Does the King Memorial Make Him Sound Arrogant?
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial that was unveiled last week came under fire first for appearing too Asian. Now poet and author Maya Angelou says a quote inscribed on the statue makes the humble pastor sound too arrogant.
“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,” King told Ebeneezer Baptist Church two months before he died in 1968. “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.”
“The sermon was so powerful that the designers of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington selected those lines to be inscribed on the memorial’s towering statue of the civil rights leader,” The Washington Post reported today, but a design change led to a paraphrase instead. The inscription on the side of the statue reads: I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.
“The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,” said Angelou, who consulted on the project. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply.” Ever the wordsmith, Angelou added, ” The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.”
Angelou isn’t the first writer to make this observation. Last week, Washington Post editor Rachel Manteuffel voiced a similar complaint. “An ‘if’ clause is an extraordinarily bad thing to leave out of a quote. If I had to be a type of cheese, being Swiss is best,” she wrote. “I say, let’s undo the mistake. Let’s get the chisels back out. Let’s remember the words he chose and not let this be one more way we’ve failed King.”
Should Rev. Billy Graham Get a Statue Too?
“Not now,” wrote Charlotte Observer journalist Tim Funk at his Funk on Faith blog, but after Graham goes to his heavenly reward “a statue of this Charlotte-born evangelist — pastor to presidents — would be a popular addition to Our Nation’s Capital,” Funk said. But the U.S. Capital would be a more appropriate location than the National Mall, which he said should be “reserved for titans who profoundly changed America: Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR and MLK.”
Funk chose the capital building because each state is allowed to donate likenesses of two of its native children and he thinks two former North Carolina governors have had their day under the dome. There’s precedent too. Hawaii, California, Utah, and Illinois have all donated statuary of religious figures, said Funk.
I do see the point about the missing “if” clause and if Maya Angelou consulted on the project, I wonder why the quote was left as is? What difference would two little letters have made–I mean it’s not as though they would have taken up that much room on the monument.
As for Billy Graham, he’s a great man but he already has the Cove in his home state; I think that’s enough and appropriate. To build a monument to him at the Capitol would open a can of worms in the separation of church and state debate. Yes, Dr. King was a member of clergy, but he spent the bulk of his time working for social justice for all people. If Rev. Graham got a monument, inevitably the question would be asked about adding other religious leaders and I think it would just get really ugly.
Removing the “I was” would solve the problem. It would read as a tribute by the culture rather than as an arrogant attribution by and about himself. Particularly since it attributes a quotation to him that he never uttered.
Dr. King was an amazing and humble man. Since it is a paraphrasing of the quote, make it ring true to Dr. King’s original intent. Since WE are remembering him, we should remember him as he requested and the inscription should read:
“HE was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.”
I recently heard the CEO of the King Memorial Foundation speaking on NPR. He dismissed this as a non-issue and declared there will be no changes to the memorial. He seemed quite possessive over the memorial. I’m not suggesting that he make changes according to each complaint, but he ought not appear as such a dictatorial individual.