WASHINGTON — A quotation by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., clumsily shortened when inscribed in granite on his memorial at the Tidal Basin, will be replaced and his full words restored, officials said Friday.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said the correction to the so-called "drum major" quotation will more accurately reflect King's original meaning in a sermon he delivered two months before he was assassinated.

A spokeswoman for the National Park Service said the correction — expanding a truncated version that reduced 45 words to just 10 — may necessitate shaving off a slice of the memorial a few inches thick, and replacing it with a new slab bearing the full quotation.

The memorial, which was dedicated last fall, sits on a 4-acre site on the northwest shore of the Tidal Basin, southeast of the World War II memorial.

The controversial inscription comes from a powerful, difficult-to-distill sermon King delivered two months before he was assassinated in 1968. Speaking to the congregation of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, King critiqued the "drum major instinct," shorthand for a showboat who leads the parade. Imagining his own eulogy, King made it clear he wanted to be remembered for a higher purpose.

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice," King said. "Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other shallow things will not matter."

When carved into granite on the north face of the memorial's centerpiece, a 30-foot-tall statue of King emerging from a huge block of stone, the 45 words in the quotation were boiled down to 10 words so as to fit the limited space available: I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.

Anger and dismay over the quotation grew after Rachel Manteuffel wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post last summer drawing attention to the awkward abridgment. Poet and author Maya Angelou said the truncated version made him sound egotistical and boastful, like an "arrogant twit." After several months of equally scornful critiques, Salazar last month ordered a correction, and gave the National Park Service 30 days to consult with the King family and report back with a plan to fix it.

"With a monument so powerful and timeless, it is especially important that all aspects of its words, design and meaning stay true to Dr. King's life and legacy," Salazar said in a statement Friday.

The statement released by his office also cited Bernice King, the youngest daughter of the slain civil-rights leader, expressing her gratitude for the correction.

The Park Service is exploring a range of options to fund what it will cost to make the correction, including philanthropic means, the statement said.