WASHINGTON — Midway between the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, at the quiet intersection of two sidewalks along Washington's Tidal Basin, a tarnished bronze plaque marks the spot where a larger-than-life image of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may one day rise.

"At this site will be erected the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial," reads the square marker, placed more than four years ago. Since then, supporters have been trying to raise the $100 million necessary to erect a grand national memorial to the slain civil-rights leader.

Organizers had hoped to break ground this year, with completion in 2006. But fund raising has progressed slowly. In 2003, Congress granted organizers a three-year extension to secure the money and keep the dream of a King memorial on the National Mall alive.

"We don't build memorials to people, we build memorials to ideals they stand for," said Harry Johnson Sr., a Houston attorney and president of the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation. "Dr. King's ideal is peace. Dr. King's idea is equality. That's what this memorial will stand for."

The foundation has raised $32.5 million and must get to $66 million before construction can begin. To increase awareness about the project, it plans next month to launch print advertisements and television public-service announcements starring actors Morgan Freeman and Samaire Armstrong urging people to contribute.

Erecting a memorial on or near the National Mall, a hallowed stretch of open space and solemn monuments extending through the heart of official Washington, in an arduous process involving authorization, site location and fund-raising.

Thousands of aging World War II veterans died awaiting the completion of the memorial to that war, which opened last spring. It and two other recently constructed memorials in Washington all received fund-raising extensions.

The memorial project The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation can be reached at: (888)484-3373 or at: www.buildthedream.org

King's memorial was authorized by Congress in 1996, but then there was a debate over its location. The National Capital Planning Commission originally wanted it built in an area known as Constitution Gardens, which is to be the home to another new memorial honoring black Revolutionary War patriots.

Supporters of the King memorial, however, worried that the memorials to African Americans would all be in one place. They chose four acres along the Mall's Tidal Basin, a spot on a direct line between the grand memorials to presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson and adjacent to the recently completed shrine to President Franklin Roosevelt.

"We felt Dr. King needed to be in a spot of prominence," Johnson said.

The planning commission finally agreed in 1999.

The memorial's design is centered on a 28-foot-tall structure, "Stone of Hope," that will feature an inscription and a likeness of King on its facade. Visitors entering the memorial would pass through a narrow entryway of two tall stones that symbolize "mountains of despair."

The inspiration, said Boris Dramov of ROMA Design Group, lead designer on the project, came from King's August 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial: "With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope."

The memorial also will feature a crescent-shaped granite wall with cascading water that will contain inscriptions to be decided this year by a panel of African-American scholars and a diverse group of clergy, said Ed Jackson Jr., the project's chief architect.

Jackson said the foundation will submit schematic drawings of the project in April to the planning commission and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, federal entities that review new projects in the nation's capital.

The idea came in 1984 when George Sealey Jr., a retired Army major, and friends sat at a kitchen table and kicked around the idea of a memorial on the Mall to honor an African American, Jackson said.

Several names came up, but the group settled on King. Sealey pitched the idea to his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation's oldest black fraternity — of which King was a member.

Johnson hopes enough money can be raised for a groundbreaking in November 2006, with completion in late 2007.