Construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial – an effort spearheaded by St. Louis native Harry E. Johnson Sr. – is now nearly 50 percent completed, $108 million has been raised, and the dedication has been confirmed for August 28.
But the dream is not yet complete.
“We still have $12 million left to raise before we can open this glorious memorial to the public – and less than eight months to raise it,” said Ty Christian, chief marketing strategist for the Washington D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.
Both Johnson and Christian are members of Alpha Phi Alpha, the African-American college fraternity to which King belonged. Ed Jackson Jr., the project’s executive architect, also is an Alpha brother.
General Motors’ $10 million gift made it the largest contributor to the project, and the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation donated $5 million. Sheila C. Johnson, vice chairman and president of the Washington Mystics WNBA team, contributed $1 million, as did film director George Lucas and AARP.
Christian said marketing plans are afoot to call attention to the fundraising gap.
Chevy and its agency, Spike DDB, have a launched a major ad campaign of both print and TV that commenced in December and will run until March.
Boeing has placed the foundation’s award-winning PSA back in the market via national web sites and TV for the months of January and February.
A 28-foot-tall statue of Dr. King, carved in granite by Chinese sculptor Lei Yixin, is being erected on the National Mall near the Tidal Basin and between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials. Wrapped in scaffolding as construction continues, the statue faces the Jefferson Memorial. Its head was put in place just before Thanksgiving.
The size of the 28-foot-tall sculpture sets it apart from nearby statues of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, which are both about 20 feet tall. The MLK statue will be flanked by a 600-foot long curving granite wall engraved with 14 of King’s famous quotations.
One of the stone engravings reads: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
A dedication and opening has been scheduled for Aug. 28, 2011 – the 48th anniversary of King’s “Dream” speech. The memorial will be maintained by the National Park Service when it is completed.
For more information or to donate, visit www.mlkmemorial.org.
