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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 16, 2019)
Page 22 The Skanner Portland & Seattle January 16, 2019 Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The MLK Memorial Rising 30 feet above the Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. is a granite statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that memorializes the man and his role in the American civil rights movement. Dedicated in 2011, the park sits at 1964 Independence Ave., S.W., with the address memorializing the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Design Congress authorized King’s fraterni- ty, Alpha Phi Alpha, to establish a me- morial in the nation’s capitol in 1996. ROMA Design Group’s plan won an in- ternational competition with a design that paid homage to a line from King’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.: The design depicts King’s image, the Stone of Hope, emerging from a Moun- tain of Despair. Each part of the mon- ument incorporates scrape marks to symbolize struggle and movement. The Sculpture Chinese Master Lei Yixin became the official sculptor of the monument in 2007. According to the National Parks Service, Lei filled his studio with pho- tographs of King. He worked with the foundation and the King family to choose the material, a shrimp pink granite, and to generate the final like- ness. More than 150 granite blocks were sent to Lei’s Changsha, China, stu- dio, where he assembled and sculpted 80 percent of the work. The statue was then shipped back stateside, and Lei completed it onsite. The quotes engraved on the memorial were done over more than two years by Nick Benson, a third generation stone carver. Controversy The memorial originally included a paraphrased quote from King’s 1968 drum major sermon. It said, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righ- teousness.” The original quote from the sermon, which talked about the danger of the personal ego and asked the con- gregation to serve others, read, “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” Eminent poet and author Maya An- gelou said the paraphrase made King “look like an arrogant twit,” and the phrase seemed to be at odds with the sermon’s message of selflessness. In 2012, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar decided to remove the quote, and Lei returned in 2013 to modify the memorial.
