Harry Belafonte, the well-known singer and social activist, has filed suit in federal court against the three surviving children of Martin Luther King Jr.; the dispute is over documents that Belafonte owns and proudly displays in his home that King's children say belong to the estate and were taken without permission, according to the New York Times.
Belafonte was very close friends with the late civil rights leader and says that the documents in question were given to him by King, his widow Coretta Scott King and one of King's aides Stanley Levison. In 2008 Belafonte had attempted to sell the documents through the auction house Sotheby's to raise money for a charity and King's estate stopped the sale by challenging the ownership, according to the New York Times.
The documents included the outline of a 1967 speech that King wrote about the Vietnam War, a letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson to King's widow and an envelope that King had jotted some notes on that was in his pocket at the time of his assassination, according to the Miami Herald.
As the ownership of the documents is in doubt Sotheby's has held on to the documents, according to the New York Post.
Belafonte often opened his home to King when money was tight for the civil rights leader. While speaking with the New York Times Belafonte explained that he feels that King's children have gone in a direction away from what their father stood for.
"The papers are symbolic," Belafonte said. "It's really about what happened to the children, and I feel that somewhere, in this one area, I really failed Martin."
The suit claims that the documents always belonged to Belafonte and that the estate has no right to prevent him from selling them, according to the New York Post.
"Dr. King was a regular guest at Mr. Belafonte's Manhattan apartment: he worked, socialized and rested there," the suit says. "Not surprisingly, during their long time together, Mr. Belafonte came to documents associated with Dr. King and his widow. Not a scintilla of evidence was ever offered to support this claim, yet the Estate demanded the documents be turned over to them."
