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It wasn't stolen, exactly.

OK, maybe it was stolen.

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)
Martin Luther King Jr.'s colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference wanted a humble farm wagon pulled by two Georgia mules to promote their upcoming Poor People's Campaign.
Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)
The wagon is 10 feet long and barely wide enough to hold a casket, but it dominates the exhibit space.
Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)
The wagon was 'borrowed' from an antiques shop in West End, but owner Tom Cook didn't mind after it was returned and he realized he had something of historic value.
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ON EXHIBIT "From Memphis to Atlanta: The Drum Major Returns Home" Friday through Aug. 31. Free. Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, 450 Auburn Ave. N.E. 404-331-5190; www.nps.gov/malu RELATED LINKS: • Video: Martin Luther King's last moments • Photos: Portraits of those who knew MLK • Blog: Share your memories of MLK • The 40th anniversary of MLK's assassination

The rustic wagon that carried Martin Luther King Jr.'s body through the streets of Atlanta in 1968 has a back story that could have made the police blotter. Call it the case of the missing caisson.

The wagon is the centerpiece of a new exhibition in the visitors center at the King National Historic Site on Auburn Avenue. The show includes photos from the scene of the assassination in Memphis 40 years ago Friday, documents such as King's burial records and death certificate, and pictures from the funeral procession that brought tens of thousands of mourners and world attention to downtown Atlanta.

The wagon — 10 feet long and barely wide enough to hold a casket — dominates the gallery space, as it did the funeral.

When King's body was brought back to Atlanta, his colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference wanted a funeral that would symbolize his concern for "the least of these" and promote their upcoming Poor People's Campaign. They wanted a humble farm wagon pulled by two Georgia mules.

'We borrowed it'

Stoney Cooks, the SCLC staffer charged with finding it, enlisted students at King's alma mater, Morehouse College. They found the wagon they were looking for in front of an antiques shop in West End.

"We went by several times, but the shop was always closed," says Cooks, now a consultant in Washington. "So we borrowed it."

The wagon was towed away by truck, painted green and positioned outside Ebenezer Baptist Church. After the service, two mules named Belle and Ada hauled King's casket to a second observance at Morehouse as a crowd including famous politicians, entertainers and athletes followed.

Among the Atlantans who watched the TV coverage that day were Tom Cook, whose wife, Margaret, ran Cook's Antiques & Stuff on Gordon Road. At first they didn't recognize the wagon, which they had bought from a farm in Douglas County. But then they stopped by the shop and noticed it missing.

"They thought somebody had stolen it," says their son, Martin C. Cook, a Baptist minister in Stockbridge.

When the SCLC returned the wagon, his father smiled and said he didn't mind the temporary theft. He realized he had something of historic value. In the months after the funeral, the Smithsonian Institution called and asked him to donate the artifact. So did the King family. So did a group of black militants.

"They actually came by our house and demanded we give it to them," says Cook, who is white.

Finally, a sale

His father had the wagon towed to another shop he owned in downtown Atlanta, where it was disassembled because it wouldn't fit through the door. It sat there until he died in 1987.

A few years later, Cook says, the King family called again. The Cooks sold the wagon to them for less than the price of a new car. The Kings later loaned it to the National Park Service, which reassembled the relic and now displays it in the visitors center across the street from the King tombs.

That would please his father, Cook says. "My Dad always respected Dr. King."

But he also saw the humor in the situation.

"He'd joke about it," Cook says. "He'd say, 'Martin Luther King went to his grave in a stolen wagon.'"