On April 23, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on Boston Common, America's first public park, before a crowd of 22,000 and called for the city to live by its highest ideals. And 13 years earlier across town, Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott met on a blind date in January 1952 at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Seventy years after that first date, "The Embrace", a statue depicting the loving connection shared between the couple after MLK was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, will be unveiled on Boston Common on January 13 and dedicated on January 15. The monument aims to memorialize the civil rights work of the Kings while the plaza in which it sits also honors 65 figures who contributed to the civil rights movement.
We invited Jonathan Evans (ARCH '04 ), lead architect for The Embrace and Principal at MASS Design Group, to talk with fellow alum and colleague Katie Swenson (ARCH '00, PAR '23), Senior Principal at MASS Design Group, about the historic significance of the memorial, and the design process behind this powerful sculpture.
