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The personal papers of Martin Luther King, including his "I have a dream" speech, will be auctioned as one lot in New York this month following the failure of efforts to negotiate a private sale.
Sotheby's auction house, which described the collection as the "most important American archive of the 20th century in private hands," said Thursday that the public sale would be held on June 30.
The lot, valued as high as 30 million dollars, comprises King's personal library, as well as manuscripts and papers from the most active years of the civil rights leader's life -- 1946 to 1968 -- that passed to his family following his assassination.
Sotheby's had attempted to sell the collection privately in 2003, but failed to find a buyer among the major public institutions preferred by the King family.
Sotheby's vice chairman David Redden said the family still hoped that the buyer at the June 30 auction would be an institution capable of allowing access to the collection.
"Because of the wealth of unpublished primary material, the opportunities for scholarship are boundless," Redden said. "It must be saved in its entirety for succeeding generations."
Among the highlights of the collection are a copy of King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech from 1964 and writings he was still working on when he was killed in 1968.
King also kept his correspondence with presidents Richard Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy
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AFP 081629 GMT 06 06
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