atlanta coalition offered more than that.
He said the historically black college near downtown Atlanta would acquire the collection, which historians have called one of the greatest American archives of the 20th century in private hands.
''It really didn't belong anywhere else,'' said Andrew Young, a lieutenant of King's during the civil rights movement, who became overcome with emotion when discussing the deal Friday night.
The papers span from 1946 to 1968, the year King was assassinated. They include 7,000 handwritten items, including his early Alabama sermons, a draft of his ''I Have a Dream'' speech, which he delivered Aug. 28, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and his acceptance address when he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Atlanta is King's birthplace and where his wife, Coretta Scott King, raised their four children after his death. It also is where she founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and where King and his wife are entombed.
''I can't imagine a better home than the home of Dr. King for this collection,'' said Sotheby's Vice Chairman David Redden, who confirmed that the auction would no longer take place.
''It was there for years, it's going to be there forever. I think that's a marvelous conclusion to this extraordinary process,'' he said. ''It guarantees that it will be looked after properly and made available to the public.''
Redden would not disclose the purchase price. The city was the sentimental favorite in the bidding and was rumored to have stiff competition from civic and academic institutions across the country, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, Duke University and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
The Atlanta coalition is led by Mayor Shirley Franklin and also includes Emory University and the Atlanta History Society.
The money will go to the financially strapped King estate. Coretta Scott King's death in January was a catalyst for the sale because her will calls for the estate's liquidation.
For years, Sotheby's auction house has tried to sell the collection, but previous negotiations with various institutions fell through.
''People have seen this as an opportunity to step up and lay claim to Martin Luther King's nonviolent heritage as a part of Atlanta's tradition,'' said Young, a former mayor of the city.
Franklin, the current mayor, did not respond to calls seeking comment.
The 139-year-old Morehouse College stands as the largest private, liberal arts college in the country for men with 2,800 students, and one of only four all-male colleges in the United States. Other famous alumni include actor Samuel L. Jackson, former U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher and film director Spike Lee.
Minnie E Miller
www.millerscribs.com
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