Recently, Villanova University became the steward of the artifact and has entered into a long-term loan agreement with the museum to display the speech. According to Raveling, only pure impulse compelled him to ask King for his copy of the speech, and King gave it to him. They accepted, and the following day they were on stage with the likes of John Lewis, A. On the day before the speeches, Wilson and Raveling were asked to volunteer as security. He was an assistant men’s basketball coach at Villanova University in 1963 when he and a friend, Warren Wilson, traveled to Washington, D.C., to hear Dr. Raveling never intended to be on stage with King, let alone receive what would become one of the most famous speeches ever given. “The speech was slotted to be a four-minute closing to the march however, it became a powerful 16-minute rallying cry for the entire civil rights movement.”įor decades, King’s speech has been in the possession of former collegiate basketball player and coach George Raveling, a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, who was volunteering as security at the 1963 March on Washington. “This artifact is one of several drafts of the speech written by King and his advisors hours before the march began,” said Kevin Strait, curator at the museum. “Seeing the speech in person only reinforces the ways that King was a brilliant rhetorician and inspiring leader-his words not only resonate today, but we can see how this version of his remarks was just a starting point for him to transform the podium into a pulpit, the speech into a sermon on history and hope, and the occasion into one for the ages.” Mellon Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech is rightly regarded as a watershed moment in the civil rights movement, and one of the most famous and influential orations of the American history,” said Kevin Young, the Andrew W. The speech, on loan from Villanova University, will be on view in a newly installed case alongside other objects associated with King. The museum will showcase the artifact in the “Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom” gallery beginning Aug.

24 and highlights its ongoing mission to tell American history through the lens of the African American experience.

This announcement kicks off a season of celebrating the museum’s fifth anniversary on Sept. Martin Luther King Jr.’s original speech from the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) will display the Rev.

I have a dream speech text