The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial will be dedicated on Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of the day King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
About the sculpture
The sculpture, called the “Stone of Hope,” gets its name from a line in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” At the entrance to the memorial two stones stand apart, representing the “Mountain of Despair.” A single wedge is pushed out, and from there King’s form emerges.
The sculpture stands on a four-acre plot on the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin, across from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and next to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. It creates a visual “line of leadership” from the Lincoln Memorial to the Jefferson Memorial.
