Plagiarism Seen by Scholars In King's Ph.D. Dissertation

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 
dealing with complex theological conceptions, Dr. King lifted 
entire sentences and some longer passages from the works of 
Tillich, Mr. Boozer and other authors.

In one passage, for example, Dr. King wrote, "The basic 
characteristic of the symbol is its innate power." Mr. Boozer, 
discussing the same concept, wrote, "A characteristic of the 
symbol is its innate power."

In his academic papers Dr. King occasionally used another 
author's argument as his own, the researchers found, and even 
where he did use citations and footnotes, his reliance on 
previous material was often more extensive than he explicitly 
acknowledged.

But Mr. Carson said it was important to understand the scholarly 
context of the work. He said it was not uncommon, especially in 
dealing with abstract theological concepts, for interpreters to 
rely on and even paraphrase the same material; in this case, the 
conception of God as set forth by Tillich.

"That doesn't excuse King, because clearly students are supposed 
to put even difficult and complex thoughts into their own 
words," Mr. Carson said in a telephone interview. "But Tillich 
is particularly difficult because his writing is fairly dense." 
Discovery of Similarities

Graduate students at Stanford who were working on the papers 
project first noticed similarities in the dissertation to other 
works as early as 1988. They then investigated other academic 
papers, finding a recurrent pattern.

The findings were presented to the project's advisory board of 
scholars in October 1989, but Mr. Carson, as senior editor, 
decided not to make public any details until the first 
installment of the collected papers was published. The original 
date for publication was the end of this year.

Mr. Carson said yesterday that the first two volumes of the 14-
volumne series -- covering Dr. King's early life up to 1955, the 
year of the dissertation -- were now expected to be published, 
with footnotes nearly as extensive as the text itself, in 1992.

Scholars familiar with the papers say the academic works are Dr. 
King's least important writings and show very little of the 
dramatic orator who was to emerge so forcefully in later years. 
Mr. Garrow, Dr. King's biographer, described the dissertation as 
"dry as bones," and said that was why no one had ever published 
it.

Mr. Garrow, said that as far back as 1970 he was aware that 
parts of books and articles published by Dr. King after he left 
Boston University probably had been written by others. He said 
Dr. King's speeches also borrowed from others because in the 
oral tradition in which Dr. King lived, it was common for 
ministers and preachers to adopt as their own the words of 
prominent men who had come before them.

Mr. Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 
agreed. "Preachers have an old saying," he said. "The first time 
they use somebody else's work, they give credit. The second 
time, they say some thinker said it. The third time they just 
say it." Book to Examine Borrowings

According to The Wall Street Journal article, Keith Miller, a 
professor of rhetoric at Arizona State University, has written a 
book, soon to be published, that will outline how Dr. King 
borrowed liberally from others, even in some of his most famous 
speeches.

In trying to explain why the young Dr. King had relied so 
heavily in his academic writings on the work of others, those 
involved speculate that it was perhaps just the strain of that 
time in his life. Dr. King never intended to be a university 
scholar, and wrote most of his dissertation while working as 
pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala.

While academic experts will resolve the extent of the plagiarism 
and the validity of the doctoral degree, the allegations will 
raise more questions about the character of Dr. King.

In 1989 the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, in his autobiography 
"And the Walls Came Tumbling Down," published by Harper & Row, 
stated that Dr. King engaged in extramarital sex on the night 
before he was killed. Dr. King's son, Dexter Scott King, was 
also involved in a recent controversy. In August 1989, he was 
made president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for 
Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, the site of Dr. King's 
crypt. But in a few weeks he resigned in what was reported as a 
family dispute over the direction the center should take. Widow 
Declines to Comment

Mrs. King, who set up the papers project in 1984 to assure that 
her husband's scattered writings and speeches were collected and 
edited by reliable scholars, would not comment on the latest 
controversy, referring all questions to Mr. Carson at Stanford.

In October 1989, the editors discussed preliminary manuscripts 
of the King papers with the project's advisory board, which, in 
addition to Mrs. King and Mr. Garrow, includes 11 recognized 
scholars and 8 other associates of Dr. King.

Shaken by the allegations, Mr. Garrow said he had been 
reconsidering his opinion of Dr. King.

"This has altered my judgment of him as a person," Mr. Garrow 
said, "though it hasn't shaken my tremendous regard for his 
courage and dedication to his movement."

Photo: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (The New York Times, 
1956)(pg1); ::There are instances of plagiarism in these 
papers," said Clayborne Carson, who studied the Rev. Dr. Martin 
Luther King Jr.'s doctoral dissertation. (Associated Press) (pg. 
10) Graphic: "Examining 2 Dissertations" In his 1955 doctoral 
thesis, entitled "A Comparison of the Conception of God in the 
Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman," Martin Luther 
King Jr. mentioned secondary literature that had been helpful to 
him, including another doctoral dissertation on Tillich written 
three years earlier by Jack Bozzer, like a King a graduate 
student at Boston University. King appropriated many passages 
from Bozzer's dissertation without footnoting them. An example: 
KING: Tillich insists that a symbol is more than a merely 
technical sign. The basic characteristic of the symbol is its 
inate power. A symbol possesses a necessary character. It cannot 
be exchanged. A sign, on the contrary, is impotent and can be 
exchanged at will. A religious symbol is not the creation of a 
subjective desire or work. If the symbol loses its ontological 
grounding, it declines and becomes a mere "thing," a sign 
impotent in itself. BOOZER: Tillish distinguishes between a sign 
and a symbol. A charateristic of the symbol is its inate power. 
A symbol possesses a necessary character. It cannot be 
exchanged. On the other hand a sign is impotent in itself and 
can be exchanged at will [ ... ] A religious symbol is not the 
creation of a subjective desire or work. If the symbol loses its 
ontological grounding, it declines and becomes a mere "thing," a 
sign impotent in itself. (Source: The Martin Luther King Jr. 
Papers Project, Statement on Research in Progress, Nov. 9, 1990) 
(pg.10)

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