Photo by joelogon

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today that a controversial paraphrased quote on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will simply be removed instead of altered to more closely reflect what King said, reports the AP:

Salazar said he had reached an agreement with King’s family, the group that built the memorial and the National Park Service to remove a paraphrase from King’s “Drum Major” speech by carving grooves over the lettering to match existing scratch marks in the sculpture. Memorial sculptor Lei Yixin recommended removing the inscription this way to avoid harming the monument’s structural integrity.

The quote on the monument was awkwardly paraphrased from a 1968 sermon in which King said: “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.” After being cut to fit the monument, King supporters like Maya Angelou said that the paraphrasing made the civil rights icon sound like an “arrogant twit.”

While members of King’s family initially wanted the entire quote to be transcribed on the side of the memorial, such an undertaking would have required removing a large segment of the memorial, which could have threatened its structural integrity.

Work will begin in February or March, and the memorial will remain open while the work is being done.