Morehouse College is teaming up with Atlanta's leaders to develop the $125 million center that will exhibit the Morehouse King Collection and highlight the role of historically black colleges and universities in social justice struggles.

The city has been known for its desire to be a player on the world's stage since a community coalition worked on bringing the Olympics to Atlanta in 1996.

 

"The vision has been that the Center for Civil and Human Rights will be the primary exhibition facility for the papers," Doug Shipman, executive director of the Center for Civil and Human Rights Partnership, told Black College Wire recently. However, Morehouse will remain the owner of the papers and the "scholarly drive" behind the King Collection, which is currently being held in the Robert Woodruff Library that Morehouse shares with the other Atlanta University Center Schools.

"We see ourselves as the public outlet when someone wants to bring their family," Shipman said. "When a scholar wants to study the King papers, Morehouse is the institution that will be their partner in their academic pursuit."

So, the 141-year-old HBCU has been doing everything it could for the last two years to leverage the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection that the city gave as a gift to the school.

"It can only enhance Morehouse's reputation, nationally and internationally, and carries the Morehouse tradition of our alumni, prominent, well-known alumni, [being] closely connected with the college," former president Walter E. Massey said in an interview with Black College Wire shortly after the news was announced two years ago. "It's another recognition that we are among the finest colleges in the world, the fact that this kind of collection would be entrusted into our oversight," Massey said in the June 2006 interview.

However, at the time, neither the school nor the city clearly defined how they intended to capitalize on the acquisition of the 10,000 piece collection that was left in Coretta Scott King's basement. There had been suggestion that the papers would be exhibited at a museum that Mayor Shirley Franklin had been planning. The only thing that was clear was that a deal that mobilized $32 million in 11 days to save the papers from auction would be used in some significant way.