Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 19

LEE PUBLICATIONS, INC. NATION SATURDAY, AUGUST 30, 2003 B7 tt; Thousands of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. papers go on display Ji I. ASSIXJIATED PBESS PI K)TO Actor and veteran Civil Rights leader Ossle Davis, center, speaks at the Kennedy Center on Thursday In Washington, D.C., In honor of the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King 'I Have A Dream' speech and March on Washington.

Members of the Metropolitan Music Ministry of Metropolitan Baptist Church is in background. ATLANTA (AP) Arms linked, a crowd of 300 marched Thursday through downtown Atlanta and the neighborhoods where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up to mark the 40th anniversary of the slain civil rights leader's "I Have a Dream" speech. Political and community leaders, including presidential candidate Al Sharpton, led the march through the city's historic Sweet Auburn district to a rally that eventually drew about 400 people at the MLK National Historic Site. Rep.

John Lewis, who helped organize the original March on Washington in 1963 where King delivered his oration, reflected on the progress made since then. "In 1963, 1 was on the outside protesting, looking in," Lewis said. "But because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, 1 am now on the inside making laws. "I wish Medgar Evers; President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Robert Kennedy and many others were here today to see how far we've come." Coretta Scott King focused on the legacy of her late husband's words. "Martin's call to interracial brotherhood and sisterhood has enduring resonance because it speaks so eloquently to the longing for unity that resides in the hearts of all people of good will," she said.

"He painted a dazzling word picture of a multicultural democracy of the America that could be, the America that should be." In Washington, Martin Luther King in addressed the National Press Club and updated his late father's 40-year-old dream for racial equality with a call for universal health care, economic parity for minorities and the elimination of the "state-sponsored terrorism" of capital punishment. He also lashed out at opponents of affirmative action for trying to "twist" the meaning of the words of his father, who once said he hoped someday iVj IT i (MR- I I Magnolia tea room, the Montgomery bus boycott, the firebombing of a Birmingham church, the Selma march, the murder of civil rights workers in Mississippi. In all of King's writings, "you can see how impassioned he was, impassioned by the cause," said Elizabeth Muller, a Sotheby's vice president who led a six-year inventory of the papers. The handwritten draft of the 1964 Nobel Prize lecture, with its notations and inked-out revised passages, "is as if the hand just came off the paper; it is as close to the author as you can get," Muller said. "These words actually speak to us." In one telegram from 1962, King urges Kennedy to nominate Thurgood Marshall and another black judge to the U.S.

Supreme Court. In another, boxer Muhammad All expresses his hope that King in jail is "comfortable" and "not suffering any physical pain." Yet there is little of the private King in the collection. Coretta Scott King kept a ribbon-tied packet of letters that he had written to her during courtship, which Muller rediscovered in a box. And seven pages jotted down on cheap jailhouse stationery in Albany, in 1962, is the only item that could be called a diary, she said. The archive includes about 1,000 volumes from King's personal library -almost all concerned with religion, social issues and history, with no room for novels or popular fiction.

The ownership and potential sale of King's archives has generated controversy over the past decade. Boston University owns a separate, pre-1962 collection of papers that King's estate tried and failed to reacquire in 1993. The Sotheby's acquisition covers his adult life from 1949 to his death. The Library of Congress was prepared to pay $20 million in 2000 for King documents, including many of those now at Sotheby's. But Congress withheld any appropriations after two experts a King biographer and an appraiser for the library disagreed as to its value to researchers.

NEW YORK (AP) Not only did he break down barriers of race, lead by example and inspire millions to believe in his dream, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. apparently also never threw away any scrap of paper Instead, he saved every book, notebook, sermon, letter, telegram, invitation, index card and church financial statement, filling the blank spaces and margins with his own thoughts -serious, committed, single-minded and utterly devoid of frivolity. These impressions are readily drawn from a collection of King's papers that goes on public display Tuesday at Sotheby's auction house in Manhattan ahead of a private sale next month. The 7,000 items include early college exam books, a draft of King's Nobel Prize lecture, the hand-corrected proof of a Playboy magazine interview, scribbled notes on the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, and papers found in King's briefcase after he was gunned down at a Memphis, motel nearly five years later.

Ifthereisacenterpiece.it would be the draft of King's most famous public address, the "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963. But that key passage is not in the text, written the night before at Washington's Willard Hotel; it was added extemporaneously as King spoke to a huge throng at the Lincoln Memorial. Appraised by Sotheby's at $30 million, the collection will be offered for private sale after the showing ends Sept. 8.

Sotheby's vice president David Redden said "a number" of institutions, which he declined to identify, have expressed interest. He said the papers would be kept intact rather than sold off to individual buyers. "It must be kept together to be useful to scholars," he said. Some of the material was previously housed at The King Center in Atlanta and is familiar to scholars. Other items have been in boxes at the home of his widow, Coretta Scott King.

The archive is replete with events and crises of the civil rights revolution led by King sit-ins at the children "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." King said his father often advocated the "preferential hiring of the disadvantaged. To abandon affirmative action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination." King left Washington and boarded a plane to Ohio, where he urged a crowd of several hundred Thursday night to continue their economic boycott of Cincinnati. He said the boycott is in the tradition of his father's civil rights work. Black activists began the boycott in 2001 after a white policeman fatally shot an unarmed black man running from officers trying to arrest him. The shooting led to three nights of riots.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking at a rally in New Haven, for striking Yale University workers, reminded the crowd that King's speech also was about broken promises the government made after slavery, jobs for Americans and civil in fg Coretta Scott King, widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King speaks during a rally celebrating the 40th anniversary of King's 'I Have a Dream' speech on Thursday in Atlanta. rights legislation. said. "Because the dream has "If you just focus on the in it no enforcement powers, dream the dream can The dream has no budget for become an illusion," Jackson priorities." Bush: Still work to do to realize King's dream CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) President Bush, marking Thursday's 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, urged the nation to "continue the march to equality and opportunity for all." "Through his leadership, courage and determination, Dr.

Martin Luther King brought tremendous good to our country," Bush said in a statement "His vision and words caused Americans to examine their hearts and live up to the ideals of our Constitution." In the historic speech, delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Aug. 28, 1963, King spoke about his dream that society would evolve into a colorblind one that judges people by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. "He viewed the summer of 1963 as a time for America to renew its commit ment to equality," Bush said in the statement, in which he and first lady Laura Bush sent their best wishes to those gathered in cities across the country to celebrate the anniversary. "Today, we have come a long way, but there is still work to do to realize Dr. King's dream," the president continued.

"As we honor this important anniversary, I encourage all Americans to continue the march to equality and opportunity for all." FBI documents reinforce Justice White's straight-arrow image Louise Cluck, Pulitzer winner, named next U.S. poet laureate 'l- AJ The agents added, "There is no question whatever in his mind concerning Mr. White's character, moral standards, general reputation, associates or loyalty." No misconduct surfaced in checks at various agencies except for a Dec. 21, 1959, $10 fine for speeding in Colorado. Four days into the Kennedy administration, Hoover sent aide Cartha DeLoach for a get-acquainted meeting.

White asked if there was an FBI gym and "if he would be thrown out if he went down on occasions to use this gym," DeLoach wrote Hoover. Hoover scribbled "extend every courtesy" on the memo and initialed it. The bureau gave White and his boss, Robert Kennedy, lockers in the gym, then in the Justice Department basement. A year later, White asked the bureau if he, like Kennedy, could have a key to use the gym after hours. The Feb.

13, 1962, memo about White's request has Hoover's handwritten "OK" and a notation that the key was delivered the next day. White asked the bureau to give private tours of its facilities to aides, relatives or visitors eight times between 1961 and 1974. In that era, news organizations covering the FBI asked for private tours for executives and relatives much more frequently. White himself didn't take a tour until 1966, four years after he left Justice for the court In March 1961, White's assistant, Joseph Dolan, told the FBI's Courtney Evans that the deputy attorney general was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer. Dolan wondered if agents with White's rare AB negative type would donate blood if needed, Evans wrote.

The bureau immediately checked its agents' blood types. Four days later, Dolan advised that blood wouldn't be needed but White was "most grateful for this prompt and generous" response. While investigating the 1982 attack on White, the FBI found in its files letters that White's attacker, Estes, wrote in 1969 to Justice William O. Douglas, in 1976 to Solicitor General Robert Bork and in 1981 to a group of Supreme Court justices. The threats had been ruled too vague to prosecute and Estes, told the FBI in 1976 he didn't intend to threaten.

WASHINGTON (AP) Over more than 30 years, the worst thing the FBI came up with about Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White was that he got a $10 speeding ticket the year before he joined the Kennedy administration, bureau documents show. White's relatives and admirers are being spared the indignity that befalls families and friends of some public figures whose death is followed by release of their FBI files replete with sexual escapades, marital turmoil, drinking or drug problems. White comes across in the 338 pages of his FBI file as the same athletic straight-arrow he appeared to be during more than three decades as deputy attorney general and high court justice. The file is slim for a public figure and top Justice Department official less than half the size of Elvis Presley's, about a quarter the size of Robert F.

Kennedy's. The Associated Press obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The file describes a dozen or so actually surprisingly few of the small courtesies and favors that the FBI used under former Director J. Edgar Hoover to ingratiate itself with scores of high public officials and prominent private sector figures: private tours of the FBI building for aides and relatives, condolence and congratulatory notes from Hoover, a key to the FBI gym and even an offer to donate blood if he needed it during treatment of a bleeding ulcer. Another section discloses details about the anti-pornography and antibusing protester who slugged White during a 1982 Salt Lake City speech.

The FBI was aware the attacker, Newton Estes, had written three angry and vaguely threatening letters to other justices and public officials over the previous 13 years, i Half the FBI documents are from the December 1960 background investigation done for President-elect John F. Kennedy before he nominated the then-43-year-old Denver lawyer and former college and professional football star to be deputy attorney generaL White is described in glowing terms in each interview. In the FBI's Dec. 15, 1960 summary, agents paraphrased one professional colleague, whose name was blacked out, as calling White "an able, ethical lawyer who has a keen legal mind." WASHINGTON (AP) Louise Gluck, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a dozen other poetry awards, will be the next U.S. poet laureate.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced the appointment Thursday. Gluck (pronounced glick) has been an English professor at Williams College for 20 years. She has published nine volumes of poetry and in 1993 won a Pulitzer for "The Wild Iris." Her latest work, "October," is due this fall. Gluck, who shuns publicity, said her first undertaking in her new position will be "to get over being surprised." Then she will concentrate on promoting young poets and poetry contests, she said.

"Her prize-winning poetry and her great interest in young poets will enliven the poet laureate's office," Billington said. Born in New York, Gluck studied at Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College, and earned a law degree from Williams College. She lives alone in Cambridge, and commutes 150 miles when teaching at Williams. Gluck said she doesn't believe the poet laureate must create new programs. The incumbent, Billy Collins, started a Web site to furnish a poem a day for high school students.

Gluck said a project to record Americans' favorite poems, begun by her friend and former poet laureate Robert Pinsky, could be taken further. Gluck's poetry often deals ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO Louise Glck, shown In this undated 2003 photo, will be the next U.S. poet laureate, the first woman to get the honor In a decade. Protected from what we loved And our intense need was absorbed by the night And returned as sustenance." The one-year poet laureate's job includes an office at the Library of Congress, a $35,000 salary and an obligation to deliver and organize readings. Previous poets laureate including Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks and Rita Dove.

Glick, who is divorced and has a grown son, will take up her duties in the fall, beginning with a reading from her work on Oct 21. with women's problems and can be dark and foreboding. Loss and isolation are common themes. "Writing is not decanting of personality," she wrote in 1994 at the start of a volume of essays called "Proofs and Theories." "The truth, on the page, need not have been lived. It is, instead, all that can be envisioned." Asked for a sample of her work, she suggested five lines from "The Seven Ages," published in 2001: "Immunity to time, to change.

Sensation Of perfect safety, the sense of being.