VITAL SIGNSrnPUBLISHINGrnThe Life andrnTimes of the KingrnPlagiarism Storyrnby Theodore PappusrnThree death threats, one left hook tornthe jaw, 40 rejections from 40 publishersrnin 40 months, and a sold-out firstrnedition. Such was the response to myrn1994 book, The Martin Luther King, Jr.,rnPlagiarism Story.rnChronicles and I first became interestedrnin this story in mid-1990, when wernheard 1) that a university had threatenedrnto block a scholar’s bid for tenure if hernfollowed through with his plans to discussrnKing’s plagiarisms, and 2) that thernNational Endowment for the Humanities,rnwhich has allocated more than arnmillion dollars of the taxpayers’ money tornthe King Papers Project, had long knownrnabout King’s plagiarisms but had yet tornpressure Clayborne Carson, editor of thernproject, for a prompt disclosure of the evidence.rnAs we later learned, NEH DirectorrnLynne Cheney was not obligatedrnto inform the public about these findingsrn. . . and she didn’t.rnWliat quickly became clear is that thisrnstory had less to do with King and hisrnlegacy, with what he did or did not do,rnthan with larger cultural issues, such asrnthe politicization of the academy, thernethics of the press, our obsession withrnmulticulturalism and diversity, and thernsorry state of American publishing —rnmagazine, newspaper, and book publishingrnalike.rnThis last aspect of the story begins notrnin America but in England, where a semblancernof free speech and open debaternstill exists. On December 3, 1989, FrankrnJohnson, the current editor of the LondonrnSpectator but then a columnist forrnthe London Sunday Telegraph, publishedrna short article entitled, “MartinrnLuther King, Jr.—Was He a Plagiarist?”rnAs Johnson reported, “Researchers in hisrnnative Georgia must soon decidernwhether to reveal that the late Dr. MartinrnLuther King, murdered in 1968, was —rnin addition to his other human failings —rna plagiarist. There is now much doubt asrnto whether his Ph.D. thesis was really hisrnown work.” Most interesting was Johnson’srnjab at America: “[This] story has notrnyet been published in the United States.”rnDespite Johnson’s prodding, thernAmerican news media treated the Kingrnplagiarism story like the plague. Rumorsrnof King’s plagiarisms continued to circulaternin academic circles and a few rightwingrnjournals through mid-1990, butrnthere remained no actual evidence ofrnKing’s plagiarisms nor any acknowledgmentrnof the story by the scholarly community’,rnthe mainstream American press,rnor the National Endowment for the Humanities;rnan explosive story seemed tornhave died aborning. But all this changedrnwhen Chronicles’ editor Thomas Flemingrnbriefly referred to King’s plagiarismsrnin his September 1990 article “Revolutionrnand Tradition in the HumanitiesrnCurriculum”: “The ‘Doctor’ should nowrnbe understood as strictiy a courtesy title,rnsince King, it has been recently revealed,rnapparently plagiarized his Boston Universityrndoctoral dissertation.” This wasrnthe first menfion of King’s plagiarisms inrnthe American press to garner nationalrnattention and the ire of Boston University,rnwhose acfing president, Jon Westiing,rnsent us a letter to the editor claimingrnthat King’s B.U. dissertahon had beenrn”scrupulously examined and reexamined”rnand that “not a single reader hasrnever found any nonattributed or misattributedrnquotations, misleading paraphrases,rnor thoughts borrowed withoutrndue scholarly reference in any of its 343rnpages.” It was in response to Mr. Westling’srnletter that I wrote, for our January-rn1991 issue, “A Doctor In Spite of HimselfrnThe Strange Career of MartinrnLuther King, Jr.’s Dissertation.” Thisrnwas the first article to expose, with parallelrnquotations, the extent and blatancy ofrnKing’s pilfering.rnThe national news blackout on thisrnstory ended two weeks after we had gonernto press with my story, when the WallrnStreet Journal heard that the story wasrnbreaking and published a front-page articlernabout King’s plagiar)’ on Novemberrn9, 1990. Every major newspaper andrnjournal of opinion then followed withrneditorials about King’s sleight of hand.rnWhat these publicahons did not admitrnis that many of them had long knownrnabout this story, and about the overwhelmingrnnature of the evidence, butrndeliberately suppressed it. As CharlesrnBabington later revealed in the New Republicrn(“Embargoed,” January 28,1991),rnthe Washington Post, the New YorkrnTimes, the Atlanta Journal/Constitution,rnand the New Republic itself all knew thernfacts of this story but refused to publishrnthem. What Babington did not discuss isrnhow, once the story broke, it was thoroughlyrnwhitewashed.rnTake the New York Times and thernWall Street Journal, for example. Afterrnthe Time’s initial story about King’s pilfering,rnit then softened the blow a fewdaysrnlater with a puff-ball editorialrnpooh-poohing the controversy. After all,rnit editorialized, John Kennedy had hisrnTheodore Sorensen, George Bush hisrnPeggy Noonan—as if taking someone’srnwork without permission and thenrnclaiming it as your own is somehowrnequivalent to the work of a paid speechwriter.rnThe Wall Street Journal’srnbackpedaling was even more embarrassing.rnThe Journal reported the plagiarismrnon November 9, ran a November 15 editorialrnthat says King’s plagiary does not sornmuch reflect on the character of King asrnit “tells something about the rest of us,”rnand then published a January 21 editorialrnby a Professor George McLean thatrnpraised King’s plagiarized dissertation asrn”a contribution in scholarship for whichrnhis doctorate was richly deserved.” Now,rnone may not want to strip King of his titiernof “doctor” at this late date, but to say thatrnhis doctorate was “richly deserved” onrnthe very basis of his thoroughly plagiarizedrndissertation (66 percent of the thesis,rnin fact) is absurd and dishonest.rnThe Journal’s pathetic coverage of thisrnstory did not go unnoticed by the LondonrnSunday Telegraph, which reported:rn”Such is the cravenness of the U.S. mediarnwhen it comes to race that no newspaperrnfollowed [our December 1989]rnstory, until Friday. Then, in an articlernfrill of apologetic, mealy-mouthed phrases,rnthe Wall Street Journal confirmed ourrnMAY 1998/43rnrnrn