Only Known Manuscript of MLK's "I Have a Dream" Could Fetch $10M at Auction
The public will be able to view the handwritten final draft of the iconic speech at Christie's New York before it goes under the hammer in January.
The only handwritten manuscript of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” speech, famously delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to 250,000 people on August 28, 1963, will be up for auction at Christie's on January 22, 2027.
Following a public week-long viewing in New York, the document is expected to fetch over $10 million at its single-lot sale. (Christie's did not publicly release an estimate.)
In the late 1990s, Xernona Clayton, a civil rights leader and pioneering broadcaster, discovered the papers in a desk drawer belonging to Edward T. Clayton, her late husband and one of Dr. King's speechwriters and close advisors.
Two years ago, she happened upon the manuscript again and worked with Christie's and her advisor, Eddie Bridgeman, to identify it as the only known handwritten final draft of the speech.
