Judge gives no ruling in MLK family dispute

ATLANTA - A judge in Atlanta heard arguments Tuesday in a dispute over who owns the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal and traveling Bible but did not issue a ruling in favor of either side.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney says he hopes to issue a ruling before the case is set to go to trial in the second half of February. The dispute has effectively pitted two sons of the civil rights leader against his daughter.

King's estate, which is controlled by his sons, last year asked a judge to order King's daughter to surrender the items. In a board of directors meeting last year, Martin Luther King III and Dexter Scott King voted 2-1 against Bernice King to sell the two artifacts.

This is at least the fifth lawsuit between the siblings in the past decade, but this one crosses the line, Bernice argued in February from the pulpit of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father and grandfather preached. Her father cherished these two items, which speak to the very core of who he was, she said.

The Rev. Timothy McDonald, who served as assistant pastor at Ebenezer from 1978 to 1984 and sides with Bernice but describes himself as a friend of the whole family, told The Associated Press: "You don't sell Bibles and you don't get but one Nobel Peace Prize. There are some items that you just don't put a price on."

The estate's lawyers have not responded to requests for comment from the King brothers. At a hearing last year, a lawyer who represented the estate at the time said they want to sell the two items because the estate needs the money.

Paying lawyers to enforce the rights to King's words and image is expensive, attorney William Hill reminded the judge, drawing chuckles.

The estate is a private entity, so its finances aren't public, and court records don't elaborate on the estate's need for cash.

Whether to sell the Bible and the medal is not up to the judge, or even part of the lawsuit, which is purely an ownership dispute.

Lawyers for Bernice have argued, among other things, that King gave the Nobel medal to his wife as a gift, meaning that it is part of Coretta Scott King's estate. Bernice is the administrator of her mother's estate.

King's heirs have previously parted with parts of his legacy. They sold a collection of more than 10,000 of his personal papers and books in 2006 for $32 million, a collection now housed at Morehouse College, King's alma mater.

Two separate appraisers, Leila Dunbar and Clive Howe, told the AP they would expect the medal to sell for about $5 million to $10 million, and possibly more, based on what other Nobel medals have gone for and King's place in history.

Dunbar said she would expect the Bible to sell for at least $200,000 and possibly more than $400,000. Howe said it would probably go for about $1 million.

If they are sold through a private sale, which can bring substantially higher sums from buyers who want to secure items before they get to auction, the medal alone could fetch $15 million to $20 million, Howe said.

Both items have enormous societal value and should be on public display, said Barbara Andrews, director of education and interpretation at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. The Bible is important because of who King was, and the Nobel Peace Prize because of what it signified - that the fight for civil rights was being recognized on a world stage, she said.

While museums and books can talk about the medal, being able to see it renders it tangible, "more than a photograph, more than us just talking or writing about it," Andrews said.

"We like to own things. We like to touch things. We like to see them with our eyes. It satisfies that need in us to see the physical manifestation of the award."

Even in the hands of Bernice, though, neither item has regularly been available to the public. Both "are in the same places they have been for years. The Peace Prize medal is located in a safe deposit box in possession of the King family, and the King Bible is in a safe and secure location" known to Bernice and her brothers, her lawyers wrote in response to the lawsuit.

A replica of the medal has been on display at the King Center for about 17 years, but it's unclear when the medal itself was last shown, King Center spokesman Steve Klein said.