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King Auction Canceled, Archives Saved for Atlanta

Sermons, books, notes and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. will be spared the auction block next week because the civil rights icon's alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, has bought them.

Sotheby's auction house had estimated the value of the collection at up to $30 million ahead of the auction that had been set for Friday, some five months after the death of King's widow, Coretta Scott King.

King's heirs had tried to sell it to the U.S. Library of Congress in 1999. But the deal fell through, and the auction had raised concerns about where the historic archive would end up.

Sotheby's said late on Friday that Morehouse College, the historically black institution from which King graduated in 1948, purchased it for an undisclosed sum.

Read entire article at Reuters