After a historic buildup to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial dedication last August -- a week of poignant events, and numerous reflections on the 15 years of work that went into it -- the plan was scrapped in the wake of Hurricane Irene. Rescheduled for the morning of Oct. 16, the new dedication day has been scaled back but will still be packed with entertainers and prominent speakers.

Hosted by PBS NewsHour's Gwen Ifill (and preceded by an hour of musical selections and readings, emceed by journalist Roland Martin), the program will feature President Barack Obama, Nikki Giovanni, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. John Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Cicely Tyson, Julian Bond, Jesse Jackson, Jennifer Holliday, Joseph Lowery and Mary Mary. The dedication is free and open to the public (no tickets required).

Harry Johnson Sr., president and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation, spoke with The Root about last summer's disappointing weather report, who made last-minute memorial donations and why there should be no controversy around holding the dedication on the anniversary of the Million Man March.

The Root: In August it looked like you were trying to hold on as long as you could, planning to proceed with the dedication "rain or shine." What convinced you to finally postpone it?

Harry Johnson: I was watching the weather pattern very carefully. Hurricanes can do a lot of things -- they can turn at a moment's notice, for example, and go away from you. The first bit of news we heard was that it was turning eastward. That was a good sign because it meant that we'd get very little rain, and some wind that would pass over. Throughout the day, however, the news changed, and it was turning westward.

My biggest concern was the wind. We had 27,500 chairs out there, portable bathrooms, bike racks and a stage that was several stories tall. Just coming off of the Indiana State Fair, at which a stage collapsed, I did not want to put anyone in harm's way.

Did it hurt to make the decision? Yes. But it was the right decision to make.

TR:  Why did you choose Oct. 16 as the rescheduled date -- was it purposely selected to coincide with the anniversary of the Million Man March?

HJ: That was a coincidence. We were trying to get a date when President Obama was available, along with Cabinet members who are participating. This was the best date that we had.

TR: Can you tell us about the gala on Saturday night, preceding the dedication?

HJ: The gala's really just a thank-you, if you will, to folks who have helped build the memorial: people who donated, people behind the history of how it got started and people who helped to literally build it. It has been trimmed down a bit from the last time. We were going to do 5,000 at a seated dinner; now we're doing 2,400.

TR: In August, the memorial was $6 million short of its $120 million goal. Have more donations rolled in since then to narrow the funding gap?

HJ: Yes. Right now we're at about $117 million, so we're $3 million short. We had another million dollars come in from Boeing, and Major League Baseball donated a million dollars.

TR: Have there been any new celebrity donors?

HJ: No.

TR: There will be several hours of programming on the day of the dedication. What can people expect?

HJ: Our "Morning Joy" program begins at 8 o'clock on Sunday morning, so you won't hear a lot of joking and all that, but there will be gospel, poems and sincere words from various people. The actual dedication program starts at 9 a.m., with people giving readings and remarks. The historic Ebenezer Baptist Church choir will sing, as well as the Dupont Chemical Co. choir. People can expect to see a lot of reverence.

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.

Another hot topic at President Obama's news conference this week, despite his best efforts to focus on the jobs bill, was solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. Last month the company, which in 2009 received a $535 million federal loan, declared bankruptcy. Yet the president had emphatically lauded Solyndra as a model for government investment in clean energy, visiting its California headquarters as part of his 2010 "Main Street Tour."

Behind the scenes, administration officials were warned about the shaky standing of Solyndra, which made solar panels without silicon. The business floundered when silicon prices dropped sharply. Democratic members of the House energy subcommittee, which is now investigating the company's bankruptcy (along with another investigation by the Treasury Department inspector general into the Solyndra loan, and a fraud investigation into Solyndra by the FBI), released emails that showed the concern.

In a 2010 email to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Steve Westly, a former California state controller and green venture capitalist, wrote, "Many of us believe the company's cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term." A staffer from the Office of Management and Budget wrote that "bad days are coming."

A report by the Energy Department's inspector general cautioned that the agency hadn't fully developed regulations needed to manage the loan program -- created in 2005 under President George W. Bush -- that provided funds for Solyndra. The Obama administration, however, repeatedly downplayed the concerns.

Obama's Defense

At a White House press conference on Thursday, the president gave his explanation for supporting the company despite the alarms over its vetting and viability:

We knew from the start that the loan guarantee program was going to entail some risk, by definition ... The overall portfolio has been successful. It has allowed us to help companies, for example, start advanced battery manufacturing here in the United States. It's helped create jobs. There were going to be some companies that did not work out; Solyndra was one of them ... And of course there were going to be debates internally when you're dealing with something as complicated as this.

Asked whether his administration also ignored the warnings out of eagerness for his clean-energy "Win the Future" agenda to succeed, Obama insisted that was not a factor:

Even for those projects under this loan guarantee program that have ended up being successful, there are those in the marketplace who have been doubtful. So, I mean, there's always going to be a debate about whether this particular approach to this particular technology is going to be successful or not.  

All I can say is that the Department of Energy made these decisions based on their best judgment about what would make sense. And the nature of these programs are going to be ones in which for every success, there may be one that does not work out as well. But that's exactly what the loan guarantee program was designed by Congress to do -- was to take bets on these areas where we need to make sure that we're maintaining our lead.  

Solar Naysayers Take Aim

On the other hand, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), chair of the House oversight subcommittee investigating Solyndra, said last month that the company's downfall proves that "green energy isn't going to be the solution." Stearns has also argued that we can't compete with China when it comes to renewable energy because China puts far larger subsidies into it. He's not alone. In Solyndra's aftermath, there's growing sentiment that green energy -- and solar in particular -- is a doomed industry.

Majora Carter, president of the Majora Carter Group, a consultancy that specializes in green solutions, doesn't believe the sky is falling. "It's a little alarmist, to say the least, considering that solar is an industry that's certainly taking off in other parts of the world and even here," she told The Root, adding that Solyndra represented just 1.3 percent of the Energy Department's loan-guarantee program portfolio. "There are a lot of other U.S. solar companies that are doing just fine. Why are we not talking about the [federal loan] beneficiaries that did succeed?"

But even though advocates have been talking about the potential of solar energy to take off in this country for decades now, it still makes up only 0.1 percent of our energy consumption. If it were really viable for the United States, why are the numbers so microscopic?

"There's a big difference between talking about it and actually putting resources into it. We have not done that," said Carter. "Reagan could not have been more obvious about where he thought solar should be when he went into the White House and immediately uninstalled the panels that Jimmy Carter had installed there. That was an indication that there weren't going to be the kind of subsidies and support, and research and development, need to go into that industry.

"We haven't been putting serious resources into it now, either. Instead it's been going into oil, gas and coal. It's just not a real comparison. The assumption is that all things are equal, and they clearly are not. The playing field is not level."

Carter is equally dismissive of the idea that we can't compete with China. "There's something to be said about a whole bunch of folks always being able to do it cheaper," she conceded. "But I don't think we should just throw in the towel. Whatever happened to American ingenuity and developing our own market share? We've done it with pretty much everything, and there's no reason why we can't do it. What we haven't done is make the investments in R&D to actually do something -- and maybe even do it better."

Cynthia Gordy is The Root's Washington reporter.