Vintage 1960s MLK Martin Luther King Large Memorial Postcard 🃏 NOS Sum Ho Bun Lee DC

How Was Dr. King Remembered? 🕊️ Vintage 1960s Martin Luther King Memorial Postcard, Large 9x6, NOS

Size: 9" x 6"

🕊️ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a painted portrait, the American flag waving behind him through the clouds, leafy branches at his shoulders, and a banner across the bottom that says I HAVE A DREAM. It's a big memorial postcard from Washington, D.C., made after his death in 1968, and this one has never been written on or mailed.

🔍 What's On It

The front is all black and white: Dr. King in a suit and tie, the flag behind him, the branches, and the scroll banner. The back is plain cream with STAMP and ADDRESS guides and, up in the corner, the memorial line "He left for the mountaintop to witness the glories of the Lord.—Dr. Martin Luther King, 1929-1968." Printed up the middle is the artist's credit, Sum Ho Bun Lee, Washington, D. C., and at the lower left Distributed by AAA Novelty Co., Washington, D. C. There's no date or copyright line, and the 1968 in the memorial line is what dates it.

The portrait is the work of Sum Ho Bun Lee, a Washington, D.C. artist, and it's a well-known image of Dr. King - the same picture was also printed as a full-size 10" x 8" print with the same credit down in the corner. AAA Novelty Co. handled the postcards. The portrait even made it into art history: Sum Ho Bun Lee's name appears in Reimar Zeller's 1998 German book Prediger des Evangeliums ("Preachers of the Gospel"), a study of preachers in art across 281 plates that runs from the Reformation all the way to Martin Luther King.

It's the big size, about 6" across and 9" tall, a lot larger than an ordinary postcard. Most MLK postcards you'll find are regular postcard size, and you don't see this big one very often.

⛰️ The Mountaintop

The line on the back goes straight to his last speech. On April 3, 1968, Dr. King spoke at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to support the city's striking sanitation workers. At the end he said he had been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land, and that he might not get there with them, and he closed with the words of the hymn, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord." He was assassinated in Memphis the next day, April 4, 1968. The card's memorial line is an echo of those last words.

And the front takes you back to Washington, to the speech everybody knows. Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963. A card made and sold in Washington put those words right across the bottom of his portrait.

📏 Details

• Vintage 1960s Martin Luther King Jr. memorial postcard, "I Have a Dream" banner and flag
• Back: the mountaintop memorial line and Dr. King's dates, 1929-1968
• Portrait by Sum Ho Bun Lee, distributed by AAA Novelty Co., both of Washington, D.C.
• Large format, about 9" x 6", unused and unmailed, New Old Stock
• You'll get one postcard like the ones shown

🖼️ At this size it fills a frame like a small print. It's a meaningful piece for a home office, a classroom, a church hallway or anywhere you want to remember Dr. King.