On Aug. 28, 2011, the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial officially took its place as America’s 395th national park – 48 years after King’s “I Have a Dream speech” delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“Welcoming this memorial to the National Mall honors a heroic man and a critical chapter in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union,” said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. “Martin Luther King, Jr., mobilized the power of faith and morality to break the chains of oppression that held our nation back.
The dedication ceremony was also to take place on Sunday, Aug. 28, but was postponed because of Hurricane Irene, which made its way up the eastern seaboard.
In 1996, Congress authorized Dr. King’s fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, to establish a memorial to the civil rights leader in Washington, DC. The group formed the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation and held a competition for the design. A site along the Tidal Basin of the National Mall was chosen for the memorial.
For more information about America’s newest national park, please see http://www.nps.gov/mlkm.
3 Comments
The eloquence of this memorial is not in the stone rendition of the man but rather in the inscribed words within the marble. Like very few other individuals, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was able to weed out the hate in a Promised Land infested by weeds. The purpose of these kinds of memorials is to help ordinary visitors to spark their own inner connections with the one and only inner rhetoric of Nature, that he must have felt, when he related his “Dream” for a divided nation. A few years ago, I was so impressed by this, that I created my own dream: I have a dream, that all of the world’s children would each pull out a symbolic weed of hate, to rid ourselves of the remaining weed seeds of hate, that have inhibited our progress from completed Dr. King’s great vision. Just think of it…billions and billions of young hands actively participating in fullfilling his great dream. Sound impossible? Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued a Weed Out Hate Proclamation last Sunday; Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad and Illinois Governor Pat Quinn did the same. There is no force strong enough to restrict the one and only inner ecology of the spirit once people connect with it. Let’s tap our roots, weed out hate, and get connected!
This stature of Mr. Martin Luther King Jr. is of growth and chizzled future started at the beginning and determine to the end. The statue is such a glory in factor of his glory, mind, body, determination, of his strive to become name of weight in his quest to see the ultra-dream in society as that has become, but yet to tower to the limits of no depth or height that has not an elimination to fall but to sore beyond the dream we dream, to see a capture in the light of our nation. His color of voice was that of no nationality of determination without the rainbow of the democracy of our nation to be in the Unite of the strips of the colors of the USA Flag. He saw within the darkness of the light to give to that whom could hear the destiny. He could only pave, to hold inside others to strive on their name to belief behold the dream in the drink of unknown wealth. May this statue always be the marble beauty to make the hard working be the best in the sense vitality to eliminate the easy to take, and reserve the right in freedom of commerce of one own word. An individual can make a office a home and a nation a culture of society, but a vial of hatred can shatter a prediction of one, to make many a homeland, and not a agent of our own enemy. Let not a man whom said, “listen to me”, not to a complete idol society. Listen to my wealth in word, not in those whom want to recall a sentence not a paragraph, he whom stands for the weak and mighty stands for the future, not the destruction of the inner being to destroy the heart of a path way. Mr Luther Jr. stated, “Let Christ be our reach and our dreams be our cloak”. “May no one steal upon our home Land, to weaken our nations wall, that so many have contributed to”. May not one take from the strength by replacing the care given by those whom reach, as that of Mr. Martin Luther King Jr. and not to push the destine dream aside for sack of power. Let that be the dream and not the exploded corruption that people tend to let pass as if not aware of the corruption made by the smoke trenched in the path of destiny.
Some fool typed a misprint….national park should be national farce