Handwritten Final Draft of MLK Jr. I Have a Dream Speech to be Auctioned at Christie's

“When I first saw these pages, and realized what they were, I was astounded,” said Peter Klarnet, Christie’s manuscripts specialist, as the auction house announced it will offer the only known handwritten final draft of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Written across seven yellow legal pad pages in blue ink, the document was completed around 4 AM on August 28, 1963, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC. Dr. King drafted the remarks after days of discussions with advisers, including trusted speechwriter Edward T. Clayton, aiming to keep his delivery to five minutes.

The manuscript was discovered in a desk drawer belonging to Clayton by his widow, Xernona Clayton. While she originally found the papers in the late 1990s inside an envelope labeled “speech,” she did not realize at the time that it was the unique final draft and tucked it back into the drawer, where it remained until she looked inside again in 2024.

The auction house expects the document to fetch more than $10 million in a single-lot sale scheduled for January 22, 2027. Proceeds from the auction will benefit several charities, including the Xernona Clayton Foundation and The King Center in Atlanta.

“It is poetic that the past will protect the future,” said Martin Luther King III. Bernice King noted that Coretta Scott King would be 100 this upcoming year, adding, As President and CEO of The King Center, I am honored to continue our parents’ legacy and lead the work of this important institution our mother founded in 1968 to advance our father’s work and teachings.

The draft features edits and crossings-out that reveal Dr. King’s composition process. The handwritten pages do not contain the iconic phrase “I Have a Dream,” which Dr. King added spontaneously during his delivery at the March on Washington.

Before the New York auction, the manuscript will be publicly exhibited for the first time at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta from November 16 to 22, followed by a display in Chicago and a week-long exhibition at Christie’s New York from January 15 to 21, 2027.

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