The MLK Living Memorial

The MLK Living Memorial is Chicago’s first permanent Memorial to King and it will be unveiled on August 5, 2016. A large part of it is being constructed at a community center in the neighborhood in which it will live and, thereafter, it will stand in Marquette Park. The brick memorial pays homage to the housing stock of so many Marquette Park homes and to the anti-discrimination housing efforts that King was invited to Chicago to work on through the Chicago Freedom Movement. The memorial commemorates King and the marchers but also the living, breathing legacy of that movement and the deep community organizing, relationship- and institution-building that has existed in Chicago communities like Marquette Park ever since.