Memorial Planners Have a Dream, Too
Mall Site Honoring King Reaches Next Milestone

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 12, 2006

Ground will be broken in many ways tomorrow morning with a ceremony heralding construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the Mall.

The memorial, scheduled to be completed in 2008, will mark a change in the very character of some of America's most hallowed real estate.

The Mall is lined with memorials to wars and the soldiers who died in them and marble monuments to great presidents. But this addition to Washington's monumental core will be a unique paean to the man and the ideal that it honors -- a civilian and an African American who embodied the American tradition of peaceful protest and activism.

"I think, like many kids, I came to D.C. years ago and saw all the monuments," said Harry E. Johnson Sr., president of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation Inc. "But there never was a memorial to a man of color, a man of peace.

"And even today, there is nothing to place King in the proper historical context. He is among the giants of our country, though he was not a war hero nor a president," Johnson added.

Tomorrow's groundbreaking ceremony is expected to draw 5,000 people. It will feature former president Bill Clinton, who signed the 1996 bill authorizing the memorial. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey and poet Maya Angelou also will speak.

They will gather at the sweeping four-acre site along the Tidal Basin that sits halfway between monuments to Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, and Lincoln, liberator of slaves. The crescent-shaped memorial park will be near the steps leading to the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave his electrifying "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.

Cranes and backhoes won't move in immediately, however. This groundbreaking is ceremonial, and the construction permits from either the secretary of the Interior or the General Services Administration will be issued once fundraising is complete. In the case of the World War II Memorial, permits were issued two months after the groundbreaking ceremony attended by about 10,000 people on Veterans Day 2000.

The design of the memorial park is the physical articulation of one of the most famous and powerful passages in King's 1963 Washington speech.

After outlining the dream of his children growing up to live in a nation where people are judged by the content of their character, where even in the racist South black and white children would join hands as sisters and brothers, he added:

"This hope is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. And with this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day."

At the memorial to King's vision, visitors will enter through a 12-foot-wide cut in the wall, walking through a tall, dark passage symbolizing the Mountain of Despair.

Once visitors pass through the portal, the view of the Tidal Basin's waters and ring of trees will unfold. The giant stone piece removed from the wall to create the opening will be in the middle of the plaza. King's image will be sculpted from it, emerging from the rough-hewn Stone of Hope.

The design team is working on plans to create waterfalls that will flow in a syncopated rhythm reflecting King's oratory style, cascading over a wall engraved with his words.

The design, created by the ROMA Design Group of San Francisco, has had an unusually warm reception since it was unveiled in 2000, compared with the harsh criticism that stalled other contemporary memorials.

Many considered the Vietnam Veterans Memorial too modern and abstract when it was introduced in 1981. The World War II Memorial was called too large and complicated for such a prominent spot on the Mall when construction began in 2001.

The King Memorial's design has received resounding kudos.

"It's very elegant and simple and moving," Thomas Luebke, secretary of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, said. "It's interesting that on part of the Mall, there is a theme developing. It is less about war and more about ideas and aspirations."

The prominent site was authorized by Congress in 1998. Its place was secured even after Congress passed the Reserve Act of 2003 forbidding further construction in the core of the Mall. The King Memorial is likely to be one of the last giant monuments to furnish the nation's front yard.

The biggest obstacle the memorial has faced is money. And that's part of the message its backers will send during tomorrow's ceremonial groundbreaking.

They have raised almost two-thirds of the $100 million needed to build. Efforts have been beset by delays.

"The fundraising is difficult, period," Johnson said. "There is always something else looking for attention of the donors. There was 9/11, then the tsunami, then Hurricane Katrina."

In 2001, the foundation struggled with King's family, which wanted a fee for the use of the slain civil right's leaders name. An agreement was eventually reached and no fee paid.

But the delay pushed the foundation up against the December 2003 deadline imposed by Congress to complete the monument, and it had to apply for an extension.

Supporters of the memorial would like to finish fundraising before the eventual construction of the National Museum of African American Culture and History, slated for Constitution Avenue and 14th Street NW on the Mall. It will be tapping much of the same donor base that the King memorial is targeting.

"We want to be out of the way before the museum starts up, so there's no competition for donations," Johnson said. "We're accepting donations, from $1 on up. If only everyone in America gave us $1."