THE POWER OF PLACE, THE POWER OF OUR VOICES

Remarks of Martin Luther King III

106 Strong: The Rally for History, Culture, and Sovereignty  |  U.S. Capitol West Front  |  November 9, 2026

Thank you, Greg [Werkheiser]. You and I first met more than twenty years ago. I am so pleased to be here with you again, getting into some good trouble.

And thank you to my brothers and sisters from Tribal Nations, preservation advocates, civil rights leaders, and neighbors who have come here from across this country. You are proof that people who care about different places, and carry different histories, can stand together for a common purpose.

My father taught that nonviolence begins with recognizing the dignity of every human being. Part of recognizing that dignity is recognizing that every people has a history. Every community has stories worth telling. Every generation has places worth remembering.

When we erase those places, we erase evidence of lives lived, sacrifices made, injustices endured, and victories won. We deny our children the wisdom of that history.

That is why I am here today.

My father had a dream. We have not yet fulfilled it. But one lesson of the movement he helped lead is that change does not happen because people wait patiently for someone powerful to do the right thing. Change happens when people organize, insist on being heard, and refuse to accept that their lives and histories count for less.

For sixty years, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act has given communities a voice when federal projects may affect historic places. It asks federal agencies to identify what matters, consider the effects of their plans, and consult with those whose heritage may be at stake. It does not say that we cannot build. It says that before we build, we must listen.

That is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is a democratic principle.

Consider the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. In 1991, workers building a federal office building uncovered the remains of hundreds of enslaved and free Africans. Archaeologists identified 424 graves. As many as 15,000 people had been buried there, many perhaps still resting beneath the city today.

At first, the federal government proposed little more than a plaque. But their descendants demanded dignity for their ancestors and a place in the American story. Section 106 gave them a voice.

And here is the important part: the federal building was still built. But the plans changed. Part of the burial ground was preserved. The ancestors were respectfully reinterred. And today, a national monument and museum stand in their honor.

That is what Section 106 makes possible. Not stopping progress, but reminding us that true progress must make room for human dignity.

At Minidoka, Idaho, Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II. Decades later, a proposed massive energy project threatened the historic landscape where that injustice is remembered. Section 106 gave survivors and their descendants a voice in the review process. We need new sources of energy. But we must also hear the voices of those whose history and heritage stand in development’s path.

In Virginia, the Monacan Indian Nation fought to protect Rassawek, its ancestral capital and sacred burial grounds, from a proposed water project. Through consultation and advocacy, the project was relocated. The community could still pursue its water needs, and the Monacan people could protect a place sacred to their ancestors.

That is not a story of preservation stopping progress. It is a story of people finding a better way forward because the government had to listen.

And we know what happens when communities have little power over decisions made in their name. Highways and urban renewal tore through thriving Black neighborhoods—from Jackson Ward in Richmond to Hayti in Durham. In Black communities, we know that our success was threatening. Too often, the neighborhoods sacrificed for federal infrastructure were among our most vibrant and successful.

Families were displaced. Businesses were lost. Churches and gathering places were severed from the people who sustained them. Those wounds remain visible generations later.

When we erase that history, we rob Black and brown children of the knowledge of the evils their ancestors endured and overcame, and the extraordinary communities they built. And we trap white children in the mirage of supremacy, denying them the truth that could set them free from its illusions.

That is not progress. That is the perpetuation of injustice.

We cannot undo every historic wrong. But we can learn from those mistakes. We can refuse to return to a time when the people most affected by a decision are the last people consulted about it.

Today, Congress is considering a bill promising affordability and jobs—goals my father championed. We need housing, infrastructure, energy, and opportunity. But progress should never require us to silence the people it is supposed to serve.

Title III would weaken protections for historic places and narrow opportunities for communities and Tribal Nations to be heard. It would make it harder to prevent harm—and harder to seek justice afterward.

I say to Congress: do not force Americans to choose between building our future and remembering our past. We can do both. Remove Title III—the Historic Preservation provisions—from this bill. And if those provisions remain, do not pass the bill in that form.

This is personal to me. My father’s childhood home on Auburn Avenue teaches visitors that an ordinary human being can help change the world. I recently took my daughter to the Lorraine Motel, where he lost his life, so she could understand what courage costs—and what remains unfinished.

A photograph can tell us something. A book can teach us something. But standing where history happened can change us.

My father often spoke of the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. But that arc does not bend by itself. It bends because people stand together. Because they speak. Because they organize. Because they insist that the promise of democracy must reach everyone—not just those with money, influence, or a seat at the table.

Look at what you have built. More than twelve hundred Tribal Nations and organizations standing together, united by the conviction that Americans deserve a voice in what we preserve, what we change, and what we pass on.

So leave here determined. Speak to your representatives. Tell the stories of the places that shaped you. Stand with communities whose histories have been ignored. And remember: protecting these places is not about living in the past. It is about learning from the past to build a more just future.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless all those working to make this nation worthy of its highest ideals.