The King Papers

by Cliopatria

Now that the auction of the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers seems to have been averted, and the King family can reap the benefit of the $32,000,000 payment promised them (Dexter King exulted that the papers were going “home to Atlanta,” as if they had ever been anywhere else) historians can examine at greater leisure some of the questions involved, notably the place and value to scholars of original manuscript documents. Yesterday, Clayborne Carson, Director of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, which was created in cooperation with the King Center to organize and publish volumes of the King papers, put out a public letter on the Institute’s website dismissing the importance of the proposed Sotheby's sale.

Carson stated in the letter that the prospective Sotheby’s sale should not be a source of concern and would not provide any handicap to the work of the Project, because their staffers had already photocopied and scanned the documents in question. On the one hand, this seems at first glance like an extraordinary admission. Since the Papers Project is interested in publishing and not maintaining the papers, from their point of view all of King’s papers could as well be auctioned off and dispersed. On reflection, though, it seems to me that Carson’s statement underlines two unusual features of the case at hand. One is the fact that the King papers are being turned out at the same time that the original papers themselves remain closed to scholars. Now, it is true that publication projects are not always housed in the same location as the papers themselves. It also is not unheard of for donors to close part or all of an archive, for an indeterminate time. (As I recall, the family of Max Yergan, the Black left-winger-turned-right-winger, has shut off his papers until 2026--50 years after his death). However, it is curious that the King family simultaneously is interested in disseminating King’s writings while guarding the underlying papers. There is no way for outside researchers to look at the documents that have not, or not yet, been published. The other aspect of the case is the extent to which originals have a value once they are scanned. Are historians simply document fetishists, who want to hoard primary sources even once a true facsimile is produced, or are the orignals needed to let outsiders verify independently the accuracy of what is published? Of course, we place a social value on original manuscripts, but is there any reason to pay large sums to purchase and house writings for which digital copies exist? Perhaps the lesson of the King affair is that access is more important than actual possession. Unless there is serious reason, as here there is not, to question the authenticity of a document, or the completeness of the processed material, it seems to me that the creation of online archives with digitized documents eliminates the need to retain manuscripts, if not their sentimental value. Perhaps then the best way to balance the King family’s desire for a financial windfall against the social need to maintain King’s historical legacy intact would have been to negotiate an agreement whereby all the contents of the purchase would be copied, the copies to be preserved and made publicly available, with the originals then to be sold to whatever private buyer desired them.

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Ralph E. Luker - 6/26/2006

In some interesting ways, the King Estate has learned from the Elvis Presley Estate, as in interesting ways, Dr. King learned from Billy Graham.

Greg James Robinson - 6/26/2006

This seems to me quite exceptional, granting that there probably no American of such stature outside official government circles. Is there any other such entrepreneurial practice by any estate?

Ralph E. Luker - 6/25/2006

Right. Clay's a very smart guy. He's had to put up with a lot of crap from the King Estate, himself, and he still has to do a lot of pr work on its behalf in order to keep the wheels greased. All I'm suggesting is that it's important to be skeptical because, if the documents were auctioned off to individual collectors, the only resource for them available to hapless individual scholars would be: a) the published volumes of the Martin Luther King Papers, which are an incomplete selection of documents; and b) a file of xeroxes owned by Clay's MLK Institute at Stanford. As I've indicated, it has already declared that it isn't an archive -- no archive, except under highly unusual circumstances, would warehouse xeroxes -- and will not allow outside scholars access to its files. It may allow you to pay for its staff members to do research in them and, even if it digitizes the King xeroxes, the MLK Institute will charge you for access to the digitized copies of documents. There is a sense in which Clay has learned lessons in entrepreneurship from the entrepreneurship of the King Estate.

Greg James Robinson - 6/25/2006

Ralph, I do not have a personal line to the counsels of Clayborne Carson, whom I have met exactly once. As you can figure out from this, I am not able to judge whether his statement was accurate. If it is anywhere near as questionable as you suggest, though, then he should clearly not have put it out, even if he is beholden to the King family for having reposed their trust in him to put out the published edition. But then, it is the King family who are the most blameworthy for accepting public money for organizing the papers and then not providing reasonable public access to them.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/24/2006

And, btw, according to Sotheby's spokesman, those few manuscript pages that fell out of a magazine in the King Collection it has just happened to be a couple of manuscript pages from text that found its way into the "I Have a Dream" speech. We're not talking about inconsequential material.

Ralph E. Luker - 6/24/2006

Greg, If Clayborne hasn't already answered them, here are a couple of questions for you to think about: 1) do you know whether the Stanford office of the King Papers Project has xerox copies of all of the marginalia in King's library? What part of that marginalia will it publish? How do you effectively publish marginalia from book collections? 2) if Sotheby's was finding manuscript documents falling out of the pages of magazines in King's manuscript collection at Sotheby's, isn't that pretty good indication that the project at Stanford doesn't have the manuscript material that "fell out" or else why would they have flagged it independently. 3) does Clayborne tell you what percentage of King documents future volumes of the King Papers will have published? You're assuming that it will be 100%. Is he willing for you to continue to believe that because it puts your mind at each about this sale? At the back of the first five volumes of the King Papers, there's a fairly comprehensive list of all the documents that might have been published in that volume. Those that actually were published are listed in bold type. It's maybe 10% or 20% -- whatever -- there are a huge number of documents that will never be published by the King Project. Clayborne might have copies of those others, but he won't be publishing them and, according to your suggestion, the originals would be auctioned off one by one or so to collectors. The King Project has already said that it isn't an archive. You may not go do your own research in its files. At most, you may be able to pay a member of the King Project staff to do research for you in those files. I don't think that's an acceptable solution.