Carroll County?s NAACP president supports Anne Arundel County?s planned construction of the state?s first memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Anything that attracts attention to progress amongst races in the county and state is a benefit to the community at large,” said Charles E. Harrison, head of the Carroll County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“And coming on the heels of allegations of police brutality in the Anne Arundel minority community, I think it?s a great step and needs to serve not just the minority community but the whole community.”
Carroll County is also in the process of commemorating its black history.
“We are working with county administrators to get a foyer with a tribute to blacks in Carroll County history at the former Robert Moton High School in Westminster, which is being converted to county office space,” Harrison said.
Anne Arundel County community leaders and civil rights activists still need to raise another $150,000 in about four months to construct the $400,000 monument, said Carl Snowden, an Anne Arundel civil rights activist and county intergovernmental affairs director.
Plans call for a 70-foot-wide plaza and garden dedicated to the memory and message of King and his wife, Corretta Scott King, on the grounds of Anne Arundel Community College.
Denver-based Ed Dwight Studios has been commissioned to cast the sculpture of King. Ed Dwight Studios also worked on the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley memorial in downtown Annapolis.
Snowden said organizers hope to dedicate the memorial, the first in the country honoring the couple on the anniversaryof King?s “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
