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MLK COLLECTION SET TO BE AUCTIONED: Sotheby's authorized by King children to sell papers, manuscripts and personal library for an estimated $30 million.
*After several years of attempts at selling the collection privately to an institution,
Sotheby's Holdings Inc. will auction the slain civil-rights leader Martin Luther King
Jr's personal library, manuscripts, and papers for up to an estimated $30 million. The
auction, preceded by a nine-day public viewing, will be held on June 30 in New York and is authorized by King's four children.
The 7000-item set, which includes an early handwritten draft of King's "I Have a Dream" speech delivered in 1963 as well as correspondence with John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, was set to be purchased for $20 million by the U.S. Library of Congress in the late 1990s, but the deal failed when congress questioned why the items weren't being donated.
"There's been great institutional interest, but a sale was never finalized,"
said Sotheby's Vice Chairman David Redden, who is urging institutions to step
up and fears that it will fall into private hands. "If it goes to a private individual,
public institutions have abdicated their responsibility for one of the most important
American archives." The documents will be offered as one lot versus separately and this is the second time Sotheby's has displayed the items since 2003.
King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968, and his widow, Coretta
Scott King, died of ovarian cancer last January.
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