The woman behind MLK's 'I have a dream' riff
Monday, Aug. 28, marks the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, delivered in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
But did you know that Dr. King's unforgettable key phrase, "I have a dream," was not in the original draft of his speech? It was not even going to be a part of his speech up to the time he delivered it.
It's true.
Clarence B. Jones was a lawyer, an adviser and assistant speechwriter for Dr. King. Jones was hired as a young attorney by Martin three years earlier, in 1960. (Jones is currently a scholar in residence and visiting professor at Stanford University's Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.)
In his book "Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation," Jones explained that it was after a big meeting of civil rights leaders that Jones penned the first draft of King's 1963 March on Washington speech.
Jones explained that he simply put together a summary of ideas they had talked about on a few different occasions.
WTOP News reported, "As was customary in their relationship of speechwriter and speech-giver, King took the draft to tweak it and make his own. Jones didn't see the final draft."
But on Aug. 28, before a crowd of 250,000 people, "as King made his way through the first several paragraphs of the [actual] speech, Jones realized King had not changed a word he had written."
In the hours leading up to his actual speech, King of course added his own paragraphs onto Jones' suggestions. In fact, we're told King worked on it until the early morning hours of the 28th.
What's amazing is that the words "I have a dream" were nowhere in either Jones or King's prepared drafts.
That's where singer, Mahalia Jackson, stepped in.
By 1963, Jackson was already a legend in Gospel music. Way back in 1950, she became the first Gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall. She even sang at President John F. Kennedy's inaugural ball in 1961.
Jackson was King's favorite singer. He once explained to a crowd that the spirit-led singing of his "great friend" Mahalia Jackson is "a voice [that] comes along only once in a millennium."
That is why before King took the stage to speak at his March on Washington, Jackson belted out the Negro spirituals "How I Got Over" and "I've Been 'Buked, and I've Been Scorned."
Both Clarence Jones and Mahalia Jackson sat behind King as he delivered his famous Washington speech on that hot summer day.
His message started out like an airplane taxing and taking off on a runway. Dr. King spoke truths somberly, safe and somewhat methodologically as he read from the manuscript Jones and he had prepared.
And then this happened.
As history.com reported, Jackson "intervened at a critical junction when she decided King's speech needed a course-correction. Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, 'Tell them about the dream, Martin.'"
Jackson had seen him deliver the dream refrain a few months earlier in a speech in Detroit, and she must have known in her spirit that it could have a particular impact at that very moment. (Stanford MLK Research and Education Institute documented "synthesized portions of his previous sermons and speeches, with selected statements by other prominent public figures," as resources for King's "I have a dream" speech.)
Maybe it was, as history.com wrote, that Jackson thought King's "speech needed a course correction" – a bit more spark or punch. Then again, maybe it wasn't that direct. Having been with Martin on so many speaking occasions, maybe Jackson simply felt he was "too locked into his manuscript" and needed to "let go and let God."
Whatever the exact reason, it worked.
Speechwriter and close confidant Jones noticed right after Jackson shouted the words, "Tell them about the dream, Martin," that he glanced over momentarily at Jackson. King then pushed his speech notes to the left side of the podium, and extemporaneously and spontaneously spoke freely from his heart and mind about his dream.
When Jones noticed Martin pushing his notes to the side of the lectern, he told a person sitting next to him, "These people out there. They don't know it, but they're about to go to church!"
A few months later, in an interview on Nov. 29, 1963, King explained to Donald H. Smith that the "I have a dream" moment happened this way: "I started out reading the speech, and I read it down to a point … the audience response was wonderful that day. … And all of a sudden this thing came to me that … I'd used many times before … 'I have a dream.' And I just felt that I wanted to use it here. … I used it, and at that point I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether. I didn't come back to it." (Italics mine.)
Though Dr. King didn't credit his great friend and favorite singer Mahalia Jackson by name as the turning point in his great speech, her shout to him on that day is what prompted the "all of a sudden this thing came to me" moment. Whether he realized it or not, an angel in the form of a Gospel singer inspired the orator and his message.
Five years later, on Apr. 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in broad daylight.
The assassin took Martin's life but not his dream.
At MLK's funeral, Mahalia Jackson sang one more time for her friend. She honored his last request by singing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."
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