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{{But then everything started to go wrong. Residents in the black area where the statue was placed complained that it didn't look like him. The face wasn't quite right, the stance was haughty, the expression aloof. One even thought the pen he was carrying looked like an extra finger.

"I couldn't believe it," said 71-year-old Samuel Gray. "That's not Dr King. There's no likeness, none."

Then they found out the sculptor was white. To the statue's detractors race explained the artistic mistakes. "We need an artist who can relate," one resident, Kimberle Evans, told the New York Times.

To supporters of the statue, the racial point explained why others would disparage it so readily. But, either way, the work of art meant something to almost everyone. For the town council that meant trouble. Views on how to rectify the situation diverged, from the drastic (getting the sculptor to cut the head off and replace it with a better likeness or do the whole thing again) to the problematic (finding a black sculptor to do another). }}