WASHINGTON -- For the 70 or so people who rode 13 hours from Atlanta to Washington on a bus chartered by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the trip was a dream fulfilled.
Today, they will join thousands of other visitors for the dedication of the long-awaited Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The ceremony comes two months after a hurricane delayed the original dedication and years after advocates began the quest to get the memorial built.
“I came on this trip because I love him,” said Martha Davis, whose baptism into the civil rights struggle was more than a half century ago.
For some of the riders, the journey was the culmination of their own civil rights activism. For others it was a chance to see an old friend and mentor forever idolized in granite. And for many of them, it was an opportunity to encourage the next generation to take on the mantle of leadership.
King’s monument beside the Tidal Basin is the first such memorial to an African American and ensconces him on the National Mall among the nation's greatest leaders: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR.
For Atlanta, the monument to the city’s most revered native son is personal.
“When I see it up close for the first time, it’s going to bring tears to my eyes,” said Nadine Proctor, a longtime union organizer and volunteer with the SCLC, the civil rights organization founded in 1957 with King as its first president.
Like others on the bus, Proctor is a certified foot solder of the Civil Rights Movement. These veterans earned their stripes through years of marching, boycotting and protesting -- sometimes being beaten for their trouble.
All of them have stories, and some of those stories include chance interactions with King.
Today their hair is gray, their shoulders are stooped, and their faces carry the deep-seated creases that testify to lifetimes of experience. But back then, many of them started young enough to be considered children of the movement.
Davis, 67, was a youngster in the crowd when King came to Rome, Ga., to speak. She started working behind the scenes at the age of 16, attending midnight meetings to help plan fundraisers for bail money to free young, black students arrested for protesting.
“I was always behind the scenes, but I always loved Dr. King,” she said.
Larry Lewis started in the movement at 14 years old when members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came through his hometown of Milledgeville, Ga. They were on their way to Selma, Ala., for a boycott.
“I though they were marching to fight, and I wanted to fight,” he said. “But they explained to me the nonviolent concept and I started organizing and have been doing it ever since.”
Lewis, like other SCLC old-timers, wears a medallion around his neck with an image of King alongside praying hands and the words “I have a dream.” He grips the emblem fondly he talks of the old days.
“Those were tough times back then, and more times than not we were scared,” Lewis said. “But we had courage. To do the things that had to be done, you had to have courage.”
Rolling northeastward Friday night, the riders quickly became a pseudo-family. They shared food and laughs, comparing notes on commonalities such as hometowns, distant relatives and colleges.
As the hour grew late, they divided into two groups: sleepers in the front and a raucous crowd in back. In the last few rows, some of the organization’s workers still in the field, including the SCLC Georgia president, the Rev. Samuel Mosteller, delved into a wide range of topics.
They spoke of Elvis Presley (stole his sound from black musicians), home cooking (young women can’t cook anymore) and the Obamas’ infamous fist bump during a 2008 campaign speech (impressive).
But gradually they grew quiet, until the only sound was from videos of civil rights legend Rev. Joseph Lowery’s 90th birthday celebration and the late SCLC national president, Howard Creecy Jr., speaking at a National Baptist Convention.
Finally, with the sun rising, the final movie of the trip was, fittingly, footage of the 2009 inauguration of the country’s first black president.
For Proctor, 65, this bus ride recalled another one. In 1963 she paid $20 for a seat on a Trailways bus to travel with her cousin from college in Pennsylvania down to Washington for the March on Washington. On that trip, she heard King deliver the legendary “I Have a Dream" speech.
“I wasn’t going to miss that, and I wasn’t going to miss this either,” she said.
In addition to King, many of their stories are laced with references to long-gone and legendary contemporaries of King, including Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy. But they also talk of the future and their hopes for those who follow them.
Those younger generations have not always been eager to pick up the torch.
Rev. Benford Stellmacher saw reluctance in his own son, who criticized him years ago for being too involved with the SCLC and its activism. But when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, Stellmacher’s son apologized for his criticism and thanked his father and others like him for paving the way for the election of a black president.
“I broke down and cried,” the father said. “To hear my own son say that after all the work we had done, that was the proudest moment in my life.”
Stellmacher’s son has gone on to a leadership position in the Democratic party in South Carolina.
George Kimbrough Johnson, at 40 one of the group’s youngest members, said a vision impelled him to become a foot soldier for equality.
“God told me in a vision to take up the torch and follow Dr. King,” said Johnson. “This trip is an outpouring of what God has in store for me through civil and human rights.”
Johnson is a very green, but eager, two-week SCLC volunteer. His cause: equal rights for the disabled. Health problems associated with diabetes led to three operations on his right foot and a pronounced limp.
“Looking at me you wouldn’t know that I’m disabled,” he said. “Going through all of this has shown me that covert racism still exists, especially with equal rights for the handicapped.”
For their parts, the grizzled pioneers said they are buoyed by the wave of activism they see in the Occupy Wall Street protests, propelled mainly by young people and spreading throughout the country and to cities around the world.
“This is the beginning of an economic injustice movement,” said Robert Johnson, 63.
Johnson was raised in the SCLC. He gave up a college scholarship to Alcorn State University in Mississippi to participate in the marches and activism of bygone days.
For him, the King memorial "symbolizes the dedication of a people, including those whose names will never be called, who sacrificed for this. This is a ceremony for all of them -- and the young people need to see this.”
Forty-eight years after the "I Have a Dream" speech, a towering memorial has been erected to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
as a man of peace among the many monuments
to wars and presidents in the nation's capital.
The road to today’s dedication of King’s memorial, however, has run through hurdles of all kinds — not unlike the long struggle over King’s legacy itself.
Since King’s death, there have been financial worries at the King Center in Atlanta, and legal fights over the use of his image and words and over control of the civil rights organization he co-founded.
Many people wanted to help shape King’s bricks-and-mortar legacy as well, the first memorial for a black leader on the National Mall. There were skirmishes over who would sculpt King’s likeness, where the granite would come from and who would profit from the mammoth $120 million fundraising effort as the family demanded a licensing fee to support its Atlanta priorities.
Overall costs for the memorial rose over time, and the government demanded tougher security amid threats of domestic terrorism, dragging the project 15 years from the time Congress authorized it in 1996 and 27 years from when King’s fraternity first proposed it.
Lesser hurdles have halted others who aspired to build monuments on the mall.
“We have persevered,” said Harry Johnson, a 57-year-old Houston attorney and Alpha Phi Alpha brother who for the past 11 years led an effort that is to culminate with today’s ceremony featuring President Barack Obama.
Originally set for Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of the “Dream” speech, the dedication was postponed by organizers and the National Park Service due to Hurricane Irene. The memorial escaped damage from the storm and an earthquake that rattled the East Coast.
The quake and storm posed one final set of challenges to memorial organizers who have faced many over the years.
“Even though we’ve had dark days and dark clouds, we were able to always see a silver lining in the sky, knowing, understanding and believing it was always going to happen,” Johnson said.
One of the darkest days was 9/11, Johnson said, because the memorial foundation was set to go public with its fundraising campaign but had to put plans on hold as the country recovered. Then came the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, plus an economic downturn, all of which made raising donations even more daunting.
Race, too, was a factor in the struggle over how the memorial would be conceived.
The surprise selection of a Chinese sculptor for King’s statue in 2007 eventually drew protests. A black painter launched a petition to try to force a change, saying black artists should have first rights to interpret the memory of the man who did so much for his fellow African-Americans. A bronze sculptor from Denver complained he was pushed aside. Human rights advocates chimed in, saying King would have detested China’s record on civil liberties.
Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., 62, who oversaw the design process for 15 years, concedes he may have been naive to think others would easily see the power of sculptor Lei Yixin’s concept and the mastery of his work.
“Politics can actually change the color of your lens ... and some of the comments were out of ignorance,” Jackson said.
Still, the memorial foundation maintained King was inclusive of all people and never wavered from the selection of a Chinese sculptor. Jackson said he tried to insulate Lei, even as a federal arts panel criticized the design as too “confrontational.”
Early tours of the memorial by church leaders and civil rights veterans gave Jackson a sense of affirmation he made the right choice.
Financial disputes
Soon after King’s assassination in 1968, his widow, Coretta Scott King, established the King Center in the basement of the couple’s Atlanta home to preserve his legacy. Now located near King’s birthplace, a national historic site, it has become one of Atlanta’s most popular tourist attractions. Though Coretta Scott King did not live to see the King Memorial become a reality, her relentless efforts were the catalyst for such a project, said their daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, especially given the country’s feelings about her father during his life.
“He was one of the most hated men in America. He was considered an enemy of the government,” she said. “And here we are 40-something years later, and he’s being honored in this way by our nation. ... So it certainly speaks to the magnitude of some of the progress that we’ve made in the area of race relations.”
The family has guarded King’s memory closely. While Coretta Scott King was an early champion of the memorial, the family’s efforts to seek fees from its fundraising briefly stalled the effort in 2001.
Later, the family secured an $800,000 licensing deal for use of King’s words and images in fundraising for the memorial. After the unusual arrangement came to light in 2009, Bernice King and Martin Luther King III said they weren’t aware of the details. They said the deal was mishandled by their brother, Dexter King, but was meant to benefit the King Center, which has struggled with funding for repairs at the site where King is entombed.
At the time, Intellectual Properties Management, an entity run by King’s family, said proceeds it received would go to the King Center out of concern that fundraising for the monument in Washington would undercut the center’s donations. Some donors and scholars still bristled at the deal.
King’s family has sued media companies for using the “I Have a Dream” speech without permission. Lawsuits also have been filed among the siblings over control of the estate.
Infighting and leadership troubles also have hobbled the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King helped found following the Montgomery bus boycott in the 1950s and played a major role in fighting segregation. Martin Luther King III was president from 1997 to 2004.
In 2009, Bernice King was elected president but eventually declined to take office over differences with the board. Some called for the group to disband. This month, the group named King’s nephew, Isaac Newton Farris Jr., as its president.
Rave reviews
For all the troubles from concept to construction, King’s contemporaries said the memorial captures his message for a new generation, and it has drawn tears for many when they saw it for the first time.
Rep. John Lewis, an Atlanta Democrat who met King as a teenager and is the lone surviving speaker from the 1963 March on Washington, said the statue is the best likeness he’s ever seen.
“He’s not looking down, he’s looking straight ahead,” Lewis said. “Dr. King was an emancipator, he was a liberator. He liberated not just a people. He liberated a nation. His ideas, his message of peace and love are still liberating people. I think people will come from all over the world to be inspired to go out to act, to do something.”
When the Rev. Harold Carter, pastor of Baltimore’s New Shiloh Baptist Church, saw King’s statue for the first time, he was awestruck.
“Oh, God. You got him,” Carter said, looking up to King’s face, along with more than a dozen other pastors from the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia who helped raise more than $1.5 million for the project from their congregations.
“This is a king among presidents,” said Joe Ratliff, pastor of Houston’s Brentwood Baptist Church, who was with Carter’s group. “That’s what I think every time I see it.”
Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador who was an aide to King, has taken multiple trips to track the monument’s progress.
“The first time I saw it, I broke down and cried,” Young said. “It’s so beautiful. It’s such a fitting statement.
“You know, he was always self-conscious about being short. ... Now he’s a giant of a man. Isn’t that something?”
Janel Davis serves as a managing editor responsible for lifestyle and culture content.
Janel Davis serves as a managing editor responsible for lifestyle and culture content.
