IT MIGHT BE A COINCIDENCE—OR MAYBE IT WAS JUST FATE. Connie and I visited Denver’s Martin Luther King Memorial on the same day as Rep. John Lewis’s funeral, the same Civil Rights leader who marched across the Pettis Bridge with Dr King. And while Barak Obama eulogized Lewis at MLK's old church with an elegance that has been absent for nearly four years, we walked around a bronze statue of Dr. King, literally and figuratively, standing upon the shoulders of Gandhi, Fredrick Douglass, Sojourner Truth and Rosa Parks.
A Humble Cortege for John Lewis
The Memorial was dedicated in 2002 in City Park but Connie and I only learned about it from a special Covid “Safer-at-Home” American Experience episode on PBS. “Chasing the Moon” serendipitously brought together both of the great issues of the 60s—Civil Rights and the Space Race—with a brief segment about Ed Dwight, the first African-American selected by NASA for space flight.
Martin Luther King Memorial, City Park, Denver
Ed Dwight never flew into space—the nation wouldn’t be ready for a black astronaut until 1983 when Guion Bluford flew on the space shuttle—but he became a well-known sculptor. When Connie “googled” him we found out he lives in Denver and created the Martin Luther King Memorial.
Ed Dwight, Astronaut Ed Dwight, Sculptor
Quite a coincidence, I think, especially at this time of turmoil.
ADDENDUM—May, 2024 Sixty years after he was released from the Space Program, Ed Dwight went into space on Blue Origin. “I thought I didn’t need it in my life,” Dwight said of the experience. But I lied. I really, really did need it.”
