Plagiarism Issue Raised in College Work of Dr. King

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized or inadequately credited other authors’ works in his doctoral dissertation and other college writings, according to a Stanford University history professor appointed by King’s widow to edit the papers of the civil rights leader.

As a result of that finding, by Clayborne Carson at Stanford and by other researchers, Boston University is reviewing whether King’s 1955 doctoral degree in theology should be revoked retroactively. But officials said that such a drastic step is unlikely.

Carson and King’s associates in the civil rights movement said Friday that the discovery of plagiarism by King in his student days, no matter how disturbing to strict scholars, should not detract from later achievements of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

“I think what it shows is that there was an earlier stage in King’s life when there were other goals in his mind. He wanted to succeed as a student of theology and he wasn’t practicing to be the Martin Luther King who has become a kind of national icon,” Carson said in a telephone interview. “He was just a flesh-and-blood human being with flaws and limitations.”

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Atlanta-based organization King once led, said: “We’re impressed by Martin Luther King’s footprints and are willing to forgive any youthful errors in his footnotes.”

Carson, an expert in the history of black Americans’ struggle against bias, said the findings of plagiarism in the dissertation and other student writings by King were emotionally “draining” for him and other researchers. “There is very little elation about this kind of discovery. But I wouldn’t be a historian if I didn’t think it’s better to know than not to,” he said.

The interim president of Boston University, Jon Westling, said the allegations of plagiarism “merit close scrutiny” and he appointed a committee of scholars to look into the matter.

“Thirty-five years ago, as now, the university’s standards for the proper use and attribution of scholarly sources were strict, explicit and explicitly made known to all graduate students,” Westling said. But, he added, to investigate allegations against a dead man unable to defend “any misleading appearances” will be difficult. King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis.

The findings have delayed an ambitious plan to edit and publish all of King’s papers in 14 volumes. The first two volumes, covering King’s life until just before the start of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955, were to be published this year. But now all the papers are being scrutinized for possible borrowing and are not expected to be published until 1992, complete with annotations showing similarities to others’ works.

The King papers project is sponsored by the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and is conducted in association with Stanford, Emory University and the University of California Press.

Staff members of the King papers project first became aware in 1988 of insufficiently credited similarities between some of King’s academic papers and other writers’ texts. How to address the issue reportedly caused much debate at the King Center last year. A spokesman at the King Center declined comment Friday and said King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, who appointed Carson as top editor, wanted the Stanford professor to handle any press inquiries about the matter. Carson said Friday that he had planned to discuss the findings in a history journal article next year but decided to talk publicly after the Wall Street Journal published an article Friday about the controversy.

Ralph Luker, the project’s associate editor, said Friday that he would not attach the word plagiarism to King’s writings but would let others reach their own conclusions. “Plagiarism is a charge and I am not making such a charge,” he said. Yet Luker, who works out of Emory University in Atlanta, said that he “had lost sleep” over the findings and that several graduate students quit the project because “the research was to some extent spiritually enervating.”

King himself donated many of his writings to Boston University six years before his assassination, but Mrs. King is suing to retrieve those documents. According to Carson, that donation shows that King probably felt no guilt about his scholarly work and was not trying to hide any plagiarism.

King’s dissertation, entitled “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” presented some of Tillich’s ideas in passages nearly identical to Tillich’s but did not credit him.

But that is not the worst of academic sins, because those sections were clearly intended to represent the views of Tillich, an influential Protestant theologian who died in 1965. Worse, in the view of most universities’ standards, was King’s appropriation of works by other writers about Tillich, including a 1952 doctoral dissertation by another Boston University student. In his own thesis, King cited that dissertation by Jack Boozer in the general bibliography but did not credit Boozer for particular passages.

“What we can say is by the strict definition of plagiarism, which is the appropriation of words or phrases, there are instances of plagiarism in King’s papers,” Carson said. “But in most of the cases, the sources were . . . in the bibliography or on another page.”

The revelation about King’s student writings may be viewed by some as another dent in his image. For example, last year, King’s former close associate, the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, published a book which included details about King’s extramarital sex life.

Abernathy, who died in April, said he did not expect his account to diminish King’s stature.

On Friday, Lowery, who had disputed parts of Abernathy’s book, urged the public not to think any less of King as a result of the plagiarism issue. “Sometimes those who are in a high level of scholarship become so involved with technical secondary issues that they overlook the substantial issues,” Lowery said in a phone interview.

Carson’s project has not yet researched King’s later and more famous writings and speeches. But other scholars have noted similarities in those to works by other ministers and social activists.

Juan Williams, author of “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years,” the 1987 book tied to the PBS television series of the same name, said there is “no doubt” that King or the aides who helped write his speeches sometimes borrowed from others’ words. To say otherwise, he said Friday, would be “intellectual dishonesty.” But Williams, now a Washington Post reporter, emphasized that focusing on this aspect of King’s work was petty, and he feared it will be used by “people who haven’t gotten over the fact that King was such a great man and that we are a changed society in large part because of him.”

COMPARING THE TEXTS

Here is a passage from King’s 1955 doctoral dissertation and a similar passage from a 1952 dissertation by Jack Boozer, another Boston University student. They both deal with views of theologian Paul Tillich. In his bibliography, King cited Boozer’s dissertation, but did not credit this particular passage to Boozer. KING

Tillich insists that a symbol is more than a merely technical sign. The basic characteristic of the symbol is its innate power. A symbol possesses a necessary characteristic. It cannot be exchanged. A sign, on the contrary, is impotent and can be exchanged at will. BOOZER

Tillich distinguishes between a sign and a symbol. A characteristic of the symbol is its innate power. A symbol possesses a necessary character. It cannot be exchanged. On the other hand a sign is impotent in itself and can be exchanged at will . . .