Dr. King’s Documents Withdrawn From AuctionBy MOTOKO RICH
December 11, 2008
On the eve of a planned Sotheby’s auction of three documents related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Belafonte, the singer and a friend of Dr. King who owned the papers, withdrew the items for sale.
In a brief statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Sotheby’s said the items had been removed from the auction roster “at the request of Mr. Harry Belafonte.” Sotheby’s gave no reason for the withdrawal, and Mr. Belafonte did not return calls left with his agent.
The items scheduled for the auction on Thursday included a three-page handwritten outline of one of Dr. King’s most important speeches, “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” delivered in February 1967, and notes for a speech recovered from his suit pocket after he was assassinated in 1968. The third document was a typewritten condolence letter to Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, from President Lyndon B. Johnson.
After news reports early this week about the auction the King estate released a statement condemning the sale and saying that it believed the documents had been “wrongly acquired” by Mr. Belafonte.
“The King estate contends that these documents are the property of the estate of Martin Luther King Jr.,” the statement read. “Mrs. Coretta Scott King and the King estate stopped a previous attempt by members of Harry Belafonte’s family to anonymously and secretly auction wrongfully acquired King documents through a Beverly Hills auction house.” In the statement the estate said lawyers were “looking into issues related to the December 11th Sotheby’s auction of King documents.”
Joseph M. Beck, a lawyer representing the King estate, did not return calls or an e-mail message seeking comment. Calls to Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, children of Dr. King, were not returned. Phillip Jones, a King family representative, and Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of Dr. King and president of the King Center in Atlanta, did not return calls.
In a telephone interview before Mr. Belafonte withdrew the items for sale, David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s, said that the outline for the anti-Vietnam War speech was written in Mr. Belafonte’s Manhattan apartment. The notes from Dr. King’s pocket, Mr. Redden said, had originally been given by Mrs. King to Stanley Levison, an adviser to Dr. King, who left the notes to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden said that Mrs. King had given the condolence letter to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden, who estimated the documents together could fetch from $750,000 to $1.3 million, declined to comment on whether the King family objected to the sale of the papers.
Mr. Belafonte originally met Dr. King, the civil rights leader, when he gave a speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in the mid-1950s. In an interview this week with The Associated Press Mr. Belafonte said he met with Dr. King for four hours in the basement of the church outlining plans for the singer to help spread the civil-rights message through the entertainment industry. In the interview Mr. Belafonte said he later invited Mr. King to use his apartment during his visits to New York. In other news media interviews Mr. Belafonte said he planned to donate the proceeds from the auction to charities representing “the disenfranchised.”
Mr. Belafonte appeared to fall out with the King family around the time of Mrs. King’s funeral in 2006, when he was invited, and then disinvited, to give a eulogy.
The King family has been criticized for its handling of Dr. King’s papers and for trying to profit from them. In 2006 the family selected about 10,000 items from its collection of his papers to auction at Sotheby’s. At the last minute the collection was withdrawn from auction because the city of Atlanta secured a privately financed loan of $32 million and established a nonprofit organization to buy the papers and store them at Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.
David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr. King, said that the Belafonte documents were historically important and that he hoped they would go to a “professionally respectable archive.” In addition to Morehouse, Boston University, where Dr. King received his Ph.D., holds a collection of his papers. “It is regrettable if Mr. Belafonte has been intimidated by the estate, if indeed he was going to put the proceeds to good social cause,” Mr. Garrow said in a telephone interview. “Given the years of intimate loyalty that Belafonte had with Dr. King, he is one of the last people who should be legally intimidated by the estate.”
Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a trilogy on Dr. King and a friend of Mr. Belafonte, said he was more concerned about the fate of hundreds of documents still stored in the King Center, the nonprofit foundation started by the King family in Atlanta. “Most of Doc King’s collections are locked up in the King archives, which have been essentially nonfunctional for years,” Mr. Branch said. “This is what really worries historians, which is that everything will get lost.”
Clayborne Carson, founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and director of the King Papers at Morehouse, said that he was not so concerned about the content of Mr. Belafonte’s papers getting lost, because Mr. Carson had already obtained copies from Sotheby’s. “To me the buying and selling of papers is a whole other world from what my interest is,” Mr. Carson, a historian, said. “I wish we could go back to the days when people cared about the ideas as opposed to the commodity.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 12, 2008 An article on Thursday about Harry Belafonte’s withdrawal of documents related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he had planned to auction, including notes for a speech found in Dr. King’s pocket after he was assassinated, misspelled the surname of an adviser to Dr. King who left the notes to Mr. Belafonte. He was Stanley Levison, not Levinson.
In a brief statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Sotheby’s said the items had been removed from the auction roster “at the request of Mr. Harry Belafonte.” Sotheby’s gave no reason for the withdrawal, and Mr. Belafonte did not return calls left with his agent.
The items scheduled for the auction on Thursday included a three-page handwritten outline of one of Dr. King’s most important speeches, “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” delivered in February 1967, and notes for a speech recovered from his suit pocket after he was assassinated in 1968. The third document was a typewritten condolence letter to Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, from President Lyndon B. Johnson.
After news reports early this week about the auction the King estate released a statement condemning the sale and saying that it believed the documents had been “wrongly acquired” by Mr. Belafonte.
“The King estate contends that these documents are the property of the estate of Martin Luther King Jr.,” the statement read. “Mrs. Coretta Scott King and the King estate stopped a previous attempt by members of Harry Belafonte’s family to anonymously and secretly auction wrongfully acquired King documents through a Beverly Hills auction house.” In the statement the estate said lawyers were “looking into issues related to the December 11th Sotheby’s auction of King documents.”
Joseph M. Beck, a lawyer representing the King estate, did not return calls or an e-mail message seeking comment. Calls to Bernice King and Martin Luther King III, children of Dr. King, were not returned. Phillip Jones, a King family representative, and Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of Dr. King and president of the King Center in Atlanta, did not return calls.
In a telephone interview before Mr. Belafonte withdrew the items for sale, David Redden, vice chairman of Sotheby’s, said that the outline for the anti-Vietnam War speech was written in Mr. Belafonte’s Manhattan apartment. The notes from Dr. King’s pocket, Mr. Redden said, had originally been given by Mrs. King to Stanley Levison, an adviser to Dr. King, who left the notes to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden said that Mrs. King had given the condolence letter to Mr. Belafonte. Mr. Redden, who estimated the documents together could fetch from $750,000 to $1.3 million, declined to comment on whether the King family objected to the sale of the papers.
Mr. Belafonte originally met Dr. King, the civil rights leader, when he gave a speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem in the mid-1950s. In an interview this week with The Associated Press Mr. Belafonte said he met with Dr. King for four hours in the basement of the church outlining plans for the singer to help spread the civil-rights message through the entertainment industry. In the interview Mr. Belafonte said he later invited Mr. King to use his apartment during his visits to New York. In other news media interviews Mr. Belafonte said he planned to donate the proceeds from the auction to charities representing “the disenfranchised.”
Mr. Belafonte appeared to fall out with the King family around the time of Mrs. King’s funeral in 2006, when he was invited, and then disinvited, to give a eulogy.
The King family has been criticized for its handling of Dr. King’s papers and for trying to profit from them. In 2006 the family selected about 10,000 items from its collection of his papers to auction at Sotheby’s. At the last minute the collection was withdrawn from auction because the city of Atlanta secured a privately financed loan of $32 million and established a nonprofit organization to buy the papers and store them at Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.
David J. Garrow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Dr. King, said that the Belafonte documents were historically important and that he hoped they would go to a “professionally respectable archive.” In addition to Morehouse, Boston University, where Dr. King received his Ph.D., holds a collection of his papers. “It is regrettable if Mr. Belafonte has been intimidated by the estate, if indeed he was going to put the proceeds to good social cause,” Mr. Garrow said in a telephone interview. “Given the years of intimate loyalty that Belafonte had with Dr. King, he is one of the last people who should be legally intimidated by the estate.”
Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a trilogy on Dr. King and a friend of Mr. Belafonte, said he was more concerned about the fate of hundreds of documents still stored in the King Center, the nonprofit foundation started by the King family in Atlanta. “Most of Doc King’s collections are locked up in the King archives, which have been essentially nonfunctional for years,” Mr. Branch said. “This is what really worries historians, which is that everything will get lost.”
Clayborne Carson, founding director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and director of the King Papers at Morehouse, said that he was not so concerned about the content of Mr. Belafonte’s papers getting lost, because Mr. Carson had already obtained copies from Sotheby’s. “To me the buying and selling of papers is a whole other world from what my interest is,” Mr. Carson, a historian, said. “I wish we could go back to the days when people cared about the ideas as opposed to the commodity.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 12, 2008 An article on Thursday about Harry Belafonte’s withdrawal of documents related to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that he had planned to auction, including notes for a speech found in Dr. King’s pocket after he was assassinated, misspelled the surname of an adviser to Dr. King who left the notes to Mr. Belafonte. He was Stanley Levison, not Levinson.
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