Never Let It Fade
Unless you know that it is there, you would miss it. There are no arrows or signs pointing to this spot. This stone marks the place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech during the March on Washington in August 28, 1963.
For the past couple of weeks, I have struggled through whether I like this image or not. It has gone from the flagged pile, to the rejected, un-rejected, back and forth a few times. It was a hard shot to take through moving groups of people and legs. The lettering is hard to read from this angle, but it was the best with the available light and time. Some visitors will spill water over the lettering to make it more readable. I didn’t want that image and was pressed to take this shot before someone came up with the idea of dumping water.
The shoes—a symbol of the several generations that have come since the speech—drove me to figure out a way to make this image work and maybe make it more acceptable.
It came down to sharing my interpretation of what I see in this image. The words and lettering are hard to read, but like many events in history the details begin to fade or revise with time. There is enough detail here to invoke a sense of curiosity to go back and revisit a time past—to rekindle the meaning and never letting it fade completely from memory.
