“I have a dream,” Martin Luther King Jr. intoned on the steps of Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial during an August heatwave in 1963. Those words became a symbol whose gravity bent what King elsewhere refers to as the “arc of the moral universe.” That arc is long, King said, “but it bends toward justice.”
Now, SLCC’s Taylorsville Redwood Campus hosts a statue commemorating the moment that King described his dream in a larger-than-life, 9-foot bronze monument. The monument’s physical mass substantiates the figurative weight of King’s dream.
The statue is the work of Stan Watts, a Salt Lake City-based sculptor who heads a workshop called Atlas Bronze Casting. Watts has also sculpted other civil rights leaders like Rosa Parks and Ida B. Wells, and — along with fellow sculptor Tami Brooks — populated the Peace and Justice Garden at South City Campus with a series of sculptures honoring other historically significant women.
James Walton, who manages SLCC’s galleries and art collection, believes the sculpture of King is a timely addition to the College’s material and ideological landscape, though he also notes that reflecting on King’s activism is always appropriate.
“I can’t imagine a time in this country when it won’t be important to engage with Dr. King’s legacy,” he said. “The struggle for civil rights has been deeply engrained in the fabric of America since its founding, and it continues to this day.”
According to Watts, the new statue of King centers that message by depicting the legendary orator pronouncing the first syllable of “I have a dream.” That’s confirmed by the sculpture itself; King’s mouth, tongue, and teeth are clearly forming the first-person pronoun, and his upraised arm and fanned fingers, culminating in an extended index finger, emphasize the point. The overall effect leads the viewer to complete the quote:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
Though it’s only one of eight instances of “I have a dream” in the speech in which it was delivered, this particular occurrence came to define both the speech, known universally as the “I Have a Dream” speech, and King’s overall legacy. That legacy has since come to carry incalculable weight in the US’s collective memory. While sculpting, Watts felt that weight.
“Just using Dr. King’s name, you have a responsibility to make it better than you could do,” Watts said of the stakes in creating a monument for such a significant individual at such a critical moment in US history.
This is especially true for this statue, which commemorates the speech's call for the country to realize the shared dream of its highest ideals — or, as Walton puts it, “It’s a call to action, a fiery condemnation of America’s failure to realize the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence.”
Watts feels the same, hoping King’s fiery words will continue to inspire action for years, decades, or even centuries to come.
“In 500 years,” he said of the statue, “Dr. King will still be saying, ‘I have a dream.’” With that moment cast in the permanence of bronze, the SLCC community may still be listening.
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