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SAN FRANCISCO — An auction house on Tuesday called off the sale of an extensive collection of speeches, journals and notes attributed to the late civil rights leader Malcolm X. 

Butterfields will not go ahead with the planned sale March 20 in San Francisco because it received a letter from an attorney for several of Malcolm X’s six daughters and the estate of his wife, Betty Shabazz, that raised questions about the chain of ownership of the documents, said Butterfields spokesman Levi Morgan. 

The family attorney, Joseph Fleming, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. He said earlier the documents were sold at a Florida self-storage center and claimed they were the family’s property. 

Butterfields has said it cannot reveal who the owner of the collection is, only that it is not a family member.  

Morgan said the possible problems with ownership occurred before the auction by the storage center. 

“Our client has demonstrated to us clear title,” he said. “The irregularities preceded the auction by the storage center.” 

Scholars said the collection could significantly add to existing Malcolm X documents. It contained photographs, handwritten speeches, a Quran owned by Malcolm X and four journals he kept during travels to Africa and the Middle East in 1964, a year before he was assassinated. 

The collection was displayed to potential bidders in Los Angeles last week. The surfacing of the documents was a surprise — and raised questions about their origin — but many scholars believe they are authentic. 

“These documents give us insight into a singular individual,” said Abdul Alkalimat, director of Africana Studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio. 

The collection was expected to bring as much as $500,000 at auction. 

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, based in New York, was trying to raise money to acquire the collection. Many scholars had been concerned that the documents could be scattered among different private collectors, inaccessible to researchers. 

The documents are currently being stored by Butterfields. 

“We’ll just hold onto them until we’re instructed how to proceed,” Morgan said.