Nestled in the archives of the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita, there’s an early draft of a speech written by civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
The document, from the 1960s, is not on public display because curators worry that exposing it to light could damage it over time. It’s kept behind the scenes, under historical preservation in a climate-controlled room.
“I got to open it up out of our acid-free folder here,” said museum education manager Matt Dwier. “It’s got a handwritten portion here from Dr. King, along with some typewriter bits it looks like it was probably the beginnings of a speech.”
All the writing is on one page with no signature or writing on the back. It says: “Let me say finally, that we must all maintain faith in the future as we struggle to make justice a reality, we do not struggle alone, but God struggles with us. The God that we worship is not…since right departed is stronger than evil triumphant. So, I can say more than ever before, we shall overcome.”
“I feel like, for anyone who's really familiar with the writings and speeches of Dr. King, this is right up his wheelhouse,” Dwier said. “It looks like it was written pre-1965, it seems like it might be a bit of a draft. And so, when I was doing my transcribing and writing some of the lines to see if compared to some of his other speeches that we could put up, the ‘We Shall Overcome’ speech was the one that was coming up the most. So, this could potentially just be a draft of that, or he might have used some of these ideas, or formulated these ideas and then used them later on for that. But that seems the most likely.”
Dweir notes that the left part of the page has a stain. He surmises that it could be spilt coffee or a drink.
“As a historian, when you're looking at items like this, you're taking in as much of it as you can, to go, ‘Okay, what is this?’” Dwier said. “And so I'm thinking it's a draft of a speech, because it's got those ellipses in there.”
It appears that as King was typing, he turned to writing the rest of the draft in longhand.
“These writings here are a collection of ideas that are brewing,” Dwier said. “They're not fully formed yet. He had to kind of sit on them, think about them, really decide what was going to be the most impactful. Because obviously he was a great speaker. His public speeches are some of the most important in American history.”
Dwier said looking at the letter is helpful and positive. Reading it and transcribing it gave him hope for the future.
“I think for a lot of Americans, we are dealing with a very uncertain time,” Dwier said. “People aren't sure of how they're supposed to react, what they should do, and so reading these words from one of the greatest Americans ever, and seeing how he worded it, how he dealt with difficult times with this certain positivity.”
The Martin Luther King, Jr. document remains in a protected space at the museum. It’s housed in an acid-free folder that prevents any buildup of acids and oils.
“The next step that we do normally alongside that is it would go in one of our little boxes over here in a low light area, because paper is really bad at actually holding on to ink and lead and anything that's written on it, and so having light shown on it will damage it over time, and that writing will fade,” Dwier said.
Dwier compares preserving the document to the upkeep of the Declaration of Independence.
“If you ever go see it in Washington, DC., it's in a box that has no oxygen,” Dwier said. "It's super low light because it's super faded at this point from the light degradation.”
The museum tries to keep the MLK letter away from as much light as possible. If it were to ever go on exhibit, it would be for a very short amount of time. Dwier also floats the possibility of making a duplication for display.
“We [could] try and have facsimiles, professional copies of them, made, so that they can actually withstand the light, but we can keep the original safe,” Dwier said.
When asked when an exhibit might take place, Dwier said it doesn’t match any of the current exhibits’ themes, but he said it was possible down the line.
“I can see a spot for it in the future,” Dwier said, “and I hope that we can make that happen alongside some of the other wonderful items that we have hiding back here in our collection space.”
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