(Mis)quoting King: commemorative stewardship and ethos in the controversy over the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

• Author: VanderHaagen, Sara C.

Just days before the planned dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in late August 2011, national news outlets published several opinion pieces on the monument. On 25 August, Cornel West opined that, while the memorial marked one of the "major milestones in the turbulent history of race and democracy in America," it did little to address the injustices opposed by King. Making a clear allusion to the memorial, West declared, "King weeps from his grave. He never confused substance with symbolism. He never conflated a flesh and blood sacrifice with a stone and mortar edifice." West concluded that King would not be satisfied with static commemorations but rather that "King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution" (West 2011). That same day, Washington Post writer Rachel Manteuffel penned an editorial claiming that the memorial had been "a little controversial--but not for the right reason." She explained, "Someone, somewhere along the line made a decision that makes King look like something he was not: an arrogant jerk." Manteuffel perceived the offending quotation--"I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness"--as "awfully self-aggrandizing for a man who so often symbolized the strength in humility." Manteuffel criticized the "unknown editor" who changed the quote, then issued a call to action: "I say, let's undo the mistake. Let's get the chisels back out. Let's remember the words he chose and not let this be one more way we've failed King" (Manteuffel 2011). Like West, Manteuffel called for public action. Unlike West, however, she argued that the error should be addressed through a sculptural correction rather than a political revolution. Finally, in an 26 August editorial, Washington Post journalist Jamie Stiehm pointed out that one of the other quotations attributed to King on the monument was actually coined by nineteenth-century preacher Theodore Parker. Stiehm also began her editorial by observing, "An error has been etched in marble on the grand Martin Luther King Jr. memorial." This error, according to Stiehm, pertained to a wellknown phrase appearing on the memorial's wall, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," which was actually crafted by Parker. Although Stiehm did not call for a correction, she urged the public to think critically: "Let's not allow the same omission in a place of remembrance that will be visited by countless Americans in the decades to come" (Stiehm 2011).

Although different in focus, these three critiques exhibit a common commitment to preserving and portraying "true" memories of King. But only Manteuffel's piece sparked a visible, sustained public discussion. And only her critique resulted in a material change to the memorial, which came with a price tag of between $700,000 and $900,000 (Ruane 2012b). Why did Manteuffel's critique of the memorial gain traction while others did not? How did the editorial of a single journalist result in such a costly repair to this carefully constructed memorial? This essay seeks answers to these questions by examining the controversy that emerged in response to Manteuffel's call. My analysis thus responds to Blair, Dickinson, and Ott, who sounded Sarah Ahmed's query "What sticks?" in a "rhetorical key" by asking of public memories, '"[Wjhat makes it stick? how? and with what effects?"' (2010, 18). This essay examines the controversy over the drum major quotation in order to show what stuck and how particular rhetorical choices drove that outcome. (1) On the surface, the debate over this "misquote" seems to center on historical accuracy--i.e. whether the paraphrase accurately reflects what King said and who he was. However, I find that this debate actually reveals more about how elites argue in ways that develop and appropriate the credibility to make commemorative decisions. I argue that the most successful participants in this debate developed ethos by representing themselves as "commemorative stewards" who could speak on, make decisions about, and ultimately control interpretations of public memories.

By developing that argument, this essay advances research on public memory in rhetorical studies in two ways. First, it addresses the need for more scholarship on what Ryan Erik McGeough, Catherine Helen Palczewski, and Randall A. Lake have called "postconstruction controversies" (2015, 251). Whereas most studies of commemorative controversies examine disagreements prior to the memorial or museum's construction, the debate discussed in this essay began after the memorial was completed. Rhetorical scholarship on public memory has amply shown that commemorative efforts are frequently accompanied by debates about who, what, and how to remember figures and events from our shared past (see Kretsinger-Harries 2014; Pierce 2014; Vail 2012 for recent examples). But as McGeough, Palczewski, and Lake point out, "postconstruction controversies over monuments and their meanings have been neglected" (2015, 251). Second, this analysis shows how elites use a rhetoric of stewardship to activate and channel power in commemorative controversies where they are pitted against other elites yet remain responsible to the public. Because this debate was carried out primarily among elites such as journalists, experts in art and academia, luminaries of the civil rights movement, members of the King family, and leaders of the Memorial Foundation, it depended on different forms of ethos than a controversy that pitted "ordinary" citizens against those in power. (2)

The essay proceeds in four parts. First, I narrate the history of the memorial's planning and construction and sketch the contours of the debate. Second, I frame my analysis within public memory scholarship about the role of power in controversies over memory, and I outline how the discourse of stewardship navigates the politics of commemoration. Third, I analyze the themes of stewardship and ethos in participants' arguments. Finally, I discuss what this controversy can teach us about stewardship discourse and the persistence of hegemonic memories of King.

The history of a memorial and a misquote

The official history of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial began in 1984, with members of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity who hoped to memorialize their famous brother. The Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity was founded by and for African American men in 1906 and joined by King in 1952. Those early discussions among the members of Alpha Phi Alpha ultimately led to the decision to seek space for a memorial to Dr. King. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed legislation to provide space for such a memorial in the District of Columbia. Two years later, the charter for the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation was approved. The Foundation, which then had been joined by Coretta Scott King, launched an international competition to find the best design for the memorial. Over the next few years, the Foundation, the Commission of Fine Arts, and Congressional figures debated the appropriate location for the memorial, finally settling on a four-acre site adjacent to the Tidal Basin. The Foundation selected a San Francisco team as the winning design in 2000 and began its fundraising campaign soon thereafter. (3) The site was completed five years after the 2006 groundbreaking, opened to the public in late August 2011, and officially was dedicated in October 2011. The National Park Service's statistics indicate that more than 22 million people visited the memorial between its opening and the end of 2017.

Visitors to the memorial site encounter both the likeness and the words of King. They enter the four-acre site near the Tidal Basin through an opening in the wall, flanked by two 30-foot blocks of granite--the Mountain of Despair. Marking the perimeter around the memorial stand two crescent-shaped walls inscribed with 14 quotations reflecting the memorial's stated values of justice, democracy, hope, and love. (4) The creators based their design on a metaphor from King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech: "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope." As visitors walk through the cleft in the Mountain of Despair, they see the uncarved back of the Stone of Hope. The likeness of King appears as one walks around the Stone of Hope. An inscription on the left side reads: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." On the right face of the King statue was the contested quotation, which originally read: "I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness."

As Manteuffel's 25 August editorial pointed out, this quotation paraphrased a passage in a sermon that King gave on 4 February 1968 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. King had adapted this sermon, which he titled "The Drum Major Instinct," from one given several years earlier by white Methodist minister J. Wallace Hamilton. King's sermon used a New Testament passage to discuss human beings' innate desire for recognition, which he, following Hamilton, called the "drum major instinct" (Miller 1992, 1-12). King urged his listeners to consider how to respond virtuously to this instinct. As he concluded, he imagined how he would want people to reflect on his own response to this instinct once he had passed away. He expressed his hopes for his own eulogy, saying, "I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. 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 shallow things will not matter" (King 1968).

The process that produced this paraphrase became a focal point in news coverage. According to the memorial website and a 2007 press release, relevant individuals and groups had originally approved the longer quotation for inclusion in the memorial (Market...