Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Sculpture

Theoharis argues that the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial sculpture on the National Mall in Washington DC is symbolic of the national narrative of the civil rights movement. She writes that the statue of King does not resemble the man himself enough and does not represent the ethos of dissent he embodied. The original plans for the monument were that it would include other civil rights activists but those people were ultimately not included for budgetary reasons, thus reinforcing "the Great Man view of history" that Theoharis writes about specifically in Chapters 6 and 7. On a granite wall next to the statue of King, fourteen quotes are inscribed. However, these quotes are taken out of context, are in no particular order, and not one of them uses the words "racism, "segregation," or "racial inequality" (9). Because the quotes are not arranged in chronological order...