WASHINGTON, D.C. - Rev. Reginald Green was walking along the tidal basin footpath when a group of visiting school teachers noticed him and then surrounded him, gleefully surprised at their own good fortune.
"I'm thrilled we got the opportunity to meet you," said one woman.
"So when you were arrested, were you actually put into jail?" asked another.
Green, 72, smiled at the question he has been asked many times before. "Well, yeah! The idea was to be arrested at that point."
In the spring of 1961, Green was a college student in Richmond, Va. when he left to join the Freedom Riders, a diverse group of civil right activists who made trips down south, fighting to integrate the still segregated U.S. bus system. Like many others on those rides, Green was arrested and spent most of that summer in a Mississippi jail.
Fifty years later, Green rests on a leafy pathway near the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, Washington's newest monument, and reflects on the influence King had on his own journey through the civil rights movement.
"When you look back on it, you don't realize at the moment that you're in it, how much of an impact an individual can have on your life," Green said softly. "But as I've grown older, the one thing I do recall is his magnetism, his use of language, and how his use of language could fascinate you."
King, known for his poetic words and powerful delivery, gave one of his most famous speeches on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," King said in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
Those words, which have continued to inspire generations, will be remembered again at the memorial's official dedication on August 28, the 48th anniversary of the speech. With U.S. President Barack Obama scheduled to speak and Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder to perform, the dedication is an important day for Green.
"There is a lot of emotion to it," he said. "I say to myself, how blessed I was to walk in some of the paths that this man walked."
A jogger, out for his lunchtime run on the shady trail, came to a stop as he approached the memorial.
Cleveland Arrington, a former Marine turned government employee, explained why he chose this route.
"I come out here to de-stress and while I'm de-stressing … I can come out here and pay respect and honour to the man who in his time, helped pave the way for folks like me. Looking at it gives me strength. In life and to finish my run."
And as Arrington continued on his way, Green echoed the sense King's spirit and the power of his words permeate the granite structure.
"Now we get to ride by here, walk by here, read the message and the language of many of his quotes, and just to look up at it, it's almost as though you want to just kneel and kiss the ground to say this man was indeed a 20th century prophet… a spokesperson for God."
