Vintage 1960s MLK "I Have a Dream" Commemorative Print 🖼️ Washington DC Civil Rights Memorial Poster, NOS Sum Ho Bun Lee

Remember "I Have a Dream"? 🖼️ Vintage 1960s Martin Luther King Commemorative Print, Washington DC, NOS

Size: 10" x 8"

🕊 This vintage 1960s commemorative Martin Luther King print is a clean new old stock (NOS) survivor from the years just after Dr. King’s assassination. Created in Washington, D.C. by artist Sum Ho Bun Lee, it shows Dr. King with the American flag behind him and a flowing banner that reads “I HAVE A DREAM,” turning a few words from his 1963 speech into a daily reminder on the wall. At about 10" x 8", it’s perfectly sized to frame.

📍 The artwork comes out of Washington, D.C., the city where Dr. King delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” address at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington. The way people in D.C. tell it, in the years after 1968 memorial prints like this were sold in shops and church basements around the city and hung in living rooms, classrooms, and sanctuaries as people looked for a way to keep his message present in everyday life.

🎤 August 28, 1963

Dr. King gave the speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, in front of a crowd of roughly 250,000 people. The best-known part wasn't in his prepared text. The story goes that Mahalia Jackson, standing nearby, called out "Tell them about the dream, Martin!" and he set his notes aside and spoke the lines this banner borrows.

🕯️ How a Memorial Print Was Built

A face over a flag, laurel leaves at the shoulders and a ribbon banner below is an old American formula for honoring the dead, used on memorial prints going back to Lincoln. What's different here is the line chosen for the banner: not a date or a farewell, but the most hopeful thing he ever said. The same Sum Ho Bun Lee portrait was also sold as a large postcard, and dealers name AAA Novelty Co. of Washington on those. The artist's name even turns up in a 1998 German art-history book, Reimar Zeller's Prediger des Evangeliums, a study of preachers in art that runs from the Reformation to Martin Luther King.

The holiday came later: President Reagan signed it into law in 1983 and it was first observed in 1986, and in 2011 the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial opened on the Mall, not far from where he spoke. Yours is unused and matches the one shown.

🖼️ Sum Ho Bun Lee’s composition is full of period detail: the soft sky and cloud backdrop, the carefully rendered flag, the ribboned “I HAVE A DREAM” banner, and Dr. King’s calm, thoughtful expression. Printed in rich black and white, it has that specific late‑1960s look, right down to the small Washington, D.C. credit line at the bottom margin.

📚 This print sits at the crossroads of art and civil‑rights history. It’s a piece of original 1960s memorial ephemera, part of the wave of buttons, postcards, church programs, and posters that sprang up as communities tried to honor Dr. King’s work and mourn his loss. These were never displayed, so each one is ready to go straight into a frame.

🏡 As décor, it brings quiet strength into a space. Framed simply in black, wood, or metal, it works beautifully in a home office, study, reading nook, hallway, classroom, or church, and it pairs naturally with historic newspapers, books, or photographs from the civil‑rights era. It’s the kind of piece guests notice, step closer to read, and then talk about.

You will receive one original vintage 1960s Sum Ho Bun Lee “I Have a Dream” Martin Luther King memorial print from Washington, D.C., approximately 10" x 8", in clean, bright NOS, unused condition—an original civil‑rights era tribute ready to mat and frame.