Filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, Ariel Investments president Mellody Hobson, are legally seeking possession of Ebony and Jet magazines' historic photo archives.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the collection contains thousands of pictures and recordings that document more than 70 years of African-American culture, including rare original snaps of Martin Luther King Jr., Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali.

On Wednesday, Capital Holdings V, a company controlled by the billionaire power couple, filed a motion in Chicago federal Bankruptcy Court seeking to foreclose on the archives, citing risk to their loan repayment and preservation of the historic archives.

The collection was once appraised at $40 million, but is now being used as collateral for a $12 million loan provided by Capital Holdings V in 2015 to the recently bankrupt Johnson Publishing Company.

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According to the Chicago Tribune, the loan was in default. Johnson Publishing, the former publisher of Ebony and Jet, owed Capital V $13.6 million, including unpaid interest.

“The Johnson Publishing archives are an essential part of American history and have been critical in telling the extraordinary stories of African American culture for decades,” Lucas and Hobson said in a statement. “We want to be sure the archives are protected for generations to come.”

Johnson Publishing was founded in 1942 and launched Ebony magazine in 1945. The publisher proceeded to document some of the most powerful moments during the civil rights era and beyond, including photos of Emmett Till’s 1955 funeral in Chicago and rare photos of former South African president Nelson Mandela.

In 2016, Johnson Publishing sold Ebony and Jet to Clear View Group, a private equity firm in Austin, Texas.

The cash-strapped publisher filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on April 9.

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George Lucas

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