Clinton OKs Monument to King

President Clinton signed legislation Thursday to create a monument on the Washington Mall to assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Vice President Al Gore said.

Gore announced the decision in a speech to the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in Atlanta, evoking King’s legendary “I Have a Dream” speech delivered on the Mall in 1963.

“At this moment in the Oval Office, President Clinton is signing a new measure that will authorize the creation of a national monument to Dr. King, right on the National Mall from which he led and moved our nation. It’s about time,” Gore said.

“It’s appropriate that there is a memorial for him in the nation’s capital on the order of those for Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson,” said King’s widow, Coretta Scott King. “They were great patriots of this country, and so was my husband.”