Martin Luther King
center halts talks
on transferring papers
The estate of Martin
Luther King Jr. has postponed indefinitely talks with
Stanford and Emory University about the possible transfer
of more than 80,000 documents to one of the institutions.
Personal papers date from
the last six years of the civil rights leader's life and
currently are stored in the Martin Luther King Jr. Center
for Nonviolent Social Change, an archive and institute in
Atlanta. The archive also holds collections of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Congress of
Racial Equality.
Press accounts of the
decision reported that the King Center is in financial
trouble and can no longer afford to manage the archive.
Access to documents has been severely limited for a
number of years. The Stanford Libraries have been
discussing with the King Center and the King family the
possibility that the university might obtain the papers.
The King Center has a
longstanding relationship with Stanford that dates from
1985, when Coretta Scott King asked Clayborne Carson,
professor of history, to edit her late husband's papers.
Three volumes of King's papers already have been
published, and 11 more are scheduled to appear over the
next 20 years.
"That is why Stanford
is even in the running, because the King Papers Project
is here," Carson told the San Jose Mercury News.
"That's why I made an effort to encourage Stanford
to enter the negotiations."
If the papers were
transferred, literary property rights would remain with
the King family estate. SR
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