The Coca-Cola Company

Company Helps Return Civil Rights Leader's Historic Papers To Atlanta

July 07, 2006 edition

The Coca-Cola Company is among a group of Atlanta-based business, education and civic leaders contributing to the city’s successful effort to acquire the extensive writing collection of the late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and return the papers to Dr. King’s hometown.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin led the endeavor to secure $32 million in guarantees to buy more than 7,000 of Dr. King’s handwritten items and books from the King family. The writings, which include drafts of Dr. King’s famous "I Have a Dream" speech and his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, were to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in New York City on Friday.

"Dr. King’s work is a continuing source of inspiration for people throughout the world," said Neville Isdell, the Company’s chairman and CEO. "And it is fitting that the words he so carefully and poignantly wrote to instill hope, promote equality and seek justice will be returned to Atlanta -- the bedrock of the peaceful civil rights movement that Dr. King led."

Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater, will take ownership of the historic documents.

Representatives of The Coca-Cola Company, which contributed $2 million to the effort, were in New York with Franklin and other supporters on Thursday to view the collection.

"Dr. King’s work helped shape a better world," said Ingrid Saunders Jones, the Company’s senior vice president and director of Corporate External Affairs, "Throughout the years, The Coca-Cola Company is proud to have joined with the King family in honoring Dr. King’s legacy, building on his spirit of unity and commitment to human rights that permeated his messages and solidified our communities."