[bsk26]

from your link, "The speech was drafted with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones[12] in Riverdale, New York City."

"written" and "drafted with assistance" arn't quite the same thing. Though imo it's a silly point regardless.

[sambeau]

It is on the record that the speech was written by them rather than written "with their assistance". Obviously MLK would have had input (and veto).

There was an interesting interview with one of them on British TV last year and he said as much particularly he claimed the "I have a dream" part.

[moldbug]

No, they're not quite the same thing. "Drafted with assistance" is a coy, euphemistic way to say "written by."

Here's Jones' own recollection of the process (http://nexoscapital.com/articles_pdf/TheManWho_06-04.pdf). With some cuts:

When King headed to Atlanta just days before the march, Jones and Levison stayed in New York to craft the speech. They titled it "Normalcy -- Never Again." After three drafts, they got a copy to King, who made crucial substantive changes. Then, on the evening before the event, they all rendezvoused in the Willard Hotel, in Washington, DC. King, in essence, held court in the lobby and listened to all his key advisers' suggestions. "Martin kept saying, 'Clarence, are you taking notes?' Jones recalls. And I said, 'Yes.' We both kinda rolled our eyes at each other. The other leaders were determined to tell Martin what to say and how to say it.'

"I visited Martin in his hotel suite that evening," Andrew Young remembers. "Martin was working away, editing the speech text, desperate to find the exact right word for every sentence. Clarence was coming and going, giving Martin encouragement and ideas."

By five A.M., King's speech had been mimeographed and was being passed out to the press. When informed two hours later of the document's dissemination, Jones put an immediate halt to it. "I called Martin in his room and said, 'You know, this could be a major speech, and I'm concerned that you are protective of the ownership of this. So we've got to be sure it's not published... don't give up the copyright.' Little did I anticipate that my act of moderate wisdom would be deemed as the most prescient service I rendered for King."

Jones roots around his office and eventually produces the original 1963 copyright application for the "I Have a Dream" address. Jones had ensured that the speech would not become part of the public domain but would instead belong to King and, eventually, his heirs. "Whenever oral recordings or republications of the speech are sold without permission from the King Estate," Jones boasts, "a lawsuit occurs."

When King finished the speech, he came over and shook his cohort's hand. "You was smoking," a euphoric Jones told him. "The words was so hot they was just burning off the page!"

[bjornsing]

This is to me the most surprising aspect of this whole story, that Jones (and King?) at the height of a historic moment was thinking about... copyright. I can't believe that there was a commercial motivation behind this at the time, yet Jones really gives that impression in the interview.