As editor of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dr. Clayborne Carson, with the assistance of his staff at Stanford's Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, had access to a variety of documents relating to all aspects of Dr. King's life and career. The encyclopedia provides readers with over 280 entries that offer fresh and engaging insights into Dr. King and the civil rights movement. From their unique familiarity with these materials, they have compiled an encyclopedia offering a fresh and exciting look at the work of Dr. King and the course of the civil rights movement.

Clayborne Carson is professor of history at Stanford University, where he is also founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. His publications include In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981), which won the OAH's Frederick Jackson Terner Award, and Malcolm X: The FBI File (1991). He also served as senior advisor for the award-winning PBS series on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize, and co-edited the Eyes on the Prize Reader (1991). In 1985, Coretta Scott King invited him to direct a long-term project to edit and publish The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to these volumes, Dr. Carson has written or co-edited numerous other works based on the papers, including A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998) and The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), compiled from King's autobiographical writings.

Tenisha Armstrong is associate director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project. She holds an MA from Stanford University. A former King Summer Research Fellow, she joined the King Institute staff in 1998, and was the lead editor of Volume V: Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960 of the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Susan Carson is former managing editor of the King Institute. She holds an MA in Library Science from San Jose State University. She co-edited Volumes III-VI of the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. Carson retired in 2007.

Erin Cook is former associate director of the King Institute's Liberation Curriculum Initiative. She served as a teaching assistant for Professor Clayborne Carson's undergraduate course on the African-American freedom struggle and is currently teaching history at an independent high school in California.

Susan Englander earned a PhD in U.S. history from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and has been an editor at the Martin Luther Ing, Jr., Papers Project since 2001. She is the lead editor on Volume VI: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963 of the Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.