Jackson Progress-Argus

John H. Carter, the Washington, D.C., King memorial’s first project team leader, discusses a display of his materials associated with the project, including a shovel used in the groundbreaking.

Jackson — Despite being told it could take decades to get legislation passed to build a memorial to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C., John H. Carter said he and his team refused to see impediments to seeing the project through.

Carter, a Thomaston native, a retired executive at AT&T and the King memorial’s first professional project manager, was the featured speaker Monday at the United Coalition of Butts County’s 26th Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.

“This memorial is in the center of the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials,” Carter said. “Jefferson wrote it, Lincoln fought for it, and King died for it.”

Before an audience at the Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Jackson on Monday afternoon, the national King holiday, Carter discussed his role as the reluctant first leader of the King memorial project. He outlined the legislative steps it took, and the months of work, to get approval to build a memorial to the slain civil rights leader. Legislation authorizing the memorial to be in Washington, D.C., was passed in 1996, he said. But it took two more bills to gain approval to locate the memorial on the National Mall, and in a specific area on the Mall.

He said he told people, “If we’re going to do something that’s going to be there forever, it should be difficult. That’s why everyone doesn’t have a memorial on the Mall.”

After helping raise an initial $15 million to get the memorial project started, Carter said control was transferred to Harry E. Johnson, Sr., who is president and CEO of the Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial.

First conceived of by leaders of the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity in 1984, according to a history on the memorial’s web site, the King memorial was officially dedicated Oct. 16, 2011, after the ceremony was pushed back from the August anniversary of King’s March on Washington because of an earthquake and approaching hurricane.

It was during that 1963 march that King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Carter said an initial dedication was held at the site in the Tidal Basin in 2000, during which a plaque -- now in the Smithsonian -- was installed to mark the future home of the memorial. “If you’re going to dream a dream, you’ve got to put a stake into it,” he said.

As part of the United Coalition’s King holiday celebration, audience members were also led in prayers and song, including “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and “We Shall Overcome.”

The Butts County Community Choir also provided accompaniment for soloists Sohmer Evans McKibben and Christine Barlow Mayfield.

The Rev. Charlie Barlow, the president of the Butts County branch of the NAACP, emceed the program.