UPDATED: July 3, 2012
“We haven’t come close to getting this thing sold,” Jason Wiley an attorney for ABKCO, said. “We’ve got to cut this thing off.” ABKCO Music & Records plans to ask the court to conduct an auction of the items in the Montague Collection.
Dotan Melech, the federal bankruptcy trustee charged with administering the Montague estate, is still hopeful he can find a buyer or get more time from the court. He has sent letters to a few hundred individuals and nonprofits that have shown interest in the collection asking them to submit their best bid by July 13.
By Norm Bond
Montague curated a 8,000-plus-item collection of African-American historical artifacts during the course of more than fifty years of purchases from garage and estate sales; antique and book shops; and private collectors and auction houses, in both the US and Europe.
Today that entire collection is headed for either sale or auction as part of a bankruptcy action.
“I have not been able to maintain the collection for the last couple of years,” Montague said. While working with his wife of 56 years, Rose Casalan, to archive and prepare the collection for sale, he took out a loan to help pay for the archiving, found himself overextended financially and declared bankruptcy in August.
His collection was seized, and it is now in the hands of a trusteeship charged with selling it to satisfy his debts, including a judgment for $325,000 plus interest and court fees.
The asking amount? “We’re looking for an amount in excess of $2 million” said Martha Kader, project manager for the Montague collection.
Some say the true value of the collection is priceless.
The Montague collection includes original and rare artifacts and pieces of memorabilia – including posters and photos, rare books, artworks, recordings, films, dolls, toys, even authentic slave contracts – dating back to the days of slavery. It has been called one of the largest private collections of African-American memorabilia in the world. It’s valued in the millions; some call it priceless. One assessment of just five of the pieces puts the total value of those treasures alone somewhere between $592,000 and $940,000. “I shudder to even fantasize what it could go for,” said appraiser Philip Merrill, who performed the assessment.
Clinton Byrd, a financial services consultant retained by Montague estimated the value could be “Anywhere between $50 million to $100 million in terms of what could be generated in sales.” He continued “I say that because of its potential with Amazon and Kindle and the downloading of books. What would a person pay for it? I think a venture capitalist looking at this, if they could get it for $10 million to $15 million, they’d feel they had a bargain.”
Now 84 years old, Montague described himself to CNN as “an undertaker”. Watch the video interview:
Montague converted to Judaism in 1960, and picked up the collecting passion and thirst for knowledge of his own heritage from Jewish book dealers who knew him from the radio.
“I got interested in the Jewish culture, the pride to know who they are, showing me what their problem was in America, how they were catching hell,” Montague says.
Collecting, he says, was a skill he had to develop: “I didn’t know how to collect. I spent a lot of time talking with dealers, meeting die-hard Jewish collectors. If there was a saucer, they collected it. If it was a pen, if it was Nazi or German, or rare books. When I learned how they did it I started looking for stuff, anything that had anything to say about the Negro I tried to buy — slavery, the whole thing.
But as of today, even after CNN exposure, there are no solid offers on the table. “This would be a wonderful thing to be at a university or a museum, or even (with) a private collector who would buy the whole collection and let it go on tour” said Kader.
Montague adds “We had a lot of people interested but one guy said, ‘We just have to wait until you’re dead and we’ll get it.’ That’s a hell of a thing to say.”
In his memoir Montague writes, “I wanted to show … these gang members, these hip-hoppers, once they understood their history, there’d be no holding them back.”
“I wanted to give them something more powerful than guns and turntables. I wanted to give them their B.H.D.s, their black history degrees. I wanted to show them how to soar like the black eagle. But we know not all dreams come true. I know I will not get there.”
Charles
There are 40 million of us in the United States, it would cost us one stinking nickel from every Black man, woman and child in this country to preserve this collection, but we won’t do it. We as a people are about to get exactly what we deserve. Shame on us all and may God have mercy on our souls.
I am even happy to know that there is a history about Doris Millier. My stepfather served with him at Pearl Harbor.
What is never useful is trying to shame people into action. First of all, it never works. Second, it says more about the person raining shame. But, like in this instance, we do this to one another way too often; crediting the shamer by shaming all others. It does not unity make.
I am sorry that there is nothing I could contribute to help preserve this collection, but I will be glad, and will, pass it on.
Blacks who value their history, their Ancestors, their legacy as a people, and try to preserve it for prosperity are too often left to this fate because those among us in our communities who are in financial positions to partner with those of us in the trenches trying to educate and uplift our communities, and especially our progeny, are left with the burden of total personal sacrifice financial and otherwise.
As a result our many years of work too often end up lost in the garbage, to thieves, to saboteurs etc., with priceless, irreplaceable treasures lost to the wind. Was a shame.
I so agree with Mr. Montague, if our youth and children truly knew their history as a people, and how great their Ancestors and Elders are and were, there is no way we would remain the psychological slaves that we are now. Unfortunately, slavery has only been modernized, and as such is, in many way, more potent now than ever. Once you control the mind, you control the body and aspect of the lost soul.
Unfortunately, with the event of “integration,” aka “extreme assimilation and self hate,” the sad outcome has been a total abandonment and disrepsect for everything that was ours: our communities, our businesses, our hair, our self respect, our dignity, our appreciation of our innate being, our spirituality and our history. What a sad, sad travesty.
This is a classic opportunity for someone like Oprah, Bill Cosby, Sheila Johnson, Beyounce et.al nouveau riche blacks to make a simple, and stress free contribution to our youth by buying this collection and making it available to our progeny
via some repository where it would be safe, secure and on view to the public at large.
Even Lonnie Bunch at the National Museum of African-American History & Culture, but they’re too busy making it a slavery museum versus one that tells the untold story of our many contributions to this thankless country.
It seems that the only way to become a celebrated black figure in this country is via “show business” and a total disconnect from the authentic black community.
I pray for the children.