According to Clayborne Carson, Volume V, which is scheduled for publication in 2003, also is the first one that deals with the protest movements of the 1960s. First on the agenda is a telegram from King to then-Mississippi Gov. James P. Coleman protesting the lynching of Mack Charles Parker, an African American man who was abducted from his jail cell and killed, just hours after being arrested and charged with raping and kidnapping a white woman. Next is a transcript of an interview with King on a Canadian television program, in which King states that he believes the Southern states will attain desegregation by 1974. Editors haggle over the wording of footnotes and descriptive headnotes. Herbert Aptheker, a biographer of W. E. B. Du Bois, visited the Papers Project last fall.
Collaboration is about tension.
But it's one of those things where you ultimately feel really good about the outcome. Providing scholars with access to primary source documents is the central mission of the Papers Project. Then other people can use what we provide to do their own interpretations, their own analyses. Editors first select the small percentage of documents that will be included in the volume. Highest priority is given to King-authored writings and correspondence, and transcriptions of speeches and sermons.