WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- A plan for a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be chiseled in Chinese granite by a Chinese sculptor for the U.S. capital is under fire.
The Martin Luther King National Memorial Foundation is working with Lei Yixin on a 30-foot statue of the slain civil rights leader to be erected on the National Mall in Washington. But the choice rubs wrong those who think the stone should come from a domestic quarry and be carved by a U.S. artisan, The (Nashville) Tennessean reported Wednesday.
"To say there's nobody in the U.S. who could do this project -- there's something else going on here," said John Castaldo, director of the Barre Granite Association, a granite industry trade association. "The issue is, no granite in the U.S. is being considered and no sculptors from the U.S. are being considered."