Historian Sides With School in Fight Over Martin Luther King’s Papers

Forcing Boston University to give Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s documents to his family would place too much power in the hands of the slain civil rights leader’s widow, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian said Friday.

Taylor Branch, the first witness to testify for the university, made his remarks outside the courtroom before taking the stand.

Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, is suing the university, seeking return of the documents King left with the school in 1964 and 1965.

The school claims that it owns the papers under the terms of a 1964 agreement with King, while his widow claims they are the property of King’s estate.

Branch, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for “Parting the Waters,” chronicling King’s work from 1954 through 1963, said he testified for the university because of concerns about the King family monopolizing the papers and trying to control the way he is portrayed.

“The thing that worries me is . . . there are many, many signs . . . that the King heirs and Mrs. King want to control how information is used about Dr. King and to license it,” Branch said. “If she has all of it . . . and then she says basically: ‘You can’t quote this without my permission,’ that control is anti-historical, and I also believe it is not in the spirit of Dr. King’s movement.”