Word: lins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Centerpiece of the structure -- conceived by Maya Lin, who designed Washington's Viet Nam Veterans Memorial -- is a round tabletop, 11 1/2 ft. in diameter. On it, along with the 40 names, is carved a chronology of major civil rights events, and over this flows a thin sheen of water, a symbol of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "mighty stream" of righteousness. Said Karen Reeb, daughter of a white Unitarian minister who was beaten to death after he marched with King in Selma, Ala.: "It just eases the emptiness in my heart...
When she flew south to Montgomery, the "cradle of the Confederacy," in May 1988, Lin was excited but apprehensive. The material she had been sent from the law center included videotapes of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize, the book that complemented it and a short documentary on the Ku Klux Klan, one of the groups whose activities the SPLC monitors. Before receiving all this, Lin knew very little about the civil rights movement. She wasn't even born when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus in 1955, the arrest...
...kind of thing," Lin says, "that requires patience, awareness and added sensitivity. Architecture is like a mythical fantastic. It has to be experienced. It can't be described. We can draw it up and we can make models of it, but it can only be experienced as a complete whole. I wanted to put the truth down, just once. Placing it, just once." After all, she asks, "if you don't remember history accurately, how can you learn...
...asking that seemingly simple question, she raises a complex issue that will surely not be resolved until the memorial is dedicated, if then: How will the South in general, and Montgomery in particular, feel about this tribute to a painful time? And will Maya Lin find herself and her work surrounded by controversy once more...
PROFILE: Architect Maya Lin combines water, granite and truth in her newest work...