Unseen writings from MLK part of collection revealing new details of Civil Rights Movement

Papers once tucked in boxes in the basement are now part of a project adding critical details to the nation’s Civil Rights Movement, including those who fought alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

“We’re learning how important all of the people around King were,” said Meghan Weaver, research assistant, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

The 14-volume edition called The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. is lending insight into King’s role in the Civil Rights Movement and contains a comprehensive collection of King's most significant correspondence, sermons, speeches, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. The seven already published volumes have become essential reference works for researchers and have influenced scholarship about King and the movements he inspired.

“King has become the focus of the history of the Civil Rights Movement, but so many regular people were involved,” said Meghan Weaver, research assistant, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

In 1985, Coretta Scott King, King’s widow and Founder and President of The King Center, contacted Dr. Claborn Carson, a historian at Stanford University, and asked if he would catalog, edit, and publish this collection of papers in boxes in the basement of her home.

“Dr. King is much more than his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech or the Selma to Montgomery march,” Weaver argued. “He was a big proponent of practicing nonviolence, especially in demonstrations, something that is applicable today. He also spoke of what he considered the triple evils: militarism, racism, and poverty. His writings are as applicable today as they were in the 1960s.”

Weaver says the papers reveal surprising findings, “One that strikes me the most is just how busy he was,” she recalled. “He would give a speech in Atlanta and then get on a plane to New York, give a talk there, get on a plane to Boston and give a talk there, and fly back to New York all in one day and also have meetings in between those events.”

Also eye-opening to Weaver is how the papers pay tribute to key players behind the scenes. “King has become the focus of the history of the Civil Rights Movement, but so many regular people were involved. He could not have become what he was without receiving little bits of wisdom from so many people that then essentially coalesced to the persona of King.”

One of those people is a woman known as Mother Pollard, who is credited with the Montgomery Bus Boycott mantra, “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.” Weaver says her actual name was unknown until now.

“She is most likely a woman named Lou Pollard.” Pollard was born in 1876 to parents who were born into enslavement. “She lived a difficult life,” Weaver explained. Pollard ended up in Montgomery in the 1930’s where she connected with King during the bus boycott. She and her husband were unemployed and living with their daughter who supported the family working as a maid.

Pollard suffered from gangrene in her left foot, a condition that indirectly contributed to her death and was attributed to an old fracture that didn’t stop her from walking during the bus boycott when she would say, “My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” Weaver went on to explain, “Her physical body was in rough shape, but her soul was at peace with what she was contributing to the movement.”

Pollard’s story is just one of many helpers and countless details unveiled in The Papers of Martin Luther King Jr. The public can purchase the published volumes (Amazon or Barnes & Noble). Some libraries also carry the volumes. Learn more at:

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/

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