ATLANTA
When Barry Tulloss heard an interview between Martin Luther
King Jr. and his father, former radioman Jerry Tucker, he said the hair stood
up on his neck.
“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” Tulloss
said. “He didn’t see it for anything significant, but I saw it as
priceless, a lost part of history.”
The interview sat in a shoe box in a closet for 40 years,
until Tulloss began quietly shopping for prospective buyers six years ago. Then
he saw Atlanta auction house owner
Paul Brown on CNN.
“They’ll be able to do something with it,” Tulloss
said of the interview, now one of a few items from the era up for sale next
month in Brown’s Atlanta gallery.
Brown gained national attention in April when an anonymous
woman attempted to sell a small collection of documents said to belong to King
through an auction at Gallery 63. Although the King family ultimately halted
the sale, the episode suddenly thrust Brown into the civil rights business.
Suddenly, people came forward with items from their attics,
closets and basements, hoping each relic might fetch a small fortune. Eager buyers
started contacting him, too, with plans to invest in civil rights-era
collectibles.
