A draft of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” — one of the most famous writings from the civil rights era — is set to be auctioned in New York this week, with an estimated value of $10,000 to $15,000.
The document is among more than 500 items up for auction at the Printed & Manuscript African Americana sale on Thursday at the Swann Auction Galleries. It is being offered by former Atlanta antiques collector James Allen, best known for his collection of lynching photos gathered from across the South.
Allen said he acquired the draft version three decades ago, after discovering it during an estate sale that included the papers of a former African-American minister in Alabama.
“I thought this just can’t be,” Allen said.
King wrote his famous letter in April 1963 on scraps of paper inside the jail after he and others were arrested during the Birmingham protests. It was later typed into a formal letter by his staff. The version being sold has significant differences from the final version, the auction house says.
The letter was published in newspapers and magazines in 1963 and helped draw national attention to the struggle for racial equality in the South. It has become one of King’s most famous works, appearing in dozens of anthologies and textbooks.
Historian Clayborne Carson, who is directing a project to edit King's papers, said he doesn't yet know the significance of the draft being sold because he has not seen a full version. He estimates there are more than five other drafts in existence.
Carson, director of the The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, said the institute does not have the resources to buy the letter but hopes to review a copy of the draft.
“We’re very interested in it,” Carson said.
He said an annotated version of King's letter will appear in the eighth edition of the "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr." due out in a couple of years.
"It's a document that helps us understand how that particular letter, which had a great impact, how it evolved," he said. "Without the full copy it's hard to judge where it fits."
The African Americana sale is one of the most concentrated sales of collectible items and ephemera documenting black history. The sale includes photos and artwork as well as writings from the slavery period through the civil rights era up to the present.
Some other significant items at this year’s sale include a rare photo of Harriet Tubman , a manuscript by Malcolm X and a collection of papers by the group that helped organize the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott.
Other items of note include a letter signed by Frederick Douglass, an 1850 poster from a vigilance committee in Boston to help fugitive slaves and a copy of the famous Negro Motorist Green-Book travel guide that assisted black travelers in identifying friendly hotels and merchants during the Jim Crow era.
The gallery is touting the civil rights material as its strongest collection in the 22-year history of the sale.
"This sale is the biggest and richest in terms of star quality material," said Wyatt Day, the auction organizer.
For Allen, it’s the second time he’s participated in the auction. At roughly 75 items for sale, he has the largest collection up for auction. The highest valued item he is selling is a sequin cape that belonged to singer James Brown, estimated value of $25,000 to $30,000.
Some of the most interesting items in his collection were gathered over decades as he traveled the back roads and hidden corners of the South as an antiques collector. In addition to the King letter, he is selling a 1970 “I am a Man” placard worn by striking Atlanta sanitation workers, a circa 1895 portrait of Frederick Douglass that once adorned the wall of a black school house in Ben Hill County, Georgia and a collection from the infamous Scottsboro Boys civil rights case in the 1930s.
Allen said he is selling many of the items because he has run into financial trouble in recent years and needs money.
"It's humbling," Allen said of seeing his items up for sale. "This is stuff I'd always thought I'd find a perfect use for. That's hard. It's the hardest part."
Allen’s work as an antiques picker led him to the revelation of the lynching photographs decades ago. It was common during the era of lynchings for postcard images to be taken that showed large, festive crowds gathered to view the public violence.
Allen first came across a photo in the course of collecting antiques, and he became obsessed by the images of racial terror. One-by-one, he pieced the collection together over years. In 2000, he published the photos in a book, "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America."
The collection was exhibited at a small photo gallery in New York and drew international media attention and large crowds who stood in line to catch a glimpse of the brutal images. Eventually, the exhibit travelled the country, including a 2002 Atlanta exhibition at the King National Historic Site that drew 176,000 visitors.
"Little did I know how powerful it was going to be," he said. "None of it was planned. It just came from doing something."
In 2005, the U.S. Senate adopted a resolution that apologized for its historic failure to pass federal anti-lynching legislation. Allen's photo collection was credited by Senate sponsors for helping draw attention to this hidden history.
A decade ago, Allen and his partner, John Littlefield, moved to coastal Georgia in McIntosh County. Around this time, they sold the photo collection to the the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta for close to $1 million.
But the couple have been in a number of legal disputes in McIntosh County that Allen says have drained their savings. Shortly after moving there, he said he was getting his car tags and saw the Ten Commandments hanging in a county office. He fought the local government on the issue.
They have also been in a protracted legal battle over a property line dispute that has cost them hundreds of thousands in legal fees, Allen said. They had to file for bankruptcy and are hoping the auction will raise enough money to pay off the bank.
Allen, 62, said he had never intended to sell many of the items. Returning to New York this week — where the lynching photos were first displayed — to view his items now up for auction has not been easy, he said.
“I did not want to come,” he said. “It is what it is. I just hope I have the energy to go back out. This took years.”
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