Martin Luther King Jr.'s handwritten draft of 'I Have a Dream' speech found in desk drawer

Résumé détaillé

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.

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.

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.

Début de l'article, extrait de CBC News. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.