Park Service to remove inscription on MLK Memorial

WASHINGTON - The National Park Service announced plans Friday to remove an inscription from the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and replace it with a full quotation from the civil rights leader - a move the memorial project's architect said would "destroy" the monument.

Critics including the poet Maya Angelou, had said the paraphrase didn't accurately reflect King's words. It reads, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

Angelou had said the shortened phrase made King sound like an "arrogant twit." She had served on a panel of historians to select inscriptions for the memorial before they were hand-carved into stone, but she did not attend meetings about the inscriptions, memorial officials have said.

Fixing it will likely involve cutting into the monument several inches around the inscription to remove a block of granite and replacing it with another piece for engraving. Officials said it's unclear how much the work may cost. The park service may seek private donations to fund the project.

Removing the inscription now will amount to "defacing" the memorial or "scarring it for life" because any new granite added to the memorial would be a noticeably different color, said Ed Jackson Jr., the executive architect of the $120 million memorial project.

"There is no way you can match the existing stone and color," he said. "It will continue to age differently, even if you went to the same quarry."

He compared it to the Washington Monument, which has a visible line where the color of the white stone changes because construction of the memorial was halted for years during the Civil War.

Jackson said he proposed adding words to the beginning of the existing inscription to place it in the context of King's 1968 sermon known as the "Drum Major Instinct," in which King discussed how he would like to be remembered about two months before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

But in the past 10 days, Jackson said federal officials had decided on a different plan without any further discussion.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the plan Friday to remove the inscription entirely and replace it with the full quotation, which seems more modest.

It reads: "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

In a statement, Salazar said the change was necessary for the memorial.

"With a monument so powerful and timeless, it is especially important that all aspects of its words, design and meaning stay true to Dr. King's life and legacy," he said.

Park service officials consulted with stone masons and with the King family in making the decision, said Carol Johnson, a spokeswoman for the National Mall and Memorial Parks. King's daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, and his sister, Christine King Farris, met with Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis.

Bernice King thanked officials for consulting with the family in a statement released by the park service and said the "proposed correction" was the right decision.

Jackson, the architect who oversaw the memorial's development for years, said he hopes the matter will be sent back to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts for a fuller discussion on how to preserve the memorial's granite in one piece.

"The expertise that is required to even consider this has not been brought to the table," he said. "I think people are speculating what they can and cannot do."

Asked whether there could be any way to remove the inscription, Jackson said, "without destroying it, no."

[skeezix06]

It doesn't even look much like MLK and I didn't care for the emerging from a rock image. We should sue all involved to get our money back, find someone who is actually capable of doing a good job, and starting over.

[cameraphone]

I am not a drum major for keeping the quotation as is...

[gunshack1]

Good lord, just add the words "Just say" at the start of the quote. Talk about a tempest in a teacup.

[bobnjersey]

[Critics including the poet Maya Angelou, had said the paraphrase didn't accurately reflect King's words. It reads, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness." Angelou had said the shortened phrase made King sound like an "arrogant twit." She had served on a panel of historians to select inscriptions for the memorial before they were hand-carved into stone, but she did not attend meetings about the inscriptions, memorial officials have said.]
--------------------------------------------------
there's an easy fix.

for those that think it should be changed ... they should pay for it.

when they see how much it will cost ... i'm sure they'll feel differently about how it reads ... and how important it is to change it.

maya angelou was on the committee ... and should have attended the meetings on the inscriptions if she's going to be so particular about all the details.

the inscription as it is conveys just as much of the meaning as the original quote.

insisting that these changes be made at someone else's expense makes them sound like arrogant twits.

[Jaylah54]

Uh, gee, maybe they should have considered putting on the actual quotation when they started this project?

I'm not so arrogant that I think anybody's going to put up a monument to me when I die, but if I did something extraordinary and somebody did decide to do it, I sure hope they'd engrave my actual words, and not some totally out of context snippet of what I actually said.

If replacing the quotation is going to mar the memorial because of the differences in stone, then just sand-blast the existing misquotation off of it and leave it bare. I think Dr. King is enough of a part of our history that his words (his actual words, not this misquote) won't be lost to the generations if it isn't engraved on his monument.

[joe1022joe]

This thing was supposed to paid for with private money. Why on earth are the American taxpayers now going to fund anything to do with it? I understand for every dollar the US government spends $.40 of it is borrowed from overseas. Why is Obama spending our tax dollars and borrowed money on Martin Luther King's statue? Three guesses and the first two don't count.

[DWileyOne]

Why has $120 million of taxpayer money been spent on this? I agree that Dr. King was worthy of recognition; however, with millions of Americans out of work or underemployed, I find this type of spending abhorrent (whethre is was through taxpayer dollars or private funding). Further, why wasn't the quotation vetted more thoroughly? The paraphrasing sounds stupid and there are so many other of Dr. King's words that are magnificent and more appropriate.

[venusvegasvada]

I agree. It should not have had a paraphrased inscription in the first place.

It's a monument- not art in an art gallery.

As a monument, it is suppose to stand the test of time.

That means using the exact words MLK said.

Paraphrasing what someone else says, no matter what their intention was, amounts to injecting a third party viewpoint into it. It's no longer a statement of truth, but something diluted by another person's interpretation.

The whole point of having a monument is to let the people view it and what he said and let them form their own feelings and opinions on it.

That's the only thing that will stand the test of time.

[mrleme]

Geez, I thought our country was in debt?? Leave the inscription alone, it is what it is and was approved before it was put on. Abraham Lincoln "change that darn inscription on my monument now," right, see how silly it is. You can't please everyone especially at a rising cost of over 120 freaking million dollars!

[venusvegasvada]

Are they going to send it back to China for the modification or are they going to let someone here do it?

[mrleme]

LOL take a wild guess? Americans would ask to be paid