Memorial to Rev. King Is Planned for Watts Center

Two years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, dreams too long deferred ignited along 103rd Street in Watts, earning the devastated commercial strip the nickname “Charcoal Alley.”

Since those days of rage in August, 1965, redevelopment has come slowly to 103rd--a major health center, some showcase subsidized housing, a Metro Rail Blue Line depot and a shopping center named for the assassinated civil rights leader.

Now the Community Redevelopment Agency has commissioned a memorial to King to stand in the shopping center at 103rd between Compton and Grandee avenues, a sculpture requiring visitors to stand in King’s footprints to read the text of his celebrated vision.

If the City Council gives its approval in about two weeks, work on the $64,000 memorial by Watts native Charles Dickson, 44, will get under way, with unveiling scheduled for King’s birthday in 1992.

The 8-foot by 10-foot sculpture will feature a concrete wedge suggesting a pulpit and bearing the full text of King’s speech delivered during the 1963 march on Washington.

A cast iron arm and open hand releasing a bird--a gesture of freedom--will extend upward from the top of the wedge. The concrete walls will include figures representing freedom marchers.

Nineteen artists from across the country competed to execute the memorial, but the selection committee unanimously chose Dickson. The sculptor said the memorial gives him an opportunity to serve his community in a unique way.

“Dr. King left mankind a legacy in the form of a dream, a dream that all Americans had shunned the death mask of hatred, leading the entire world to a new life of brotherhood and fellowship among men,” Dickson said.

“My proposal is to create in contemporary form that moment in time when Americans were unified in the struggle for human rights.”