After long struggle MLK has home on National Mall
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
After long struggle, MLK has home on National Mall
By: Brett Zongker, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - On the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a
Dream" speech, a towering memorial will honor the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. as a man of peace among the many monuments to wars
and presidents in the nation's capital. The road to this weekend's
dedication, however, has run through hurdles of all kinds - not
unlike the long struggle over King's legacy itself.
Since King's death, there have been financial worries at the
King Center in Atlanta, and legal fights over the use of his image
and words and over control of the civil rights organization he
co-founded.
Many people wanted to help shape King's bricks-and-mortar legacy
as well, the first memorial for a black leader on the National
Mall. There were skirmishes over who would sculpt King's likeness,
where the granite would come from and who would profit from the
mammoth $120 million fundraising effort as the family demanded a
licensing fee to support its Atlanta priorities.
Overall costs for the memorial rose over time, and the
government demanded tougher security amid threats of domestic
terrorism, dragging the project 15 years from the time Congress
authorized it in 1996 and 27 years from when King's fraternity
first proposed it.
Lesser hurdles have halted others who aspired to build monuments
on the mall.
"We have persevered," said Harry Johnson, a 56-year-old Houston
attorney and Alpha Phi Alpha member who for the past 11 years led
an effort that culminates Sunday with a massive ceremony featuring
President Barack Obama. "Even though we've had dark days and dark
clouds, we were able to always see a silver lining in the sky,
knowing, understanding and believing it was always going to
happen."
One of the darkest days was 9/11, Johnson said, because the
memorial foundation was set to go public with its fundraising
campaign but had to put plans on hold as the country recovered.
Then came the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters,
plus an economic downturn, all of which made raising donations even
more daunting.
Race, too, was a factor in the struggle over how the memorial
would be conceived.
The surprise selection of a Chinese sculptor for King's statue
in 2007 eventually drew protests. A black painter launched a
petition to try to force a change, saying black artists should have
first rights to interpret the memory of the man who did so much for
his fellow African-Americans. A bronze sculptor from Denver
complained he was pushed aside. Human rights advocates chimed in,
saying King would have detested China's record on civil
liberties.
Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., 62, who oversaw the design
process for 15 years, concedes he may have been naive to think
others would easily see the power of sculptor Lei Yixin's concept
and the mastery of his work.
"Politics can actually change the color of your lens ... and
some of the comments were out of ignorance," Jackson said.
Still, the memorial foundation maintained King was inclusive of
all people and never wavered from the selection of a Chinese
sculptor. Jackson said he tried to insulate Lei, even as a federal
arts panel criticized the design as too "confrontational."
Early tours of the memorial by church leaders and civil rights
veterans gave Jackson a sense of affirmation he made the right
choice.
___
King's likeness rises a full 30 feet to watch over the memorial
landscape. The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner stands with his arms
crossed, carved from a "stone of hope," looking toward the horizon.
The central theme is King as a symbol of hope emerging from a
boulder - a "mountain of despair," as King said in his 1963 "Dream"
speech.
Visitors pass through a narrow opening in the "mountain" to
symbolize the struggle for civil rights before entering an open
plaza. They won't discover King's statue right away. Designers
intend for waterfalls to draw visitors to either side of the plaza
to first see curving granite walls carved with 14 quotations from
King, none of which is from the "Dream" speech - organizers said
they wanted to focus on some of King's powerful but lesser-known
words, such as his Nobel acceptance remarks and his "Letter from
Birmingham Jail."
Originally, Jackson planned to fill the plaza with magnolia,
pine and crepe myrtle trees to tie the landscape to the son of
Georgia. Later, he learned Washington's famed cherry blossoms reach
full bloom each April at the time when King was assassinated, so
the design was changed to include 185 cherry trees.
The granite for King's statue was chosen because when lit at
night, it lends a brownish tone to King's likeness. The stone,
however, only exists in China, Jackson said; some wanted it to come
from the United States.
King's statue stands taller than other human figures on the
mall, though it does not seem overwhelming, said Thomas Luebke, an
architect who serves as secretary to the U.S. Commission of Fine
Arts, an agency that approved the design. The memorial to King puts
him squarely between those of Thomas Jefferson, who espoused ideals
of equality but was a slave owner, and Abraham Lincoln, who freed
the slaves in the Civil War.
"It's nicely situated between the Jefferson and the Lincoln
Memorial, so it's part of that conversation," he said. "That corner
of the mall has started to have a little bit of a theme about the
ideas of our democracy between Jefferson, (Franklin D.) Roosevelt
and now King."
Eventually, Jackson hopes to add King's voice to the visitor's
experience by introducing iPads or other devices with educational
features and recordings of speeches while people walk through the
plaza.
"Dr. King came along right at the height of the television era,"
he said. "So we can take advantage of that."
___
Soon after King's assassination in 1968, his widow, Coretta
Scott King, established the King Center in the basement of the
couple's Atlanta home to preserve his legacy. Now located near
King's birthplace, a national historic site, it has become one of
Atlanta's most popular tourist attractions. Though Coretta Scott
King did not live to see the King Memorial become a reality, her
relentless efforts were the catalyst for such a project, said their
daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, especially given the country's
feelings about her father during his life.
"He was one of the most hated men in America. He was considered
an enemy of the government," she said. "And here we are
40-something years later, and he's being honored in this way by our
nation. ... So it certainly speaks to the magnitude of some of the
progress that we've made in the area of race relations."
The family has guarded King's memory closely. While Coretta
Scott King was an early champion of the memorial, the family's
efforts to seek fees from its fundraising briefly stalled the
effort in 2001.
Later, the family secured an $800,000 licensing deal for use of
King's words and images in fundraising for the memorial. After The
Associated Press revealed the unusual arrangement in 2009, Bernice
King and Martin Luther King III said they weren't aware of the
details. They said the deal was mishandled by their brother, Dexter
King, but was meant to benefit the King Center, which has struggled
with funding for repairs at the site where King is entombed.
At the time, Intellectual Properties Management, an entity run
by King's family, told the AP that proceeds it receives would go to
the King Center out of concern that fundraising for the monument in
Washington would undercut the center's donations. Some donors and
scholars still bristled at the deal.
King's family has sued media companies for using the "I Have a
Dream" speech without permission. Lawsuits also have been filed
among the siblings over control of the estate.
Infighting and leadership troubles also have hobbled the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King helped found
following the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and played a
major role in fighting segregation. Martin Luther King III was
president from 1997 to 2004.
In 2009, Bernice King was elected president but eventually
declined to take office over differences with the board. Some
called for the group to disband. This month, the group named King's
nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., as its president.
___
For all the troubles from concept to construction, King's
contemporaries said the memorial captures his message for a new
generation, and it has drawn tears for many when they saw it for
the first time.
Congressman John Lewis, who met King as a teenager and is the
lone surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, said the
statue is the best likeness he's ever seen.
"He's not looking down, he's looking straight ahead," Lewis
said. "Dr. King was an emancipator, he was a liberator. He
liberated not just a people. He liberated a nation. His ideas, his
message of peace and love are still liberating people. I think
people will come from all over the world to be inspired to go out
to act, to do something."
When the Rev. Harold Carter, pastor of Baltimore's New Shiloh
Baptist Church, saw King's statue for the first time, he was
awestruck.
"Oh, God. You got him," Carter said, looking up to King's face,
along with more than a dozen other pastors from the District of
Columbia, Maryland and Virginia who helped raise more than $1.5
million for the project from their congregations.
"This is a king among presidents," said Joe Ratliff, pastor of
Houston's Brentwood Baptist Church, who was with Carter's group.
"That's what I think every time I see it."
Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who
was an aide to King, has taken multiple trips to track the
monument's progress.
"The first time I saw it, I broke down and cried," Young said.
"It's so beautiful. It's such a fitting statement.
"You know, he was always self-conscious about being short. ...
Now he's a giant of a man. Isn't that something?"