New Online Directory of Martin Luther King Jr. Documents

The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University is now permitting scholars online access to a directory of more than 4,000 documents relating to the slain civil rights leader. An additional 4,000 detailed descriptions of King documents will be added to the online collection by the end of the year. Due to copyright issues with the King family, the actual documents will not be available online. But the descriptions will contain information on the locality of the actual documents and how researchers can gain access to them.

The online database serves as a directory of materials at the three research centers holding large collections of King-related documents at Stanford, the Atlanta University Center, and Boston University. Clayborne Carson, professor of history at Stanford, stated that the directory “is the only public database on King archives that provides scholarly details and descriptions on each individual item” at all three research centers.