A huge collection of the papers of Martin Luther King Jr. will stay in Atlanta after all. The family of the murdered civil-rights leader originally planned to auction off the documents this month (The Chronicle, June 8), and there was speculation that only the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, or some major university could come up with the $15-million to $30-million that the archive was expected to fetch.

But on Friday, the mayor of Atlanta announced a deal with the King family that would purchase the papers for $32-million, give them to Morehouse College (King’s alma mater), and house them at an array of Atlanta-area institutions, including Morehouse, Emory University, and the University of Georgia, according to an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Funds for the acquisition will be provided by a group of affluent Atlanta residents, civic groups, and local and regional businesses. Other research instititutions were interested in bidding on the archive, but the Atlanta group had an advantage because it was able to negotiate with the King family directly.