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Memorial will be built where MLK and Coretta Scott King met and studied

Racial Injustice MLK Monument
Posted at 2:24 PM, Jan 18, 2021
and last updated 2021-01-18 15:05:33-05

BOSTON (AP) — A memorial honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, is moving forward in Boston.

The civil rights couple met and studied in the New England city in the 1950s.

Organizers say fabrication of a towering bronze sculpture depicting arms embracing is expected to start in March.

The monument would be entitled “The Embrace” and would consist of four 22-foot-high intertwined bronze arms. Organizers hope to place it at the site of a 1965 civil rights rally that MLK led on the city's historic Boston Common.

Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of the group King Boston, says the effort also includes an economic justice center and annual racial equity festival in Boston.

Jeffries hopes to demonstrate how public works can serve as a call to action following the national reckoning on racism sparked by George Floyd's killing last year.

Organizers also want the memorial to be the largest in the country dedicated to racial equity.