This is the tenth of my posts based on a recent tour of the eastern half of the USA. I visited a number of sites relevant to African American history. To mark Black History Month, I am relating some of the things I saw, in the order I saw them.
In Washington DC, I was lucky enough to stay in a neighbourhood where the people were extremely friendly and welcoming. But it is true that the centre of “DC”, as it is almost universally called in the States, is odd. It consists of virtually all federal buildings of some sort or another, plus a lot of monuments. In fact there are so many monuments that, after a couple of days, I had definitely reached “peak monument”.
But certainly one of the most breathtaking monuments is the Dr Martin Luther King Memorial (above). The central statue is beautifully crafted by Lei Yixin. But I was very moved by the large number of plaques bearing the eloquent and powerful words of the great man. Here’s a couple of them:
* Paul Walter is a Liberal Democrat activist and member of the Liberal Democrat Voice team. He blogs at Liberal Burblings.
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The gold standard of heroism, of humanitarianism, this man, Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
His picture is on my wall above my desk, taken from the I have a dream, speech he gave.
My musical I am developing, on the theme of African American related history, is dedicated to him and Nelson Mandela.
The naysayers from the far right , as with those on the far left particularly with President Kennedy, prefer to bring him down in our view of him, as flawed only, as if flaws and more are not the norm with all human beings even greater ones.
He was and is a great and good man , and leader.
We had a three week stay in the Eastern USA, including DC, this year and we both found the MLK monument one of the best. The other thought that struck us was their love of statues, especially in the Capitol, was that we were reminded very much of Imperial Rome.