WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush, appearing at a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a memorial honoring slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said the National Mall monument will “preserve his legacy for ages.”

Under overcast skies, Mr. Bush joined President Clinton and a host of civil rights figures and members of Congress to celebrate the monument to be built not far from where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

“When Martin Luther King came to Washington in the summer of 1963,” Mr. Bush said, “he came to hold this nation to its own standards. … He stood not far from here … with thousands gathered around him. His dream spread a message of hope.”

“An assassin’s bullet could not shatter his dream,” Mr. Bush said. “As we break ground, we give Martin Luther King his rightful place among the many Americans honored on the National Mall. It will unite the men who declared the promise of America and defended the promise of America with the man who redeemed the promise of America.”

The memorial, to be built roughly a half-mile from the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave his historic speech, will be the first to honor an African American civilian on the Mall.

Mr. Clinton, who received a standing ovation from the largely black crowd, noted that the memorial will stand between the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. He said it is appropriate for King’s memorial to be between the man who helped found the nation and the man who protected the nation’s ideals during the Civil War.

“It belongs here,” Mr. Clinton said.

About 5,000 people braved light rain, cold winds and mud for the ceremonial groundbreaking, including poet and novelist Maya Angelou, television personality Oprah Winfrey, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and several members of Congress.

Ms. Winfrey credited King and other civil rights leaders with making it possible for her to achieve what she’s done.

“It’s because of them that I can be heard,” she said. “I do not take that for granted, not for one breath.”

Donations for the memorial, which have mostly come from major corporations, hit $65.5 million earlier this month.

Harry Johnson, president of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project Foundation, said he hopes to have the site completed by the spring of 2008.

The location is flanked by the Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin D. Roosevelt memorials near the eastern edge of the Potomac River Tidal Basin.

The entrance to the memorial will include a central sculpture called “The Mountain of Despair.” Its towering split rocks signify the divided America that inspired the nonviolent efforts of King and others to overcome racial and social barriers.

“This project has been over a decade in the making,” Mr. Bush said, thanking Mr. Clinton, who signed the legislation authorizing the monument.