I don’t think the President is going to authorize the strikes on Syria today- he is speaking from the Lincoln Memorial, from the very place where one of my American heroes uttered the wards that ring down the decades.

(Stan Levison and Clarence Jones)

The prepared speech- done the night before by New York businessman Stan Levison and lawyer Clarence Jones- was a compilation of several previous efforts, including an address that harnessed the “dream” imagery and which electrified the crowd at Cobo Hall after the 125,000 person “Great March on Detroit” in June of 1963.

I remember feeling a little apprehensive about the march when it happened, that summer. I was between Baldwin Elementary School and starting seventh grade at Barnum Junior High. It seemed to be a time of change everywhere.

Little did I know the events of the next few months would be so seared into our collective memory- the lofty and emotional words of Doctor King being punctuated by the news on the public address system in seventh period Industrial Arts class with Mr. Collins that the President of the United States had been assassinated in Dallas.

The world seemed to have come unhinged. That was the start of something that is not over yet, nor is the cause for which Doctor King rose to address on this late-summer day fifty years ago.

I would publish it, but the speech is copyrighted, owned by Dr. King’s estate, and you have to pay to use it or face potential legal action.

Because the speech was broadcast to a large radio and television audience- of which I was just one of millions of recipients, there was controversy about the copyright status of the speech.

Obviously, the broadcast of the performance of the speech constituted “general publication” and thus is properly in the public domain, just as Mr. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was.

Of course, the written speech by Messrs.’ Levison and Jones are not the words Dr. King wove into legend. You can credit the magnificent gospel singer Mahalia Jackson for that part.

(Mahalia Jackson sings at the March on Washington, 1963. Photo AP)

Dr. King was well into the prepared remarks when Ms Jackson shouted out from the crowd: “Tell them about the dream, Martin!”

Dr. King stopped delivering the script as prepared and launched into full Preacher Mode, and that is when the speech entered the small canon of the greatest public remarks in American history, his words soaring above the crowd.

I have often been to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial- we used to run that way from the Pentagon- but I felt the impact of the rich profundo of Dr. King’s rhetoric in the nave of the original Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, near the organ where his mother was shot down by a deranged gunman in 1974, six years after her son was shot down.

Few families, except perhaps the Kennedys, have given so much for their nation.

When Dr. King had given his speech for the ages, he folded the three typescript pages and was about to tuck them in his pocket. He thought so little of the text from which he had departed that when all-star basketball player George Raveling, who had volunteered to serve as security for the official party, approached him and asked for the paper, Dr. King handed it over.

(George Raveling and his Villanova coach Alex Severance (1959) – Instagram)

In later years, Raveling said it appeared the Dr. was going to say something, but he was approached by someone else and turned away. Raveling has had the speech all these years, and been offered millions for it.

He refuses to sell, and has decided it is the legacy of all African Americans, and will be his bequest to his kids, on the provision that they never offer it for sale.

So that is about what he thought about the significance of the words- they were there for all who could hear to listen and act. Dr. King did not file the address with the Registrar of Copyrights, but the family decided that the historic remarks constituted only “limited publication” and sued CBS, which had broadcast the full speech.

The courts ruled that the estate in fact retained the rights to the speech, and the parties settled.

I could excerpt the remarks, claiming “fair use,” but I do not have time this morning to get in a beef with the King Family. I probably will never be able to quote the whole address until the copyright expires after seventy years, in 2038.

That is well beyond what I expect to be allotted in my time on the planet, so unless someone turns that around, I will just have to accept what I cannot change.

Dr. King did not. He had a dream.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303