Jul 5, 2006

The Other King papers

by Cliopatria

The saga of the city of Atlanta and the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers continues to spark discussion and analysis, especially in these pages. All sorts of questions have arisen as to the nature of the papers stored in the late Coretta Scott King’s basement, their disposition, and the ownership of the various rights attached thereto. While this debate is certainly understandable—after all, Dr. King’s place and symbolic weight on American society is all but unmatched. Yet, for all the concentration on maintaining intact archives, nobody seems to have asked what will happen to Coretta Scott King’s own papers.

This curious void indicates that, despite the national attention lavished on her at the time of her funeral, Coretta Scott King remains obscured by the shadow of her late husband, as well as her own wish for privacy. Throughout her long widowhood, Mrs. King carefully chose her public interventions, even as she concentrated on raising her four children. Yet there is ample testimony that she played an important role in civil rights activism, as well as in other pursuits (supporting the creation of children’s books, for one, through the American Library Association award bearing her name). Any surviving correspondence or collections would shed light on her work. Furthermore, Mrs. King maintained contacts with people throughout the world. I remember seeing her on television in the early 1980s in the role of journalist, conducting an interview with Jehan Sadat, the widow of Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat. The two spoke about their respective husbands, a bout world peace, and about women’s equality. Presumably, there were other, similarly fruitful recorded encounters. It is to be hoped that Atlanta's leaders, who devoted such effort to securing the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers, are similarly vigilant not to let slip away the record of such an important life as that of Coretta Scott King.

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Ralph E. Luker - 7/5/2006

I certainly don't disagree with Greg's expressed desire that the CSK papers be in an archive. On the other hand, if you know that a) her children allow the collection of her papers in the King Center archive to be rained on; and b) whenever anyone approaches them with the idea in mind that the papers ought to be preserved and well-archived, they start to calculate how deeply they can get their hands into your pocketbook, it's not unreasonable to say: wtf!

Oscar Chamberlain - 7/5/2006

Ralph

How does any of this diminish the importance of her papers, which was the primary point being made here? Even if Greg overstates her accomplishments, she is, at mimimum, a witness with an extraordinary vantage point to events both during and after her husband's life.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/5/2006

No. My comment about CSK syphoning money away from SCLC was right on target. After April 1968, the male leadership at SCLC wanted to use CSK as a figurehead/fundraiser for their work. They certainly expected that she would have no significant voice in decision-making. With Daddy King's approval, she took the magic of the family name away from SCLC and used it to raise funds to build the King Center. For two decades, from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, it was clearly a female-dominated institution, with CSK as CEO and ML's sister, Christine King Farris, as Treasurer. The widow of A. D. King, ML's brother, ran the cash register in the gift shop.
It is true that she was generally supportive of gay liberation in her later years. Her ghost writer, Steve Klein, had an office right next to mine at the King Center and he regularly produced text for her speeches, press releases, and newspaper columns, much of which were supportive. Her children, on the other hand, either won't touch the issue with a six foot pole or have been outright hostile to gay liberation.

Greg James Robinson - 7/5/2006

I must wonder, Ralph, whether it is jaundice or bile that is issuing forth here. Certainly your comment that her contribution to feminism was in "siphoning off" money from SCLC is out of place and gratuitous. The King Center has certainly had its shortcomings, but it was not created as revenge on the men who pushed her aside before 1968. I think that Coretta Scott King did not play a large role in the movement during her husband's lifetime, although she raised money through the benefit concerts she sang. However, after he died, she did not remove herself from the movement (unlike, say, Rosa Parks). She showed, in particular, enormous courage in her support for the rights of Gays and Lesbians, rights that the SCLC and the civil rights movement in general have considered secondary at best

Ralph E. Luker - 7/5/2006

I'm afraid that proximity to CSK jaundices my view a bit, but here are a couple of observations:
1) a huge trove of CSK's papers sits in the archives of the MLK Center here in Atlanta, where the roof leaks on the just and the unjust alike. It leaks because the Estate controls it, doesn't do maintenance, and Dexter, its ceo, draws his six figure salary and prefers living the life in Malibu rather than being on the job.
2) decisions were made about the collection of documents in the Kings' home on Sunset. His letters to her prior to their marriage, for instance, were declared a part of the CSK Papers and withheld from the auction. So, apart from what's at the King Center, the children own a collection of her papers. No one outside the family and its lawyers knows where that collection is.
3) Given that the children thought his papers in their control were worth $32 million, I'm not sure that anyone cares to approach them with enough money to pry loose any collection they have of her stuff.
4) CSK did play a role of some limited significance, I think. It is likely to be exaggerated by eulogists, but she really played no significant role in the movement prior to her husband's death.
5) Thereafter, her creation of the King Center by syphoning funds that might otherwise have gone to the male-dominated SCLC is a modest chapter in 2nd wave feminism that's never been written.
6) But, really, let's be honest: a) CSK was a perfectly dreadful public speaker. b) she had _none_ of her husband's charisma. c) had she not been married to him, she'd have had no significant public recognition and rightfully so. d) she had no significant public constituency, though her hair launched a thousand discussions in Afro-beauty shops. e) for most of your lifetime, she played the role of the aggrieved widow to the hilt because, unlike Jackie Kennedy, she had no other second act. f) she taught her children to think of their father's legacy -- not as a public treasure -- but as a private one, to be shared for cash.