WASHINGTON (AP) — Tourists and Washingtonians were about to get their first up-close look Monday at the memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The site was set to open without fanfare around 11 a.m. to kick off a week of celebrations ahead of Sunday’s official dedication. About 20 people had lined up outside the site by late morning on what was a warm and sunny day.
Pamela M. Cross, 53, a cybersecurity professional from Washington, said she usually passes by the memorial on her morning walk around the National Mall and was excited to be able to see it up close.
Cross said her father, a postal worker, attended the march on Washington in 1963. She said King’s message continues to resonate.
“The way the country is right now, it’s good to remember his principles,” Cross said. “We are in need of jobs, we’re in need of equality, we’re in need of an economic vision that’s inclusive.”
The memorial sits on the National Mall near the Tidal Basin, between memorials honoring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. It includes a 30-foot-tall sculpture of King and a 450-foot-long granite wall inscribed with 14 quotations from the civil rights leader.
The sheer size of the sculpture of King sets it apart from nearby statues of Jefferson and Lincoln, which are both about 20 feet tall, though inside larger monuments.
A panel of scholars chose the engraved quotations from speeches by King in Atlanta, New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Montgomery, Ala., as well as from King’s books and his letter from a Birmingham, Ala., jail.
One of the stone engravings reads: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
The sculptor, Lei Yixin, said he wanted the memorial to be a visual representation of the ideals King spoke of in his “I Have a Dream” speech.
“His dream is very universal. It’s a dream of equality,” Lei said through his son, who translated from Mandarin. “He went to jail. He had been beaten, and he sacrificed his life for his dream. And now his dream comes true.”
The 30-foot sculpture depicts King with a stern expression, wearing a jacket and tie, his arms folded and clutching papers in his left hand. Lei said through his son that “you can see the hope” in King’s face, but that his serious demeanor also indicates that “he’s thinking.”
The statue depicts King emerging from a stone. The concept for the memorial was taken from a line in the “I Have a Dream” speech, which is carved into the stone: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” Visitors to the memorial pass through a sculpture of the mountain of despair and come upon the stone of hope.
The National Mall site will be surrounded with cherry trees that will blossom in pink and white in the spring.
Sunday’s dedication ceremony will mark the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at the dedication.
via thegrio.com
At his mother’s cozy bungalow, where a spare bedroom has always waited for him, Haynesworth ate the Chinese takeout he had been craving — chicken fried rice for lunch. For the first time in his life, he placed a call on a cellphone. Two nieces he had just met crawled into his lap as he relaxed on a recliner in the living room.
It was his 46th birthday, and he was finally home.
“I’m just going to sit here and relax and spend time with my mother,” Haynesworth said.
Haynesworth was an 18-year-old high school dropout when was arrested as he walked to the market to buy sweet potatoes and bread for Sunday dinner. He told police they had the wrong man.
Now, nearly three decades later, Virginia Attorney General Ken T. Cuccinelli II and two prosecutors say they believe he was telling the truth. DNA and other evidence, they say, point to another attacker.
Haynesworth has his freedom, but he is still fighting to clear his name. He was released after Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) asked the parole board to review his case. The state of Virginia is supporting Haynesworth’s bid to have the Virginia Court of Appeals issue a “Writ of Actual Innocence.”
“I believe in Mr. Haynesworth’s innocence, and I will continue to work toward a complete vindication,” Cuccinelli said in a written statement.
Haynesworth said he will continue fighting for exoneration. He thinks the court “will see the truth,” he said.
But Monday was about celebrating and starting anew.
About 11:20 a.m., Haynesworth, wearing khaki pants and a button-down shirt, walked out of the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt carrying his television and a single garbage bag that held the rest of his belongings.
“He’s home,” his mother, Dolores Haynesworth, said as she tucked her arm around her son. “It’s still hard to believe. I’m holding him, but it’s still hard to believe.”
Haynesworth has never googled, used an ATM or traveled on an airplane. He doesn’t have a driver’s license. During nearly three decades behind bars, he was told when to eat, exercise and go to bed. He said he’s ready to catch up with a world he knows only from television and books.
But for starters, he craves simple things. He wants to sit on a porch, reconnect with old friends and enjoy some of his mother’s fried trout.
“It’s been a long journey,” Haynesworth said. “I just want to reflect and sit down and talk to my momma and eat a meal with her.”
Haynesworth was arrested on a February afternoon in 1984 when his mother sent him out to buy groceries. A woman who had been attacked days earlier saw Haynesworth and told a police officer he was the man.
Haynesworth, who had no criminal record, maintained from the start that he was innocent. But five women ultimately identified him as their attacker. He was convicted in three attacks and acquitted in one; one case was dropped.
In 2005, in the wake of the exonerations of five other wrongly convicted men, then-Virginia governor Mark R. Warner (D) ordered a sweeping review of thousands of criminal cases from 1973 through 1988. Haynesworth’s was among them.
Using technology that wasn’t available in the 1980s, authorities tested DNA collected from a January 1984 rape for which Haynesworth was convicted. The results cleared him and implicated a convicted rapist named Leon Davis.
The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project took on Haynesworth’s case. DNA testing exonerated Haynesworth in a second rape in which he had been a suspect. Again, Davis was implicated.
Davis lived in the same neighborhood as Haynesworth. They resembled each other and have the same blood type.
Davis, who is jailed on other charges, has declined to be interviewed.
Haynesworth also was convicted in two attacks for which there is no genetic evidence. Prosecutors who have reexamined the cases are convinced he was wrongly convicted of those crimes, too.
Haynesworth said guards at the prison woke him up about 1 a.m. Monday to tell him he soon would be released. The other inmates gave him a birthday card that he brought home.
Hours later he was walking outside, hugging his mother and sisters. News photographers shot photos and reporters fired questions at him.
“Back in the hands of the people that love him,” a nephew said.
“I always believed this day would come,” Haynesworth said. “I didn’t think it would take 27 years.”
At home, he checked out his new bedroom and decided it would need some of his own touches. His mother’s dog, Stud, snapped at him. And he settled back in the easy chair as his mother prepared to whip up a dinner of scalloped potatoes, string beans and her son’s favorite trout.
“When we’re here tonight and it’s just the two of us, it will sink in,” she said.
