MLK on the auction block
Oh, I hate this. I suppose I have no right to hate it, but I do ...
After years of failed attempts to sell Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s private papers to the Library of Congress or a university, King’s family has agreed to allow New York auction house Sotheby’s to put the collection up for sale June 30....
“I’m really on tenterhooks about it,” said King biographer Taylor Branch. “Because it’ll wind up in a library or it’ll wind up dispersed.”
The collection includes more than 7,000 items from King’s college years through his 1968 assassination, including his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize lecture and an early draft of his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech. The collection will be exhibited in Sotheby’s galleries June 21–29.
Word to Mr. Branch. Dang.