A handwritten draft of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech appears more than 60 years later

More than six decades after delivering one of the most famous speeches in American history, a rare handwritten draft by activist Martin Luther King Jr. has emerged after it had been kept in the desk drawer of one of his former aides since 1966, without anyone realizing its full historical importance.

The document dates back to the “I Have a Dream” speech, which King delivered on August 28, 1963, in front of hundreds of thousands in Washington, during a march calling for an end to racial discrimination and the achievement of equality.

According to the New York Times, Christie's intends to display the manuscript, consisting of seven pages written in blue ink, at auction next January, with expectations that its price will exceed $10 million.

The document is important because it is the only known final draft of the speech written entirely in King's hand; It reveals the last hours he spent refining his words before taking the stage. At first glance, the pages appear to be ordinary papers, but they contain many crossings out and amendments that reflect his keenness to choose every expression carefully.

Among the striking details is that the draft does not include the most famous phrase, “I have a dream,” which became the title of the speech and part of American memory. King decided to improvise this clip while delivering the speech to the audience, after he had excluded it from the written version due to time constraints. On the other hand, the manuscript includes his famous conclusion, “We are finally liberated.”

Researchers believe that King wrote the draft during the night of August 27, in his suite at the Willard Hotel in Washington, after spending days exchanging ideas with his aides and advisors. The amendments indicate the extent of his attention to linguistic details. On one page, he crossed out two expressions before settling on the word “gradual” to describe the slow pace of achieving change.

As for the story of finding the document, it begins inside the office of Edward T. Clayton, one of King’s close aides, who died in 1966. His wife, Zernona Clayton, found the papers in the late 1990s inside an envelope with the word “letter” written on it, but she did not realize their full value at the time, so she returned them to the drawer.

Clayton, who is 96 years old, said that her husband had kept everything, and that she finally decided to make the document available to the public instead of keeping it locked in a drawer. The proceeds from its sale will be allocated to charitable causes, including supporting a museum project that documents her career in the field of civil rights, media, and community work.

Peter Clarnett, a specialist in manuscripts at Christie's, described the document as the most important manuscript he has dealt with during his career, while researchers believe that it provides a rare window into the way the words of one of the most influential speeches in modern history were formed.

Thus, a draft that had been hidden from the spotlight for more than 60 years returned, revealing that behind a speech preserved in the collective memory were long hours of thought and review, arriving at words that resonated beyond the moment they were said.