That Ain’t Right…

Ever heard of Lei Yixin? Most African American’s have not. Yixin is the Chinese sculptor that designed the Stone of Hope, and the statue of Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington DC on the National Mall. You might ask why didn’t a black sculptor design and create the statue of one of the greatest icons of the civil rights movement? Well give me a second, I’m “Yixin.” to tell you. Heh.heh.. Yes, I gonna keep my head held high after that..

To make a long story short, the monument cost $120 million. The federal government kicked in $10 million. The rest was made up of various donations from different groups. At one point the organizers feared they would not be able to raise the money in the time frame they had set. The Chinese government stepped in with a $25 million donation to close the gap. The committee was ecstatic!! When the offers came in to build the monument, Yixin was chosen. The accusations flew around like flies at a picnic. The president of the memorial’s foundation, Harry E. Johnson, who first met Lei in a sculpting workshop in Saint Paul, Minnesota, stated that the final selection was done by a mostly African American design team and was based solely on artistic ability. Right.. Didn’t you pick the members on the African American Design team Harry? Wasn’t the monument built in China and assembled here. Didn’t the Chinese take $8 million off the price. You and your design team searched high and low and there was not a single black man on this planet that could do the job… right? Look a Chinese made African American monument is better than no monument. You didn’t have to lie to us. No, we don’t like it, but it is what it is. Like the statues namesake said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

Hmm.. those wascally wabbits… anywho, at the unveiling there was a chorus of detractors.. myself included. There was something about his eyes. He looked like an Asian. I’m not kidding! I wasn’t the only one who thought he looked like a black Genghis Khan. Courtland Milloy, a former columnist for the Washington Post, summed up the complaints:

“So, yes, it stings when, centuries later, creators of the King memorial say they couldn’t find a qualified black sculptor…. Who gets the job? A Chinese national with an apparent preference for the heroic and authoritarian. The sculpture is based on a 1966 photograph of King taken in his office in Atlanta, standing at his desk, with a picture of Indian leader Mohandas Gandhi on a wall in the background. In it, King has soft eyes and an open face that conveys the blessed assurance of a man who walks by faith.

Lei Yixin has turned those eyes into something of a steely squint. The result is a stern colossus, dressed no less in a style of suit similar to ones found on many statues of Stalin. In America’s militaristic culture, King’s take-no-prisoners personae will surely resonate — especially among many in the black middle class, which places a premium on order and discipline. King’s expression reminds me of a parent or teacher about to administer some tough love with a belt.”

This from NorCal blog’s “The Gate,”:

“The sculpture of MLK looks eerily like a black Chinese Dictator. It’s as if the artist used the body from some old Chairman Mao statue and stuck an oriental looking Martin Luther King head on it. Seriously, check out his eyes and forehead. It’s as if the artist used Photoshop to lift MLK’s face off a picture and pasted it to a bust of Mao.”

Another problem with the memorial was the inscriptions were wrong. One of the two quotes appearing on the Stone of Hope and attributed to King, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”, is a paraphrased version of King’s actual words, which were: “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. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” They wasn’t going to change it either. That is until Maya Angelou called them out. “The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit. … It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. … It makes him seem an egotist.” She also pointed out, “The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.” So guess what happened?

On January 13, 2012, United States Secretary of the InteriorKen Salazar ordered the quotation corrected. A year later in December, Salazar announced that the entire quote would be removed, starting in February or March 2013; it will not be replaced. In August 2013, the sculptor removed the disputed inscription from the statue, and created a new finish for the side of the artwork. The inscription was never replaced. So when you go on the right side of the monument, there use to be that inscription there. I feel like the little boy who didn’t like the new pair of tennis shoes mama bought, so she took them back. In 2001, the foundation’s efforts to build the memorial were stalled because Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an organization operated by King’s family, wanted the foundation to pay licensing fees to use his name and likeness in marketing campaigns. The memorial’s foundation, beset by delays and a languid pace of donations, stated that “the last thing it needs is to pay an onerous fee to the King family. In 2009, the Associated Press revealed that the King family had negotiated an $800,000 licensing deal with the foundation for the use of King’s words and image in fundraising materials for the memorial. The King children also allegedly wanted $1,000000, to lend the Museum of African American History Dr Kings personal bible. They didn’t get it. Instead the museum closed all the shades on Valentines Day so the sun wouldn’t shine in there.

The memorial to Dr king is not the only one as you can imagine. There are quite a few and as with the one in Washington DC there have been detractors with the other statues as well.

This statue is in Albany NY. It was commissioned before weed was legalized. The lady thinks its a statue of her uncle Clyde asking for another five dollars.

That looks so much like him.. I really enjoyed those Rocky movies…

They need a new NAACP leader in Charlotte North Carolina..

Look Buffalo NY, if you don’t want a sculpture of MLK in your city, just say so.

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