Clarence Jones, who helped the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. write the “I Have A Dream Speech,” told a Television Critics Association panel in 2013 how the most famous part of the speech came spontaneously.
It was Aug. 28, 1963: King was speaking to hundreds of thousands at the Lincoln Memorial, and millions watching on TV, when suddenly singer Mahalia Jackson called out. Here is what Jones said:
Very few people know — most people do not know — that the speech that he gave was not the speech that he had intended to give. … As he was reading from the text of his prepared remarks, there came a point when Mahalia Jackson, who was sitting on the platform, said, “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream.”