So does the AmeriKan War Media:
"King monument takes its place on National Mall" October 17, 2011|By Helene Cooper, New York Times
WASHINGTON - Promising that “change can come if you don’t give up,’’ President Obama yesterday called on Americans to use the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to help push for progress in today’s economically tough times.
Speaking at the dedication of the monument to King on the National Mall, Obama said Americans must celebrate all that the civil rights movement accomplished even as they understand that the work is not done....
At times, the words Obama used to describe King’s struggles might also apply to himself.
“For every victory, there were setbacks,’’ Obama said. “Even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. King was vilified by many.’’
He continued, “He was even attacked by his own people, by those who felt he was going too fast and by those who felt he was going too slow.’’
Obama’s speech culminated a morning during which a lion’s gallery of civil rights and black leaders stood on the podium to hail that a preacher of no rank had joined Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt to be memorialized in perpetuity in the National Mall area....
The three-hour ceremony included speeches by civil rights leaders including Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and music by performers such as Aretha Franklin....
After attending the dedication ceremony, civil rights activist and Princeton University professor Cornel West was arrested while protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court about corporate influence in politics, the Associated Press reported.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman said 19 people were arrested after they refused to leave the grounds of the court. They were part of a group taking part in the October 2011 Stop the Machine protest in Washington’s Freedom Plaza....
Related:
"The protest, which was marking 10 years since the start of the war in Afghanistan, was called to protest war, corporate greed, economic injustice, and human rights abuses."
Enough of that antiwar stuff.
The monument is not only the first to a black man on the Mall and its adjoining parks but also the first to honor someone who was not a president, according to the foundation in charge of installing it, something that has been an inspiration to many.
“I drive past the Mall every day, and to see that Martin Luther King is now there with Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, and Roosevelt - that is powerful,’’ said Lonnie Bunch, a founding director of the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
King’s stone figure faces the Jefferson Memorial across the water. Lincoln is at his back, and Roosevelt to his right.
The design gave form to a line from King’s “Dream’’ speech: “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.’’
In the statue, he is emerging from a large piece of stone. Two towering granite mounds set behind him are the mountains of despair.
Bunch said the dedication offered an opportunity to assess race relations in America.
“We are not in a postracial America, but in an America that allows us to talk about race candidly in different ways,’’ he said. “Having a statue of Martin Luther King, without even saying it, lets people know that this is a different Mall, this is a different America.’’
For those who knew King, the dedication offered an opportunity to remember the emotion and the intensity of the civil rights movement.
“The March on Washington was the point where the whole country seemed to come together,’’ said Sterling Tucker, a civil rights leader who worked with King. “It felt like, here we are, marching together as a nation in the right direction.’’
Tucker, who is president of the National Theater in Washington, said he experienced the same feeling when Obama was elected in 2008. That this country elected an African-American, he said, was possible only because of the work done by King’s generation, a point that Obama himself has often made.
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I noticed there was nothing about his nonviolent, antiwar views that got him killed.
Related: The Modern Day Jesus Christ
He's about as close as they come in my lifetime.
