The 2015 statue stands on a three-foot granite pedestal near the Essex County Hall of Records, part of the Essex County Government Complex in downtown Newark. Six words ring the base: Hope, Equality, Peace, Courage, Love, and Respect. The pedestal is engraved with the phrase "I Have a Dream," referencing King's 1963 speech at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. An accompanying plaque traces the arc of King's life in compressed, deliberate prose -- from the young Georgia minister who rose to lead a nationwide movement, through the bus boycotts, the Freedom Rides, the sit-ins, and the peaceful protest marches, to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and his assassination in 1968. The timing of the unveiling was no accident: the ceremony marked the golden anniversary of King's Nobel Prize.

Warren, based in Oregon, has shaped much of the public art landscape at the Essex County Government Complex. His bronzes of Rosa Parks, Justice William J. Brennan Jr., Governor Brendan Byrne, and Congressman Donald M. Payne all stand in the same civic precinct. His statue of tennis pioneer Althea Gibson occupies a place in nearby Branch Brook Park. There is something fitting about a single artist's hand connecting these figures across the same public space -- civil rights leader, Supreme Court justice, governor, congressman, athlete -- as if the complex itself were an ongoing conversation about who New Jersey chooses to honor. The original King statue was later relocated to the jurors' entrance of the new Martin Luther King Justice Building, a $77 million courthouse that opened in 2021.

A second statue of King, also created by Warren, was unveiled in front of the new justice building in 2021. Newark thus has two bronze depictions of the same man in the same government complex -- one near the Hall of Records, one at the courthouse entrance. The doubling is unusual but speaks to the depth of King's connection to Newark, a city that experienced its own explosive reckoning with racial injustice during the 1967 uprising. The justice building that now bears King's name is the complex's newest addition, a structure that pairs his legacy with the daily practice of law.

A third King-related sculpture also resides in Newark, though it predates Warren's work by decades. Patrick Morelli's Behold -- originally created for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta -- exists as a second casting commissioned by the New Jersey Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission. It was placed at Essex County College and dedicated in 1990 in a ceremony led by Mayor Sharpe James. Together, the three sculptures form a constellation of remembrance spread across Newark's civic landscape, each offering a different moment and mood: the national hero in Atlanta, the young visitor on the courthouse plaza, the enduring symbol at the college.