Qualla: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe Ravi, CC BY-SA 3.0. The address is 1964 Independence Avenue. The number is not arbitrary. It commemorates the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the federal law that struck down segregation in public accommodations and gave the executive branch the tools to enforce equal protection. King had stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the year before, in August 1963, and told a crowd of 250,000 about a dream. The Memorial that bears his name sits in a sightline between the Lincoln he addressed and the Jefferson who wrote the Declaration he kept invoking. Walk in from the north side and you pass through a Mountain of Despair - two great wedges of granite cleaved apart - and emerge on the other side, on the Tidal Basin, where a 30-foot figure of King has been carved out of a third wedge that seems to have been pushed forward from between the other two. He is reading. He is unfinished. He is looking out across the water at Jefferson, and behind him, on a 450-foot curving wall, fourteen of his sentences run along the granite.

Image: Joe Ravi | CC BY-SA 3.0

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: The Fraternity's Long Project

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Another Believer, CC BY-SA 3.0. The memorial began as a fraternity project. King had been initiated into Alpha Phi Alpha as a doctoral student at Boston University in 1952, and he stayed connected with the chapter through the rest of his life. After his death, members of Alpha Phi Alpha began lobbying for a nat...

Image: Another Believer | CC BY-SA 3.0

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: Stone of Hope

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Omassot, CC BY-SA 3.0. The phrase comes from King's I Have a Dream speech: With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. ROMA's design literalized the metaphor. A 30-foot figure of King emerges from a 30-foot block of pale pink granite, as if cleaved from the la...

Image: Omassot | CC BY-SA 3.0

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: The Drum Major Inscription

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Genthelawlibrarian, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first version of the Stone of Hope carried a paraphrase on its north face: I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness. King had said something close, but not identical, in a sermon at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968 - two months before his d...

Image: Genthelawlibrarian | CC BY-SA 4.0

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: Fourteen Sentences

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Federal Government (Department of the Interior), Public domain. The Inscription Wall runs 450 feet in a curve along the Tidal Basin. Fourteen quotations from King's speeches, sermons, and writings are carved into its granite. A Council of Historians including Maya Angelou, Lerone Bennett, Clayborne Carson, Henry Louis Gates, and Marianne Will...

Image: U.S. Federal Government (Department of the Interior) | Public domain

Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial: Postponed by Hurricane

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Raul654, CC BY-SA 3.0. The dedication had been scheduled for August 28, 2011 - the 48th anniversary of King's I Have a Dream speech. Hurricane Irene, churning up the Atlantic seaboard, forced a postponement. The memorial opened to the public on August 22, and four days later, on August 28, it officiall...

Image: User:Raul654 | CC BY-SA 3.0