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Friday, April 19, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Martin Luther King’s Bible, Nobel Prize Go to Estate

(CN) - The estate of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has settled a dispute with his daughter over the slain civil rights leader's Nobel Peace Prize and traveling Bible.

King's two sons and daughter are the sole shareholders and directors of the estate, but the siblings had a falling out in January 2014, after brothers, Dexter Scott King, who is president and CEO of the estate, and Martin Luther King III, its chairman of the board, vote to sell the artifacts to an unnamed private buyer.

Their sister, Bernice King, possessed both items and refused to give them up.

The estate filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order her to surrender them. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney initially declined to do so, and encouraged the family members to work with a mediator former President Jimmy Carter to settle their differences.

When that effort failed, McBurney cleared the case to proceed to trial.

On Monday, Judge McBurney decided it was time to end the dispute, and signed a consent order saying the items are to be released to Martin, as chairman of the board of the estate.

The order signed by McBurney does not indicate what will happen to the two items once they are released to Martin.

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