BOISE, Idaho — Five years ago, the president of the Treasure Valley chapter of the NAACP started a plan to bring a new Martin Luther King, Jr. monument to the City of Trees. The first one for the civil rights leader was a small plaque that was put into storage when the Idaho State Capitol Building was renovated.
Since then, NAACP Treasure Valley president Charles Taylor's project took several years of bouncing ideas around before it gained traction. But the protests over the murder of George Floyd last summer were the catalyst for the project to be completed.
What started out as an idea for a 75-pound memorial turned out to be a one-ton solid rock monument, which is set to be formally introduced on Saturday, April 3 at 11 a.m. in front of the Idaho Black History Museum.
"Martin Luther King was one of my heroes back in the day, I came up in his generation," Taylor said. "And it was so riveting just looking at it how beautiful it turned out to be."
He added that he got a little carried away when he first started planning the memorial. With the help of Aaron Hill, a stone engraver, the project of a plaque turned into a monument for the civil rights leader.
For Hill, the protests in response to the murder of George Floyd spurred him to complete the project.
"I'm too shy to go out in protest and I don't know how to solve all of the world's problems but I know how to engrave rocks and I knew it was something I could do," he said.
Like many others, Hill mostly learned about MLK and the civil rights movement in school but focusing on King's idea that "poverty, racism, and discrimination keep us part" hit home for him.
"Words are a little hollow when you learn them at a young age and typing that and laying it out and thinking about it you internalize it a little more and it means a little more than just sitting in a social studies class," he explained.
It's the exact message that Taylor hopes the monument will spread.
"We have to create this circle of being open to different cultures, different ideas, rather than me trying to find the worst in you but to try to find the thing that we have common," he said, "and I hope people take that away when they look at that and really analyze what we're saying."
Taylor added that being a part of setting the stone into place was one of the happiest days he's had as president of the Treasure Valley NAACP.
Hill also told Taylor over the summer not to worry about fundraising for the project.
Hill, who calls himself a homebody and an introvert who likes to keep to himself, said working with Taylor has been the real joy of this endeavor. Getting out of his comfort zone, getting a new friend and broadening his horizons a little bit.
Perhaps that's the biggest thing he's gotten out of this and Taylor couldn't agree more.
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Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled the NAACP as NCAAP. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.