eBay removes listing for King tub

Memphis judge D'Army Bailey wanted to sell the tub for $150,000, but was told eBay was removing it from its Internet listings. Calls to eBay were not immediately returned Friday.

Bailey said he received an e-mail saying it is against eBay policy to auction any item "that graphically portrays violence or victims of violence, and lacks substantial social, artistic or political values."

Bailey, a leading founder of the National Civil Rights Museum on the site of King's murder, said he considers the tub "a historic treasure."

"Death and sacrifices are as much a part of our history in this struggle as are our births and lives," he said.

Bailey said the tub attracted several bids, including one for $152,000. He had no more information on the bidding.

King was shot by a sniper as he stood on the balcony of The Lorraine Motel while helping lead a strike by city sanitation workers in 1968. Investigators said the shot came from a bathroom window of a boarding house about 200 feet away.

Ray pleaded guilty to the murder in 1969. At his hearing, authorities described how the assassin stood in the tub, knocked out the window screen and shot King with a .30-caliber rifle. Ray raised no objections to that testimony but later denied killing King.

The Lorraine is now the centerpiece of the civil rights museum, which opened in 1991 and underwent a major expansion in 2000. The museum said it had no need for the tub.

Bailey said he got the tub in 1983 from an artist who was renovating the former boarding house. He had planned to give the museum part of the money derived from the tub's sale.