In one folder, there is Coretta Scott King, cradling her daughter Bernice from a pew at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral. In another, Billie Holiday stands on a city sidewalk with a cigarette and a faraway expression. One box holds a black-and-white print of Ray Charles hanging out with a Chicago nightclub owner and playing dominoes, as the typewritten caption noted, “by feel.”

This week , one of the visitors to the warehouse could walk away with it all: the entire photo archive from Ebony and Jet, the iconic sister magazines. The collection of photographs, more than four million prints and negatives, will be offered at an auction on Wednesday conducted privately at a law firm downtown.

Word of the auction has stirred fascination as the future of the remarkable collection, a bittersweet reminder of the essential place the magazines once held in black homes, hangs in the balance. Historians, alarmed by the potential sale, say that the collection is full of cultural treasures that should be opened to the public. People close to John H. Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet who died in 2005, say he would have eventually wanted it to be available for people to see.