MLK’s Atlanta

WORDS BY TONY WARE

As the country celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr on the annual January 16 holiday, take a walk trough the city that made the man

Dr Martin Luther King, Jr stands at the crest of Freedom Parkway overlooking downtown Atlanta, one hand outstretched to welcome the future. The statue, “Homage to King,” by artist Xavier Medina-Campeny, captures King’s resolute silhouette. Cast in iron, it’s a striking presence against the skyline. But it’s four blocks south, at the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic Site, that King’s legacy has its emotional and philosophical foundations. Maintained by the National Park Service, the site preserves King’s birthplace (501 Auburn Avenue) and the Ebenezer Baptist Church (407 Auburn Avenue) where he worshipped alongside his father, “Daddy King.”

King would go on to lead the bus boycotts of Montgomery, Alabama, the marches on Washington, help found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to fight segregation, study nonviolent social change with Gandhi, be famously imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama, fight squalor in Chicago and receive the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, among so many other distinctions, before his assassination in 1968. All these distinctions are commemorated at the MLK Historic Site, which celebrates the life of a man who stepped up to answer the call to courage.

Comprised of 39 acres rich in history and visited by more than 600,000 people annually, the site sits in the residential segment of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district, chosen in the 1950s by Forbes magazine as one of the country’s wealthiest African-American enclaves. These days, Sweet Auburn’s wealth is cultural—and priceless.

“The people who visit here are drawn by the call for peace, dignity and human service,” says Saudia Muwwakkil, public information officer for the site. “We have people from every corner and crevice of the Earth visiting because they recognize that the human struggle involves doing what’s right by our neighbors, and here they can start to glimpse that.”

Leaving from the preserved Fire Station No 6 (39 Boulevard), one of the city’s eight original firehouses and the first to be integrated, park rangers lead regular free tours of the family home where King was born on January 15, 1929. Visitors can look out from the porch where King, or “ML” as he was known, played as a child and with a little imagination they can understand how these blocks formed the foundations for King’s outlook. King, after all, was only a regular man who accomplished extraordinary things, and it was within these walls that he was bred to be respectful and selfmotivated. Stories are told of how “ML” was paid 25 cents a week to stoke the coal-burning “central heat” and how he was expected to recite passages from the Bible at the dinner table. Above all, visiting the birthplace reveals King the human being, as opposed to the figure from history books.

“When you walk through Dr King’s birth home, you see how as a child he was mischievous, messing up the piano keys in the parlor with a hammer or using the head of his sister’s doll as a baseball,” says Muwwakkil.

“The house shows how he rose from a normal childhood to achieve so much, and this serves as an awakening for people who need more in their lives to make a difference outside of their immediate quarters.” “The house where King was born gave me the insight I was looking for,” says Mary Harman, a 24-year-old Atlanta native and first-time visitor. “In the room where he was born I felt like he could have been standing right beside me.”

Harman says she is eager to bring her 10-year-old niece back to join the Junior Ranger Program: “They teach King’s philosophy of nonviolence and give kids a background to the Civil Rights Movement—that’s something that could benefit everyone, whatever their age, color or creed.”

As a child himself in Sweet Auburn, it would have been clear to King how far some of the local residents had come—and had yet to go. To one side of his block lived teachers and doctors in two-story, Queen Anne-style homes, while to the other side lived mill workers in shotgun rowhouses. The fact that these Sweet Auburn people could prosper, despite the indignity of segregation, might well have shown King that you simply need willpower to achieve greatness.

The Atlanta Daily World was founded just down the street—one of the first black-owned daily newspapers—as was the Atlanta Life Financial Group, which offered life insurance to the residents and made its founder, ex-slave Alonzo Herndon, a wealthy pillar of the community.

Much like King saw the need for change firsthand while young, the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic Site Visitor Center (450 Auburn Avenue) stresses education from an early age, offering downloadable curricula on King’s legacy for educators as well as tours of the property for school groups. Inside the Visitor Center, graceful glass displays etched with quotes depict King’s acceptance of the call to lead, his efforts to expand his dream and how his legacy has been preserved and his sacrifice never forgotten.

Special exhibits are mounted; there’s one to honor the 40th anniversary of the African-American struggle for voting rights (running through February). In the rotunda, a special exhibit celebrates the “Children of Courage,” who suffered the sting of segregation and fought for freedom. At the end of the exhibit a notice asks, “Who will end injustice?” A mirror provides the answer.

Across the street there’s a spot for reflection— the private, non-profit King Center (449 Auburn Avenue, www.thekingcenter.org). Founded by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following her husband’s death, this is the final resting place of his body.

This month, the Center is coordinating events for the Martin Luther King holiday on January 16. On January 13, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is putting on a celebration at Morehouse College (see www.morehouse.edu). Morehouse, which was attended by King from the age of 15, is one of six, historically black universities in the Atlanta University Center district (440 Westview Drive) worth visiting to explore the integral role they played in the Civil Rights Movement. Other events around the holiday include the Martin Luther King, Jr Service Summit, a three-day conference leading up to the holiday, co-sponsored by the King Center and Hands On Atlanta (www.handsonatlanta.org). This will explore how ordinary people can make a difference.

For many visitors, though, merely visiting the landmarks of Martin Luther King, Jr’s life is an inspiration in itself. “Coming here has always been a goal of mine,” says Carlton McHenry, 51, from Virginia, who spent a day shuffl ing reverently around the site. “It took me so long to make the trip, I even got to bring a grandbaby. But this is someplace I thought the kids ought to see to get some appreciation of how far civil rights have come since the ’60s, even if we ain’t out of the woods yet. We can never stop fighting for Martin’s dream, because it’s so much bigger than these few blocks can show.”

“Still,” he adds, “this is a good start.” For more information on the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic
Site visit www.nps.gov/malu/

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