The sculpted clay was dry and the bronze would soon be cast, but artist Martin Dawe still found himself waking with a start before dawn, worried that he didn’t get the details of the famous man’s face exactly right.
On Monday, Dawe will find out if he succeeded when officials unveil his statue of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on the Georgia state Capitol’s grounds for the 54th anniversary of the March on Washington.
Getting to this point was a three-year struggle over multiple hurdles. Officials had to negotiate with King’s family for the right to use his image. Then an artist was selected for the project, only to be killed in a motorcycle accident. After a lengthy screening, Dawe was chosen to replace him.
Then came the artistic challenge.
“It’s the most difficult portrait I’ve ever done in my whole career,” Dawe said this month at his Atlanta studio. “He has very elusive features. He has a very distinct profile but no over strong characteristic like some historical figures.”
A reflection of epochal changes, the civil rights leader’s statue is going up in his Southern hometown at a time when monuments honoring Civil War Confederates are coming down in many places across the South.
Less than two miles from King’s birthplace, Georgia’s state Capitol has held only one representation of the civil rights icon and Nobel laureate since 1974 – a painting. Black lawmakers lobbied without success for years to install a statue on the grounds commemorating him.
Then, in late 2013, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal ordered the statue of white supremacist Tom Watson – a Georgia political leader in the late 1800s and early 1900s – removed from the Capitol lawn.
On the 2014 national holiday bearing King’s name, Deal visited the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where King preached and promised to “find an appropriate way” to honor him at the Capitol.
King’s family is fiercely protective of his name, image, words and more. Within weeks, an attorney representing the estate warned the governor’s chief of staff that permission for such a statue would be required.
Lawmakers approved a resolution proposing the statue and Deal appointed Rep. Calvin Smyre, a black Democrat from Columbus and longest-serving member of the House, as a liaison to the family. The state and the King estate ultimately came to an agreement for the statue, at no cost.
Smyre said the estate never asked for a financial commitment to use King’s image and he thinks King’s children deserved to be involved.
Meanwhile, Smyre and Republican Rep. Joe Wilkinson began seeking donors to cover the estimated $100,000 expense. By early July of 2015, King’s estate signed off on a design proposal from artist Andy Davis, whose statue of Ray Charles for a south Georgia city convinced state officials that he was the right pick.
But within days of getting the okay to start his work, Davis was killed when a drunk driver collided with his motorcycle. Officials had to start over.
Last January, nearly three years after the statue was proposed, Dawe actually began crafting it.
For its stance, he already had a photo originally chosen by Davis. A fedora-wearing King is shown leaving a courthouse in Montgomery, Ala., during the 1956 bus boycotts.
King’s face, though, took weeks of research. A video clip gave him inspiration.
King has just given his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. He stands, with the overcast sky lighting his face perfectly.
In the finished piece, Dawe aimed for an expression just short of a smile but “hopeful” and “deep in thought.” Once in place, the completed statue’s head will be turned slightly, gazing toward Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Dawe hopes the slight tilt inspires viewers to ask themselves: “What is he thinking?”