Overall costs for the memorial rose over time, and the government demanded tougher security amid threats of domestic terrorism, dragging the project 15 years from the time Congress authorized it in 1996 and 27 years from when King's fraternity first proposed it.
Lesser hurdles have halted others who aspired to build monuments on the mall.
"We have persevered," said Harry Johnson, a 57-year-old Houston attorney who for the past 11 years led an effort that is to culminate today with a ceremony featuring President Barack Obama.
Originally set for Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of the "Dream" speech, the dedication was postponed by organizers and the National Park Service due to Hurricane Irene. The memorial escaped damage from the storm and an earthquake that rattled the East Coast.
The quake and storm posed one final set of challenges to memorial organizers who have faced many over the years.
"Even though we've had dark days and dark clouds, we were able to always see a silver lining in the sky, knowing, understanding and believing it was always going to happen," Johnson said.
Overcoming challenges
One of the darkest days was 9/11, Johnson said, because the memorial foundation was set to go public with its fundraising campaign but had to put plans on hold as the country recovered. Then came the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters, plus an economic downturn, all of which made raising donations even more daunting.
Race, too, was a factor in the struggle over how the memorial would be conceived.
The surprise selection of a Chinese sculptor for King's statue in 2007 eventually drew protests. A black painter launched a petition to try to force a change, saying black artists should have first rights to interpret the memory of the man who did so much for his fellow African-Americans. A bronze sculptor from Denver complained he was pushed aside. Human rights advocates chimed in, saying King would have detested China's record on civil liberties.
Executive architect Ed Jackson Jr., 62, who oversaw the design process for 15 years, concedes he may have been naive to think others would easily see the power of sculptor Lei Yixin's concept and the mastery of his work.
"Politics can actually change the color of your lens ... and some of the comments were out of ignorance," Jackson said.
Still, the memorial foundation maintained King was inclusive of all people and never wavered from the selection of a Chinese sculptor. Jackson said he tried to insulate Lei, even as a federal arts panel criticized the design as too "confrontational."
Standing tall
King's likeness rises a full 30 feet to watch over the memorial landscape. The 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner stands with his arms crossed, carved from a "stone of hope," looking toward the horizon. The central theme is King as a symbol of hope emerging from a boulder - a "mountain of despair," as King said in his 1963 "Dream" speech.
Visitors pass through a narrow opening in the "mountain" to symbolize the struggle for civil rights before entering an open plaza. They won't discover King's statue right away. Designers intend for waterfalls to draw visitors to either side of the plaza to first see curving granite walls carved with 14 quotations from King, none of which is from the "Dream" speech - organizers said they wanted to focus on some of King's powerful but lesser-known words, such as his Nobel acceptance remarks and his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
The granite for King's statue was chosen because when lit at night, it lends a brownish tone to King's likeness. The stone, however, only exists in China, Jackson said.
King's statue stands taller than other human figures on the mall, though it does not seem overwhelming, said Thomas Luebke, an architect who serves as secretary to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, an agency that approved the design. The memorial to King puts him squarely between those of Thomas Jefferson, who espoused ideals of equality but was a slave owner, and Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves in the Civil War.
"It's nicely situated between the Jefferson and the Lincoln Memorial, so it's part of that conversation," he said. "That corner of the mall has started to have a little bit of a theme about the ideas of our democracy between Jefferson, (Franklin D.) Roosevelt and now King."
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