Memorial in King’s honor will break ground next week

Derrill Holly

WASHINGTON — A diverse group of celebrities, corporate leaders and ordinary Americans will break ground this month for a memorial honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. It will be the first monument to an African American on Washington’s National Mall.

The site is about a kilometer from the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. King was shot to death in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn.

“He’s an American hero, and beyond that he’s a hero for all sorts of people,” said poet and novelist Maya Angelou, who is scheduled to join talk-show host Oprah Winfrey and others who have been working for more than a decade to help build the monument.

Angelou, 80, said the Nov. 13 groundbreaking is even more special because it comes almost a year after the death of King’s widow. “She never was a person to say, ‘Why didn’t it happen sooner?’ That would not be Coretta Scott King,” Angelou said of her friend, who died in January at 78.

Following the deaths of Coretta Scott King and civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, who died in October 2005, efforts to raise the necessary $100 million to build and maintain the 4-acre memorial accelerated.

Donations, mostly from major corporations, had totaled less than $40 million through August 2005. But as of Nov. 1, donations topped $65.5 million.

Harry Johnson, president of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, said he hopes to have the site completed by the spring of 2008.

The location is flanked by the Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt memorials near the eastern edge of the Potomac River Tidal Basin. From a distance, visitors can see the stairs where King delivered his most famous speech during the March on Washington on Aug. 28, 1963.

The entrance to the memorial will include a central sculpture called “The Mountain of Despair.” Its towering split rocks signify the divided America that inspired the nonviolent efforts of King and others to overcome racial and social barriers.

“This gateway was designed to lead visitors to the heart and soul of this living memorial,” said Ed Jackson, Jr., the project’s executive architect.

Beyond the entrance are landscaped gardens surrounding a “Stone of Hope,” a rock carved with the image of the civil rights leader and inscribed with excerpts from his speeches.

“Martin Luther King stood for so much of what America represents, including equal justice and equal opportunity for all,” said Henry Schleiff, chief executive officer of the Hallmark Networks, one of the memorial’s many corporate supporters.

The Revs. Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, who were with King on the trip to Memphis that preceded his April 4, 1968 assassination, are among 5,000 people invited to the ceremonial groundbreaking on Nov. 13.

Former President Bill Clinton, who signed a resolution approved by Congress authorizing the memorial in 1996, is scheduled to make remarks, and the country music group The Judds will sing their hit, “Love Can Build a Bridge,” which includes the line “love and only love can join the tribes of man” in its lyrics.

“It is a metaphor to how connected we are,” Naomi Judd said.

Backers of the project say corporate support was critical to the project. General Motors provided $10 million, and clothing manufacturer Tommy Hilfiger contributed $5 million through his charitable foundation.

Hilfiger, 55, recalled how his Irish Catholic family was touched by King’s assassination.

“You could compare it to the assassination of JFK,” Hilfiger said. “It was so significant in our lives as teens and young people. It was earth shattering.”

The fashion mogul is working with hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons to help raise another $35 million for the project from entertainers, professional athletes and others over the next six months.

Major galas and concerts are planned in New York, Houston and other cities, including a National Dream Dinner at Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 13.

(Associated Press)