KING MEMORIAL CONTROVERSY

After years in the making and millions of dollars in donations, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Washington, D.C. Mall is a reality.  But the monument to America’s most famous civil rights leader has not been without mishaps and missteps.

Located in the nation’s capitol at 1964 Independence Avenue, a reference to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the $120. million dollar project was scheduled for an official dedication last Sunday, August 28th, with President Obama and a host of international dignitaries in attendance. But Hurricane Irene, with threats of torrential rains and high winds, scrapped the dedication at the last minute for a future date TBA.  Still, the King Memorial is already open to the public for viewing — and that is where a certain misstep has caused a bit of controversy.

On each side of the monument is an inscription from one of Dr. King’s speeches (although, oddly, “I Have a Dream” is omitted). On the right side is the inscription “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” However, Dr. King never made that quote. His actual words were: “Yes, 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.”    Sadly, Dr. King was purposely misquoted by memorial planners so the chosen words would fit aesthetically on the granite.  Now, civil rights figures are crying foul and calling for a re-do.

Poet Dr. Maya Angelou, who was active in the civil rights movement in the 1960’s and was a personal friend of Dr. King and his family, says although she is happy a fitting memorial for Dr. King is finally a reality, she is disturbed by the misquote and how self-serving it makes Dr. King appear.

Dr. Maya Angelou

“The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,” Angelou said last week. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply.  He had no arrogance at all,” she said. “He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.”

The paraphrase “minimizes the man,” she said. “It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. . . . It makes him seem an egotist.”

But the memorial’s executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr. tried to explain, saying that statue sculptor Lei Yixin, informed him that the real “drum major” quote would not fit.  “We said, ‘. . . We’ve only got this much space, [so] what are we going to put up there?’ ” Jackson said.

Ed Jackson, Jr.

“We sincerely felt passionate that the man’s own eulogy should be expressed on the stone,” he continued. “We said the least we could do was define who he was based on his perception of himself: ‘I was a drum major for this, this and this.’ ”

“As you move through the process, things happen and you have to make design changes on the spot,” he added.

Throughout all the criticism from Dr. Angelou, members of congress and other civil rights leaders, Jackson is adamant that the inscription will not be corrected, and has actually gone on the defensive. “I think it’s rather small of folks to pick at things,” he said. “This has been going on for 14 years, and all of them have had plenty of time to add their thoughts and ideas.”