The King Family is at it Again--Selling the MLK Papers

The family of Martin Luther King continues to disgust me. Now that Coretta has passed on, the kids have full reign to make as much bank as they can off their father's legacy. The latest plan: auction off all of his papers to the highest bidder.

This is revolting on two levels. First, the simple materialism involved in it. MLK's family long ago decide to cash in on his legacy. On one level, this is understandable given the financial straits they were in when he died. But they long ago reached a more than adequate comfort level.

But it is as a historian that this is truly outrageous. Martin Luther King is arguably the most important human being in the history of post-war America. And rather than donate his papers to an archive at a major university, they are going to sell them. For years, they have tried to sell them to archives, but what archive has this kind of cash? Maybe the Library of Congress steps in and buys them all up. Or maybe the state of Georgia. Possibly Stanford University, where some of his papers already are open to reserachers. That would be great. Then they could be processed, opened for researchers, and we could learn more about King. But what are the chances that some rich guy buys them and keeps them for his personal collection and doesn't let anyone see them? Or even worse, someone buys them and then resells them to a variety of buyers, then some of them eventually disappear, and our understanding of King will forever remain incomplete.

I'm really not one for moralizing. But the King family should be ashamed of themselves for their relentless money-grubbing and for placing profit over providing a service to the future of the nation.