Rochelle Riley.

(Rochelle speaking faintly) (gentle music) - Tell us this story because this is rather fascinating.

So you were at the event at the right and you had begun to think about and done some investigation about Dr. Martin Luther King's history here in the city of Detroit.

- So I was invited to this unveiling at the Wright Museum and that was my first time being there.

And while there I questioned, I said, did Martin Luther King ever do anything in this city?

The mayor was there and Rochelle Riley and then the curator of the museum.

And they said, "You know, as a matter of fact, don't you know, he gave the speech here first?"

No, I didn't know that.

So I just, I approached the mayor and I said, I would like to place a Dr. King here, and I believe I can get a donor if we can find a place.

- [Orlando] Rochelle Riley, the city of Detroit's Arts and Culture Director has worked closely with Watts throughout the process.

- He said, you know, I've got some other statues.

And I said, oh, really?

You got a lot of statues?

What have you got?

And he said, "You know, I've got this Martin Luther King statue and the person who owns it wants to donate it to some place very special.

Donate it to a city or to some spot."

And I said we want it.

We want it.

He said, "Oh, well, you know, yeah, we could do it in."

I said, no, no, no.

There's a very special reason we would want it.

Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech here two months before he gave it in Washington, DC and that historic moment that was seen by everybody, but we had 125,000 people who marched down Woodward and saw it here and heard it here.

- [Orlando] Talk a little bit about art being a documenter and a record of history.

- Thank you.

You only have so many statues.

Dr. King was one of those that I had the honor of doing.

Great men and great stories and they're untold from the Black community because they're still, they survived through the horrific situations to now.

And our job is to bring the horrific situations to light and honor the people that documented, that learned to read when you couldn't teach them to read because it's illegal.

- Stan Watts is an amazing artist.

We had the best conversations about African-American history which is a part of American history.

We had great talks about his aesthetic and what he likes to do.

And he likes to do a lot of statues of African-Americans who deserve their place in history.

When you see the statue, you'll see that not only does he know what he's doing but he really puts his heart into it.

These things mean something to him.

- I'm gonna say something that I believe in my heart.

The longest lasting form of medication for healing is bronze because it lasts for 4,000 years.

So when you honor somebody doing something good, that did something that changed lives, you can actually be a better person for having seen great artwork.

And we need great artwork done with respect.

- Normally artists are sort of commissioned in this kind of work, and you were not.

And you went out and found the funding to be able to do this.

I wanna ask you about, upon learning this history, what moved on the inside of you that prompted you to want to do this without being commissioned, but to ask to do this?

- Great artists need to understand why they're doing what they're doing and what they're doing.

And they're not doing it for money.

I'm not doing it for money.

I need to get paid but I'm doing it because it needs to be done.

- [Orlando] The statue of MLK will find its new home in the heart of downtown Detroit at Hart Plaza.

- As soon as we decided and as soon as they agreed to let us have it here there was no place else for it to be.

Hart Plaza is our community space in Detroit.

It's like New York's Times Square.

It is where, connected to the nation's best River Walk, the place for things to happen.

We have movement there.

We have the jazz festival there.

Everything big for our entire community happens there.

The placement of the statue is so important.

There is a transcending monument that's at Hart Plaza that people don't always pay attention to that represents labor.

No matter who's walking down that plaza they'll be able to walk right up to that statue, right on that plaza at Hart Plaza, our community space.

- What are you most looking forward to when you make your way here to the city?

- It's the unveiling and the humble opportunity to honor somebody of the magnitude of Dr. King and his purposes for just bringing the Constitution to fruition.

He had a mission to say, well, don't just say that.

Don't just change the laws, enforced it.

And so, and he was a great man and he knew the spirit, I believe, of our country.

Once everything was on exposed on television, the marches, that the spirit wouldn't allow our country couldn't allow ourselves to say something and then not back it.

And I think he said we were given a check that bounced, is how he described it.

- Yeah, he did describe that in the beginning stanzas of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech with the March on Washington.

He said that the check has been returned as insufficient funds.

- There you, yes, exactly.

I'm looking forward, humbly, to be in this event and to know that my talents were used for a good purpose and that people will be able to, 500 years later, they'll still know that this wonderful man had a dream and that we all are actually just from the same family.