MLK’s ‘dream’ speech goes on display at Smithsonian for 60th anniversary

The Smithsonian Institution announced Tuesday that Martin Luther King Jr.’s original “I Have a Dream” speech has gone on display at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington to mark the historic address’s 60th anniversary.

The three-page, typewritten speech was delivered before about 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963, during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

It is considered one of history’s greatest speeches and an anthem of the civil rights movement. As he delivered it, King summarized the plight and aspirations of African Americans and expressed the dream that all people might one day live together in peace and friendship.

But the text does not reflect the majestic “I have a dream” section – because it wasn’t written down.

“I started out reading speech and read it down to a point,” King wrote, as published in the “The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” a 1998 compilation of his words edited by Clayborne Carson. “The audience’s response was wonderful that day, and all of a sudden this thing came to me. The previous June … I had delivered a speech in (Detroit’s) Cobo Hall, in which I use the phrase ‘I have a dream.’

“I had used the phrase many times before and I just felt I wanted to use it here. I don’t know why. I hadn’t thought about it before the speech … and at that point, I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether, and didn’t come back to it.”

The speech first went on display at the museum in 2021.