Donald De Lue
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1976
Cast bronze
Museum Purchase with Student Government Association funds
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
Martin Luther King, Jr
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential advocates of nonviolent protest in global history. During his 13-year tenure leading the African-American civil rights movement, the movement realized unprecedented amounts of change. Among other notable achievements, he served as the spokesman for the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955, which garnered near-universal participation among the black population, despite the hardship of having to walk miles to work each day. As a result of the boycott, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled that racial segregation in transportation is unconstitutional. In 1963, King helped organize the March for Jobs and Freedom, more commonly known as the “March on Washington.” Over a quarter of a million people attended, and it was at this event that King gave his renowned “I Have a Dream” speech. It was at least partly due to the March on Washington that Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which essentially ended the practice of legal racial segregation in America. King’s accomplishments made him the youngest man to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize, and he is the only non-president to have a national holiday in his honor.
It is therefore unsurprising that, when their bust of Dr. King was stolen in 1976, the students of Brookdale Community College in New Jersey commissioned a replacement. They turned to sculptor Donald de Lue, who during his 60-year career made more monumental sculpture than any other 20th-century American. De Lue’s bust aims to capture the forceful personality of its powerful subject.