Forty years ago today (2003 article), George Raveling found himself on stage as Martin Luther King delivered his ?I Have a Dream? speech. Raveling had just finished a career as an All-American basketball player at Villanova. Ahead of him were more than 30 years as a highly successful college basketball coach. But on August 28, 1963, he beacame forever connected with the civil rights movement when a triumphant King, waving goodbye to an audience of over 200,000 "March on Washington" participants gave Raveling the original typewritten "I Have a Dream" speech.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,478839,00.htmlHow a gangly 24-year-old ex-basketball star and volunteer security guard became the guardian of the speech is an amazing story of raw chutzpah and plain dumb luck. It began the night before at the dinner table of Dr. Woodrow and Lucile Wilson in Wilmington, Delaware. They were the parents of Raveling's best friend Warren Wilson, a fellow basketball player from Villanova. Nearly 100,000 people were expected to march on Washington the following day demanding a $2 minimum wage, passage of a meaningful civil rights bill, desegregation of schools, a federal public-works job program and the barring of unfair employment practices. As dessert was being served, Dr. Wilson declared, "You guys take the car and head to Washington, you've got to be involved with this." He gave them gas money and bear hugs goodbye. "So we drove down that night," Raveling recalls.
Raveling and Wilson arrived at the designated rendezvous spot the next morning an hour early and were assigned to the speakers? dias. Already people were pouring onto the grassy lawns surrounding the reflection pool. By 9:30 am there were 40,000 participants with the number swelling to an estimated 100,000 by noon.
King ended his oration with the unforgettable line: "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last." With sweat pouring out of him, he stepped back, blotted his forehead with a handkerchief, and waved farewell as he headed off the crowded makeshift platform. That's when Raveling made his move.
"I was only about four people off to the side of King," he remembers. "I don't know what possessed me but I walked up to King and calmly asked ?Can I have that copy?' Without hesitating he turned and handed it to me. And just as he did a rabbi on the other side came and said something to him, congratulating him on his speech and that was essentially the end of it as far as me acquiring the speech. Of course nobody, including myself, realized that this was going to take on the historical significance that it did."
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