Maya Lin was asked to build the MLK memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1989. The monument consisted of two elements: a curved black granite wall inscribed with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech and a 12-ft disk inscribed with the dates of major civil-rights-era events and the names of 40 martyrs to the cause. Lin stated, “The minute I hit that quote I knew that the whole piece had to be about water,” Lin said. “I realized that I wanted to create a time line: a chronological listing of the Movement’s major events and its individual deaths, which together would show how people’s lives influenced history and how their deaths made things better.”