Archivist Appointed for MLK Papers

-- Library Journal, 7/25/2006

Brenda S. Banks, who will retire as deputy director of the Georgia Department of Archives and History this week, has been named to oversee the Martin Luther King Jr. collection recently acquired for Morehouse College by a local consortium. The $32 million purchase took the papers off the auction block at Sotheby’s. The 10,000-item collection will be housed initially at the Robert Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center, though it may not stay there forever. "This is a wonderful opportunity, and it comes at a great time," Banks told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "I am still young enough to do something else and this is a great opportunity to work with a collection that is important to local, Southern, American and African-American history." A former president of the Society of American Archivists, Banks is a graduate of Spelman College and Atlanta University.