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| Rod Gillum, the VP of General Motors and president of the General Motors Foundation. He is also the chairman of the board of the Martin Luther King National Memorial Project. |
WASHINGTON
– Dozens of Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest confidantes
and associates all gathered at the very site where the $120 million
Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial will be built on the National
Mall. Civil Rights dignitaries traveled to the nation’s Capitol
on Dec. 2 and 3, including Xernona Clayton, King’s special
assistant, and the Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, the man who
made the fateful invitation for King to come to Memphis in April 1968.
The surviving associates of King received a detailed analysis of the
design and shape of the memorial, which is projected to be built in
2010.
At the celebratory dinner at
the upscale Madison Hotel on Dec. 2, his friends, associates and fellow
marchers shed tears and laughed while they shared never-before-heard
intimate details of King, including the poignant tales of seeing him
for the last time.
With
General Motors’ VP of Corporate Relations and Diversity Rod
Gillum taking the lead with a $10 million contribution, followed
closely by Federal Appropriations’ $9.8 million and Tommy
Hilfiger’s $5 million, the Martin Luther King National Memorial
Project Foundation has raised just over $100 million of the $120
million needed to build the memorial for the first and only African
American on the National Mall. The memorial will be situated along a
four-acre site along the Tidal Basin, sitting adjacent to the Franklin
D. Roosevelt Memorial and on a direct line between the Lincoln and
Jefferson Memorials. King will be the first non-President of the United
States to have his giant likeness stand among the iconic figures of
American politics.
“We
wanted to hear from [King’s associates], because this is like a
reunion for them. Many of them know each other,” says Harry E.
Johnson, president and CEO of the Washington, DC-based Martin Luther
King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc. and past general
president of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the community service
organization that is heading the project. “Then they will see a
model of the memorial, see the video, and go by the site. They will
realize that in this day and age, that an African American man, a
non-president, a peace man, will be on the Mall.” –terry shropshire
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| MLK’s image decorate a wall, as former advisors and intimate associates of Dr. King assemble at the upscale Madison Hotel for a MLK Memorial celebratory dinner gala in Washington DC. |
Close associates of Dr. King, including former assistant Xernona Clayton, left, laugh and cry as they listen on poignant tales of Dr. King’s lasting legacy on the world. |
