BY ANNE FLATTÉ

During a visit to the home of Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1997, Clayborne and Susan Carson unearthed a treasure trove: an old cardboard box filled with handwritten sermons composed by the late civil rights leader.

Scott King was considering moving from her residence of more than 32 years and allowed the Carsons to search the home for documents of historical significance. Among the many boxes pulled from the Kings’ basement and study, the couple found one very large one filled with papers covered with King’s cursive script. "We kept pulling things out of it, saying, ‘Look at this; look at this!’" remembers Susan Carson, managing editor of the King Papers Project. "A lot of the sermons in there were early versions of King’s most famous sermons. So it was very exciting."

Ernest Withers, foreground, a photographer in Memphis during the civil rights movement, and Jimmy Collier, a musician who warmed up the crowd at rallies and marches, came to campus last January to share their stories with Papers Project staff and supporters. photo: L.A. Cicero

The Carsons speculate that the papers probably hadn’t been touched since the Kings’ move from Montgomery to Atlanta in 1960. "Once we saw these materials, we realized they were a wonderful source of information about his life as a preacher," says Clayborne Carson, the Project’s director. "The handwritten sermons show the evolution of some of King’s most famous sermons and passages, including ‘Loving Your Enemies’ and ‘I Have a Dream.’" Clayborne Carson decided it was worthy of a dedicated volume that would depart temporarily from the chronological order of the Project’s 14-volume series. That volume is scheduled to be published in 2005.

Assistant Editor Adrienne Clay first came to the Papers Project in 1996 as a summer fellow from Colby College. She joined the staff after graduation. photo: L.A. Cicero

In the meantime, editors at the Project also are readying Volume V, which covers January 1959 to December 1960 and chronicles King’s rise to international prominence; his journey to India to meet with Gandhi’s followers; and his move from Montgomery to his birthplace, Atlanta. According to Clayborne Carson, Volume V, which is scheduled for publication in 2003, also is the first one that deals with the protest movements of the 1960s. "That gets us into the sit-ins and the origins of the student movements," he says.

The editing process

At a recent editorial meeting, the four editors of Volume V -- Adrienne Clay, Kerry Taylor and the Carsons -- go over annotations for the volume and discuss several documents from April 1959. First on the agenda is a telegram from King to then-Mississippi Gov. James P. Coleman protesting the lynching of Mack Charles Parker, an African American man who was abducted from his jail cell and killed, just hours after being arrested and charged with raping and kidnapping a white woman. Next is a transcript of an interview with King on a Canadian television program, in which King states that he believes the Southern states will attain desegregation by 1974. Editors haggle over the wording of footnotes and descriptive headnotes.

Herbert Aptheker, a biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois, visited the Papers Project last fall. photo: L.A. Cicero

"It’s one of those messy, conflict-filled processes," observes Taylor. "Collaboration is about tension. It’s difficult -- your ego’s on the line. But it’s one of those things where you ultimately feel really good about the outcome."

Providing scholars with access to primary source documents is the central mission of the Papers Project. "The real strength of documentary history," says Clay, "is that this is primary material. We do choose the documents that go in there and we certainly are shaping it by those decisions, but we’re letting the original words speak for themselves. Then other people can use what we provide to do their own interpretations, their own analyses."

Editors first select the small percentage of documents that will be included in the volume. Highest priority is given to King-authored writings and correspondence, and transcriptions of speeches and sermons. Next are transcripts of meetings, newspaper articles, interviews with King, and correspondence about King as they reveal the civil rights leader’s attitudes, activities and associations. For example, Volume V includes a third-party account of King’s trip to India by fellow traveler James Bristol. "It’s almost a travel journal," says Clay, "who they saw, what happened, what the crowd response was, how King was responding -- was he tired, was he sick, was he happy? It paints a picture."

Clay, who also worked as an editor of the previous volume, says that some documents are worth fighting for even when they don’t fall neatly into one of those categories. "One of the letters in Volume IV is from a 13-year-old South African [Herbert W. Vilakazi]," she remembers. "He writes this wonderful letter, [saying] ‘I’ve read your book, and here’s what it’s like in South Africa. And I think it’s the same.’ And it’s brilliant. And we wanted to publish it even though it doesn’t really fit our criteria -- so we fought for it. We ended up discovering that this kid became a professor who was appointed by Nelson Mandela to oversee the first democratic elections in South Africa."

After deciding which documents will be included in a volume, editors annotate the documents, adding footnotes and headnotes, and write an introductory essay and chronology of historical events.

Of all the documents she’s perused, Clay prefers King’s more reflective letters, in which the late civil rights leader writes about some of his fears or quandaries as the movement progresses. "In hindsight, we know what happened," she says, "and seeing some of the letters where he’s working through problems or questions is a reminder that they didn’t know what was going to happen. He didn’t know whether this would be successful. And those are rare, where we really get to see the human side of King. Finding things like that, I think, are treasures."

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project