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Washington (dpa) - Morehouse College, the 140-year-old Atlanta African-American college, will be the final resting place for the lifetime papers of Martin Luther King Jr after long-term efforts of the family to find a buyer.
The sale, sealed over the weekend by a group of Atlanta business and civic interests, came just days before the archive was slated to be auctioned Friday by Sotheby's in New York. The documents however will be on display through the week in New York, reports said.
The city did not disclose the amount being paid for the papers, but said the coalition had paid a "fair price for the priceless collection," according to a press statement posted on the website of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Included in the papers is King's handwritten "I Have a Dream" speech, which was famously delivered on August 28, 1963 during the march on Washington. King, a Nobel Prize winner and most recognizable figure of the black civil rights movement in the United States, was gunned down on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Centre for American History at the University of Texas at Austin came close to purchasing the papers in 2003, the New York Sun newspaper reported, but backed out at the last minute because of the conditions and the 30-million-dollar price tag placed by the family.
Strict terms about the use and copyright of the material has irked some scholars, and damped interest among potential purchasers.
The collection of thousands of documents chronicles the political activism of King from 1948 up to his assassination on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel, which has since been turned into the National Civil Rights Museum.
King was a 1948 graduate of Morehouse College, which he entered on early admissions at age 15. Dr. Walter E. Massey, president of Morehouse College, said the school would house the collection.
"Given the important role Morehouse played in Dr King's intellectual, spiritual and moral development, we believe there simply is no better place for these papers to reside," Massey said in a statement. "We are grateful to the King family for their confidence in Morehouse to serve as the repository for this legacy, which reflects the best thinking of our nation?s most outstanding leader, and of Morehouse College's most outstanding alumnus."
Previous attempts by King's estate to sell the papers fell through, including a tentative deal with the Library of Congress, over the high asking price. Academic institutions were turned off over the family's insistence on keeping control of copyrights, which would limit the ability of researchers republish excerpts.
The same basic rules were placed on the Sotheby's action, although the family would have allowed about 10 per cent of every document to be published on a buyer's website and in press articles. It was not clear if similar restrictions have been placed on the Morehouse deal.
King's family had been hopeful that a buyer would donate the papers to a museum or library. One library tried to enlist the help of a noted King biographer, Taylor Branch, who said he refused because of the complicated terms of the sale.
"I couldn't do it in good conscience until the conditions are clear," he told the New York Sun.
"My qualm is not the amount of money involved," Branch told the newspaper. "I would in good conscience ask for some wealthy person to buy and donate the materials, but not if they're then going to turn around to find a bunch of lawyers on the steps of the donated institution talking about all these conditions of sale that will limit access."
The decision to release the private collection was made by King's family after the passing of the civil-rights campaigner's wife, Coretta Scott King, in January. The family had decided the documents would be better kept at a research institution or museum, Sotheby's said.
"If you buy a collection and spend that kind of money, you want to be pretty free to open it up for scholarship and have things published," said Don Carleton, the director of the centre.
"The history of the King estate's handling of the King literary rights has been rather troubling," he added. "You have to make a decision if you're going to acquire the collection: Do you really want to enter into a partnership with people who have proven themselves in the past to be extremely difficult?"
Among the group's reportedly interesting in bidding for the material are the Schomberg Centre for Research in Black Culture in New York, the city of New York, the History Society at Boston University, and the city of Atlanta, George, King's birthplace.
Copyright 2006 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH
