King Center Archive

January 23, 2012 10:16 PM

The King Center archive launched a new web interface this year, featuring online access to thousands of historical documents relating to Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.
posted by latkes (9 comments total)

--- Warning: prominent JP Morgan sponsorship might be offensive to those who feel When ... profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered or The contemporary tendency in our society is to ... compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity.
posted by latkes at 10:16 PM on January 23 [3 favorites]

do they have video of the "I Have A Dream" speech yet?
posted by dunkadunc at 11:48 PM on January 23 [2 favorites]

I'm having a hard time with it. After I figured out how to get articles about nonviolence, nothing appeared. Then I found and selected the list view, which is good because nothing useful appeared in the tile view, just pretty wallpaper. But now that I've listed the articles and clicked one, I'm waaaaaiting for the selected article to download. Is my virus software blocking it? Have we killed the server? Was it just a crappy server to begin with? Are the documents all absurdly gigantic scans? All I see now (while still waiting for a simple document to appear) is:

To obtain proper authorization for use of Dr. King's works and intellectual property, please contact Intellectual Properties Management (IPM), the exclusive licensor of the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. at [e-mail] or 404 526-8968.

So far, I give the site an A for being pretty, a C or D for ease of use, and an F- for delivering content.
posted by pracowity at 11:49 PM on January 23 [1 favorite]

Something seems very wrong that Dr King's works are held by IP Management, Incorporated and need to be licensed.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:00 AM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Your civil rights

buffering

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posted by srboisvert at 12:40 AM on January 24

I wonder what kind of royalties the Gandhi family is raking in? MLK, great stuff - but his descendants are a bunch of greedy shits highlighting what's wrong with US IP laws. I am trying to imagine MLK prepping his notes before the "I have a Dream" speech, thinking to himself, "Wow, this is going to put my children on the gravy train - ch-ching!"
posted by Meatbomb at 1:16 AM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Ladies! We have gone to the sea in the spirit of Gandhi to bring Dandi Gandhi Salt to your corner grocer. Now march, march, march with Dandi Gandhi Salt from your grocer to your dinner table today! That's Dandi Gandhi Salt! Never let anyone tell you you can't buy Dandi Gandhi Salt!
posted by pracowity at 1:44 AM on January 24 [2 favorites]

Martin Luther King Jr. Online - "The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Public Domain Resource Site"

Online King Records Access (OKRA) Database - "A Joint Project of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, and the Robert W.Woodruff Library at Atlanta University Center. Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation." (Plus Online Encyclopedia.)
posted by pracowity at 2:27 AM on January 24 [1 favorite]

OK, I tried it again just in case it was an intermittent problem, but I am still getting very long wait times. It's always "Waiting for storage.synaptic.att.com" so it can show me something.

And then finally it loads a nice looking background of documents, like a cluttered desk, and I think the things on that desk are supposed to be clickable, or something clickable is supposed to appear over that clutter, but I'm getting nothing but a static picture in Firefox 9.0.1.
posted by pracowity at 10:11 PM on January 26