Martin Luther King, Jr.’s grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from 1960 until his death Martin Luther acted as co-pastor. King attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of 15; he received the B. A. degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution of Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had graduated. After three years of theological study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded the B.D. in 1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his residence for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.

King led the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and later became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As president of the SCLC, he led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia, and helped organize the nonviolent 1963 protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King helped organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On October 14, 1964, King won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance. In 1965, he helped organize the Selma to Montgomery marches. In his final years, he expanded his focus to include opposition towards poverty, capitalism, and the Vietnam War. King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C., to be called the Poor People's Campaign, when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.

In 1966, after several successes in the south, King and others in the civil rights organizations took the movement to the North, with Chicago as their first destination. King and Ralph Abernathy, both from the middle class, moved into a building at 1550 S. Hamlin Avenue, in the slums of North Lawndale on Chicago's West Side, as an educational experience and to demonstrate their support and empathy for the poor. The SCLC formed a coalition with CCCO, Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, an organization founded by Albert Raby, and the combined organizations' efforts were fostered under the aegis of the Chicago Freedom Movement. During that spring, several white couple/black couple tests of real estate offices uncovered racial steering: discriminatory processing of housing requests by couples who were exact matches in income, background, number of children, and other attributes. Several larger marches were planned and executed in Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs including Bogan, Belmont Cragin, Jefferson Park, Evergreen Park (a suburb southwest of Chicago), Gage Park, Marquette Park, and others.

Offered is a collection of hundreds of original items chronicling King’s involvement in the Chicago Freedom Movement, including documents, journals and financial materials. Among these items are financial records and cancelled checks from the South Side Bank & Trust Co. of Chicago account of the Chicago Committee – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom from 1963 on, including a blank book of deposit slips. Also included in this collection are handwritten financial ledgers on loose-leaf pages and a 11 x 15-inch black leatherette bound ledger book and a 6½ x 13½-inch black cardboard “Deluxe Bank Checks” binder of blank checks and receipts from the South Side Bank & Trust Co. labelled “Chicago Committee March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom “Transportation Fund”” on the front cover. A folder of bank statements for the transportation fund, dated “9/7/63” in blue pen, includes a sheet of letterhead for the Chicago Committee. There is a folder labelled “Unpaid Bills” in red pen including a bill from the University of Chicago Bookstores, the Chicago Urban League, and two bills from The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. Passenger Traffic Department. The collection also includes a folder of blank Chicago Committee letterhead, and a folder of “Bills Paid” including letters, envelopes, invoices and receipts from vendors including Allied Art & Sign Materials Store, George Murphy Signs, Dohrn Transportation Company, Progress Printing and Gaynor Realty, among others. This file also includes samples of letterhead and hand bills from the Chicago Committee. A folder marked “Tickets to be Refunded” includes letters, white cuts, envelopes and other notes including a typewritten letter, dated August 30, 1962 to the Chicago Committee from the International Union, United Automobile Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America Local 719 – U.A.W. on letterhead. A folder labelled “Letters covering some Donations received C. C. Wailes Jr. 8/31/63” in blue pen includes postcards, bank deposit slips and receipts, handwritten letters and typed letters, including an August 12, 1963 letter from the Chicago Federation Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a handwritten letter dated August 12, 1963 from the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, and other cover letters received with cash and check donations to the Chicago Committee. Notable in this folder is a two-sided 8½ x 11-inch flier headlined “the time is NOW for ALL Americans to join the…MARCH ON WASHINGTON for Jobs and Freedom Wednesday, August 28th, 1963” issued by the Chicago Committee. Handwritten on the reverse is the names and addresses for Susan Honeycutt and her mother Mrs. Helen Honeycutt arranging for transportation on the Chicago Freedom Train at the “Special Rate: $27.00 per passenger round trip” from Chicago to Washington, D.C. hand-inscribed with the date “8/17/63” in blue pen. Included in the collection is a 7½ x 12-inch hardcover “Journal” printed in black on green cloth with red leatherette edges on the upper and lower corners of the front cover. The cover is inscribed in blue pen “Distribution of Buttons” and in red pen “Income & Distribution of Cans P76-152”. The interior pages are handwritten in blue and black pen and gray graphite pencil and include white cuts, slips and envelopes in its pages.

Also, this collection includes a manila folder inscribed “Hold for Delores Chatman C. Wailes 8/22/63” in blue pen with multiple pages of receipts and blank receipts, most written in black pen. The collection also includes a 9 x 11-inch white paper folder printed in red, blue and black, with the legend across the top of the front cover “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom August 28, 1963” over the legend “We Shall Overcome” and a photo of three individuals in silhouette. The interior includes a seven-page insert with a title page featuring the facsimile signatures of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders on the top page, a table of contents, and five graphic illustrations in red, blue and black printing. The title page indicates that “This collection of graphic collages has been created specifically as a memento for those who participated in the historic March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs on August 28, 1963. It depicts man’s inhumanity, his cruelty to his fellow human being. This memento, we believe, will inspire us to assert man’s decency and goodness through an understanding of anguish…”

The collection also includes two 3½ x 5½-inch black leatherette covered account ledger books from the South Side Bank & Trust Co. with inscriptions in blue pen, as well as multiple envelopes with receipts, deposit slips, and other documents. There is a 3½ x 8½-inch white paper certificate printed in blue and black with the caption “Freedom Certificate On the 17th day of May, 1957, the Third Anniversary of the United States Supreme Court Decision declaring racial segregation to be unconstitutional, (blank) did take part in and contribute to the success of the PRAYER PILGRAMMAGE FOR FREEDOM held at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.”…with facsimile signatures of A. Philip Randolph, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Roy Wilkins, inscribed in blue pen with the name “Leonard I Carlson”. The entire collection is an interesting look at a seminal period in the struggle of King and his followers as they fought for the civil rights of all, especially Blacks and African-Americans, during a turbulent era of United States history.

Auction Notepad