Luther King Archive Retained By Alma Mater

The archive of Martin Luther King will stay in his home city of Atlanta in the possession of his alma mater, Morehouse College, thanks to a last minute, $32m (£17.5m) deal.

The archive, which includes early drafts of his famous "I have a dream" speech and his Nobel prize address, was put up for sale by his family following the death of his widow, Coretta Scott King.

Sothebys in New York was due to sell the archive of 7,000 items on Friday and several universities, as well as the Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress, were said to be vying to house what the auctioneers described as the "the most important archive of the 20th century in private hands".

But at the last minute a group of businesses and philanthropists raised the money to buy the papers from the King children to enable the archive to remain in Atlanta.

Morehouse College, historically an institution for black men, will assume ownership and has pledged that scholars will have full access. "Public access is at the core of why the coalition started this effort to keep the papers here," said Phillip Howard, vice-president for institutional advancement at the college, according to the website Inside Higher Ed

"We are going to create a scholarly environment to provide scholars with access to study Dr King," he added.

Morehouse is assembling a team of library and archive experts to develop a plan for making the documents available. Other institutions in the city - Emory University and the University of Georgia - may play a role, but Mr Howard said he expected an archives building eventually to be built on the Morehouse campus.

There is intense and growing academic interest in the King papers, which has been frustrated until now by the guarded attitude of his family to allowing scholars access.

The mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, is hoping to use the King archive as the centrepiece of a civil rights museum in the city.

In a statement yesterday, Walter Massey, president of Morehouse College, where Martin Luther King Jr was a 1948 graduate, said: "Given the important role Morehouse played in Dr King's intellectual, spiritual and moral development, we believe there simply is no better place for these papers to reside. We are grateful to the King family for their confidence in Morehouse to serve as the repository for this legacy, which reflects the best thinking of our nation's most outstanding leader, and of Morehouse College's most outstanding alumnus."

Other famous Morehouse alumni include the film-maker Spike Lee and the actor Samuel L Jackson.