Deal entices collectors to sell civil rights documents

Errin Haines

ATLANTA — When Barry Tulloss heard an interview between Martin Luther King Jr. and his father, former radioman Jerry Tucker, he said the hair stood up on his neck.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Tulloss said. “He didn’t see it for anything significant, but I saw it as priceless, a lost part of history.”

The interview sat in a shoebox in a closet for 40 years, until Tulloss began quietly shopping for prospective buyers six years ago. Then he saw Atlanta auction house owner Paul Brown on CNN.

“They’ll be able to do something with it,” Tulloss said of the interview, now one of a few items from the era up for sale this month in Brown’s Atlanta gallery.

Brown gained national attention in April when an anonymous woman attempted to sell a small collection of documents said to belong to King through an auction at Gallery 63. Although the King family ultimately halted the sale, the episode suddenly thrust Brown into the civil rights business.

Suddenly, people came forward with items from their attics, closets and basements, hoping each relic might fetch a small fortune. Eager buyers started contacting him, too, with plans to invest in civil rights-era collectibles.

And Brown knew he was onto something.

“I’ve stumbled upon a market I really didn’t realize existed,” said Brown, an antiques dealer who specializes in estate sales. “When you can get your hands on a piece of history, that touches you. This stuff is out there and people want it.”

After the Martin Luther King Jr. collection was purchased for $32 million last year from auction house Sotheby’s, those who had been saving similar items from the civil rights era saw the potential for profit. And many items that may have gone directly to a university, library, museum or other institution are now up for grabs on the open market.

That has put more pressure on nonprofit groups chasing those documents. They must now work more aggressively to reach donors before they die or choose to sell them on the open market, said Doug Shipman, executive director of Atlanta’s proposed Center for Civil and Human Rights.

And many of those items will inevitably wind up at Gallery 63 — a north Atlanta warehouse which sells everything from antique paintings and furniture to baseball cards and vintage jewelry.

The gallery became a clearinghouse of sorts for civil rights documents in April, when an anonymous woman claiming to be a childhood friend of King’s approached Brown to sell her collection of about 25 “previously unknown” letters, notes and speeches dating from the early- to mid-1960s and held in a green file folder for 40 years.

As word of the auction spread, thousands visited his company’s Web site and dozens of interested investors called. But three days before the sale, the auction was halted by the King estate, which cited intellectual property rights.

Collectors don’t seem put off by the failed sale. Brown said he’s received about 100 inquiries from sellers and buyers. He is planning another auction starting on Aug. 4, with items including reels of interviews with King and an invitation to King’s 1965 Nobel Peace Prize dinner in Atlanta. He has also brokered four private sales of similar items — two of which were valued at more than $100,000.

King family representative Isaac Newton Farris Jr., King’s nephew, said he will not oppose the sale of the invitation and letter — since both were gifts — but could challenge the sale of the interview. Farris said it’s hard to keep an eye on private sales of items that may not be legitimate or that may conflict with intellectual property rights.

“You can only deal with what you know. When we are alerted to it through the media, concerned citizens or others, we try to take action,” he said. “I don’t know if anybody’s figured out how to have a fail-proof way of monitoring this type of thing.”

Collector Robert White of Bluffton, S.C., founder of The Robb Report magazine, said prices for the documents have “skyrocketed” recently.

“I’m always seemingly an underbidder,” said White, who plans to bid at the August auction on behalf of several prospective buyers.

White has about 15 or 20 pieces from the era that he collected during his years as a student at Ole Miss. When he has had an item for long enough, he usually sells it or trades it for something else he wants.

“You’re either a philanthropist or you’re buying to collect,” White said. “I’m a collector.”

For others, Brown said, the thrill is in the chase, and sales to private owners don’t always mean such documents are lost to the public.

“Somebody can purchase it and then donate it and everybody wins,” Brown said.

Andrew Young, who worked alongside King at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, has urged his friends in the civil rights movement to bypass the private sector and donate their documents.

For his part, he said he gave his papers to the Auburn Avenue Research Library and The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change even before he knew their potential value.

“We’ve got a priceless heritage hidden away in trunks and suitcases and boxes,” Young said. “I would just like to see them all come together. Then we will be able to understand what a great period in American history this has been.”

The national interest in the civil rights movement is not expected to wane any time soon. Museums dedicated to civil rights are in Memphis, Birmingham and Greensboro, N.C., and plans are under way for a King memorial on the National Mall and a new Smithsonian Institute museum dedicated to black history and culture.

If the past several months are any indication, there are plenty of people yet to come forward, Brown said.
“There’s an amazing amount of historical pieces out there,” he said. “The treasure hunt is still on.”

(Associated Press)