The concept of Lin's design is based on the soothing and healing effect of water. It was inspired by a passage from King's 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech "...we will not be satisfied "until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream..." The quotation in the passage, which is inscribed on the memorial, is a direct paraphrase of Amos 5:24, as translated in the American Standard Version of the Bible. The memorial is a fountain in the form of an asymmetric inverted stone cone. A film of water flows over the base of the cone, which contains the 41 names included. It is possible to touch the smooth film of water and to alter it temporarily, which quickly returns to smoothness. The memorial is designed in a timeline manner. It begins with Brown v. Board in 1954, and ends with Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968.
Tours and location
The memorial is in downtown Montgomery, at 400 Washington Avenue, in an open plaza in front of the Civil Rights Memorial Center, which was the offices of the Southern Poverty Law Center until it moved across the street into a new building in 2001. The memorial may be visited freely 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.[2]
The Civil Rights Memorial Center offers guided group tours, lasting approximately one hour. Tours are available by appointment, Monday to Saturday.[3]
"The Forgotten" are 74 people who are identified in a display at the Civil Rights Memorial Center. These names were not inscribed on the Memorial because there was insufficient information about their deaths at the time the Memorial was created.[6] However, it is thought that these people were killed as a result of racially motivated violence between 1952 and 1968.[7]
