Week of Activities Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.in DC; Updated Plans

A week of celebration of Martin Luther King’s legacy began on August 22 with a press preview of the memorial to Dr. King on a four-acre site on the National Mall. It will end on August 28, the 48th anniversary of the famous March on Washington, when President Obama dedicates a memorial to the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He made his famous "I have a Dream" speech from the Lincoln Memorial at the end of that march in 1963.

The central theme of the monument was taken from a phrase in that speech: "With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." Dr King’s image is carved into the stone of hope. To get to it one walks through a gap in a representation of the mountain of despair. It’s flanked on either side with a black granite wall in which are carved fourteen excerpts from Dr. King’s speeches that a committee found to be the most inspirational.

This memorial was sixteen years in the making. In 1996 Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing Alpha Phi Alpha — a national fraternity of black men — to erect a memorial. It raised $112 million dollars in private donations and hired the companies necessary to design and construct the monument. Ten million dollars in federal funding was provided under a resolution sponsored by Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. At the dedication the memorial will be turned over to the American people to be run and maintained by the National Park Service.

Although most of the people involved in this project were black, some criticism arose over the fact that the carving took place in China by Lei Yixin, a prominent Chinese sculptor. He brought his team of workers to DC assemble the parts of the monument and do the final detail work. The carving of Dr. King was based on a photo by Bob Fitch, who was SCLC’s photographer in the mid-1960s.

While many thought this disgruntlement had ended, the members of Local 1 of the Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers are still angry. They announced that they would picket the memorial all week to protest the fact that American workers were not used to erect it. However, they skipped the morning press conference where LeiYixin answered questions in Mandarin posed by some fifty reporters from roughly twenty countries.

Memorial events are going on all week. The National Memorial Project Foundation is holding luncheons and galas to raise still more money. The District government and the Martin Luther King Jr. library in DC have posted schedules of their activities so there will be plenty to do for the two to three hundred thousand visitors Foundation CEO Harry E, Johnson Sr, said would come to the celebration.

Note: On Saturday the National Prayer Service will be held at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. This will be the final official event of the Dedication week.

Dr. Johnson Sr.: "We have worked with the Park Service to ensure that the Memorial will be open to the public, weather permitting, on Saturday. The Memorial will be open Saturday from 7:00 a.m. to 12 noon.

"The official Dedication ceremony will be moved to a date yet determined in September or October. We will announce those details when we have them. For now, we wanted to make sure you had this information as soon as possible."

Jo Freeman is currently writing a book on her experiences in the Southern civil rights movement. Her experiences in the San Francisco Bay Area civil rights movement are related in her 2004 book, At Berkeley in the Sixties (Indiana U Press).

Image credit for scene from steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Aug. 28, 1963: US Government Photo

I Have a Dream Speech

News and Issues, History, Politics, Government, Travel, Senior Women Web, Articles, Jo Freeman, Authors

Week of Activities Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.in DC; Updated Plans

More Articles