Signed and inscribed by Martin Luther King Jr.
Original photograph boldly signed and inscribed "Best Wishes to Mr. & Mrs. Ken Browne, From Martin L. King".
Ca. 125 x 90 mm. Double matted, framed and glazed (332 x 298 mm).
€ 20,000.00
Rare vintage glossy photograph of King sitting in a half profile pose to his left in a sharp suit and tie, signed and inscribed in fountain pen, "Best Wishes to Mr. & Mrs. Ken Browne, From Martin L. King". The reverse bears the photographer's credit stamp of Arthur Freeman of Montgomery, Alabama, and a typed collector's notation indicating that the autograph was received in 1957. In very good to fine condition, with a few creases, two paperclip impressions (one to the top, the other to the upper right edge), surface impressions across King's forehead from typed notations on the reverse, and somewhat irregular ink adhesion to portions of the signature.
Photographs signed by King are extremely rare and desirable. This fine example shows him wearing the same necktie and "K" pocket-square handkerchief as in his first and most famous mug shot after being jailed for leading the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956.
From the autograph collection of Kenneth H. Browne (1923-2018), a native of Brewer, Maine. After WII service in Italy, Browne met Joyce Lane (b. 1927) in Yankton, South Dakota, and they married in California in 1946. Browne graduated from Husson University in Bangor, Maine, in 1948, before taking a job at a bank in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1959, the couple moved to Mesa, Arizona, where Browne retired from Wells Fargo Bank in 1982.
Browne began collecting autographs in 1939, when he obtained Eleanor Roosevelt’s signature at a hotel in Bangor. For the next sixty years, he collected autographs and autographed photographs of political, sports, and cultural celebrities, eventually accumulating approximately 10,000. Some years, he mailed as many as 1,200 letters to various celebrities, and in the peak year of 1957 received 450 autographs in return.
In very good condition.
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