Harry Belafonte has filed a lawsuit in the federal courts against Martin Luther King's three surviving children to claim rights to three historical documents on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported.
The documents are an outline of a Vietnam War speech called "The Casualties Of War In Vietnam," notes that were scribbled on a speech Dr. King was suppose to deliver in Memphis, and a condolence letter from President Lyndon B. Johnson to King's wife after his assassination in 1968, according to the AP.
Belafonte held the Vietnam War speech outline since 1967 When King left it in his apartment after working on it, the AP reported.
In 1967, Dr. King stayed with Belafonte in his Manhattan apartment and held meetings with advisors there.. It was during one of those stays that King left the speech behind after composing another draft of the speech, the New York Times reported.
The second document are notes to a Memphis speech and are the last words King wrote, according to the Times. They were left to Belafonte by Dr. King's aid who died in 1979. The third document is a condolence letter by President Johnson to Mrs. King and was given to him in 2003.
According to the Times, Dr. King's children, Dexter, Bernice and Martin Luther King III, have said the documents were taken without permission and belong to the estate. In December of 2008, Belafonte tried to sell the documents at a Sotheby's auction house to raise money for Barrios Unidos, a charity that works with street gangs, the Times reported.
Before the auction could move forward, however, Dr. King's estate challenged the ownership of the documents, telling Sotheby's in a letter that the documents are "part of a wrongfully acquired collection," the Times reported.
Belafonte's lawyer, Jonathan Abady, said the King estate has never presented evidence that the 86-year-old actor stole the documents. What's more, the three-year time limit for filing a suit in New York to reclaim them has passed, the Times reported.
"We were left with no choice but to seek relief from the courts, and, whatever rights the King children have, they are not entitled to undo the wishes and actions of their parents," Abady told the Times.
