Dispute over MLK Bible, Nobel prize headed for mediation

ATLANTA (AP) — A legal battle over the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s traveling Bible and 1964 Nobel Peace Prize is headed for court-ordered mediation, and lawyers for both sides said today they hope for a lasting resolution to issues that have long divided the civil rights icon's heirs.

The three surviving King children — Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott King and the Rev. Bernice King — are the sole shareholders and directors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Estate Inc. In January 2014, Martin and Dexter voted 2-1 against Bernice to sell their father's peace prize medal and traveling Bible to an unnamed private buyer.

Both items had long been in Bernice's possession. Lawyers for the estate filed a lawsuit just over a week after the vote asking a judge to order Bernice to surrender them.

Speaking from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where her father and grandfather preached, Bernice in February 2014 denounced her brothers' intentions, saying the Bible and peace prize medal were among their father's most-cherished possessions and shouldn't be sold.

The estate's lawyers had cited a 1995 agreement among King's heirs to sign over their rights to many items they inherited from their father to the estate.

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. His widow, Coretta Scott King, died in 2006. Yolanda King, the Kings' eldest child, died in 2007.