Carson is Professor and (since 1985) the Director of the Martin Luther King Jr., Papers Project at Stanford University. He is from Buffalo, New York, but was educated at UCLA, where he received his B.A., his M.A. and his Ph.D. He has been at Stanford since 1974 or 1975 (sources differ on this).
In 1990, Carson made headlines when he revealed that King had plagiarized parts of his dissertation at Boston University. BU formally considered revoking King's PhD because of this plagiarism, but elected not to do so.
Some irate e2 users have accused me of racism for mentioning King's plagiarism, but that is silly. Carson is black, and was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, and is considered an authority on the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. If he says that King plagiarized in his PhD thesis, it's safe to agree.
Carson's books and television projects include In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s, a study of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (1981). It won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award of the Organization of American Historians. His other publications include Malcolm X: The FBI File (1991). Dr. Carson was as senior advisor on the PBS civil rights series "Eyes on the Prize" and historical advisor for “Freedom on My Mind,” which was nominated for an Oscar in 1995, as well as for “Chicano!” (1996) and “Blacks and Jews” (1997).
He has written or co-edited a number of books based on the King papers, and has published (as of 2002) four volumes of King's writings. Ultimately, the King documents are expected to fill fourteen volumes.
Sources:
LinguaFranca.com November 9, 2000
http://www.stanford.edu/~ccarson/
http://history.stanford.edu/faculty/carson