Culture · Washington
Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in the broader landscape of King memorials
Washington, D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is listed among the buildings and public places commemorating the civil rights leader across the United States.
By KLGBT News Desk ·
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is Washington, D.C.’s entry in a national list of places that commemorate King. The listing places the library among buildings named in his honor, alongside a wide range of memorial sites, bridges, parks, schools and public promenades elsewhere in the United States.
The list presents these memorials as a broad and varied form of public remembrance. Some are connected to specific places in King’s life. In Atlanta, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated King’s boyhood home and several nearby buildings as the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in 1980. Other entries take the form of civic spaces and infrastructure, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Promenade in San Diego, memorial parks in Kalamazoo and Raleigh, and bridges in Fort Wayne and Toledo.
Raleigh’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Gardens includes a life-size sculpture of King and a 12-ton granite water monument honoring civil rights leaders in the area. The list also includes Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School in Memphis and a memorial high-rise building for older residents at Atlanta’s McDaniel-Glenn housing project.
Washington’s library appears in the section devoted to buildings, rather than in the list’s separate grouping of memorial sites. The extract does not provide additional information about the library’s design, history, programming or location within the city. It does, however, place the Washington institution within a national pattern: King’s name has been used for civic and educational spaces as well as for monuments and commemorative landscapes.
The list also records a geographic act of commemoration in the Pacific Northwest. King County, Washington, rededicated its name in his honor in 1986 and changed its logo to an image of King’s face in 2007. That entry differs from the Washington, D.C., library listing because it concerns the naming and visual identity of a county rather than a single building.
Taken together, the entries show the range of forms included under the heading of memorials to King. They include historic preservation, public art, transportation infrastructure, education, housing and library buildings. For Washington readers, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library is part of that larger national record of places carrying his name, even though the supplied list provides no further details about the D.C. building itself.
Source and reuse information This automatically generated backgrounder adapts text from “List of memorials to Martin Luther King Jr.” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memorials_to_Martin_Luther_King_Jr. The adapted text is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. The source article’s linked references are provided below where available. This story has not been independently reviewed or fact-checked.
Further links listed by the Wikipedia page (not independently checked): - https://web.archive.org/web/20120616170228/http://www.mlkmemorial.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=hkIUL9MVJxE&b=1601407&ct=3612187 - https://web.archive.org/web/20071207045944/http://www.harrisburgpa.gov/pressReleases/prArchives/2003/01/20030119_mlkEssay.html - https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/across-dc-statues-honor-african-americans/2011/07/28/gIQA5f1iZJ_story.html - https://2001-2009.state.gov/f/releases/remarks2007/87649.htm - https://wayback.archive-it.org/all/20080624221014/http://personal.ecu.edu/aldermand/pubs/alderman_chapter.pdf - https://civilrightstrail.com/attraction/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-memorial-gardens/ Image rights Photograph description: A historic dialogue with some of the LGBTQ Communities of Washington, DC. Guided by some of the most transformational leaders of our time. Everyone deserves to be safe. Creator: Ted Eytan. License: CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0). Original image page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2017.05.09_LGBTQ_Communities_Dialogue_and_Capital_Pride_Board_Meeting_Washington_DC_USA_4558_(33746416363).jpg. The image was resized for display; no other changes were made.