MLK Jr’s wife’s cousin Coretta Scott King slams Boston’s divisive new $10 million sculpture honoring the icon

The cousin of Martin Luther King Jr.’s wife, Coretta Scott King, called the newly unveiled statue celebrating the civil rights icon a “woke” waste of money.

The 20-foot-tall ‘The Hug’ piece depicts the famous hug between the two civil rights leaders after MLK Jr. learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Seneca Scott, King’s cousin and unsuccessful 2022 Oakland mayoral candidate, spoke out against the statue Sunday.

She claimed that “ten million dollars was wasted” on the statue of her cousin’s late husband, whom she described as members of “one of the great American families of all time.”

“The awakening algorithm is broken, I don’t know what else to tell you,” he told the New York Post. “If you went through all that and that’s what came to your mind, something is wrong.”

He was responding to the artist behind the sculpture, Hank Willis Thomas, who said, “When we recognize that all storytelling is an abstraction, all representation is an abstraction, we hope that it allows us to be open to more dynamic and complex forms of representation that we don’t like.” let’s stick to the narrative that oversimplifies a person or their legacy, and I think this work really tries to get to the heart of that.’

Scott, whose grandfather’s brother was the father of Coretta Scott King, said he only saw King once at a family gathering before his death in 2006.

“It’s doubly insulting to the black community, that still on average… too many of us are below the poverty line,” Scott said, calling for the sculpture to be melted.

‘You’re spending $10 million on a headless bronze statue? Man, it’s a joke. No acting, no pictures, put down your phone and go do [an act of service] Nobody knows,” he added.

The $10 million artwork shows two sets of disembodied, headless arms, causing confusion among many art fans and supporters of the civil rights icon.

Some members of the King family were among the large crowd that turned out for a ceremony in Boston Common’s Freedom Plaza, where the piece was displayed for the first time, featuring only the couple’s entwined arms.

Several people online questioned the artist’s decision not to include the couple’s heads.

But others were moved by the piece, which pays tribute to the iconic couple who fell in love in Boston and later made a difference in the world.

The sculpture is one of the nation’s largest memorials dedicated to racial equity, a private King Boston organization said last year.

It was designed by Thomas and MASS Design Group and was selected from 126 proposals and installed on Boston Common, not far from where King led a rally and march in 1965.

When the photos and video of the sculpture debuted online, some Twitter users were confused by the art.

One Twitter user called it a “horrible sculpture,” while another tweeted that it didn’t translate well.

“This is horrible,” added British rapper Zuby.

One user shared an image of the piece that showed it at a better angle.

“It’s unfortunate that our first post-introduction sighting is from the worst possible angle,” the user wrote. This is what we should have seen.

Another user criticized the sculpture for not respecting the original photo.

‘The original photo that inspired it was beautiful and perfect. Why not honor that with a replica instead of this hideous rarely sexualized bronze stain… #mlksculpture #MLK’.

Another wrote: ‘Finally some feel good news. Beautiful sculpture. Thanks for sharing!’

The sculpture was unveiled as part of the annual tributes and commemorations of the life and legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which began across the country Friday.

The massive monument consisting of four interlocking arms was unveiled Friday in Boston, where the leader met his wife for the first time.

The civil rights leader and his wife first met in Boston in the early 1950s, when he was a doctoral student in divinity at Boston University and she was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music.

“They both loved this city for its proud heritage as a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and its unique intellectual and educational resources,” their son, Martin Luther King III, said at the dedication.

‘And indeed, Boston became a place where they forged a partnership that would change America and make a powerful contribution to the fight for black freedom. That is what I see in this beautiful monument.

“They both loved this city for its proud heritage as a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and its unique intellectual and educational resources,” their son, Martin Luther King III, said at the dedication.

‘And indeed, Boston became a place where they forged a partnership that would change America and make a powerful contribution to the fight for black freedom. That is what I see in this beautiful monument.

Yolanda Renee King, who has never met her grandparents, said she and everyone else are challenged to “carry on” the couple’s “unfinished work.”

“This is the spirit we must uphold as we commemorate (the King’s holiday),” the 14-year-old said, as the crowd cheered. ‘Let’s make it a great day of community service; a day of brotherhood, a day of brotherhood; one day of using your platform forever; a day of love and healing in the spirit of this wonderful monument.’

Imari Paris Jeffries, executive director of EmbraceBoston, the organization behind the monument, highlighted the importance of the sculpture’s location on Boston Common, the oldest public park in the United States and a high-traffic area with millions of residents and visitors to the city. city ​​walking its roads every year.

“I think Boston has a reputation for being a city of heroes and abolitionists, like WEB Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, along with this reputation for being unfriendly and, in some cases, being portrayed as racist. So there’s this tension between these two images of Boston. Having the memorial there is part of our intention to transform the perspective of our city.”

The organization is also raising money to build an economic justice center in the historically black neighborhood of the city where MLK preached.