Forty-three years after his death, Martin Luther King, Jr., became the first African American and fourth non-president to be honored with a memorial on the National Mall. The memorial, which opened in 2011 and overlooks the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C., stands in a "line of leadership" between the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the steps of the latter upon which King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963. The inscription on the side of the 30-foot-tall stone statue of King is an excerpt from the speech: "Out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope."
Read about the controversial history of Martin Luther King Day.
