Artist:	Harold L. Williams and Gerald Gladstone
Title:	King Memorial
Date:	1978
District:	Second Supervisorial District
Location:	205 S. Willowbrook Avenue Compton, CA 9022

Originally designed and conceived as a fountain, the King Memorial is a sweeping tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The memorial, commissioned by Los Angeles County and the City of Compton Civic Center Authority, is situated as the focal point of a plaza surrounding the Compton Civic Center and was originally designed to feature a 70-foot stream of water shooting through the center of the structure. The monument derives its symbolic impact from its simplicity of design and clean, straight lines. Arranged in the classically harmonious shape of a circle, multiple identical white panels rise up at varying angles and meet at a central circular form.

According to the Civic Center’s architect, Harold L. Williams, the designers as well as the artist Gerald Gladstone wanted to bring a community quality to the architecture that would project the feeling of open space. The work evokes the form of a mountain, reflecting Dr. King’s own statement that he had “been to the mountain top.” The magnificent, minimalist structure surrounded by planters and benches serves as a perfect spot to sit and ponder Dr. King’s philosophies and his global impact.

Information provided courtesy of African-American Architects of Los Angeles: Oral History Transcript, 1989-1990, interview with Harold L. Williams by Wesley Howard Henderson; UCLA Library Special Collection.

About the Artists: Harold L. Williams was the ninth African-American architect to be licensed in Los Angeles. He worked with Paul Williams before moving to the architecture firm of Orr, Strange, and Inslee. In 1960 he established his own architecture firm in partnership with Virgil A. Meeds and Leonard Brunswick. His many projects in Los Angeles include the Compton City Hall (1976), South Central Los Angeles Multiservice and Child Development Center (1976), State Office Building in Van Nuys (1982), and Fire Station Number Three in Compton (1989).

Gerald Gladstone (1929-2005) was a Canadian sculptor raised in Toronto. In the 1950s Gladstone exhibited with a group of Toronto artists in a gallery operated by Av Isaacs. He received his first Canada Council of the Arts grant in 1959 and traveled to London, England where he studied with renowned sculptor Henry Moore. Later in 1967, Gladstone was granted three major commissions for Montreal’s Expo 67 and in 2003 he was given a retrospective exhibition by the Art Gallery of Ontario.