President Obama urged the nation Sunday to celebrate the dedication of the memorial to slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. by continuing to press for the goals and hopes of the “black preacher with no official rank or title who somehow gave voice to our deepest dreams” and helped make the nation “more perfect.”
Like pilgrims, tens of thousands of people from across the country thronged the Mall on Sunday beneath blue skies to dedicate at last the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.
Look at the protesters, little children. They’re marching in the District for jobs and justice. But if you want a job and some justice, you’ll have to march to the beat of a different drummer. When you hear Al Sharpton and other protest leaders chant “No justice? No peace,” chant back: “No education? No way.”
From toddlers to graying veterans of the civil rights movement, thousands turned out for the dedication of Washington’s new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The crowd filled 10,000 folding chairs and spilled across a large field near the Tidal Basin.
Multimedia: Civil rights leaders, including John Lewis, Juanita Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, remember Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington.
Workers at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial cleaned and prepared the new monument for its official unveiling.
Valerie Green-Thomas sees them every day in her classes at the Bronx middle school where she is a special education teacher. Kids hungry, anxious, living in the dark because the electricity in their homes has been turned off.
Cynthia Poole graduated from college the same year that Martin Luther King Jr. led the March on Washington. Jaki Bethea came out of high school the same year that King pushed for passage of the Voting Rights Act.
If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. were alive, he surely would feel honored that the United States on Sunday is dedicating a stone memorial to him on the Mall. But King would likely have been equally gratified by new, living monuments to his legacy about a mile away.
The executive architect for Washington’s new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial says there are no plans to change a controversial inscription on the memorial’s statue of King in the wake of complaints that it makes the civil rights leader seem arrogant.
On Feb. 4, 1968, two months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a haunting sermon at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church about a eulogy that might be given in the event of his death.
Bernice King scanned a sea of more than a thousand faces in the great church — black, white, Asian and Latino — and described her life as the youngest daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She was 5 years old when he was assassinated in 1968.
The new memorial to Martin Luther King Jr. turns out to be a relatively modest affair. A stoplight on Independence Avenue SW announces the entrance, where a fan-shaped entry court leads to a 30-foot-high portal of carved stone. The memorial faces inward, away from the Mall, with planted earthen berms and trees obscuring it from many angles.
The old fraternity’s tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t on the list of official events. It wasn’t open to the public. And it was scheduled for Friday morning, before the big salutes of Saturday and Sunday.
The 30-foot granite statue has been cleaned. Dignitaries from around the world are in town. And the stage and 30,000 folding chairs are in place.
Brother Hatchel doesn’t see so well anymore. And he has a prosthetic leg. So brothers Navy and Klugh guide him along the outdoor railing of the historic school where their fraternity chapter meets.
Nikki Kahn
THE WASHINGTON POST
James "Plunky" Branch plays the soprano saxophone in silent tribute.
The first person to send us a six-word description of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on Tuesday was Paul Whiteley Sr., a 73-year-old from Louisville, Ky.
As their father’s legacy is officially enshrined in granite on the Mall, the children of Martin Luther King Jr. have come to pay homage to their daddy.
Henry Chambers went to the March on Washington with his wife, Lauretta, and their pinochle partners, Sherman and Dorothy Williams, who lived across the courtyard of their apartment complex off Bladensburg Road in Northeast Washington.
Editor’s note: Bart Barnes, a long time reporter and editor at the Washington Post, now works on contract for our news obituaries staff. We discovered in casual conversation yesterday after coming back from the opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial that he was one of the Post’s reporting team covering the 1963 March on Washington where King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Here are Bart’s recollections.
Ed Dwight isn’t here in Washington for the big event.
The political vocabulary of this year’s long, hot summer has been eerily reminiscent of what many consider the greatest political speech of the 20th century.
Josephine Baker is perhaps best remembered as a glamorous showgirl in 1920s and ’30s Paris who mothballed her skimpy costumes to serve in the French Resistance before becoming an international superstar. She was also the only woman to speak at the March on Washington.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of racial equality and harmony has not been fulfilled, according to African Americans and whites alike in a new Washington Post poll.
See the memorial from several angles in this interactive rendering of the monument.
Let’s face it: There really is something peculiar about having an artist from communist China sculpt the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial statue. And, yes, it would have been fantastic had an African American sculptor been chosen instead.
Forty-eight years ago Sunday, when Martin Luther King Jr. was about to make his historic speech on the National Mall, I was huddled close to the statue of Abraham Lincoln, tapping on a portable typewriter, making last-minute changes to my own speech. As the newly elected chair of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, speaking at the March on Washington was one of my first important actions. Dr. King spoke tenth; I was sixth. Today, I am the last surviving speaker from the march.
R
aven Parker squeezes her eyes tight trying to remember her lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. Her hair is pulled into neat braids, and she is wearing pink. Raven considers her words carefully, for she knows the import, even if she doesn’t know the whole story.
The unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial is more than a celebration of history. It’s a claim to the future. The memory of MLK and the civil rights movement will not fade if this granite tribute has anything to do with it.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais
Associated Press
A part of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the Mall.
Timed to the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, this week’s On Leadership roundtable explores King’s leadership legacy and where we stand today in fulfilling his vision for the nation—with opinion pieces by the Demoncratic National Committee’s Donna Brazile, Morehouse College President Robert M. Franklin, and Martin Davidson of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
Timed to the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, this week’s On Leadership roundtable explores King’s leadership legacy and where we stand today in fulfilling his vision for the nation—with opinion pieces by the Demoncratic National Committee’s Donna Brazile, Morehouse College President Robert M. Franklin, and Martin Davidson of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
Timed to the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial, this week’s On Leadership roundtable explores King’s leadership legacy and where we stand today in fulfilling his vision for the nation—with opinion pieces by the Demoncratic National Committee’s Donna Brazile, Morehouse College President Robert M. Franklin, and Martin Davidson of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.
“There can be unity where there is not uniformity.”
In a city crowded with memorials and monuments, a few represent the individual struggles of African American pioneers or salute the contributions of black citizens. None is as prominent as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. But they mark some underrecorded chapters of our history. The bust of Sojourner Truth in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center has the same stern likeness seen in photographs of her. The faces on the statue dedicated to the black troops who served in the Civil War resemble those in family scrapbooks and history texts. Most important, these artworks flesh out the story of the nation.
Barely more than a third of African Americans see the United States as having realized the vision outlined in Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech — down from nearly two-thirds just before President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. It’s a return to the levels from early 2008, erasing a big uptick — among both blacks and whites — following with the election of the country’s first black president. Fewer than half of African Americans who say the United States hasn’t yet reached King’s goal say it one day will reach it, a new low point in terms of optimism. | Washington Post Poll: Complete data
Watch in 36 seconds what normally takes one and a half hours.
Gray-haired Madeline Coleman got up Monday and played her old record of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches for her visiting grandson as he ate breakfast. Then she grabbed a disposable camera and hopped on the Metro for the event on the Mall.
My first impression of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial sculpture was of Han Solo frozen in carbonite from the movie “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
Nikki Kahn
THE WASHINGTON POST
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is shown in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, July 16, 2011. The official unveiling of the latest memorial on the National Mall is scheduled for Sunday, August 28.
For Sister Donna Barfield, getting a sneak peak at the soon-to-open Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial was, she said, one of the most emotional experiences of her life.
A photographic look at the life and work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the civil rights movement.
For 14 years, Ed Jackson Jr. has shepherded the creation of a memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Freedom marchers who haven’t visited the capital since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered one of the greatest speeches by an American on Aug. 28, 1963, will find the District much easier to get around as they arrive to dedicate King’s memorial.
Marvin Joseph/THE WASHINGTON POST
The statue at the Martin Luther King Jr memorial by the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. in August 2011.
Nearly 50 years after he captivated the National Mall and the nation with his famous “I Have a Dream”speech, Martin Luther King Jr. now has a permanent home in the district.
It was around this point in August 1963, in the sweltering days before the March on Washington, that Eleanor Holmes Norton was waiting for someone to say something really nasty about her boss.
Bayard Rustin was seen as the only activist capable of pulling off the March on Washington.
The arc of history is long. But does it bend toward a Martin Luther King Jr. movie?
On the outside, the Lorraine Motel looks much as it did that late afternoon of April 4, 1968. The sun still beats down on the second-floor balcony just outside Room 306, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. teased young Jesse Jackson about not wearing a tie to dinner at a minister’s house that night, and where King asked a band leader to play his favorite hymn, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” The major difference is the funeral wreath of red and white carnations that now hangs on the railing to mark the spot where he fell when the shot rang out.
The museum, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, is housed in the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.
Paschal’s Motor Hotel and Restaurant, once the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the ’60s, is now an eyesore. Many of its windows are shattered, missing or boarded up. On graying sheets of plywood, placards for palm readers and spiritual healers advertise a different kind of faith for this struggling west-side neighborhood. The only hope this once proud complex offers can be found spray-painted on a wall: “Radiate the energy you seek and it will find you.” It’s signed “J.E.T.S.”
Because of what Mayor Vincent C. Gray called “overwhelming demand,” the District is abandoning plans to require city residents to get tickets to get an early peek at the soon-to-open Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on the Mall.
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Carol Guzy
THE WASHINGTON POST
The carving of King's head and shoulders was lowered onto the statue in November.
While the official dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial isn’t till Aug. 28, the memorial grounds by the Tidal Basin are scheduled to open Monday. So I took a walk over to see how visitors can approach the site.
President Obama will deliver remarks at the Aug. 28 dedication of the national memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the District, the foundation building the memorial announced Thursday.
The District still does not have a permit from the National Park Service for Tuesday’s “D.C. Day” at the new Martin Luther King Memorial, a spokesman for the Park Service says, even though Mayor Vincent C. Gray has been heavily advertising the event.
Michael S. Williamson
THE WASHINGTON POST
The National Park Service has no say over this MLK-themed thoroughfare.
UPDATED 5:30 P.M.
The most recognizable piece of the new Martin Luther King Jr. monument--the head--was placed atop the statue of the civil rights leader, in between the National Mall and the Tidal Basin on Wednesday, November 24.
Artists honored the era through song.
Folk singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan perform during the March on Washington. (Photo by National Archive/Newsmakers)
It was a Wednesday in August 1963. Melody and electricity were commingling in the breeze as a quarter of a million Americans sang along with Joan Baez on the Mall.
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