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Martin Luther King, Jr

Currency:USD Category:Collectibles / Autographs Start Price:NA Estimated At:20,000.00 - 30,000.00 USD
Martin Luther King, Jr

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Auction Date:2018 Apr 11 @ 18:00 (UTC-5 : EST/CDT)
Location:236 Commercial St., Suite 100, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, United States
ALS - Autograph Letter Signed
ANS - Autograph Note Signed
AQS - Autograph Quotation Signed
AMQS - Autograph Musical Quotation Signed
DS - Document Signed
FDC - First Day Cover
Inscribed - “Personalized”
ISP - Inscribed Signed Photograph
LS - Letter Signed
SP - Signed Photograph
TLS - Typed Letter Signed
Amazing TLS, one page, 8.5 x 11, Southern Christian Leadership Conference letterhead, August 24, 1962. Letter to Mrs. Marian B. Logan, in part: "Albany, Georgia has spent a great deal of our energies and resources but not enough to have us overlook the tremendous job you did in making the Hall of Fame Dinner honoring Jackie Robinson a great success. Some of the monies raised have already been put to work in Albany in a Voter-Registration Drive that is in progress at this very moment. When the books close there on October 1st, you will have shared through your efforts to free the people of Albany from the shackles of segregation and discrimination. Our Annual Convention meets in Birmingham, September 25–28. Please consider this our personal invitation to attend." Beautifully and boldly signed at the conclusion by Martin Luther King, Jr., as president of the SCLC, and countersigned by Wyatt Tee Walker as director. Handsomely corner-mounted, matted, and framed with the original mailing envelope and a photo of King and Robinson to an overall size of 16 x 35. In fine condition. Accompanied by full letters of authenticity from Beckett Authentication Services (conservatively grading the autograph a "9"), JSA, and University Archives. Also includes Logan's original program for the Jackie Robinson SCLC Hall of Fame dinner discussed in this letter, held at the Waldorf-Astoria on July 20, 1962, signed inside in ballpoint by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. Accompanied by a full letter of authenticity from PSA/DNA for the Rockefeller signature.

This remarkable, historically significant letter blends sports with the Civil Rights Movement to create a unique and important piece. In a radio interview with Larry King, Dr. Martin Luther King once said: ‘I am not the founder of the Civil Rights Movement. The founder of the Civil Rights movement is Jackie Robinson.’ Robinson’s courageous breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947 introduced America to a new generation of athletes and kickstarted an era of desegregation: seven years later, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education to end ‘separate but equal’ public schools, and a year after that struck down segregated bus systems following the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, led by Rosa Parks and Dr. King. Despite this slow progress, black Americans continued to struggle under "the shackles of segregation and discrimination" in 1962.

The SCLC Hall of Fame dinner, given in Robinson’s honor and attended by the legendary ballplayer on July 20, 1962, raised funds for the Albany Movement, a drive in Georgia to register voters and further end segregation in public spaces. Robinson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown just three days later. Marian Bruce Logan, who worked as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ‘right arm’ in the New York area, aided in the planning of the dinner. Logan was the only northern board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and later became the New York City Commissioner of Human Rights. A truly spectacular, boldly signed letter by Dr. King—and perhaps the only privately held MLK correspondence mentioning the heroic Jackie Robinson.