Martin Luther King Jr.'s handwritten draft of 'I Have a Dream' speech found in desk drawer
The day Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and delivered his iconic "I Have A Dream" speech to an uproarious crowd is forever etched in the annals of history.
But the night before — when the U.S. civil rights leader stayed up alone in his hotel room scribbling his now-famous words on a yellow notepad — was a moment lost to time. Until now.
King's handwritten final draft of his Aug. 28, 1963, speech has been unearthed from a desk drawer and made public for the first time in six decades.
Lerone Martin, one of the scholars who reviewed the discovery, said looking at those pen-scratched pages sent him travelling back in time.
"It really puts you in the moment, almost puts you into the room with him as he's wrestling with these ideas and preparing to make what he knows will be one of the biggest speeches of his life," Martin, director of Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
LISTEN | Interview with MLK scholar Lerone Martin:
As It Happens6:42Only hand-written final draft of Martin Luther King Jr's 'I Have a Dream' speech going up for auction
The seven-page document is the only known copy of King's final draft of the speech before he sent it to be typed the following morning and read it almost verbatim during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
It will be on display in Atlanta, Chicago and New York City before being put up for auction on Jan. 22, 2027, when it is expected to fetch upwards of $10 million US ($14 million Cdn).
The proceeds will be distributed to several charities, including the King Center in Atlanta, which King founded with his wife, Coretta Scott King.
Found in desk drawer of longtime aide
Xernona Clayton, a broadcaster and civil rights activist, said she first came upon the draft in the 1990s in the desk drawer of her late husband, Edward T. Clayton, King's longtime aide and speechwriter.
At the time, she left it where she found it.
Clayton, who was close friends with King and Coretta Scott, told the New York Times that, for many years, she refused to sell any of her King memorabilia for fear of disrespecting a man she "loved a lot."
Civil rights activist Xernona Clayton found the draft in her late husband's desk drawer. (Scripps/Getty Images)
"Now that I'm older, I’m wiser, and it just seems like something that important ought to be shared," the 96-year-old said.
She's auctioning the draft on behalf of the Still Marching Irrevocable Charitable Unitrust, which she founded and which will distribute the proceeds to several charities.
Clayton did not respond to CBC's requests for comment.
'I could not believe what I was looking at'
When Peter Klarnet, a manuscripts specialist at Christie's auction house in New York, first laid eyes on the pages of King's historic speech, he said he was in "a state of utter disbelief."
"I could not believe what I was looking at," he told CBC.
In his 30 years of working with manuscripts, Klarnet said, he's handled important letters from physicist Albert Einstein and the U.S. founding fathers — and even a printed draft of the original U.S. Constitution.
But none of it compares to this, he said.
"I have never had the privilege and the honour to handle something so universally important, not just to our nation's history but to world history," Klarnet said.
The pages show King's revisions of his speech that were made late into the night. (Christie's)
Klarnet said King, who was also a Baptist minister, is believed to have started writing the speech on Aug. 24 in collaboration with several of his colleagues, including Clayton.
But the night before the March on Washington, he was still perfecting the prose until 3 or 4 a.m.
The pages show words, or sometimes entire sentences, scratched out in blue pen and rewritten. One page has a small brown smudge, possibly a coffee stain.
"It's a beautiful thing to behold," Martin, the Stanford scholar, said. "To watch someone who is so gifted at their craft, and then you get a peek behind the curtain to actually see how this master goes about their task."
King was a gifted orator but rarely wrote down his words, says one scholar. (Christie's)
While King's spoken words reverberate throughout history, Martin said he "rarely wrote things down."
This draft's mere existence is a testament to how important King knew this speech could be, he said.
But the speech's most famous refrain — "I have a dream" — doesn't appear in the draft.
That's not surprising, Martin said, as those words are also absent from the typed version that followed.
He said that's because King had already used variations of that theme several times before at rallies in North Carolina, Detroit, and Rochester and Albany, both in New York state.
"As he was preparing the speech and debating with his colleagues, many of them told him to not use that part of the speech," Martin said. "They thought it was trite. They thought it was overdone."
Lerone Martin is director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in California. (Luna K.)
But in the heat of the moment, Martin said, the famous orator responded to the audience's energy and pivoted.
At one point during his speech, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson can be heard shouting: "Tell them about the dream, Martin!"
"King said that the audience was in a great spirit, the audience was very enthusiastic and receptive, and so he decided to just insert it and use it," Martin said.
Bound for a private collection?
Martin said King focused his speech on what he believed were the "the three major evils or ills that plagued society": poverty, racism and war.
"He called them the evil triplets because he thought they were all interrelated," Martin said, adding it's a message that still resonates today.
"I'm also thankful that it was discovered right now, at a moment where, in the United States of America, we are wrestling with what it means to keep the American dream alive — and not just for a select few, but for everyone," he said.
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Martin said he hopes the draft doesn't end up tucked away in a private collection when the auction closes.
"I count this text as part of what we call American scripture," he said. "I would love for this text to end up in a public space where the public will be able to see it, to be able to embrace it and to reflect on it."
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.