It’s getting damn hard to honor somebody with a statue in this country. Sure, it’s more common these days to remove statues than install them as we reevaluate who’s worthy of the honor, but even when people agree someone deserves recognition, those in charge are told they’re doing it wrong.
Consider the case of the Washington, DC, memorial for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When it was dedicated in 2011, it drew criticism for both its pose and the bowdlerized quote chiseled into the stone: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.” Poet Maya Angelou said it made King “look like an arrogant twit.”
Cut to last week in Boston and the unveiling of “The Embrace.” Sculptor Hank Willis Thomas had a tough task. Though everyone keeps calling it a tribute to King, the commission was actually for something that would honor both King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston when the couple met. He chose to represent their bond by immortalizing the hug they shared after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
Reaction has been mixed, but you wouldn’t know it from the media coverage, which has focused on the negative opinions, the stronger the better. The one that got the most attention was from a Scott King cousin, Seneca Scott, who called the monument “an atrocity” and a waste of $10 million that he falsely said was “public money” (private donations paid for the monument).
Comedians noted that, from certain angles, the statue looks lewd. Guest-hosting “The Daily Show,” Leslie Jones said, “Listen, I know Dr. King went down in history, “but this is not how you show it.”
For his part, Thomas seems both bemused and saddened by the criticism: ““It’s a strange thing,” he said, “the moment that we live in, that we are more inspired to talk about silly things than something as serious as the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King.”
“These Arms of Mine,” written by Otis Redding, marked his first appearance on the Billboard charts. It reached No. 20 on the R&B chart (No. 86 on the Hot 100) in 1962.
