Martin Luther King’s estate seeks a buyer for collection of 10,000 documents
Published June 9th, 2006
The estate of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr will auction the civil rights leader’s entire collection of more than 10,000 documents, including the text of his famous 1963 “I have a dream” speech, as a single lot this month.
“This collection is without question the most important American archive of the 20th century in private hands,” said David Redden, the vice-chairman of Sotheby’s, the auctioneer that will conduct the sale on June 30.
The collection was too important to be sold piecemeal, he said, and the estate, which has struggled to find a suitable home for it since the death of King’s widow Coretta Scott King in February, required that it be kept together.
“The Martin Luther King, Jr collection belongs in a major public institution and we hope that will be the result of this sale process,” he said.
Sotheby’s has put an estimate of $15m to $20m (€12m-€16m, £8m-£11m) on it, a broad range that reflects the difficulty in valuing such historic personal collections.
The archives of Sir Winston Churchill were sold about four years ago for £20m ($37m, €29m) but that was a private sale which also required that the collection remain in the UK.
