Powerful Words: Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

When poet Maya Angelou speaks, people listen.

After she said a national memorial in Washington, D.C., misrepresented Martin Luther King Jr., the National Park Service got a directive to change what had been written in stone on the memorial.

The Washington Post reported in April of 2011 that Angelou, a consultant for the memorial, said that the quote inscribed in the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial "makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit.” 

On Feb. 4, 1968, two months before he was killed, King delivered a sermon known as the Drum Major Instinct. In it was the following passage:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.

Paraphrased on the National Memorial are the words, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."

Angelou told the Post that leaving out the "if" clause from the original passage “minimizes the man.” She said, “It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. . . . It makes him seem an egotist.”

On Friday, the Post reported, the Interior Secretary gave the National Park Service 30 days to come up with an alternative quote. 

Do you think the paraphrase was inappropriate?