Press Releases
Internationally Known Archivist to Head Up the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College
Deputy Director of the Georgia Department of Archives and History to lead team for King’s alma mater
ATLANTA—July 17, 2006— Morehouse College has hired Brenda
S. Banks as Chief Archivist to facilitate organizing more than 10,000
pieces of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection at Morehouse College,
King’s undergraduate alma mater. Morehouse received the collection,
which includes more than 7,000 pieces written in King’s hand, after
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and other civic and corporate leaders
struck an eleventh-hour, multi-million dollar deal last month to keep
the coveted collection from being auctioned to the highest bidder by
Sotheby’s auction house in New York City.
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Morehouse College Benefits from Purchase of the King Papers on Behalf of the City of Atlanta Private Coalition bans together to bring the papers back to King’s birth city.
ATLANTA—June 23, 2006— Late tonight, the City of Atlanta announced that a deal has been struck to bring the coveted Martin Luther King Jr. Collection back to Atlanta. The papers were scheduled to be auctioned at Sotheby’s on June 30.
The city says the transaction, of an undisclosed amount, was made possible through the unprecedented response of Atlanta business and civic leaders and other private parties. Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said that the coalition paid a fair price for the priceless collection.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a 1948 graduate of Morehouse College. He
entered Morehouse as an early admission student at the age of 15. Dr.
Walter E. Massey, president of Morehouse College, said that Morehouse
is where the papers should be.
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