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Like most Americans, I want the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial to be great. I want it to be an awe-inspiring monument to greatness and an eternal reminder of the promise of America — a promise that King helped make real for millions of African Americans and people of color.
But alas, after visiting the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial yesterday, I am afraid that Noah Kristula-Green is mostly right. Despite some impressive conceptual underpinnings and sculptural success, the new memorial is, ultimately, unsatisfactory — and unbecoming of the man and the Civil Rights Movement that King inspired and led.
Noah is disturbed by the massive sculpture of King, which, he says, bears an eerie resemblance to other pieces of Communist Socialist Realism. As Charles Krauthammer observes, this “flat, rigid, socialist realist King does not do justice to the supremely nuanced, creative humane soul of its subject.”
That’s true. Still, I found the sculpture of King to be perhaps the most impressive or least offensive aspect of the memorial.
True, King looks stern and intimidating — more stern and intimidating than this warm and reflective apostle of non-violence looked like in real life. But at least there’s a formidability to the sculpture. There’s a sense, both literally and figuratively, that King is larger than life. He towers above us because he is, in a real and fundamental sense, better than us.
This is a refreshing return to artistic tradition and a change in approach taken by most national memorials of recent vintage.
For example, the Lincoln Memorial, which was dedicated in 1922, elevates Lincoln to the status of an American political saint, which he was. Thus when entering the Lincoln Memorial, you feel almost as if you are entering a church or a temple. There’s a sense of solemnity and solitude that is awe-inspiring.
The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, by contrast, was dedicated in 1997. This newer and more modern memorial thus downsizes FDR — literally and figuratively — into one of us.
We see FDR, then, at eye level, and without his trademark cigarette holder, which is now politically incorrect. The idea that this four-term president, who led America through the Great Depression and World War II, might somehow be special, distinct and extraordinary is purposely denied.
No such mistake can be made when looking at the towering sculpture of King, which is impressive and noteworthy, though lacking perhaps in overall grace and majesty.
And, conceptually at least, the sculpture is fitting. King is looking forward, across the Tidal Basin, toward the Jefferson Memorial, which is clear and visible, though distant. The implication is clear: King is looking forward to the promised land — to that one day in which:
this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’
Those, of course, are the words of the Declaration of Independence, which was written by Thomas Jefferson.
So it is entirely appropriate that, in his new memorial, King has his eyes on Jefferson: Because in truth, Jefferson — and the American political creed that Jefferson helped write — was a guiding inspiration behind King and the Civil Rights Movement.
Similarly, behind King lies the sculpture of a mountain, which serves as the memorial’s entrance. And, on the left side of the King sculpture is inscribed: “Out of the mountain of despair, a Stone of Hope.”
This line comes from King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. But what is conspicuously missing from the inscribed quote is King’s purposeful reference to faith, by which King means both his political and Christian faiths. Here, in fact, is the full King quote:
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
These are beautiful and moving lines. And in fact, King’s entire “I Have a Dream” speech is filled with memorable and poetic verse.
But unfortunately, as Krauthammer points out, most of the quotes inscribed in the new King memorial are decidedly unmemorable and some are actually banal. You simply cannot separate King and the Civil Rights Movement from their uniquely Judeo-Christian American inspiration without losing much of their awe-inspiring majesty.
Yet, this seems to me to be exactly what the memorial builders have tried to do: They’ve tried to rewrite history to portray King not as the uniquely Christian American leader that he was, but rather as a world leader who espoused United Nations-like pap about universal man-made rights.
Here, for instance, is one of the 14 King quotes inscribed into the memorial:
Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
King may have said this, but this is hardly the type of sentiment that makes King stand out in the American pantheon, and for which he will be remembered by his fellow Americans. It is hardly the type of idea that made the Civil Rights Movement such a stunning and remarkable success.
In fact, quite the opposite: King and the Civil Rights Movement succeeded precisely because they appealed to the American political creed as articulated by Jefferson and the founding fathers.
Now, it is true that the American political creed speaks to all peoples everywhere; it is universal in its reach and application. Nonetheless, it is uniquely American in its origins; and King petitioned Americans upon the basis of that creed. He appealed to our national civic or political religion.
Equally offensive and wrong, the new memorial gives pride of place to King’s left-wing economic views and his opposition to the Vietnam War. There, are for instance, these two quotes:
I oppose the Vietnam War because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.
It is true, of course, that, in his latter life — after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and before his assassination on April 4, 1968 — King was moving leftward politically. He was becoming more anti-war and more committed to the economic redistribution of wealth.
But again, this is hardly what made King an important and historical figure. This is hardly what history will remember about the man and the Civil Rights Movement. It is hardly what resonates now, let alone 100 years from now.
So why inscribe these banal and unmemorable quotes into the King memorial? Why introduce politically divisive comments that will divide Americans and, which, I would argue, run counter to the American political and economic traditions?
The answer is obvious: Because the King memorial is as much an act of politics as it is a work of history. It was designed, I regret to say, to promote a certain secular, left-wing worldview. This political lesson, fortunately, is not pushed on us in a tendentious and heavy-handed manner, but it is there nonetheless.
And so, what is missing is any of King’s distinguishing Christianity and Americanness. Indeed, there’s no real sense that King was not simply a great man, but a great American and a great Christian. (And yes, King was a great Christian. Whatever his private failings, his public Christianity was rich, memorable and wonderfully inclusive.)
There’s no sense that King drank deeply from the America political tradition; and that he helped to develop, foster and promote that tradition. One hopes that, in time perhaps, this shameful and lamentable oversight can be remedied through additions to the memorial grounds.
What is needed is an explicit acknowledgement and recognition of King’s Christianity and of the American political creed. These underlie and undergird our history. And you simply cannot understand King and the Civil Rights Movement unless and until you understand how and why they captured the American imagination.
John Guardiano blogs at www.ResoluteCon.Com, and you can follow him on Twitter: @JohnRGuardiano.
They should have built a prototype that allowed for various poses that everyone could vote on.
As a comparison, drive by the monument to the Confederacy chiseled into Stone Mountain, Ga sometime. It’s huge and it’s off a major highway so you can’t miss it. However you may feel about what it represents, it’s still there all these years later.
Of course King’s vision did arise from his Christian roots. But his life’s greatest accomplishments involved bringing to life the words of Jefferson (whose Christian credentials are questionable at best) which stated that “ALL men are created equal.” That includes everyone, not just those who shared King’s (Judeo)-Christian tradition, Baptist flavored.
Any discussion of King today is still likely to generate controversy – unfortunatel. But I really didn’t expect anyone to complain that his monument isn’t religious enough!
King is still too much a current and controversial (unfortunately) figure for there to be any consensus on what kind of monument to him is suitable. Let’s check back 150 years after his death and find out how appropriate this memorial seems then. That will be what matters.
I doubt that Lincoln’s memorial seemed appropriate to most of the Confederate-sympathizing citizens still living at the time of its dedication in the 1920s. Some of them may still feel that way.
Graychin,
I agree it is a strange proposition that King’s memorial is insufficiently Christian. Only a Christian would say that. I do not think a Hindu or an antheist would say that the memorial does not do justice to King’s Christian beliefs.
MLK belongs to the world. He is no longer a uniquely American figure. His stature and accomplishments put his moral authority on par with Gandhi, the 13th DL, Mother Teresa, and Captain America. Only Jesus Christ has more moral authority in this country than MLK.
Would a memorial to Gandhi have to emphasize his Hinduism? Of course not. The life lessons of both men transcends their respective religions. I have no doubt that MLK was a devout Christian, but I also have no doubt that he would not feel a need to emphasize his Christianity as being the source of his morality. He would want all people of all religions to equally benefit from his experiences. He would also be perfectly comfortable emphasizing his Christianity as well.
Haha! No offense intended Guardiano, that’s just silly. His basic message was, “Be cool to each other.” That was really the important thing. If they capture that, then the mission was accomplised.
Also…..you might not like mentioning his left-wing attitudes towards economics and his anti-war attitudes….but that’s who he was. Your criticism on this front is more a statement about your politics than about the validity of the monument.
I’m a moderate Dem. I love George Washington, but you know….the guy had slaves. That’s a fact. It would be tempting for me to gloss over that fact when teaching my kids American history, but that wouldn’t be an authentic representation of who the guy was.
There is who our heroes really were and who we wish they were. It’s a thin line, but we should probably represent them fully, warts and all, the way they really were.
This is the perfect issue for conservatives. They get to appropriate MLK’s legacy (While Ron Paul and Rick Perry still argue against the “big government” of the Civil Rights Act). Furthermore they get to screech about that old time bogeyman, Mao Zedong. Maybe conservatives haven’t noticed that Mao and his philosophy died 35 years ago. China isn’t a capitalist democracy yet, it’s a capitalist oligarchy that Mao would never have approved of. He warned repeatedly that after his death the country would be taken over by what he called “capitalist roaders” which is what happened. The form of the attack on the MLK monument is revealing about conservative projection, why not say just say it’s ugly or it lacks feeling or something like that. The Mao meme is hijacking an esthetic debate to turn it into a political one. Conservatives are the only ones who talk about communism which has been dead for 2 decades. Give it a rest.
MLK had a noble cause but was a MASSIVELY flawed individual.
A serial sexual predator/adulterer, his hypocrisy was HUGE as a “man of God”.
He was also a fraudulent “doctor”, having plagiarized nearly every student document he wrote: http://setanta.unl.edu/mlk/dn_column.html
There were also allegations of ties with the Communist Party.
Political correctness made us give him a holiday, on the level of George Washington.
God help us all.
You sound like one of those people who were glad when he was shot to death.
And Jefferson fathered children with his slaves.
You guys who insist on bashing King for his flaws to draw attention away from his good work (of which you undoubtedly don’t approve) are pathetic and sad.
Wrong again, dribblechin:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/30/new-book-disputes-claim-jefferson-fathered-childre/
Smarg,
There is nothing wrong with presenting and discussing factual information about MLK, but you should be ashamed to delight in it so much.
He is the most globally famous American of the 20th century and a fine standard-bearer for our country. If the only thing a foreigner knew of America was MLK’s biography, then they’d mistakenly believe us to be a finer people than we are.
He wasn’t a saint. He did LOTS of bad things that we will never know about. He probably lied at some point, he may have seen a naked girly picture a few times, blah blah blah.
He was not Jesus Christ. He was a man.
Your liberal brain has erased all signs of common sense.
Masquerading as a man of God, all the while being a serial immoral sexual predator and adulterer means absolutely nothing to people who are drenched with political correctness.
Look what happened in 2008…without being properly vetted by a fawning leftist media establishment, a half-term, half-Kenyan senator was elected with disastrous results.
Will America ever learn??
It is more telling of you, Mr. Guardiano, that you find this statement “politically divisive” which will “divide Americans” and “run counter to the American political and economic traditions”:
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.
Really??
It’s not so much that this quote in isolation is objectionable as it is banal. And it was inscribed into the memorial because it comports with the modern-day political views of the memorial’s developers and sponsors.
The point of the quote point is not to champion equal rights under the law, which is the historic cause that King espoused so well and so successfully. Instead, the point of the quote is to show that King was beginning to promote “economic and distributive justice,” which is an altogether different and alien concept.
I to have been rough on you John, but I have to admit that there has been moments like this that make me wonder why your are not this objective in all you points of view. I still can’t get over how you defend the Palins of the world but critize the Huntsmans. I do have to ask though, and I apoloize if this was asked but I don’t have time to read them all. Don’t you think that MLK would have been a champian to the gay rights movements? Something you are personally against.
He may have been a christian and even may be a “conservative, but he was a wise man with a progressive vision (no not liberal) oh how things should be. Don’t you think may be you should rethink your point of view on not objecting to others marrying who the hell they want to marry? You could still be agianst it, just not support those who try to stop it.
Curious, in what respect was he “conservative” and in what way was he not “liberal”
“Economic and distributive justice” is an “alien concept”?
If epistemic closure precludes you exposure to ideas that don’t originate in Ayn Rand novels, then perhaps such a concept would seem “alien” to you.
Broaden your horizons, sir.
The quotes you draw issue with, are entirely appropriate components of the memorial because they are a testament to who MLK was and what he believed.
But equally, it is strongly inappropriate that the memorial makes little or no mention of MLK’s Christianity — because this denies the historical truth of who he was, and what motivated him.
If we honor a historical figure, we should pay them the respect of not editing the truth of their life, or their opinions.
MLK died before I was born. My daughter goes to an “international” preschool where she studies half the day in English and half in Spanish. She hears about MLK all of the time. And what she learns about him is his interest in equality for all races. Nothing about nations, nothing about the Vietnam War.
I am as hard on the author on his pro-war articles as anyone else, but I have to agree with him in this article (based on what he has written). The memorial should be about what makes him memorable.
I second this, I think the sculpture is too severe and if what JG is writing to not focus overwhelmingly on his core message of bridging the racial divide is making MLK a more parochial figure then he was.
And thank God there was nothing about how bad it was that the man who is sculpting the statue (not design, just sculpt) is a Chinaman. He was hired because he is a master craftsman, nothing more.
And I too am really rough on JG when I think he is wrong, but this was a nicely done article.
I am interested that you object to the lack of christianity and the vietnam quote but not the lack of quotes about race, which was after all, what his movement was about.
Primrose, the Civil Rights Movement was not about race per se. It was about fulfilling the promise, articulated by Jefferson and the American Founding Fathers, of equal rights and of equal justice under the law.
But only based on race. It was not about equality for gays, or women, or muslims, or any other group. It was about race and really specifically about blacks.
MLK’s ideals went far deeper than just race. That is why his great niece Alveeda looked like a total hypocrite when she supported Prop 8 measures then tried to take his mantle and share it with the likes of Glenn Beck
Yes. And yes it eventually went beyond race. But the people being attacked with dogs were African-Americans. The children bombed in the church were African-American and the people killed and jailed signing up voters were signing up African-American voters. The people being denied the right to go to decent schools, drink from the same water fountains were African-Americans. The “strange fruit hanging from southern trees” referred to African-American men.
This was about racism, a violent, brutal, endemic racism that had its roots deep in our country. It is as if in remembering the holocaust we stopped remembering the eradication of the Jews and their culture in particular because Roma,homosexuals, epileptics, dissidents and “defectives” were also killed. (As they were, in great numbers.)
As I’ve said before, you can’t have reconciliation without truth. There has been a terrible racial oppression in this country of African-Americans. It was direct, violent and particular to them and resisted all efforts of mitigation by small, steady measures. It was an oppression as often as not supported by the government, both local, state and federal. What MLK (and really the entire movement) did was nothing short of turning back the sea, just as implacable and unstoppable was the racial caste system.
To ignore this, to talk around this fact, is to forget, on purpose. And that would not honor Dr. King, or the many, many other others who also lost their lives to eradicate this evil.
I trust no instincts for banality more than this author’s.
^+1 indy
Let’s suppose for a minute that people who sound like Smarg decided to do to Obama the same thing that happened to MLK. Would it be acceptable for a monument to quote anything he said about Libya, or any other issue of the day if it displays his sensibilities? I think so.
“…After completing his course work, graduate students usually write a dissertation or thesis, supposedly an independent and original contribution to scholarship. King’s thesis was anything but original. In fact, the sheer extent of his plagiarism is breathtaking.
Page after page contains nothing but direct, verbatim transcriptions of the work of others. In 1990, the King Project estimated that less than half of some chapters was actually written by King himself. Since then, even more of his “borrowings” have been traced.
Calculating the exact extent of his plagiarism will require a computer analysis, but having looked over Chapter III in detail, I estimate that at least three quarters of it was stolen from other authors.
King stole from the subjects of his dissertation, the theologians Tillich and Wieman. He copied the writings of other theologians – passages from philosophy textbooks. But most unforgivably of all, thousands of words in paragraph-sized chunks, were taken from the thesis of a fellow student, Jack Boozer, an ex-army chaplain who returned to Boston University after the war to get his degree…”
So what quotes should have been included that were not? If you read King’s speeches, you’ll see he spoke to social justice and economic equality quite often.
In fact, I once posted snippets from his speeches on this very site when another commenter stated that King was a Republican and was uninterested in social justice. (whatever happened to JeninCT?)
Yes apparently to most cons, MLK was just like Rev Jesse Petersen or a black Falwell. He was Christian, loved America and hated affirmative action (they think)! That is why most of them were okay with Beck trying to hijack his mantle.
I rarely read any of Mr. Guardiano’s writings and when I do, I can’t help but notice he’s wrong on practically everything he writes. However, I agree with just about everything in this post, except for his admonitions against including statements from MLK that would be politically divisive.
Sorry, but if one wants to portray KING as champion of equality of all people and nations, which includes non Christians and atheist too, harping on his Christianity is a sure way to suppress that message. Nowhere in either the Torah or the Gospels do they talk about freeing slaves, as a rule, or freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Of course, according to cons, There is a direct arrow between Saint Peter, Cotton Mather, the Founding Fathers and MLK.
Kindly eat excrement.
There, I’m being nice.
Asshole.
That was totally uncalled for and no class.
welcome to the internet
I know Republicans are determined to make sure no black person ever votes for them and their racist, religious fanatic party, it’s just the intensity with which you work to make us despise you even more then we do that is so stunning.
Eat Shit, GOP.
Hey, bottomly is attuned with meddy! Why not go for the sexual violence threat, too! LOL
As per your request smarg, go fuck yourself with a rusty garden weezel. Twice.
He was usually called the Rev. King during his life, not Dr. King. He was a Baptist minister and the group he formed was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The Christian themes that filled his speeches and writings were an indispensible part of the civil rights movement’s success. Opposition to civil rights was certainly intense and violent at times, but it could have been much fiercer and longer-lasting than it was. MLK helped tame that opposition by repeatedly reminding whites that blacks shared with them a common Christian faith.
You’re missing the tribal culture element absent in the evolutionary caucasian race.
The Civil Rights Movement yielded the following 47 years later:
- Public schools with more than 20% Black population destroyed by anti-White racist violence
- Massive dependence on public assistance/entitlements causing subsidized illegitimacy which led to a massive, irreversible crime wave
And this:
http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Flash-Mob-Robbery-127726853.html
Questions?
In case anyone was wondering, “flash mob” is the latest code word for “ooga booga scary nigras!” Smarg musta learnt it at his last klan meeting.
“Evolutionary Caucasian race”? Seriously, you don’t even bother hiding it anymore.
Don’t bother with Smarg. It only rewards his behavior. (I get the temptation here, as I started to respond as well, and realized it was better to delete, delete, delete.)
But I think the slogan silence equals death, is most true for trolls. If there is no treat (i.e. causing mayhem and distress), they will go on to other territory to feed. Or get so outrageous, they are banned.
If you can’t stand it, TalkRadioSucks has a way to block his (and similar trolls) posts. I don’t use it because my computer already has quarrels with this site. I don’t dare aggravate it any more. But it should considerably lower the blood pressure.
^Typical liberals.
Any opposition to their socialist worldview results in a worthless and overused retort: “you racists”.
Meh.
Interestingly, it would seem that you want to scrub MLK to fit your image of who he was. No, he wasn’t fighting for the rights of poor people or anything of the sort. He didn’t urge poor whites to link up with poor blacks, because that’s economic equality and of course MLK is only useful for his specific leadership in the parts of the Civil Rights Movement that led to the eventual fall of racism.
Let the man’s life tell the story. Don’t try to edit it to fit your own notions of “acceptable politics” in order to promote the parts you find acceptable and scuttle those you find divisive (because you find them politically reprehensible).
That is, in fact, actually what communist and totalitarian regimes do, rewriting works and remodelling historical figures in order to harmonize them with the regime’s dogma, lopping off what they find to be heterodoxies. This is–wait for it–something to be expected more of Communist China than the United States. Martin Luther King pushed for economic justice and equality, just like he pushed for racial equality and increased access to democratic institutions. Deal with it. Maybe in confronting that truth, you may be forced to admit that he was prescient and possibly right. Maybe you can argue against it. But don’t pretend like it was magically absent from the man and the Civil Rights Movement.
I second this! He was complex guy. There were many things that could be emphasized about him or not emphasized. No monument can capture the complete truth about him. It doesn’t mean there was a conspiracy to present him a certain way to further certain agendas.
If someone built a monument to me and could only use 14 quotes, there is no way it would truly reflect who I was as a person.
When you strip the politically correct screed attached to him by the same mainstream media colossus that insisted that JFK was a great president, MLK becomes an entirely different man…
Sexual predator, adulterer, scheming, lying cheater.
Was it the assassinations of both men, who were generally failures in their personal lives (and in Kennedy’s case, add the political life) that made the MSM attempt to pawn them off as fake heroes?
He was busy organizing a poor peoples (black, white, red and brown) march on D.C. around that time he got shot in the head lets not forget.
The “handicapped” issue was a bit of a controversy involving the FDR memorial; Ross Perot made them put those stupid statues near the the Vietnam Memorial; and I’m sure people complained about the Washington Monument. These things are always political and are always decided by committee.
The Washington Monument is a great American monument: phallic, thrust up into the sky…
A far cry from Maoist/Leninist statues deifying subpar (but politically correct) individuals.
Just sayin’.
Smarg gets turned on by a giant penis.
King opposed the Vietnam War and supported feeding the hungry, not out of some “left-wing secular world view” but BECAUSE OF HIS CHRISTIANITY.
Does Christianity and being a Baptist minister = sexual predation and serial adultery?? To include forgery, plagiarism, and treason.
Does being a pathological fucking asshole = Smarg? Yes, yes it does.
They are not mutually exclusive. Some “Christians” support war.
MLK was both a Christian and a liberal. Conservatives (like smarg) demonized him while he was alive and now some (not smarg) want to whitewash (pun intended) and co-opt him.
Cheating on his wife = Sexual predator!
I see he has added “forgery” and “treason” to the list. I would ask him WTF if I thought for a second that he knew what those words meant.