Clayborne Carson is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of American History at Stanford University; Ronnie Lott Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute; and senior editor of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project at Stanford University. He is the author of In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, Martin's Dream: My Journey and the Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., and coauthor of African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom.

Tenisha Armstrong is Associate Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project at Stanford University. She is the coauthor of The Martin Luther King, Jr., Encyclopedia and coeditor of Volume V: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 1985, Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the founder of the King Center in Atlanta, selected Stanford historian Clayborne Carson to edit the papers of her late husband. Since then, the King Papers Project has continued its efforts to complete a definitive fourteen-volume edition of King's most significant sermons, speeches, correspondence, published writings, and unpublished manuscripts. This long-term research and publication venture is being conducted in association with the King Estate, Stanford University, and the University of California Press.