Anti-Hate Crime Rally, GoFundMe Follow Vandalism of Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

Update: On February 27, the Denver Police Department recovered the stolen pieces from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “I Have a Dream” monument and also the nearby Joseph Addison Thatcher Memorial fountain; they'd been sold as scrap metal. According to the DPD, "The incident at this time does not appear the incident was bias-motivated. However, investigators’ final findings will be presented to the Denver District Attorney’s Office, which determines charges."

On the chilly morning of January 15, 2024, former mayor Wellington Webb and first lady Wilma Webb joined the group gathered by "I Have a Dream," the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial by the City Park Esplanade, to kick off one of the country's largest MLK celebrations, which ends with the annual Marade to the Denver City and County Building.

The Webbs were back there last week, after vandals damaged the sculpture on February 20. Wellington Webb quickly established a GoFundMe campaign to cover repairs to the work, which could run to $100,000 to replace the missing bronze angel and the torch of freedom, as well as a bronze panel honoring Black military veterans.

As a state legislator, Wilma Webb was instrumental in pushing to make MLK Day a holiday in this state; it took her four tries before the Colorado Legislature finally approved creating a King holiday and Governor Richard Lamm signed the bill into law in 1984, establishing the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission.
The push for such an observance wasn't just rocky in Colorado. Four days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Congressman John Conyers of Michigan introduced the first legislation to create a federal holiday in his honor. Three years later, petitions with 3 million signatures in support of a King holiday were presented to Congress — but the legislation did not move forward. In 1979, the King Holiday Bill finally began moving through Congress — and was defeated in a floor vote in the House by five votes that November. Finally, in August 1983, the House passed the King Holiday Bill; it was approved by the Senate in October and was signed into law in November.

By then, states had already taken action. In 1973, Illinois created the first state King holiday; Massachusetts and Connecticut followed suit the next year.

By the time the first national King Holiday was observed on January 20, 1986, seventeen states — including Colorado — had official state holidays. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Colorado Holiday Commission had held its first Marade — a combination march/parade — the previous year, with Wilma Webb at the head of a group of about 15,000 people, who gathered by the City Park statue dedicated to MLK.

But not the current statue.

Second MLK Statue

Back in the early ’70s, even as Congress was turning down efforts to create an MLK holiday, Denver bowling alley owner Herman Hamilton came up with the idea of commissioning a statue that would connect Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy who was killed while visiting relatives in Mississippi, after he'd talked to a white woman. He was kidnapped, beaten, shot and tossed in the river; his killers were acquitted at trial.

Hamilton worked with budding sculptor Ed Rose on a proposal to create a statue made of sheet metal and bronze, "King and Companion," which was erected in City Park in 1976 as a U.S. Bicentennial project. But from the start, the piece was the focus of controversy — critics fretted that King's head was too big, funders refused to pay for the statue, and Rose had to sue to be compensated for his work.

Finally, renowned Denver-based sculptor Ed Dwight — who's been in line to become the first Bladk astronaut — was given a million-dollar contract to create a replacement sculpture of King for City Park that placed the civil rights leader on top of a three-layer pedestal bearing bronze representations of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Mahatma Gandhi and Rosa Parks.

"King and Companion" was removed to make room for the new piece, which was unveiled on the Esplanade in 2003. (Ironically, Dwight, who was honored with a 2023 MLK Jr. Business Social Responsibility Award in Denver, was snubbed for a commission to create the King memorial in Washington, D.C. The work went to a Chinese artist and debuted in 2011, when it immediately became the source of controversy over a paraphrased quote. Ultimately, then-Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, a Coloradan who today is Ambassador to Mexico, ordered the quote removed.)

After first offering the city's spare King statue to local schools, Denver finally donated "King and Companion" to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Center and Museum in Pueblo, established in an old orphanage for Black children. Although that museum has since closed, the work still stands outside what is now known as the Friendly Harbor Community Center, with a new name: "Prophet for Peace."

Anti-Hate Gathering

At 10 a.m. today, February 26, community leaders will be back before the MLK memorial, decrying the vandalism and drawing attention to the increasing number of hate crimes in Colorado; 345 were reported in Colorado last year.

“We’re living through a time of constant change, some immediately felt and some seen only through the generations,” Denver City Councilwoman Shontel Lewis says in an announcement of the event. “While we have taken strides toward a more equitable society, we continue to see those with bigoted mindsets push back against the progress made. For those who want to see the change toward better, they have to actively be the change by continuing to be active in the process and our neighborhoods.

“Now is the time to embrace Dr. King’s messages of unity, mercy and understanding,” Lewis adds. “It has been an uphill climb to where we are, and progress continues to come only through collaboration, carrying forward following our leader’s model of goodness in the face of adversity.”

The Denver Police Department has opened an investigation in conjunction with DPD's Bias Motivated Crime Unit; anyone with information can contact Denver Metro Crime Stoppers at 720-913-7867.

Portions of this story are reprinted from an article published in July 2023.