MLK Revisited: Not to Dwell On This, But ...
As heard last night on PBS NewsHour, from one of the designers of the MLK memorial they're building on the mall in Washington DC:
Um ... no?
OK, now I am more opposed to this thing than ever. MLK did and said some great things, but he is not on equal footing with Lincoln, let alone freaking Jefferson. Not even close.
BONNIE FISHER, Roma Design Group: Well, if you look at the memorial as a whole and its location on the mall, you referred a little bit earlier to its relationship to the Jefferson, which is across the way on the Tidal Basin, and the Lincoln Memorial, which is very close by, if you were to draw a line between the Jefferson and the Lincoln Memorial, that line goes right through the new site for the Dr. King Memorial.
We tried to build on that axial linkage and express it in the entry experience so that one realizes that Dr. King is one of the most important democratic leaders of modern times, in equal footing to Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence, and to Lincoln with his Gettysburg Address.
Um ... no?
OK, now I am more opposed to this thing than ever. MLK did and said some great things, but he is not on equal footing with Lincoln, let alone freaking Jefferson. Not even close.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
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