--- title: Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. | TIME description: Martin Luther King Jr. is the first non-President to receive a monument on the National Mall. TIME Contributor Richard Lacayo discusses how it does justice to the civil rights leader canonical: https://time.com/video/hiNIemI9/ og:title: Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. og:description: Martin Luther King Jr. is the first non-President to receive a monument on the National Mall. TIME Contributor Richard Lacayo discusses how it does justice to the civil rights leader og:url: https://time.com/video/hiNIemI9/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/hiNIemI9/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. twitter:description: Martin Luther King Jr. is the first non-President to receive a monument on the National Mall. TIME Contributor Richard Lacayo discusses how it does justice to the civil rights leader twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/hiNIemI9/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr. [Watch (HLS stream): Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr.](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/hiNIemI9.m3u8) (3:08)  _Published 2011-08-25. Martin Luther King Jr. is the first non-President to receive a monument on the National Mall. TIME Contributor Richard Lacayo discusses how it does justice to the civil rights leader_ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:16 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Anti-police brutality protesters and activists march to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the 57th anniversary of his historic “I Have a Dream” speech](/video/8yzzHKh1/) ### Anti-police brutality protesters and activists march to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the 57th anniversary of his historic “I Have a Dream” speech [Making Martin Luther King Jr. in Virtual Reality](/video/JpFevQu4/) ### Making Martin Luther King Jr. in Virtual Reality [President Trump Visits Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial](/video/wK1kxS3s/) ### President Trump Visits Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial --- ## Transcript With this fame, we will be able to hue out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. That line from Martin Luther King's, I have a dream speech, is the one on which the design concept, for his new memorial in Washington DC is based. As a work of art, the stiffly modeled sculpture of King, at it's center, has it's problems. But, as a work of visual rhetoric, as a devise for summoning feelings about one of the greatest Americans. The first monument on the National Mall devoted to a man who was never president and the first for an African American gets a lot of things right. 11 years ago, the San Francisco based Roma Design Group. Won the design competition for the commission, for the four acre memorial. Romed divided the mountain of despair, into two 30 foot high masses of granite. That faced one another across a divide. Walk between those and you emerge on to a plaza along the edge of the title basin. There you find the stone of hope, which appears to have shot forward from the center of the mountain to present a 30 foot figure of King emerging from the rough ground. Behind it is a 450 foot long wall, inscribed with quotations from King's sermons, writings and speeches. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty. For mankind as a whole. In order to preserve the best in thy individual societies. Though it's true the King memorial rests upon a kinda literal mind and embodiment of quotation. And succeeds all the same in calling up feelings of anguish and elation, doubt and fulfillment in a setting where visitors can sit and reflect on King's life. And the statue, it came as a surprise when the foundation that raised funds for the memorial chose a sculptor based in China. The artist, [ INAUDIBLE ], had a resume that included monumental figures of Mao. And in 2008 the U. S. Commission of fine arts, which reviews plans for monuments in Washington, criticized early versions of his King statue. For its colossal scale and social realist style. [ INAUDIBLE ] Made changes, but even now, the stone work, which is not exactly supple, bears a whiff of officialdom. But in truth, any large statue is going to cause hand wringing. Because, democracies are never entirely comfortable with monumental sculpture. We like to think of ourselves as ordinary folk, even when we produce people as extraordinary as King. Though, at the commission's request, Leigh also softened King's features to make him appear less, quote, confrontational. He still confronts us, but that seems just right. In life, King was a man of peace, in death, he forces us to remember, that the struggle for justice he devoted himself to is in our hands now. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] [ SOUND ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Washington's Grand Monument to Martin Luther King Jr.","description":"Martin Luther King Jr. is the first non-President to receive a monument on the National Mall. 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