Collectors, historians and everyday people packed the Durham, North Carolina, home of the late John Hope Franklin last weekend.

Franklin was a world-renowned scholar of African American history who died in 2009. People lined up hours early to honor the man who influenced how the world thinks about slavery and, of course, to purchase some of his possessions.

You can call it an estate sale or a tag sale. The bottom line is everything had to go....

“One of the first books I picked up and pulled out of the shelf, I opened and it was signed by the author,  Fred Gray, who was the author of 'Bus Ride to Justice,' " said [Gay Pleasant, who organized the sale], full of excitement. "I said to my son, 'This was ... Rosa Parks's attorney, and Martin Luther King’s attorney and he dedicated it to Dr. Franklin'.”

The biggest draw had to be the thousands of books. There were hundreds alone on slavery, the South, the Civil War and Reconstruction – Franklin’s specialty.