Jack Feuer, UCLA Magazine
In 1985, Coretta Scott King asked historian Clayborne Carson ’67, M.A. ’70, Ph.D. ’75 to edit and publish her late husband’s papers. Since then, Carson has been the director of the King Papers Project at Stanford University, where he also is a history professor. The Stanford resource is the absolute last word on King scholarship, to date producing six volumes of the civil rights leader’s speeches, sermons, letters and writings.
While most historians only study history, Carson — founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute — has lived it. He was 19 in August 1963 when he hitched a ride with the Indianapolis NAACP to attend the March on Washington, the largest political rally for civil rights in U.S. history, at which King delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
During his undergraduate years at UCLA, Carson participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and many of his subsequent writings reflect his experiences. Carson’s scholarly publications have focused on African- American protest movements and political thought of the period after World War II. His other publications include Malcolm X: The FBI File andAfrican American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom (2005, co-author), a comprehensive survey of African-American history.
