Fees to King family In 2001, the foundation's efforts to build the memorial were stalled because
Intellectual Properties Management Inc., an organization operated by King's family, wanted the foundation to pay licensing fees to use his name and likeness in marketing campaigns. The memorial's foundation, beset by delays and a languid pace of donations, stated that "the last thing it needs is to pay an onerous fee to the King family."
Joseph Lowery, past president of the King-founded
Southern Christian Leadership Conference stated in
The Washington Post, "If nobody's going to make money off of it, why should anyone get a fee?" Cambridge University historian
David Garrow, who won a
Pulitzer Prize for
Bearing the Cross, his biography of King, said of King's family's behavior, "One would think any family would be so thrilled to have their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn on them to ask for a penny." He added that King would have been "absolutely scandalized by the profiteering behavior of his children." The family pledged that any money derived would go back to the
King Center's charitable efforts. The foundation has paid various fees to the King family's Intellectual Properties Management Inc., including a management fee of $71,700 in 2003 (). In 2009, the Associated Press revealed that the King family had negotiated an $800,000 licensing deal () with the foundation for the use of King's words and image in fundraising materials for the memorial.
Conflicts between federal agencies Further delay was encountered in 2008, due to a disagreement between the three federal agencies that must approve the memorial. The memorial design that was approved by the CFA and the NCPC was not approved by the NPS, due to security concerns. The NPS insisted upon the inclusion of a barrier that would prevent a vehicle from crashing into the memorial area. However, when the original design was submitted to the other two agencies, including such a barrier, the CFA and the NCPC rejected the barrier as being restrictive in nature, which would run counter to King's philosophy of freedom and openness. Eventually, a compromise was reached, which involved the use of landscaping to make the security barriers appear less intrusive upon the area. The compromise plan was approved in October 2009, The commission was criticized by human rights activist
Harry Wu on the grounds that Lei had previously sculpted
Mao Zedong. It also stirred accusations that it was based on financial considerations, because the Chinese government would make a $25 million donation to help meet the projected shortfall in donations. The president of the memorial's foundation,
Harry E. Johnson, who first met Lei in a sculpting workshop in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, stated that the final selection was done by a mostly African American design team and was based solely on artistic ability.
Gilbert Young, an artist known for a work of art entitled ''He Ain't Heavy'', led a protest against the decision to hire Lei by launching the website "King Is Ours", which demanded that an African American artist be used for the monument. Human-rights activist and arts advocate Ann Lau and American stone-carver Clint Button joined Young and national talk-show host
Joe Madison in advancing the protest when the use of Chinese granite was discovered. Lau decried the human rights record of the Chinese government and asserted that the granite would be mined by workers forced to toil in unsafe and unfair conditions, unlike that used in the
National World War II Memorial, for example. Button argued that the $10 million in federal money that has been authorized for the King project required it to be subject to an open bidding process. In September 2010, the foundation gave written promises that it would use local stonemasons to assemble the memorial. However, when construction began in October, it appeared that only Chinese laborers would be used. An investigator working for the Washington area local of the
International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers was reportedly told that the Chinese workers did not know what they would be paid for their work on the memorial and that they expected to be paid when they returned home.
Stone used The memorial's design team visited China in October 2006 to inspect potential granite to be used. The project's foundation has argued that only China could provide granite of that
hue in sufficient quantity. Young's "King Is Ours" petition demanded that an African American artist and American granite be used for the national monument, arguing the importance of such selections as a part of the memorial's legacy. The petition received support from American granite workers and from the California State Conference of the
NAACP.
Style In May 2008, the
Commission of Fine Arts, one of the agencies which had to approve all elements of the memorial, raised concerns about "the colossal scale and
Social Realist style of the proposed sculpture", noting that it "recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries." The Commission did, however, approve the final design in September 2008. We don't even see his feet. He is embedded in the rock like something not yet fully born, suited and stern, rising from its roughly chiseled surface. His face is uncompromising, determined, his eyes fixed in the distance, not far from where Jefferson stands across the water. But kitsch here strains at the limits of resemblance: Is this the Dr. King of the "I Have a Dream" speech? Or the writer of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech? The way King is depicted with his arms crossed contributed to criticism that he appears stern. On the other hand, King's son,
Martin Luther King III, was quoted as being pleased with the sternness of the depiction, saying that "Well if my father was not confrontational, given what he was facing at the time, what else could he be?" In a September 1, 2011 piece, and again on December 31 of the same year, The ''Post's
editorial board agreed with Manteuffel that the wording on the monument should be changed. Poet and author Maya Angelou, a consultant on the memorial, also emphatically agreed, telling the Post'': "The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit. ... It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. ... It makes him seem an egotist." She also pointed out, "The 'if' clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely." Salazar stated that he believed it was important that the inscription be changed and that he put a deadline on the delivery of the report because "things only happen when you put a deadline on it." In August 2013, the sculptor removed the disputed inscription from the statue, and created a new finish for the side of the artwork. Sculptor Lei Yixin carved grooves over the former words to match existing horizontal "striation" marks in the memorial and deepened all the memorial's grooves so that they match. ==See also==