In conjunction with Sunday’s dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, his niece, Alveda King, will present the pro-life message at an event at the offices of the Family Research Council.
King, who is the full-time director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life, a Catholic pro-life group, will host a panel discussion and video presentation on Saturday at 11:00 a.m. “Redeem the Dream: The State of the Quality of Life in the 21st Century,” will present a frank assessment of how far African-Americans have come since Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, and how the dream has been imperiled by the abortion industry.
“The murder of millions of African-American babies by abortion was not something my Uncle Martin envisioned or would ever have supported,” King said in a statement to LifeNews. “He was unequivocally pro-life, and it would break his heart to know that so many African-American leaders endorse freedom of choice over the right to life.”
“As people gather in the nation’s capital to remember and celebrate the life of my Uncle Martin, it is an opportune moment to declare that were he here today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would be standing with those working to stop the violence of abortion against children in the womb and restore them to equal protection under the law,” King said.
The memorial to King is a four acre site that includes a towering granite sculpture of the civil rights leader and visitors to the King memorial filter through two pieces of granite carved to resemble the sides of a mountain. The 30-foot tall statute was sculpted by Chinese artist Lei Yixin and it shows King appearing to emerge from a mountain. The statute is placed facing southeaster towards the Tidal Basin to the Jefferson Memorial.
The design is based on a sentence from the speech, “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” The memorial joins ones to former presidents, Thomas Jefferson to the southeast, Abraham Lincoln to the northwest, Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the south. President Barack Obama is scheduled to speak at the ceremony this weekend.
The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation spearheaded the $120 million project and says it has $5 million left to go to pay for it.
Several pro-life groups are co-hosting the event with King, including Care Net, Heartbeat International, Center for Urban Renewal and Education, Network of Politically Active Christians, Congress on Racial Equality, Students for Life, National Black Pro-Life Union and Protecting Black Life.
