The only known handwritten final full draft of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is set to be auctioned in New York City in January, with proceeds going to several charities, including the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Christie’s announced that the document is expected to fetch more than $10 million and that it will be displayed publicly at the auction house from Jan. 15 to 21 before being offered in a single-lot sale.
Christie’s described the document as “the only known handwritten final draft of the speech.” It was rediscovered in 2024 in a desk drawer that had belonged to Edward T. Clayton, a former aide to King, by his widow, Xernona. She had first found it in the late 1990s but did not know then that it was the only known final draft, so she put it back in the drawer. She came across it again in 2024, and experts established that it is unique, Christie’s said.
King completed the draft in the early hours of Aug. 28, 1963, at the Willard hotel in Washington, D.C. Christie’s said he wrote it in blue ink across seven yellow legal-pad pages after days of discussions with many advisers, including his trusted speech writer Clayton. He focused on limiting his remarks to five minutes and on word choice and flow, the auction house said.
Hours after the ink dried that day, King delivered the pivotal speech with towering rhetoric in Washington during the height of the civil rights struggle for racial equality in the United States. Christie’s said the words he delivered that afternoon have come to be regarded as the most important speech of the 20th century and one of the most important speeches in American history.
The pages contain edits and crossings-out that Christie’s said offer a rare glimpse into King’s writing process. Notably, the original draft does not include the words “I have a dream.” Christie’s said King “famously added” those words “spontaneously while delivering his speech on the day of the march.”
“This is a treasure of American history,” said Peter Klarnet, a manuscripts specialist at Christie’s. “It gives you chills to look at it. Reading along, you’re there in the moment with Dr. King, watching him compose it and making edits in real time. It captures a moment that literally changed the course of our nation and makes it very real and very human.”
King’s son, Martin Luther King III, said in a statement that it is “poetic that the past will protect the future.”