Georgians Preserving Their Heritage

On June 23, 2006, thirty-eight years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., a group of committed Atlantans led by Andrew Young and Mayor Shirley Franklin raised $32,000,000 in 11 days, to pull 71 boxes containing the 10,000 piece Martin Luther King Jr. collection from the auction block, just hours before the collection was to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, at Sothesby New York, to bring it home to Atlanta permanently

Three years earlier in Savannah the Chatham County Board of Commissioners started the process to ensure there will never be a need for an eleventh hour save of the 1000 boxes containing the more than 100,000 piece W. W. Law collection, along with more than 200 pieces of artwork which were not boxed, by including the start of processing possibly Georgia’s largest civil rights and historic preservation history in the 2003-08 Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax ( SPLOST) referendum.

Meanwhile Savannah City Council voted to allow the W. W. Law Foundation to share a secure an environmentally appropriate City owned building to temporarily house and start processing the massive collection. These combined efforts helped to ensure that Savannahians will never have to pay millions to bring the W. W. Law collection back home. The W. W. Law Foundation is urging the community to follow Atlanta’s example and join its effort to raise a significantly smaller amount, $6 million, to construct the W. W. Law Research and Preservation Center as a part of the Revolutionary War Battlefield Park Center which Law supported by advocating for its preservation.