The Washington Mall welcomes another hero. The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial is unveiled. Sitting directly between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, "the composition of the [King] memorial utilizes landscape elements to powerfully convey four fundamental and recurring themes throughout Dr. King's message: justice, democracy, hope and love."
[more inside]
posted by darkstar
on Aug 22, 2011 -
72 comments
"I have a dream..." Take 17 minutes out of your day and remember. And then maybe take a look at this
NY Times slide show of murals depicting Dr. King.
Feel free, in fact please do, add appropriate links and suggestions in the comments section.
posted by brookeb
on Jan 21, 2008 -
40 comments
Two score years ago, a great American, whose birthday we celebrate every year with a three-day weekend, stood in the shadow of the
Lincoln Memorial and uttered
those famous words, "I Have A Dream." Five years later, older and weary, saddened and yet emboldened for a new task, that man was assassinated in Memphis. He has rightly become an American icon, a symbol of all that we consider great about our nation. And yet is is the very fact of his
apotheosis that has done his dream the most damage. Safely iconized and sanitized, MLK has been used cynically by his most bitter opponents, to ends he very clearly opposed during his life. The man who considered himself a
democratic socialist, and who supported both reparations and affirmative action is used by conservatives to stymie the efforts of his philosophical and activist heirs. Some of them, like U2's
Bono, want to
save Africans from AIDS. Others, like
Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, suggest a
10-year moratorium on the famous speech, so that we can pay attention to
other,
more important statements.
King's last great effort was not a march to combat racism but rather a new initiative to end poverty, the
Poor People’s Campaign. Thirty-five years later, the
gap between rich and poor is larger than ever in this country, and our president, who claims to follow the same religion that underwrote all King said, did and thought, is conducting a war not on poverty, but
on the
poor. How many of
us who, like G.W. Bush,
pay lip service to the ideas of King and of
Christ will stop stalling and
stand up for justice?
posted by eustacescrubb
on Jan 17, 2003 -
47 comments
