John Woodrow Wilson

(1922-2015)

John Woodrow Wilson was an influential artist from Massachusetts, who, in the late 1970s, was commissioned to create a sculpture honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in the newly renamed Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, part of the Olmsted Park system on Buffalo’s east side. Along with the name change, the sculpture was intended to physically acknowledge this part of Buffalo as the heart of the growing African American population, and Mr. Wilson designed the eight foot tall sculpture not as an exact representation but as “an enigmatic image that will invoke a sense of ritual and elemental forces.” Or as one of the lead local organizers of the public art effort, Clifford Bell, stated: It was a “force for black power…a force for life.”