Renée Ater, University of Maryland
Over the course of the past several decades, private and public organizations have commissioned numerous monuments to Martin Luther King Jr., which are now located in various public spaces across the United States. From Maya Lin's abstract Civil Rights Monument in Montgomery, Alabama, to the 28-foot-tall statue of King designed by Chinese artist Lei Yi Xin in Washington, DC (to be unveiled in August 2011), communities have struggled over how to best represent King, his life, and his legacy. This paper examines the Martin Luther King Memorial in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and community's response to the statue.
Commissioned by the city of Rocky Mount and funded through a grant from the NC Parks and Recreation Trust Fund, the statue was part of a larger project to transform the former site of a sewage treatment plant into a viable community park dedicated to the life and work of King. Designed by Erik Blome in 2001-02, the 6-foot-fall figurative statue of King engendered controversy from the moment it was installed in a predominantly black neighborhood in Rocky Mount. City officials, mostly white, felt they had hired a well-known and respected artist, and that they had provided ample opportunity for community dialogue regarding the statue. Residents of the neighborhood expressed their outrage at the lack of communication regarding the selection process for the artist, the form of the statue, and its placement. Many blacks were dismayed that the likeness of King did not closely resemble the King they remembered, and some expressed outrage that a white artist had received the commission. The project polarized the black and white communities, with the city deciding to remove the statue in 2003-04, and later reinstalling it in 2007.