Auction Is Canceled As King Papers Go To College

Yes, sometimes things do work out in a way that makes you breathe a sigh of relief:

An agreement has been reached to allow thousands of papers from the estate of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior to remain in his hometown in the southeastern United States. The collection of handwritten documents was to have been auctioned in less than one week.

A group of influential black citizens, including former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, arranged to purchase the personal papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. for $32 million.

The papers had been scheduled for auction at Sotheby’s in New York later this month. David Redden, Sotheby’s vice chairman, said the collection included drafts of Mr. King’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize and the famous “I Have A Dream” speech he delivered in Washington in 1963. “They really are remarkable, wonderful, and important and moving documents and I’m so thrilled that you will have them in Atlanta,” he said.

I visited Atlanta some years ago, on one of my vacations while I was a staff writer on the San Diego Union and went to as many sites connected with MLK, Jr. as I could. It has been a wrenching experience the past few weeks thinking that King’s papers could vanish into private collections. That surely was NOT what he would have wanted — and it would not have been a suitable way to perpetuate his memory and vital legacy. MORE:

The collection also includes Mr. King’s personal library of about one thousand books. It will be given to Morehouse College in Atlanta, where King graduated in 1948. Morehouse is the nation’s largest private liberal-arts college for black men.

That’s a wonderful ending to this dramatic historical saga. His papers will stay in town, in one place, for visitors and locals. And his papers will serve as an inspiration — in a place where the inspiration could have an important impact.