MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY
He was a big, young guy, George Raveling was in those days, a Washington, D.C., kid who had gone up to Philly to play college basketball at Villanova, but one who had followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for years, even as Raveling had followed his basketball dreams. Now on this day in August 1963, one that will always be remembered in this country, Raveling and a friend had followed Dr. King to Washington to hear him give a speech that became the rousing valediction for the civil rights movement in America, as he put words to a different kind of dream, about equality and fairness and justice, for all. “I went down there that day to listen to history,” George Raveling was saying Sunday, “and ended up being a part of it.”
He will turn 80 in June, and has had a long and wonderful and honorable basketball life. He was a head coach at Washington State and became the first African-American coach at Iowa and later coached at the University of Southern California, and now is a roving ambassador to his game for Nike.
But he was telling now about how he came to work security at the podium that day at the Lincoln Memorial in August of ’63, and how the hard copy of Dr. King’s speech has been in his possession for nearly 54 years.
Raveling was asked on Sunday how much he has been offered for that speech over the years.
“Millions,” George Raveling said, and laughed, and then said, “But it’s not for sale.”
He had heard Dr. King speak before. But now came the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and Raveling was visiting a friend, Warren Wilson, the son of a prominent Delaware dentist actually named Dr. Woodrow Wilson.
He and Warren wanted to be in Washington to hear King and a young guy named John Lewis — now Rep. Lewis, a great American in Congress still and in the news for all the wrong reasons this weekend — but said he couldn’t afford the trip.
Dr. Wilson said he would front them both the money. They drove to Washington from Claymont, Del., and stayed at a motel on New York Ave. The day before the rally they were at the National Mall, walking around, taking in the sights and imagining, Raveling says, what tomorrow would look like and sound like.
Raveling is 6-feet-4 and Warren Wilson was 6-feet-3, and someone asked them if they wanted to work security at the podium the next day.
Raveling said, “They just liked that we were big, in case there was any trouble. We even had to learn the exit plan if there was. One of the first things they showed us was the escape route.”
Raveling said that all of the speakers, including Lewis, there as the president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, were asked to keep their speeches to five minutes, and submit them in advance. Some, he said, refused.
One of the reasons why the ending to Dr. King’s speech, the part about having a dream, the part that will once again become the soundtrack of America on Monday, was not included in his copy is because King was afraid it would look as if his speech would run too long.
“But they wanted him to go at the end,” Raveling said. “They knew he would have the crowd in the palm of his hand.”
Raveling laughed and said, “I think John Lewis had to change his speech 15 times.”
There was no trouble that day, just the thrill that ran through the crowd in front of King as the power in him kept building, as he spoke to the best of us, to the best America, five years before he became a victim of the worst of it — gun violence, the same as Robert F. Kennedy was a victim of gun violence that year.
Then the speech was ending, and Dr. King’s voice was rising, as if to the heavens, and Mahalia Jackson, the gospel singer, was shouting, “Tell him about the dream, Martin.” And he did.
And then it really was over, and Rev. King was coming down from the podium, papers in his hand, and George Raveling, the basketball kid from Villanova, said, “Dr. King, can I have it?” meaning the speech, and King simply handed it to him.
“It was everything he believed,” Raveling said, “all the good he carried inside him, all the courage. It was Washington and Selma and Montgomery. All of it.”
In pictures from the day, as the benediction is being given, there is the young George Raveling, to the left of the podium.
The three pages, framed, are in a vault now, in Los Angeles, because Raveling’s wife began to worry about having a document like this in their house as more and more people came to know Raveling’s story from that day.
For years he kept the pages inside a copy of President Harry Truman’s biography that Truman had signed for Raveling once, when he had come out to play an East-West All-Star Game in Kansas City and traveled to Independence, Mo., to meet Truman.
“I knew I’d never lose the speech,” Raveling said, “because I was never going to lose a book Harry Truman had signed to me.”
So the book and the speech traveled with him across a life, and a basketball life. It was more than the speech, of course. It was the day, and the moment. It was having that speech delivered, by that man, right in front of him. It was being a part of history.
Raveling thinks he first told a reporter about it when he got to Iowa. The reporter, excited, asked where it was. Raveling said, “In a box downstairs we haven’t unpacked yet.” They went downstairs. There it was.
“You know something else I remember?” Raveling said. “I remember when we were driving back to Delaware. Seven at night. The thing’s been over for a couple of hours. And there’s still this traffic jam of cars trying to get back into Washington. Like they still wanted to be a part of the day, even though the day was over.”
George Raveling was asked what he thinks about, all this time later, when he hears the speech. What he will think about on Monday when he hears it again.
“How close I was to majesty,” he said. “And how then it was in my hands.”