The I had a dream speech was plagiarized . It was written by Stanley Levison

1. Draft collaborators, not a secret sole author

Multiple reputable accounts state that the speech’s initial framework was prepared with the assistance of Stanley Levison and Clarence Benjamin Jones, who worked with King in the weeks before the March on Washington ^{[1] [5] [3]}. Contemporary and later reporting—along with institutional summaries—describe Levison and Jones producing early drafts and logistical frameworks, not that either man quietly published the speech under his own name or replaced King as its author ^{[1] [2]}.

2. King’s revision and the improvised peroration

Scholars and witnesses agree that King revised the prepared text the night before and the morning of August 28, 1963, and that a famous peroration—the repeated “I have a dream” section—was delivered after Mahalia Jackson prompted King from the audience, an improvised flourish that became the speech’s defining moment ^{[1] [3]}. Those facts point to a collaborative authorship process typical of major public speeches, with the orator himself shaping the final rhetorical form ^{[6] [1]}.

3. The difference between drafting help and plagiarism

Plagiarism implies unattributed copying presented as one’s original work; the record here shows acknowledged assistants and a public, iterative drafting process, not clandestine theft. While King did “borrow” lines and imagery from traditions, sermons, and earlier texts—common practice among orators and intellectuals—scholars distinguish that intertextuality from systematic plagiarism of the entire address ^{[6] [1]}. Reporting that flags King’s confirmed appropriation in other contexts—such as portions of his doctoral thesis—should not be conflated mechanically with the March on Washington speech without specific evidence ^[4].

4. Why the Levison narrative became a political cudgel

Levison’s past left-leaning activism and past ties to Communist circles made him a target of FBI scrutiny and political pressure on King, and the Kennedy administration urged King to distance himself from Levison—concerns that introduced motive for some critics to allege improper authorship or influence ^{[7] [8]}. Sources such as the Stanford King Institute document government attempts to exploit Levison’s reputation to discredit King, showing that accusations about Levison’s role sometimes came framed by anti-communist agendas rather than textual evidence about the speech itself ^{[7] [8]}.

5. How historians and institutions report the facts

Institutional and journalistic accounts—Wikipedia’s summary, historical write-ups, and contemporary journalism—consistently describe a collaborative drafting process with Levison and Jones as key aides, and they credit King with the final rhetorical ownership through revisions and performance ^{[2] [1] [5] [3]}. Critical treatments that highlight King’s borrowing in other writings (e.g., the Boston University findings referenced in popular debunking pieces) are part of a broader, more nuanced scholarly assessment of his corpus and do not establish that Levison authored or plagiarized the “I Have a Dream” speech ^[4].

6. Bottom line and limits of available reporting

The available sources converge on a clear bottom line: Stanley Levison helped draft early versions of the speech, Clarence B. Jones was also a principal drafter, and Martin Luther King Jr. revised, improvised, and delivered the speech that became iconic; the claim that Levison wrote it alone or that it was plagiarized lacks support in the cited reporting ^{[2] [1] [6] [3]}. This assessment is limited to the provided sources; if additional archival documents or new scholarship were produced, they could nuance authorship questions further, but current mainstream accounts do not validate the assertion that Levison was the singular author or that the speech was stolen ^{[1] [2]}.