Coretta Scott King kept the love letters beneath her bed, in a blue Samsonite suitcase.
The amorous writings of her husband, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., were among the most cherished possessions of a famously private person, said Lynn Cothren, Mrs. King’s special assistant for 23 years. “That’s why she kept them so close, in her room, underneath her bed.”
But Tuesday, those letters and other “intimate correspondence” between the Kings are expected to be in a far less private place: Fulton County Superior Court. The papers are caught in an increasingly bitter and public dispute among her three living children.
On one side is Dexter King, head of the corporation that handles the rights to his father’s works. In May, he negotiated a $1.4 million contract to publish a biography of his mother. It would be co-written by the Rev. Barbara Reynolds, a journalist-turned-minister who taped conversations with Mrs. King before she died in January 2006.
On the other side is Dexter King’s younger sister, Bernice King, who has refused to hand over the intimate correspondence between her parents for use in the biography. Bernice King says her mother didn’t want Reynolds to write the book and that the correspondence belongs to Mrs. King’s estate, which she controls.
The family corporation that Dexter King leads, called King Inc., is seeking a temporary restraining order that would force Bernice King to give the papers to Reynolds. A judge ordered her to bring the letters and photos to court Tuesday, though they are not expected to be shown in court. At stake is the book contract with Penguin Group, the New York-based publisher that has threatened to pull out should Bernice King fail to hand over the papers by Friday.
Cothren is among those watching from the sidelines — and wincing.
“Mrs. King deserves something that was just her and Dr. King without sharing it with everybody else,” Cothren said. “It was one of the few things just for her.”
Even Reynolds, who would be paid $200,000 under the Penguin deal, is having second thoughts. She had hoped to finish the biography with the blessings of all the children, not watch it fuel more litigation between them.
“This fight is about control and money and materialism,” she said from her home in Maryland. “These are the things that Dr. King preached against. I don’t know what I’m going to do at this point.”
Durn Shame...
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