Unknown King papers to be auctioned

December 9, 2008

NEW YORK - An original handwritten outline for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s first speech condemning the Vietnam War, a document owned by his friend Harry Belafonte, is going on the auction block this week.

Sotheby's will offer the document for sale Thursday along with two others: the scribbled notes for a speech King planned to deliver in Memphis three days after he was assassinated, and a letter of condolence from President Lyndon B. Johnson to King's widow.

The Vietnam speech is valued between $500,000 and $800,000.

Belafonte, a singer and actor, was an early supporter of King's and his host on King's visits to New York dating from the mid-1950s. In a telephone interview, Belafonte said he was putting his documents up for sale because "I am at the end of my life - I will be 82 shortly - and there are a lot of causes I believe in for which resources are not available, and there is a need to redistribute those resources."

Elizabeth Muller, a Sotheby's specialist on manuscripts who in 2006 discovered a printed version of King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," said the Belafonte papers were previously unknown to King archivists.

The speech, titled "The Casualties of the War in Vietnam," cited a loss of moral principle and resources diverted from the fight for civil rights.

ASSOCIATED PRESS