Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial marked its first holiday named for the slain civil rights leader Monday with a controversy.
Shortly after the memorial was dedicated in August, it became obvious that an inscription at the base of the 9.1-meter high statue inaccurately quotes King.
It says, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.”
A columnist for The Washington Post researched King’s speeches just after the dedication ceremony to discover the true statement.
During his sermon titled “The Drum Major Instinct” two months before he was assassinated in November 1968, King said, “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness.”
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar last week ordered the National Park Service to correct the inscription or find a new one within 30 days.
The National Park Service is now working with the King family and their foundation to come up with a modification to the inscription.
Visitors to the memorial discussed the controversy and their reasons for visiting the memorial Monday morning with All Headline News.
“It’s a mockery,” said Rory Cavanaugh Wilson, a Washington, D.C., carpenter. “It’s not a complete quote.”
Benjamin Dudley, a project management consultant from Washington, said, “I can see the concern people had and I agree with it.”
The inscription is deeply etched into the base of King’s standing image, which prompted Dudley to say, “The only thing is that it’s going to cost a ton. The logistics are going to be challenging.”
Other visitors believed visiting the memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day was important, regardless of any controversy about an inaccurate quote.
“I first came here when I was 12 years old when he did the ‘I have a dream’ speech,” James Jamison, a Baptist minister from Wilmington, N.C., told All Headline News.
He and his family left their home in North Carolina at 3 a.m. Monday so they could visit the memorial on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“It brings me to tears when I read about it,” said Jamison, who added that he touched the monument during his visit. “It’s like historical.”
President Barack Obama discussed the memorial Monday during a visit to a Washington school to promote volunteer service.
Regardless of whether the inscription is a misquote, it should be read as a call to action, he said.
“I know there’s been a lot of controversy lately about the quote on the memorial,” Obama said. “If you look at that speech about Dr. King as a drum major, what he really said was that all of us could be a drum major for service, all of us could be a drum major for justice, and there’s nobody who can’t serve, nobody who can’t help somebody else.”
The poet Maya Angelou, who knew King personally, told The Washington Post the misquote makes King look like “an arrogant twit.”
The truth is that King “had no arrogance at all,” Angelou said. “He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.”
Obama and his wife planned to attend a celebration later in the day at the Kennedy Center to honor King.
The day started in Washington with a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial.
The Washington National Cathedral held a special religious service for King Monday. King preached his last sermon at the cathedral before he was shot and killed by an assassin at a Memphis motel.
In addition, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation posted about 200,000 new documents on its Web site related to his life and civil rights efforts. They include his personal notes, letters to Vice President Richard Nixon and telegrams to President John F. Kennedy.
In one Aug. 30, 1957 letter to Nixon, King wrote, “It is almost my firm conviction that the full effect of the Civil Rights Bill will depend in large degree upon the program of a sustained mass movement on the part of Negroes. History has demonstrated that inadequate legislation supported by mass action can accomplish more than adequate legislation which remains unenforced for the lack of a determined mass movement.”