From student McKenzie Zucker:  Civil Rights Memorial, Montgomery, AL, USA

             Maya Lin is an American designer and artist that created the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She studied architecture and sculpture at Yale and Harvard University. She also designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Museum of Chinese in America along with this memorial. Maya Lin also served as a board member of the National Resources Defense Council and was a member of the World Trade Center Site Memorial design jury.

              During the 1950’s and 1960’s African Americans struggled for equality. In order to gain freedom they participated in freedom rides, marches, boycotts and other protests to fight for their freedom. This was during the same time as the Jim Crow laws, which created segregation in Southern states. Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat to a white man on the bus, and Martin Luther King Jr., who gave his “I have a dream” speech, are examples of individuals who fought for their rights in a nonviolent manner.

              The Civil Rights Memorial was dedicated in 1989 and funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Within the memorial there are various pieces of art to resemble this era. There is a granite wall with Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a Dream” speech as well as a 12-foot disk with the dates of the major civil rights era events and the names of the 40 martyrs to the cause. There are several human rights issues involved in this memorial such as: right to equality, freedom from discrimination, right to desirable work and to join trade unions, right to education. Blacks were denied these rights prior to this time and they were unable to attend schools with whites. They were discriminated against and not treated as humans.

              The one controversy that stood out was the inscriptions on the memorials. On the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial one of the quotes that was missing “If”, which was a misrepresentation of his words. This was also present with the Jefferson Memorial as it took quotes, 30 years apart, and combined them together into one quote. The Lincoln Memorial also omits the reference of slavery behind the statue of Lincoln. Although there were words missing or put together, some observers like Doss believe that not all words can be put onto a memorial.

              This memorial impacted a large number of people as it remembers those whose lives were taken away as they were fighting for their own lives. Personally, this memorial was a great way to show all of those who protested for their rights and to show how they impacted the world, creating it to be equal today.