King's 'Dream' speech text sits in a bank vault. Or does it?

• Mystery surrounds original text of King%27s %27Dream%27 speech
• Security aide at March on Washington says he keeps the original in a Los Angeles bank vault
• George Raveling says he has been offered %243.5 million for the artifact but won%27t sell it

Whatever happened to the three-page speech Martin Luther King took to the lectern at the March on Washington 50 years ago? A former college basketball coach says he's got it in a Los Angeles bank vault.

George Raveling says he got the copy from King himself as the civil rights leader stepped from the podium amid thunderous applause from an audience of about a quarter million on the National Mall.

"I said, 'Dr. King, can I have your copy?' and he handed it to me,'' says Raveling, then a 26-year-old assistant coach at Villanova who'd been asked to provide security at the march.

Raveling says he later stuffed the typed script inside a book and didn't think much more about it for 20 years. It's never been in a museum or on public display, and it's been examined by only one scholar.

But was Raveling's text the only one King had with him on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial?

Raveling's copy contains no handwriting or notations by King, who -- on the rare occasions he used a script -- usually hand-marked his prepared copy with additions and deletions before speaking, according to former aides such as Andrew Young and Clarence Jones.

Drew Hansen, a Seattle lawyer and state legislator who wrote a book on King's march speech, has examined Raveling's copy. He says he believes it came from King. But since it's unmarked by King, Hansen suggests that King had two copies at the podium -- one he edited and one he kept clean, in case he wanted to refer to the original.

Although King's aides agree that it would have been extraordinary had he not marked up his speech copy, they disagree on Hansen's two-text hypothesis.

Jones, King's lawyer and speech writer, says Hansen's idea is implausible -- "That was not (King's) style.''

But Andrew Young, former congressman, United Nations ambassador and mayor of Atlanta, says its possible there were two texts: "When Martin finished speaking he'd always fold up his speech and put it in his inside pocket. … But there were many other copies of that speech available, and he might have given (Raveling) one.''

King had finished work on his speech before dawn. His hand-written version (whereabouts today unknown) was typed and mimeographed. About 300 copies were distributed to journalists and others before the speech. Many survive today, including one in the collection of the King Center in Atlanta.

Those advance copies bear a handwritten copyright symbol, added by King staffers shortly before they were handed out. Raveling's copy does not have one, suggesting it's not a media copy and more likely to have been King's.

If King did not mark his copy -- if it was like hundreds of others -- he might have been more willing to hand it off to a stranger.

There's no question Raveling had an opportunity to ask King for the speech. A photo in Ebony magazine shows him on the speakers' platform next to King.

Raveling later became head men's basketball coach at Washington State, Iowa and Southern California and an assistant coach on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal in Los Angeles.

Raveling says on the night before the march he and a friend were asked by a march organizer to be volunteer security marshals. They returned the next morning and were given credentials and white caps.

King's speech became known as "I Have a Dream'' after he extemporaneously inserted the inspirational passage into his prepared speech. (Raveling's copy, accordingly, does not include that part of the speech. Raveling himself has marked, with a line and an asterisk, the point where King departed from his text.)

After he finished -- "Thank God almighty, we are free at last!'' -- King pivoted left on the podium, taking his papers off the lectern in his right hand.

Raveling says that after handing over the speech, King was about to say something to him when he was interrupted by a rabbi who congratulated him.

Raveling says that after the march he placed the speech inside a copy of Harry S Truman's memoirs (autographed by Truman with a personal inscription to Raveling, who met Truman on a trip to Missouri with a basketball all-star team).

Why there? "I knew I'd never lose or throw out a book with a former president's signature,'' he says.

Today, Raveling's speech is framed. Its legal-sized pages are yellowed and wrinkled, and appear to have staple holes. Raveling says he used to keep it at home, until his wife worried that it might be a burglary target.

Clayborne Carson, the Stanford historian who is editor of King's papers, is one of several experts skeptical of Raveling. "If you have it, make it visible,'' he says. "Why not put it on display? Why not sell it, or do something with it?''

Raveling admits to ambivalence. He says he's proud to have a memento of his brush with history but doesn't want to trade on or profit from it. As for sharing, he says the only scholar who's asked to see it was Hansen.

Now, Raveling says, "I'll probably try to revisit (the subject), maybe have it in a museum, some place on public display. '' He says he plans to leave it to his children with a stipulation it not be sold.

Kenneth Rendell, an expert on rare documents, says Raveling's copy would appear to be a precious historic artifact: "Twenty to twenty five million dollars would not be out of line. That was the high point of the civil rights movement.''

Raveling says he's been offered $3.5 million but "I have no intention of selling it, because I don't believe it's my property. I'm just the guardian. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.''