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BY LINDA WORTHINGTON
UMCONNECTION STAFF

Baltimore-Washington Conference United Methodists are being asked to partner with a large coalition of non-profit organizations, colleges, corporations, churches and media to help build a memorial of Martin Luther King Jr. The proposed memorial will be built at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold.

'Many people were surprised to learn that there was no memorial to Dr. King in Maryland,' said Carl O. Snowden, an aide to Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens, who chairs the fundraising effort. There are other tributes, such as streets in Baltimore and Prince George?s County and a northern red oak planted in his honor at the State House in Annapolis. 'We want the memorial to speak to what King meant to this state,' he added.

The goal of the organizers, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Committee, is to raise $250,000 for the project. They have commissioned Ed Dwight, an internationally renowned sculptor, to design and cast the bronze statue, which is expected to be unveiled April 4, 2006, the thirty-eighth anniversary of King?s assassination. Dwight created the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley memorial in downtown Annapolis.

Baltimore was the backdrop for some of King?s memorable news conferences and rallies: On Halloween in 1964 he rolled through East Baltimore in an open convertible viewed by cheering throngs, in an effort to get urban blacks to vote in the upcoming presidential election. 'We have got to take that short walk to the polling booth on Tuesday because this is the most crucial and decisive election in our history,' he said in a speech that day.

Dwight began work in October on the statue in his Denver foundry. It stands nine-feet tall on a five-foot granite pedestal and will fit against a curved wall Dwight has designed for a natural amphitheater between the science and fine arts buildings on the Arnold campus. 'Dr. King?s arms will be reaching out, and he?ll have a book or a Bible in one hand,' Dwight said describing the work.

United Methodist churches are being asked to collect donations for the memorial by the weekend of King?s Jan. 15 birthday. Checks may be made to Conference Treasurer, marked MLK Memorial, and sent to Baltimore-Washington Conference, 7178 Columbia Gateway Drive, Suite D, Columbia, MD 21046. One check will then be issued to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Committee. For more information, contact associate council director Sandra Ferguson at or (800) 492-2525, Ext. 431.