July 14, 2004

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Palo Alto Online

Keeping the dream alive

by Sue Dremann

Researchers at the Martin Luther King Paper's Project on the Stanford campus have a dream.

One day they hope to give the project a permanent home and create an institute, on par with the Hoover Institute, for nonviolent social action, based on the Rev. King's teachings.

While they are far from creating such a center, they are taking steps toward strengthening the foundation for an institute. NFL Hall of Fame member Ronnie Lott recently contributed a $1 million five-year grant toward an endowment to establish a permanent home for the university's Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, a research and archive project established at Stanford in 1985.

Lott will be the honorary chair of the King Research Institute's endowment campaign, said Lindsey Ford, executive director of All Stars Helping Kids, which is based in Redwood City.

"The reason we should support the Martin Luther King, Jr. Project is that we all have a responsibility to society to keep social justice and human justice alive. I can't think of a finer place to keep the spirit of what that means than at the Papers Project at Stanford, where his works are being collected," Lott said by e-mail.

The endowment, which aims to raise $10 million, will also help the new King Research Institute sponsor national and international conferences and workshops on the use of nonviolent strategies to bring about constructive social conflict resolution.

"The King legacy is already strong, but it will be stronger with a permanent connection with an institution of the stature of Stanford," said Dr. Claybourne Carson, the soft-spoken, erudite Stanford University historian and director of the King Papers Project, who has worked on the project for 20 years. Carson is scheduled to meet with administration officials at Stanford to seek their financial support.

Reaching the stratospheric stature of the Hoover Institution is a lofty goal, cautioned Michele Horaney, Hoover Institution public affairs manager. Much more is involved in building a sustainable institution than the endowment: "The years 1919 to 1960 were the building years for Hoover. It takes a long time," she said.

Although there are no plans to work collaboratively, it's not inconceivable, said Elena Danielson, associate director for the library and archives at Hoover. Civil rights papers and human rights publications from Amnesty International are two of Hoover's biggest collections. "Martin Luther King had such a superb voice. It's a very valuable addition to the Bay Area," she added.

Lott made the commitment to jumpstart the endowment after learning about the Papers Project through one of its donors. He met with Carson, who was hand-picked by King's widow Coretta Scott King, to head the Papers Project and was deeply impressed with Carson and the Project's work. Lott's concern about the Project's lack of visibility and long-term financial stability were reasons why he got involved with the group, Ford said.

More than 300,000 documents relating to King's life and work reside at Stanford, which is the most comprehensive center for information that exists about King in the world, said Andi Dowdy, research assistant and a spokesperson for the Papers Project.

The Papers Project's major work involves publishing a 14-volume edition of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings and unpublished manuscripts, noted a press release from All Stars Helping Kids. Four volumes have been published, with a fifth, "The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume 5: Threshold of a New Decade," scheduled for release this fall.

Much new information about King's background and religious beliefs has come to light from King's papers, said Carson. The next volume in the book series will deal with King's connection with Mahatma Gandhi.

Activating King's ideas in today's world is also part of the Project's goal and fits in well with Lott's charity work, which focuses on kids: it created the Liberation Curriculum, designed to teach primary and secondary school educators how to mold students into future adults and leaders using critical thinking, through evaluation of historically significant events and to identify contemporary social issues.

Currently in use in the Oakland Unified School District through the district's Urban Dreams Project, those ideas also teach children living in strife-ridden communities nonviolent means for conflict resolution. The only thing preventing the Liberation Curriculum from being launched nationwide is the lack of money, which Lott's challenge grant intends to rectify.

"Dr. King's message needs to reach beyond kids in Oakland. His message needs to resonate, as Dr. King once said, 'from every hill and mountain,' to young people all over the world," Lott said. "We have to allow kids to know that they're all connected, and allow them to understand they should be treated and judged based not on color or race, but by what's inside."

King visited Stanford on April 25, 1964 and April 14, 1967, and spoke about civil rights in Memorial Auditorium. A plaque in his memory was dedicated at the auditorium May 1 during Stanford's first-ever minority alumni conference on diversity.

Staff writer Sue Dremann can be e-mailed at sdremann@paweekly.com

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