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From: rkoch@banmlkday.com

By ANTHONY De PALMA
Published: November 10, 1990

Torn between loyalty to his subject and to his discipline, the
editor of the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
reluctantly acknowledged yesterday that substantial parts of Dr.
King's doctoral dissertation and other academic papers from his
student years appeared to have been plagiarized.

The historian, Clayborne Carson, a professor of history at
Stanford University who was chosen in 1985 by Dr. King's widow,
Coretta Scott King, to head the King Papers Project, said that
analysis of the papers by researchers working on the project had
uncovered concepts, sentences and longer passages taken from
other sources without attribution throughout Dr. King's writings
as a theology student.

"We found that there was a pattern of appropriation, of textual
appropriation," said the 46-year-old historian, who was active
in the civil rights movement and has written extensively on
black history. He spoke at a news conference at Stanford, called
after an article in The Wall Street Journal yesterday disclosed
details of the project's findings. "By the strictest definition
of plagiarism -- that is, any appropriation of words or ideas --
there are instances of plagiarism in these papers." A Lack of
Answers

Although he said that he believed Dr. King had acted
unintentionally, Mr. Carson said that Dr. King had been
sufficiently well acquainted with academic principles and
procedures to have understood the need for extensive footnotes,
and he was at a loss to explain why Dr. King had not used them.

Mr. Carson and other scholars who have seen the papers declined
to say how great a percentage of the material had been
plagiarized, but they said it was enough to indicate a serious
violation of academic principles.

Officials at Boston University, which awarded Dr. King his
doctorate in 1955, announced yesterday that a committee of four
scholars had been formed to investigate the dissertation. But it
is not likely, even if plagiarism is proved, that the Ph.D.
degree in theology would be revoked, because neither Dr. King
nor his dissertation adviser is alive to defend the work.

The controversy comes after a series of allegations over the
past year and a half about Mr. King's extramarital sexual habits
and conflicts within his family. While not detracting from his
accomplishments as a leader in the civil rights movement and
winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the controversies may
tarnish the myth of the man. Dr. King as Role Model

"It really in some ways is not at all connected to his public
greatness," said David J. Garrow, a professor of political
science at the City University of New York, whose biography of
Dr. King, "Bearing the Cross," won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
Mr. Garrow is a member of the King Papers Project's advisory
board and has reviewed the papers in question. "But this serious
an offense really does alter how we have to evaluate him,
especially in the context of telling 10-year-olds who they
should look up to."

But to many supporters of Dr. King, the allegations are another
attempt to detract from his accomplishments.

"Dr. King as a young fellow may have overlooked some footnotes,"
said the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, which was founded by Dr. King.
"But history is caught up in his footprints, and will be hardly
disturbed by the absence of some footnotes." Donation of Papers

Scholars at the King Papers Project said the fact that Dr. King
donated his papers to Boston University six years before he was
assassinated in 1968 indicated that he knew future scholars
would look at his work and he not think he had done anything
wrong.

In the 343-page dissertation, titled "A Comparison of the
Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry
Nelson Wieman," Dr. King appears to have used many of the same
words and titles as another doctoral dissertation written three
years earlier by Jack Boozer, under the guidance of the same
adviser, L. Harold DeWolf. The earlier work was cited in Dr.
King's bibliography, but footnoted only twice, The Journal
reported.

According to Mr. Carson, in certain sections of the paper

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