A Tale of Two Auctions: One Completed, One Cancelled

The museum's President and CEO, Douglass McDonald, was quoted as saying,

"Cincinnati Museum Center is extremely pleased with the results of the sales these past two days."

Well they should be. This was a spectacularly successful sale, one that bodes well for the museum's other projects, and for other collectors with books coming up for sale in the near future. The market continues to look strong.

Meanwhile, down the street at Sotheby's, an even more important auction was scheduled to take place on June 30th, but this one never happened. In a surprising turn of events, the entire collection was sold together to one buyer a week before the floor was supposed to be open for bids. There were evidently some seriously disappointed potential bidders, though most people were happy to see this auction end the way it did.

This auction consisted of a huge collection of papers of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An astonishing 10,000-plus manuscripts and books, including over 7,000 in Dr, King's hand, were scheduled to be sold to a single bidder on June 30. Among the items in this collection are an early draft of his famous "I have a dream" speech, his Nobel Prize speech, and papers ranging from Dr. King's 1946 college examination on the Bible to those he was working on just prior to his assassination in 1968. The college test was written in one of those infamous 8-page "blue books" that generations of college students filled with fear and trepidation at examination time. Correspondence from major political figures of the day is contained in the collection, including figures such as John and Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller. Drafts of virtually all of his major speeches are said to be among the papers. Other items are of a more personal nature, including a rejection letter for his son's application to a private school, perhaps a reflection of the prejudice of the day, and cancelled checks and credit card receipts. A box containing nearly 100 of King's sermons, primarily from the 1950s, is included, as is a draft of the "Drum Major Instinct," one of his last speeches in which Dr. King alludes to his growing opposition to the Vietnam War. There are notes he wrote in 1963 in preparation for an article he penned for New York's Amsterdam News concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. Approximately 1,000 books from King's personal library, many with author inscriptions, others with King's personal notes, are contained in the collection, including 50 by or about Mahatma Gandhi, King's inspiration in nonviolence. The King family had required that all of the pieces be sold as one to assure the collection remained together.