Outline of King Speech to Be Sold Despite Heirs’ Suit

A rare outline for a speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. will be auctioned tonight in Beverly Hills, despite a legal challenge by heirs of the slain civil rights leader who claim the six-page document was stolen.

An official with Superior Galleries said Friday that bids will be accepted for the outline of an historic speech King delivered before a Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat 26 years ago.

The document is expected to sell for at least $25,000, but general manager Brian Rackohn said the auction house will not finalize any sale until the ownership of the document is established.

“If it turns out the piece was stolen, obviously there would be no sale,” he said.

Attorneys representing the late civil rights leader’s estate filed a lawsuit late Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court contending that the King document was stolen and asking Superior Galleries to return the item. In addition, the family, including King’s widow Coretta Scott King, is seeking $5 million in punitive damages from the auction house.

“The estate contends the family owns this document; that it was wrongfully taken and should be returned to the family,” said Michele Clark Jenkins, an attorney representing the King estate.

Rackohn said the auction house had not been served with the lawsuit. However, he told The Times that the auction house hopes to resolve the issue.

“We’re trying to do whatever is in the best interest of all the parties. We are cooperating with them to try and determine the facts,” he said.

The document--written on pages torn from a reporter’s steno pad--served as an outline for a speech that King delivered on Nov. 6, 1966 at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference staff retreat in South Carolina.

In the speech, titled “The Roots of Racism are Very Deep in America,” King summarized the civil rights accomplishments of the preceding 12 years and spelled out his views on nonviolence, black power and a white backlash.

The notes also were later used as a prelude to one of King’s books, “Where Do We Go From Here.”

Rackohn said his auction house received the handwritten outline on consignment from another dealer, who had bought it from another firm. That original firm had obtained the document from a woman who said in a sworn affidavit that she fished the document out of the trash 24 years ago, Rackohn said.

“We were given excerpts from the affidavit and told how close the person was to the (King) family,” Rackohn said. “It certainly seemed legitimate enough to place the piece in auction.”

Experts said the rarity and importance of the document are underscored by the fact that nearly all of King’s speeches and sermons were delivered extemporaneously.

Jenkins said the manuscript should rightfully be on display at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, where more than 120,000 original King documents are on display.

The family learned of the auction of the speech notes from an unidentified scholar who received a flyer advertising the auction, she said.

“It was a scholar who really hated to see this happen. For this kind of document to be sold on the open market is not the most desirable thing,” she said.

Before filing the lawsuit, lawyers for the King estate had attempted to file a temporary restraining order blocking the sale, but they ran out of time, Jenkins said.

By proceeding with the auction, Rackohn said, Superior Galleries will meet its contractual obligations to the dealer who had consigned the document to the auction house. But the gallery “will not deliver it to anyone” until the title dispute is cleared up, he said.