STRIDE TOWARD FREEDOM: COLLECTING DR. KING

Did you know it took a 32-year fight before Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday became a national holiday in all 50 states? Four days after King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968,  Representative John Conyers put forth a motion to make King’s birthday a holiday in honor of his efforts to win equality for all via peaceful means.

Eleven years passed before the motion even went up for a vote in the House of Representatives. Despite the support of the highest office in the country — President Jimmy Carter — it fell short by five votes of the required two-thirds majority. The bill finally passed in 1983, but the majority of our states didn’t enact “Martin Luther King Jr. Day” right away. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 2000 that all 50 states bought in.

For a man who embodied courage, exhibited love in a sea of hatred, and campaigned tirelessly for Civil Rights, the holiday reminds us of what he fought for: justice. As Dr. King himself once said in a letter, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In the collecting marketplace, King memorabilia prices have never been at the level of his contemporary John F. Kennedy, but there’s always interest when an item he signed — a letter, magazine cover, book, photograph — comes up for auction.

Pictured: a detail from a Dec. 20, 1960 letter Martin Luther King wrote to entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. thanking him for his support in his Civil Rights work. The two-page letter sold for $10,158 in 2006 but could command upwards of $15,000 today.

DOCUMENTS: In this area, content is king. A great example turned up at Heritage Auctions in 2013: a group of eight 4 x 6-inch index cards on which King penned notes for a speech in late 1959. The group sold for $31,250. The speech was his goodbye after six years as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.; his Civil Rights efforts and other commitments (including his presidency of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) were leaving him with little time by 1959. It led to, as he wrote within the index cards at Heritage, “the frustration of doing so many things that you are doing any [of them] well.”

Another King prize: a stenographer’s notebook containing a draft of a letter he wrote soliciting funding for his Civil Rights initiatives. The notebook sold for $12,500 in April 2014. Two months later, the winning bidder flipped it, getting $18,000.

And a letter Dr. King wrote to thank the doctor who treated him after a stabbing incident went up for auction at Sotheby’s in 2013 and brought $8,125. The catalog describes the document’s unique content:

“On 20 September 1958, Izola Ware Curry, a mentally disturbed African-American woman, stabbed King in a Harlem department store as he autographed copies of Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir of the Montgomery bus protest. At Harlem Hospital, a team of physicians, including Dr. Helen D. Mayer, successfully removed the letter opener used by the attacker, still lodged close to Dr. King’s heart. Dr. King spent most of October recuperating in New York. [In this letter], Dr. King expresses his warmest and most sincere thanks to Dr. Mayer: ‘I will long remember the many times that you came into my room with a warm smile and a radiant countenance expressing genuine concern for my welfare. I am sure that your thoughtful considerate gestures of goodwill went a long, long way to give me the strength to face the ordeals of that trying period.'”

(A DailyMail.com report on Jan. 20, 2015 noted that Izola Curry, 42 at the time of the standing, is still alive. Now 98, she reportedly lives in a  New York nursing home.)

Dr. King’s first appearance on Time magazine was in 1957. [Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions]

MAGAZINES: Collectors who prefer more visual items look for signed magazine covers. One such item: the Feb. 18, 1957 issue of Time, which marked the first of his four appearances on the magazine’s cover. The image, painted by Boris Chaliapin, is an impressive color portrait of King with a background illustration depicting him speaking at a podium. Unsigned, the magazine sells for $100–$200, dpending on condition. If signed, the price skyrockets, of course. An example offered by Heritage in 2013, an autographed Canadian-edition Time, bears the signature “Best Wishes/Martin Luther King.” It brought $6,875. Another example: the Jan. 3, 1964 Time, which anointed King as Man of the Year. An autographed but well-worn copy of that issue sold at Heritage for $3,000 in 2014. A signed copy in pristine condition would easily double that price.

Autographed books by Martin Luther King Jr. can sell for several thousand dollars. [Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions]

BOOKS: Then there’s the subcategory of autographed books written by King. His 1960 tome, Stride Toward Freedom/The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Bros.), can fetch $4,000–$8,000 if bearing an inscription. His 1967 book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (New York: Evanston, and London: Harper & Row, London) commands a similar price range. (Unsigned first editions of those and other King books, including 1964’s Why We Can’t Wait [New York: Harper & Rowe], can be had for $75–$150.)

PHOTOGRAPHS: Vintage photographs of King can provide a historical look at the man’s life and times. If signed, they can sell for a few thousand dollars. Example: Profiles in History (a California auction house) made $8,000 on an autographed 8×10 PR photo issued by Meet the Press in advance of King’s appearance on that NBC program on April 17, 1960. King was only the second African-American guest on the show. Adding to the value is the fact that King inscribed the photo to the founder of Meet the Press: “To Lawrence Spivak, with great respect and admiration, Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Dr. King was only the second African-American to appear on Meet the Press. [Photo courtesy of Profiles in History]

Also, an 10×6.5-inch photo of King snapped while he was addressing a crowd brought $7,000 at Alexander Historical Auctions. King inscribed the center of the photo to a friend named Ray. And an 8×10-inch original print of King walking with supporters sold for $2,870 at Heritage—and that was back in 2006.

Even unsigned vintage photos can be valuable, depending on photographer, the image, age of print, and condition. For example, Walker’s, a Canadian auction house, sold a vintage gelatin print of an iconic Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) portrait of King for $1,425 in January 2015. And Swann Auction Galleries got $1,250 for an unsigned but high-impact 14×11-inch print of King reaching out to supporters from a motorcade in Baltimore in 1964. The photographer was Leonard Freed (1929–2006).

Martin Luther King greets onlookers from a motorcade in Baltimore, 1966. [Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries]

ODDITIES: Collectors also search for nicely preserved uncommon items, both signed and unsigned. Examples we’ve seen sell at auction in recent years:

Near-mint copy of Martin Luther King comic book, a 10-cent item in 1957. [Photo courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries]

• An autographed 1958 comic book called Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story sold for $2,250, despite being a little ragged, at Heritage in 2014.

• Swann Auction Galleries sold two unsigned but near-mint copies of the same comic book for $700 in 2014. One of the editions was in English, the other Spanish (Martin Luther King y La Historia de Montgomery).

• An unsigned Southern Christian Leadership Conference broadside measuring 14 x 22.25 inches sold for $2,000 at Heritage in 2014.

• An autographed booklet—a program of events for a rally on March 13, 1966—sold for $1,350 at Swann.

• Two American Express receipts signed by King each brought $1,600 at Early American Auctions in January 2015. One was for a charge at the Hyatt House in L.A. in 1962 ($87.38), and the other was for a charge at the Palmer House in Chicago in 1966 ($71.30).

• A signed bulletin from White Rock Baptist Church (Philadelphia) on Oct. 22, 1961 sold for $1,554 in 2006 at Heritage.

• And an inscribed $1 bill (“With Best Wishes for Peace…,” on the reverse) sold for $1,400 at Signature House Auctions. Without King’s signature, the bill is worth… $1.

Broadside poster from a 1960s event.