Clayborne Carson

Clayborne Carson has devoted most of his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the movements King inspired. Since receiving his doctorate from UCLA in 1975, Dr. Carson has taught at Stanford University, where he is Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of History (Emeritus). In 1985 the late Coretta Scott King invited Dr. Carson to direct a long-term project to edit and publish the authoritative edition of her late husband’s speeches, sermons, correspondence, publications, and unpublished writings. Under Carson’s direction, the King Papers Project has produced seven volumes of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. In 2005 Carson founded the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute to endow and expand the educational outreach of the King Papers Project. Although he is completing his final year directing the King Institute, he will continue his research and teaching as a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Born in Buffalo, New York, Dr. Carson spent his childhood years in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where his father worked as a security inspector at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Since moving to Los Angeles in 1964 to attend UCLA, he has resided in California. As a student, he participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and many of his subsequent writings reflect these experiences by stressing the importance of grassroots organizing and nonviolent resistance to injustice within the African-American freedom struggle Dr. Carson has been married for more than five decades to Susan Ann Carson, who until her retirement in 2008 was the managing editor of the King Papers Project. His son, Malcolm, graduated from Howard University and the University of California’s Boalt School of Law and is Senior Vice President and General Counsel for the Trust for Public Land in San Francisco. His daughter Temera graduated from San Jose State University with a master’s degree in social work and is a social work supervisor for the County of Santa Clara, California. His grand-daughter Dalila Adofo is a project coordinator of San Francisco’s Southeast Community Council for Bayview Hunters Point Community Advocates.