Martin Luther King Jr. in sculpture: Which statues capture him best?

Martin Luther King Jr. — for most of us — is more an ideal to aspire to than a reality we can achieve. 

How much more so for an artist — trying to capture him in bronze?

"Many of them I think have missed the mark, presenting who he really was," said Theodora Smiley Lacey, a 60-year Teaneck resident who can speak with some authority on the subject.

She knew King. Worked with him. Stood next to him on Jan. 30, 1956, after his home in Montgomery, Alabama, was bombed.

She knew King, in other words, before he became a martyr, a secular saint, the namesake of a federal holiday (Monday, Jan. 20, this year) and the subject of innumerable monuments in the U.S. and around the world.

There are statues of him in — among many places — Austin, Texas; Aurora, Colorado; Roanoke, Virginia; Chester, Pennsylvania; Riverside, California; Jacksonville, Florida; White Plains, New York; and Washington D.C. There are statues in Westminster Abbey, London; Mexico City, Mexico; Tuzla, Bosnia; and Pretoria, South Africa.

There are at least eight in North Jersey.

All of them remind us that, at the very least, King was a monumental figure, larger than life. 

Whether they truly capture his essence depends, in part, on what you think that essence is.

"I have seen so many terrible statues of Dr. King, it kind of upsets me," said Thomas Jay Warren, the Oregon sculptor who has done two representations of King for Newark: one on Martin Luther King Boulevard, and another — a bust — in City Hall.

He's not the only one who's been upset by some MLK depictions. 

In 2011, there was a minor kerfuffle when the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, created by artist Lei Yixin, was dedicated in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. "Too stern," said some observers, including New York Times art critic Edward Rothstein. (King's son, Martin Luther King III, was on record as liking it.)

Lacey is of two minds about it. "I am impressed with the statue in Washington, with its size, its presence," she said. "His presence was larger than life."

On the other hand, there's that scowl. "He was not a scowling person," Lacey said. "Pensive at times, but never angry or stressed out."

She would know. Because she worked with King during some stressful times.

Lacey, 87, knew King in her early 20s, during the period of the Montgomery Bus Boycott (her father, as board president of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was responsible for bringing King to Montgomery).

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Lacey knows — more viscerally than most of us — the kind of difference King made.

Growing up in Alabama, she experienced the worst of Jim Crow firsthand. She was spat upon. She saw her voting ballots torn up in front of her eyes. She couldn't go to the zoo or the park. She couldn't walk on the sidewalks. "Sometimes you'd have to step off the sidewalk if white citizens were walking," she says. 

And don't get her started on the buses. 

"I have so many stories to tell about riding the buses," she said. "You'd have to keep getting up [for white people]. Until it's too crowded, and then you have to get off. I had to get off the bus, after having paid my fare. The bus drivers were deputized to carry guns. You had to obey their wishes."

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To insult — seemingly endless — add injury. When King's home was bombed, in 1956, many of his followers were through playing nice. "There were people, African-Americans, who gathered with guns," she recalled. "They were ready to go to war. He stood up that night and said to them, 'Put your guns away. We will not be violent.' "

And that was before he'd been home, before he'd found out whether his wife and children were alive or dead. "That's the kind of impact he had," Lacey said.

Greatness of soul, you might call it. The question is: How do you capture that kind of greatness in sculpture? Yet, if you're a certain kind of artist, you have to try.

"I wanted to capture the civil rights icon," Warren said of his two pieces. "The main focus of the piece is that I wanted to portray him as a civil rights pioneer."

In fairness, Warren said, King is a uniquely challenging subject. And he's done a lot of subjects: Brendan Byrne, Althea Gibson, Muddy Waters and Jesus Christ.

"He's a difficult portrait to capture," Warren said. "He has an instantly recognizable face, but if you look at the photos throughout his life, he changed quite a bit. It's kind of hard to explain."

Valley of the kings 

It doesn't help that there are, in a sense, many Martin Luther King Jr.'s.

There's King the scholar, King the orator, King the man of (peaceful) action, King the man of God, King the husband and father, King the Nobel Peace Prize winner. A sculptor might feel fortunate if he captured even one aspect.

"He was so universal," Lacey said. "He was so understanding of different religious and cultural backgrounds. And he was funny. When I saw him here, he teased me and my husband about abandoning him: 'You ran off and left me with all these problems in the South.' And we assured him there was plenty to do right here."

One of the many things she's done, since relocating to Bergen County in 1960, is help place a statue of King on the Hackensack side of Fairleigh Dickinson University (she was co-chairwoman of the committee). It was unveiled in 2014.

And it's a pretty good likeness, if she does say so herself. "We walked through every step with the [artist]," Lacey said. "We saw it poured. All of it." 

She, after all, was the expert — the one who knew King personally, from the beginnings of his movement until the year of his assassination, on April 4, 1968, at age 39. 

"I recall the artist saying: Do you want a young-looking picture of him or an old-looking picture?" she said. "I told him he was never old. So you certainly can't depict him as old."

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Here are some places in North Jersey where you can come face to face with King:

Hackensack

This version of King, unveiled on Oct. 13, 2014, is a scholar. He wears professorial robes. In one hand he carries what looks like a diploma; in the other hand, a book that may or may not be a Bible. Sculptor Richard Blake of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, shows him standing on rough terrain that represents the famous mountaintop ("I have been to the mountaintop"). "We do think this is quite a likeness, and it also indicates his scholarly endeavors," Lacey said.

Visit: Hackensack, Fairleigh Dickinson campus, close to the footbridge to Teaneck. 

Jersey City

Meanwhile, over in Jersey City, King is a man of the people. He visited Jersey City several times during his career. His bust by Roosevelt artist Jonathan Shahn, unveiled at the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail station in April 2000, keeps a watchful eye on the passersby along Martin Luther King Drive. As well he might. The street has been the site, in recent years, of both civic renewal and horrendous violence, including a shooting standoff in December that killed six. Clearly there is still work here for King — and all of us — to do. 

Visit: Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Station, East Martin Luther King Drive near Virginia Avenue, Jersey City.

Paterson

Here we have King the preacher — one arm upheld, the other on the pulpit, as he orates thunderingly (at least judging from his wide-open mouth). Stan Watts of Utah created this piece, the focal point of the new Martin Luther King Jr. Park, which opened Aug. 28, 2019 on a spot where King himself spoke, to a crowd at Bethel A.M.E. Church, eight days before his assassination in Memphis.

Visit: 1 Auburn St., Paterson.   

Paterson 

King spoke for the poor, the disenfranchised. The folks who are forced — by necessity — to do the most with the least. People like Henry Simon, son of South Carolina sharecroppers. He creates art with "found objects": soda cans, plumbing pipes, coat hangers, roofing copper. In 1985, the Parsippany artist was commissioned to do a King statue for Passaic County Community College in Paterson. Dedicated by former Gov. Thomas Kean, it's now in the college's main lobby at Broadway and Memorial Drive. It seems an especially fitting way to honor King: a great man who never lost his connection to humble, everyday things.

Visit: 125 Broadway, Paterson.

Newark

This King has both hands out — possibly beckoning to the crowds, possibly measuring the short time he has left to complete his work on Earth. The statue by Thomas Jay Warren was unveiled on the plaza near the Essex County Hall of Records, on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Newark, on Oct. 14, 2015 — exactly 51 years after King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (Oct. 14, 1964). "I show him at a younger age than you mostly see him," Warren said. "I tried to capture him at the time he visited Newark."

Visit: Near the Essex County Hall of Records, 465 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Newark.

Newark

The bust of King, at City Hall in Newark, looks like the kind of thing you might put on your grand piano. That is, if you had a very large grand piano. The piece by Warren (see above), is 1½ times life-size.

Visit: City Hall, 920 Broad St., Newark.

Elizabeth

Just a cameo of King here, dating from 1986, on a slab that fronts City Hall at Winfield Scott Plaza. King is popular in Elizabeth: he has a boulevard and a school named after him, too.

Visit: Winfield Scott Plaza, Elizabeth.

Union

King spoke at Kean University — formerly Newark State College — back in 1961; his signature still resides in the university's guestbook. In 1989, the university commissioned art student William Breitenback to create a bust for the Dr. Martin Luther King Reflection Garden, outside the Human Rights Institute. He's been reflecting there ever since.   

Visit: Kean University, 1000 Morris Ave., Union. 

Jim Beckerman is an entertainment and culture reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to his insightful reports about how you spend your leisure time, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com Twitter: @jimbeckerman1