MLK Statue in Boston: Design, Freedom Plaza, and Backlash

The MLK statue in Boston is The Embrace, a 20-foot bronze sculpture on Boston Common depicting the intertwined arms and hands of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. Unveiled on January 13, 2023, it was inspired by a 1964 photograph of the couple hugging after King learned he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. The abstract design, by artist Hank Willis Thomas and the architecture firm MASS Design Group, drew warm reviews from many visitors and sharp mockery online for its armless, headless form.¹

What You See on the Common

The sculpture renders only the Kings’ arms and hands wrapped around one another. There are no faces, no torsos, no feet. Thomas described the form as an “infinite loop” that recalls Celtic love knots. The finished bronze weighs 19 tons and stands tall enough that visitors can walk inside the loop formed by the arms. That interior space is part of the design: Thomas said that when someone stands inside, “you’re in the heart of their love… the viewer becomes the heart. The heartbeat.”²

The piece sits on Boston Common, the oldest public park in the United States, inside a surrounding plaza designed as part of the same project.

Why Boston

The Kings met in Boston. In 1951, Martin Luther King Jr. came to the city for a doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University, and Coretta Scott arrived the same year on a scholarship to the New England Conservatory.³ A mutual friend introduced them in January 1952, and their first date took place on the steps of the Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. They married in June 1953.

While a student, King lived in the South End and served as an assistant minister at the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury. He returned to Boston in April 1965 to address a joint legislative session at the Massachusetts State House and lead a freedom march from Roxbury to Boston Common, drawing more than 20,000 people in a rally against housing and employment discrimination.⁴ The sculpture’s plaza is directionally aligned with the Parkman Bandstand, where King spoke at the end of that march.¹

What the Design Is Meant to Say

Thomas is a conceptual artist whose work explores identity and popular culture. He has said he wanted to pull focus away from individual hero worship and onto the idea of collective action, with love treated as a force for justice.¹ He called the piece a “monument to love” in a society that more often memorializes violence.

Organizers at Embrace Boston, the nonprofit behind the project, said the design “resonated deeply” and captured the “essence of the Kings as a couple” even without their faces.⁵⁶

The 1965 Freedom Plaza Around It

The sculpture sits inside the 1965 Freedom Plaza, a 6,000-square-foot circular space designed by MASS Design Group. The floor contains more than 1,300 diamond-shaped granite pavers in six finishes, laid in a pattern meant to evoke African American quilt-making traditions.⁷ Bronze plaques embedded in the ground honor 69 local civil rights leaders active in Greater Boston between 1950 and 1975.⁸ Circular bench walls frame the plaza, one of them carrying a quote from Coretta Scott King. The text uses the “Martin” font by Black designer Tré Seals.

Who Paid For It

The project was funded entirely by private donations, not taxpayer money. Embrace Boston executive director Imari Paris Jeffries made this point directly in response to the “waste of money” line that showed up in some criticism. The original fundraising goal was $12 million, and some reports put the total project cost around $10 million. A $1 million partnership was dedicated to the Twelfth Baptist Church for King-related programming, and Embrace Boston reported distributing more than $1.39 million to community and social justice efforts since 2020.⁹

The initial push came from Paul English, a Boston-area tech entrepreneur who visited the King memorial in San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens in September 2017 and decided Boston should have one too.¹⁰ English became the project’s primary funder.

The Backlash

Within hours of the unveiling, images of the sculpture circulated online with jokes about what the abstracted shapes resembled from certain angles. Comedian Leslie Jones joked on air that the statue appeared to depict a sex act. Fox News host Tucker Carlson called the sculpture a “middle finger” and characterized it as a waste of money.⁹

The most-quoted critic was Seneca Scott, a community organizer and cousin of Coretta Scott King, who wrote an essay in Compact calling the sculpture a “masturbatory metal homage” and an “insult to Black people everywhere.”¹¹ He objected particularly to the omission of Coretta Scott King’s face, saying she had a “regal, iconic face” that deserved to be shown. Scott later softened his position after learning the project was privately funded, telling The Guardian his initial reaction had come from the “anger part of grief.”⁹

Researcher Catherine Lennartz offered a more structural critique, arguing that the sculpture’s “formal difficulties” come from arms positioned at “physiologically confusing junctions” where shoulders and bodies are simply absent.¹² She also suggested the organizers’ messaging had drifted over the years from King’s words and work to the broader theme of love, which may have “primed the public for disappointment.”

The Defense

Thomas pushed back by noting that the design had been chosen through a public selection process and that a three-dimensional sculpture cannot be fairly judged from a single photograph taken at one angle. He compared the backlash to the initial controversy around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, now widely admired.¹³

The King family spoke at the unveiling in support of the piece. Martin Luther King III called it a “love story” that evokes “strength” and described the monument as “amazing.” His daughter Yolanda King dubbed it “Love 360,” saying, “This monument is dedicated to their love, and we really need more love in the world.”¹⁴ Boston Globe columnist Jeneé Osterheldt called the sculpture “beautiful and radical,” writing that very few public monuments celebrate “love and tenderness.” The Rev. Liz Walker, co-founder of Embrace Boston, said the mixed reception reflected people speaking “out of our wounds” and that “public art is meant to bring about discussion.”¹⁵

Visitors interviewed on the Common tended to report a different experience than the online commentary suggested, with one saying it “looks really impressive in person” and another praising the emphasis on love “rather than the individuals involved.”¹⁶ By 2026, the initial online backlash had largely subsided.¹²

Visiting the Memorial

The Embrace is permanently installed on Boston Common. A free companion app, the Embrace Digital Experience, offers historical photos, storytelling, and first-hand accounts of Boston’s civil rights history for visitors on-site. In April 2025, Embrace Boston and Everyone250 dedicated “Freedom Rally Square” at the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets to commemorate the 1965 march led by the Kings, giving visitors a second nearby site tied to the same history.⁵

1
Hank Willis Thomas. The Embrace
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Time. Martin Luther King Sculpture Hank Willis Thomas Interview
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New England Conservatory. Celebrate Boston’s Greatest Love Story
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Boston Globe. The History Behind The Embrace
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Embrace Boston. Monuments
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The Boston Foundation. King Boston Sculpture SelectionMLK Statue Embrace Backstory
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City of Boston. The Embrace and 1965 Freedom Plaza
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Embrace Boston. Our Heroes
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The Guardian. Martin Luther King Sculptor Boston Hank Willis Thomas
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Boston Globe. How One Boston-Area Entrepreneur’s Dream Sparked a Movement
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The Conversation. Reaction to Bronze Sculpture of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston
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Boston University Sequitur. Up in Arms: The Embrace and Public Perception
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CNN. MLK Coretta Embrace Memorial Boston
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NBC Boston. King Family Embrace Boston Statue
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WGBH. Co-Founder of Embrace Boston on Mixed Reviews for King Sculpture
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NBC Boston. Design of The Embrace Statue Honoring MLK Prompts Varied Response in Boston