WASHINGTON - Ordinary folks and mega-stars gathered on a muddy patch of the National Mall on Monday to break ground on a memorial honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
President Bush shared the stage with former President Bill Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., talk show host Oprah Winfrey, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton to launch the first memorial on the Mall dedicated to an African-American.
"Today we see only these open acres, yet we know that when the work is done, the King Memorial will be a fitting tribute, powerful and hopeful and poetic, like the man it honors," Bush told a mostly African-American crowd of 5,000 people. "As we break ground, we remember the great obstacles that Dr. King overcame and the courage that transformed American history."
Scheduled for completion in spring 2008, the $100 million crescent-shaped memorial will stand on prime real estate: four acres of land along Washington's Tidal Basin between the Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln memorials.
The location is symbolic and significant. Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, is a founding father of the country. Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom from slavery.
The steps of the Lincoln Memorial are also where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech in the summer of 1963, capping a massive civil rights march on Washington.
"We give Martin Luther King his rightful place among the great Americans honored on our National Mall," Bush said. "And by its presence in this place it will unite the men who declared the promise of America and defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America."
