...What were they thinking? CEO Harry Johnson, the Executive Architect (Ed Jackson), MLK Project Manager (David Hamilton), the Alpha Fraternity, and other members of the Martin Luther King Jr National Memorial Project Foundation... are drawing unnecessary NEGATIVE attention to the National Mall project scheduled to open in 2009....Do we really need to hear the media debate the ethnic background of the person sculpting the King STONE OF HOPE monument? It's distracting and uncivil. It could have been avoided because the King Foundation had to know a similar debate was waged in 2003 when a N
orth Carolina city (Rocky Mount) rejected a monument using the same proposed stance for their park. The complaints that kept the monument from being erected for more than three years, were the charges that the sculptor was White, Dr. King crossing his arms with legs apart made him look arrogant, and... that the sculpture did not look like Dr. King. Those are some of the complaints being heard about Lei's clay model of Dr. King in 2007. Some even say the model looks more like Eddie Murphy than the Atlanta preacher....The King Foundation certainly could have anticipated similar public reaction heard in Rocky Mount, North Carolina... when it deliberately decided not to look for stonecutters in this country or to have artists compete for the honor of working on a monument for Dr. King. From newspaper accounts in 2006 and again in February 2007, it was obvious that the fundraising leaders knew of such potential problems when Foundation CEO Harry Johnson said after the Chinese sculptor's 2007 presentation to some Foundation members that Lei Yixin's race should not be a factor in preventing him from building the sculptu
re for Dr. King. In other words, Lei Yixin, who doesn't speak English and is guaranteed an income for life from the Chinese government... was hand-picked by a group of brothers who had fought for more than ten years to have Dr. King honored on the National Mall. No one bothered to ask, evidently, whether the sculptor could also do "realistic" models? Certainly, no one from the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project required Master Sculptor Lei Yixin to render or interpret his clay model into granite before the fact. That and the obvious lack of a world-wide competition for the honor of sculpting Dr. King raises some, pardon the pun, red flags? That Lei Yixin was approached in June 2006 because he could, as Harry Johnson told the Washington Post (8-15-07), "cut stone" doesn't quite make sense, given the number of stonecutters in this country. The MLK Committee's subsequent trips to Italy and China to inspect granite for the Dr. King monument and only belatedly to Atlanta (2007) to observe granite for other parts of the project on the mall... must have been costly.Not even the fact that Lei Yixin will end up shipping 100 crates from China to have the 30-foot granite monument of Dr. King reassembled on the mall has been a cause for concern at project headquarters. Let's hope the granite and extra personnel are all included in the $132,000 check the Foundation gave Lei Yixin earlier this year.
BUT... the real issue, I contend, is not the race/ethnicity of the sculptor but the PROCESS! In other words, Lei Yixin was not selected competitively; the process was neither open nor transparent. That's the same problem that plagued Rocky Mount, NC (2003) until the city where Dr. King said in 1962 - "Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight..." finally held a more open process.
It also should not be ignored that... Lei Yixin was picked in 2006 because he could follow the then Sculptor of Record (Ed Dwight) and the Roma Design Group's 2004 designs for the STONE OF HOPE. The public really didn't have to know about the in-house fighting between the National Memorial Project team and the sculptor Ed Dwight who by 2007 had already designed hundreds of mini-models of Dr. King that were sent to major donors.
The media will continue to play the race card because African Americans are fussing with African Americans. BUT my research reveals that that is a major mistake because there are more serious problems with the National Mall project. As a researcher, former professor of social movements and investigative reporter, what I am going to reveal might well raise some serious questions about the $82 million already raised/spent for the King memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
BUT... the real issue, I contend, is not the race/ethnicity of the sculptor but the PROCESS! In other words, Lei Yixin was not selected competitively; the process was neither open nor transparent. That's the same problem that plagued Rocky Mount, NC (2003) until the city where Dr. King said in 1962 - "Rocky Mount, I have a dream tonight..." finally held a more open process.
It also should not be ignored that... Lei Yixin was picked in 2006 because he could follow the then Sculptor of Record (Ed Dwight) and the Roma Design Group's 2004 designs for the STONE OF HOPE. The public really didn't have to know about the in-house fighting between the National Memorial Project team and the sculptor Ed Dwight who by 2007 had already designed hundreds of mini-models of Dr. King that were sent to major donors.
The media will continue to play the race card because African Americans are fussing with African Americans. BUT my research reveals that that is a major mistake because there are more serious problems with the National Mall project. As a researcher, former professor of social movements and investigative reporter, what I am going to reveal might well raise some serious questions about the $82 million already raised/spent for the King memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
For now... look closely above at which hand Dr. King uses to hold his pen in Lei Yixin's clay models and in the Roma Design Group's rendition below of the STONE OF HOPE and MOUNTAIN OF DESPAIR.
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? Which hand is Dr. King using to hold his pen in the pictures below? Is it the same hand Dr. King raises at the 1963 March on Washington? you can see the picture in the Foundation's fundraising material on its website?
DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE? Which hand is Dr. King using to hold his pen in the pictures below? Is it the same hand Dr. King raises at the 1963 March on Washington? you can see the picture in the Foundation's fundraising material on its website?
Pen in Left hand!
How do the above and Lei Yixin's models above DIFFER from these below?
How do the above and Lei Yixin's models above DIFFER from these below?
(Pen in Right Hand)
These statues are by Illinois Sculptor Erik Blome.
Blome's 2003 model of Dr. King for Rocky Mount, NC has pen in RIGHT hand. But the stance met with resistance by Rocky Mount, North Carolina residents.
At this point it's obvious that Lei Yixin's clay models of Dr. King are wrong!
If he carves granite with Dr. King using the left hand to hold his pen... the sculptor will have produced a monument that is historically not correct.
These are FATAL FLAWS involving the MLK project.
WORTH REMEMBERING:
The issue is about more than whether an African American should sculpt an African American, isn't it?
Right Hand! 
Right Hand! 
So the list of problems with MLK National Memorial is growing: inaccurate inscriptions, producing an inaccurate 30-foot statue of Dr. King, failure to hold a national/international competition for a sculptor, moving drastically away from the original Roma Design, using granite from China rather than Georgia, incurring unnecessary expenses with trips to China, and giving away American jobs by OUTSOURCING the historic project to China.
