Liverpool tourism officials have claimed that African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech was written at a city centre hotel.
The claim has been made in a guide to a major art event entitled ‘Liverpool Discovers’. A map in the guide shows over 20 locations where famous people were born along with places associated with celebrities and events in their lives.
“Martin Luther King visited his supporters in Liverpool three times, and the first draft of his famous ‘I have a dream’ speech is alleged to be written on Adelphi Hotel headed notepaper,” The Telegraph quoted the guide, as proclaiming.
A Liverpool Discovers spokesman said that all facts have come from a public consultation, where they asked people to submit what they knew about Liverpool.
“They are not official; they are just things about Liverpool that many people may not know. As you will appreciate it is sometimes difficult to prove historical facts, and we have run the map by local historians to best verify what appeared,” the spokesman said.
King’s biographer, Godfrey Hodgson, however said the suggestion did not fit facts. “I just don’t believe it to be true. If he had gone to Liverpool there would have been substantial coverage, as he would have been a big figure by then,” Hodgson said.
“Dr King did visit the UK on a number of occasions, but he was not in Britain around the time of this famous speech in 1963,” he added.
The ‘I have a dream’ speech is 17-minutes long and was delivered in August 1963. King used the speech to call for racial equality and an end to discrimination.
The speech, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the ‘March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom’, was a defining moment of the American civil rights movement.
Delivered to over 200,000 civil rights supporters, the speech was ranked among the top American speeches of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.