“It’s fitting” that a Jamaican sculptor will create new Martin Luther King Jnr statue

Watson was selected from a list – later condensed to three – of sculptors after his presentation convinced the Atlanta City Council. The bronze monument when complete will be 12 feet high and placed on a six-foot pedestal on Martin Luther King Jnr Drive in the Georgia capital near CNN headquarters and the Mercedes Benz Stadium.

The statue is projected to take some 10 months to be ready.

Some of Watson’s most recent works included statues of sprint legend Usain Bolt, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and folklorist Louise ‘Miss Lou’ Bennett-Coverley – all commissioned by the Jamaican government.
Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of culture, gender, entertainment and sports, and who would have directly interfaced with Watson on the aforementioned statues, was naturally elated for her fellow Jamaican.

In a statement to the press, Grange said: “I am very proud that Basil Watson, an outstanding Jamaican artist, has been selected to develop a monument celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Basil has been one of our leading sculptors and this is a recognition of the great work that he does and an endorsement of Jamaican talent. I look forward to his design, which I know will be awesome and inspiring.”
For Atlanta resident Valerie Rochester the new statute cannot come too soon.

“We are absolutely elated and proud to know that he (Basil Watson) was selected from a little tiny country of Jamaica. It tells the world of how tenacious we are as a people and also the history of Martin Luther King Jnr had with Jamaica where he would come to do his writings,” Rochester, who is from Old Harbour, Jamaica, said. “We are over the moon with a joyful spirit. We can hardly wait for it!”

The Jamaica Global, a Jamaica Diaspora online news site says there could not be a better person charged with such monumental privilege.

“It is fitting that a Jamaican should be selected to create a statue of the famous civil rights martyr and Nobel Laureate,” the website scribes. “On his much celebrated first visit to Jamaica in 1965, King said he never felt more at home anywhere in the world and declared “In Jamaica, I feel like a human being.”

“Few are aware of the fact that King returned to Jamaica two years later to seek the peace and seclusion of a country cottage near Ocho Rios, to give himself the freedom to think and complete the writing of a book later published under the title Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”