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Martin Luther King’s dream kept alive
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Martin Luther King’s dream kept alive
The words of Martin Luther King Jr are as inspiring today for Shirley Franklin as when she saw him deliver his “I Have A Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington in 1963.
That makes it especially important for Franklin, Atlanta’s first female mayor, that the civil rights leader’s papers be returned to the city where he spent most of his life.
An early draft of King’s famous speech, and more than 600 other personal documents, were on display for the first time in Atlanta yesterday, for King’s 78th birthday.“Atlanta is really embracing its own history by embracing Dr King and his legacy,” Franklin said. “People will see the papers and be able to relate to them and experience the movement through Dr King’s eyes and through his words.”
The exhibition is a glimpse of the collection of more than 10,000 King papers and books that Franklin helped to acquire at auction last summerfor $32m (£17.7m). She pulled off the 11th-hour deal with the help of more than 50 donors to give the papers to Atlanta’s Morehouse College, where King graduated in 1948.
The Atlanta History Centre, where the exhibition runs until May 13, is anticipating widespread interest. Until now, the collection has only been displayed at Sotheby’s auction house in New York, in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, when King delivered his “Dream” speech.
Meanwhile, the woman who had to tell King’s widow that her husband had been assassinated has died, days before the holiday that honours her former boss. Dora McDonald, King’s secretary, died on Saturday, aged 81.King entrusted his family to her care when he was in jail or travelling, and it was McDonald who told Coretta Scott King that her husband had been murdered on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.
McDonald started working for the civil rights leader in 1960 and quickly became his confidante and adviser. In 1989, she described her role as King’s secretary as “a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job”.
“But there was never a time – and I can say this in all truthfulness, from the time I went to work for him until his death - that I regretted what I was doing or where I was at that moment,” she said.
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