According to the June 26 New York Times, Franklin has secured a privately financed loan of $32 million—$2 million more than the $30 million for which the papers were appraised in the late 1990s—allowing a nonprofit organization of Atlanta major corporations and prominent citizens created to stop the auction and buy the collection from the King family. “I didn’t want to risk losing the papers over a million dollars,” Franklin told the Times. “To Atlanta, they are priceless.”
“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,” Morehouse President Walter E. Massey said June 23 in a prepared statement.
William Potter, librarian at the University of Georgia, and Loretta Parham, director of the Robert W. Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center complex, will assist in processing the 10,000-item collection and arranging for temporary housing until a permanent location at Morehouse is identified.
Posted June 30, 2006.